Deck the Halls...

It's Christmas time again, and while I'm still just as in love with Christmas as ever, this year seems different from the others.

First, we are not spending Christmas at home. (And by "home" I mean my parents house, because even getting married and having children and turning 29 has apparently not changed the fact that I still feel like that is my home.)

And lets face it, no one does Christmas "right" except the family you grew up with. Everyone else does it a little funky - not badly, just different.

And secondly, I now have a four year old, and a two year old, who also love Christmas. . Last year they were too young to really be overly involved. Now, they want to be involved in everything Christmas. Even if The Attacks desire to be included stems purely from wanting to do whatever it is that Connah is doing.

This keeps me very busy. because as we all know, doing anything with children takes at least 18 times longer than doing it by yourself We have shopping, and wrapping, and baking (Yeah, I still can't cook... I just really like baking with the boys.... We hardly ever produce anything edible. but it's still fun.) We have attempted to visit Santa several times, but he's still far too scary to talk to, so we just have to look at him. From a distance. We have paper lanterns and snowflakes taped to every surface of our home. We have Christmas lists miles long which get added to daily. homemade cards covered in glitter are scattered everywhere, and gaudy tinsel and Christmas balls are hanging from random objects.

It looks like Santa vomited partially digested Christmas inside our house.

The Christmas tree is our saving grace. We took the boys to pick out our tree, and of course they needed the biggest tree that would fit inside our house. And it fits. Just. Ok, it's kinda bent over at the top from smushing into the roof, but it fit through the door, and that means it's not too big.

Connah decorated the hell out of that tree. Every bough within his reach had a decoration or six balancing precariously on the end of it's needles.

The Attack was totally getting in the spirit in his own way. Just stand back and hiff the decorations at the tree, and dance around like a nutter when one sticks. It's decorating and a game all in one. It's multitasking.


Yes, preparing for Christmas with two small children is hectic. Things are messy, and the decorations don't match, and the Christmas tree has way more decorations on the bottom 4 feet than the top, but it's also epically fun. They more than make up for the extra work they create just by amusing me with the crazy stuff they say:



Connah: "It's lucky Ashden didn't fall out of bed and break his neck last night, else he'd get no presents on Christmas."


Me: "Ash, do you like Santa?"
The Attack: "No."
Me: "Do you like the Christmas tree?"
The Attack: "No! I not!"
Me: "Well, do you like the twinkly lights?"
The Attack: *Stamps foot* "No! No! No!"
Me: "What do you like then?"
The Attack: "Me is like ASHDEN!"


Me: "Connah, do you want to go and see Santa and tell him what you want for Christmas?"
Connah: "Nah, I'll just e-mail him later."


Me: *Upon watching The Attack stare at the Christmas tree for an extended time* "What are you doing Ash?"
The Attack: *Pointing to a shiny Christmas ball* "Lookin at all da Ashden's peekin at me!"


Connah: "Ashden's looking at me and he's not allowed."
The Attack: "I is not! I is lookin at da pwetty Kwissmas twee!"
Me: *glance at The Attack who is staring very obviously and intently at Connah for the sole purpose of irritating him* "Ash can look at you if he wants, just like you can look at whatever you want."
Connah: "No, he's not allowed! He'll use up all the air around my head!"



Those two boys embody Christmas. They are joy, and excitement, and hope. And I will be taking them with me when I leave on Thursday to spend Christmas with a family that I did not grow up with.

I get to take Christmas with me, and that is all sorts of awesome.

Merry Christmas.



xox

In The Beginning, Part Two...

So, pregnancy sucked, but now (after a 17 hour labour which finished off the pregnancy nicely... in a blood-bath horror movie kind of way,) all your dreams are about to come true as you are presented with your slimy, bloody bundle of joy.



Does the love explode out of your every pore like a rainbow on crack?



No. No it does not.



For the first three days I was a bit bewildered. I think this is what people are talking about when they say the "Three day high" after you give birth. It's not a "high" it just doofty confusion from having just had your whole world turned on it's ass. You have a retarded grin on your face because you have no idea what's going on, not because you are blissfully happy... some adjustment time is required.



Adjustment time which has to take place in a hospital room with 8 other people who have also just given birth.



You are literally confined to your tiny little hospital bed, with a spit-through curtain that you can pull around for "privacy". And nurses that stop by every few hours to poke more needles into you, and give you charming information such as: "You can't go home until you have a bowel movement you know." Whilst looking at their watch and tapping their foot so that you are sure to know that you better do so right smartly, as you are taking up a precious 12 x 6 inch space that could be used much more effectively by someone else.



This did however, give me a fair bit of time to attempt to find the rainbows-on-crack love that I was sure to feel as I gazed upon the face of my sleeping newborn.



But I couldn't find it. It wasn't there. All I felt was an immediate sense of obsession. I was not staring at his sleeping little squished up alien face out of love and adoration, I was staring at him because if I didn't, an eagle would surely swoop through the window and steal him away. Or possibly the hospital would cave in on him.



When I finally got to go home, (yes, I lied to the mean nurse, but seriously, if I was going to explode from not going to the bathroom, I could bloody well do it at home.) It was much the same. I was obsessed, and still a bit confused as to what the hell I was supposed to do now.



This was not the way it was supposed to be. There was no great maternal instinct leading the way. There was just my obsessive need to make sure that everything was done exactly right. I had no real clue as to how to achieve this, only that it needed to be done. My activities narrowed down to a rotating schedule of feed time, cleaning up projectile vomit time, (seriously, this happened every feed - sometimes twice - for six months. That is a lot of vomit.) bath time, and settling to sleep time. Oh, and when he finally went to sleep, I'd worry about everything that could be done better. And the roof caving in.



Have you ever had a conversation with a new parent? The baby is finally sleeping, and you have just launched into a hilarious tale about your new kitten and how cute she is when she's trying to catch her tail, only to discover that although the new parent is nodding along to your riveting story, you sense that they aren't really listening.



Want to know a secret?



They are not listening. At all. Their ears are straining as hard as possible to hear any peep from the baby monitor to indicate distress, and their mind is frantically running through all the things they need to get done before the baby wakes up. Your story is just a slightly distracting buzz in the background. They kinda wish you would just shut up and do the dishes so that they can take a nap.



Other people seemed to inherit the maternal instinct thing. I'd see them at the grocery store while I was still pregnant, carrying their newborn sleeping babies in slings while they calmly went about their shopping in a cloud of serenity.



My first shopping trip went like this:



* Get to grocery store, take baby out of car seat and place into sling.



* Baby does not fit in sling properly. Try putting baby in sling a different way. Try 16 more ways. Conclude that sling is not made for babies, the baby store obviously sold me the one for ferrets with 6 legs, and throw it on the ground in a huff.



* Put now screaming baby back in car seat and drive around until he falls back to sleep.



* Return to grocery store. Carefully remove car seat from car and place into trolley.



* Manically zoom around grocery store throwing anything that looks remotely edible into trolley before baby wakes up.



* Finish shopping and pay for goods.



* Put still sleeping baby back in car.



* Feel proud for accomplishing simple task.



* Realize five minutes down the road that groceries are still in trolley in parking lot.



* Weigh up the amount of money spent against the effort of going back to collect the groceries, and just continue driving home.



* Remember that there was formula and baby wipes in groceries that will be needed in the next 20 - 45 minutes, and turn around to go back and collect them.



That was the day when I realized that nothing would ever be the same again. People can waffle on all they like about how you can still do all the things you did before you had children, but they forget to mention that it will now take an average of 18 times longer to do those things, so sometimes it's just not worth it. I started thinking about what would happen if I had two tasks to do in one day, and marveled at the ridiculousness of that thought.



I was lost. I was uncertain, and confused. My whole world had drastically changed, and I did not cope well with that change. For weeks, I zipped about just getting stuff done. Because that was logical and necessary, and I could do it. By the time I stopped to catch my breath, I realized I was already in love with my son. Epically in love. Rainbows on crack even.



Everything got a lot easier after that. Because it's easy to give up things that never really mattered anyway for someone you love. And it's fun to spend 3 hours at the grocery store marveling with your child at all the bright colours, instead of rushing home to clean the house. And it's rewarding to watch your son sleep, and know that he is happy, and safe, (and the roof is probably not going to cave in on him,) because you have provided him with everything he needs.



Yes, my whole world had changed - nothing would ever be the same again.



And that is awesome.





xox

In The Beginning...

"I knew I loved you before I met you."

I have heard many variations of the above quote, referring to unborn children.

Ah pregnancy, that blessed state of tranquility that comes from knowing you are nurturing a living creature inside you. You walk on clouds of peace and serenity, and glow with the light of a thousand twinkling fairies...

Or not.

Anybody that knows me can tell you that pregnancy was not my favorite thing.
I was not peaceful and serene, I did not fall asleep every night on a bed made of clouds and wishes, and most disappointingly, I was not aglow with the light of a million fairies.

Instead, for the first trimester, I was sick. Constantly. Morning sickness is like being perpetually hungover. .I found it ironic that I was living the healthiest lifestyle I ever had, and yet felt like I was dying of some tropical disease that gradually sapped away my energy and will to live. It was awesome.

The second trimester highlights included headaches, insomnia, dizzy spells, heartburn, (I didn't even know what heartburn was before pregnancy, I seriously thought my stomach acid was trying to drown me the first time it happened.) and of course, random and untimely bouts of crying, usually about something vitally important like the cat sitting in my seat, or the cookies not having enough chocolate chips in them....
Also, this was about the time that the novelty of pregnancy wore off and I discovered that I did not like sharing my body.

And the third trimester. It is disturbing enough being eight times your original body mass, without having complete strangers feel that since you are pregnant, they have every right to publicly grope your huge stomach.
Sleeping is a joke, as there is no possible way to lie comfortably when you are the size of a small planet, and if you do happen to catch a few minutes sleep, it's only to wake up for the eleventy-billionth time to go to the bathroom, because your bladder has been squished down to virtually nonexistent. And if I hear one more person say: "It's to help prepare you for when the baby comes, and you have to get up during the night" I will poke them in the eye. It prepares you in the same way getting nipped by a crab prepares you to be eaten by a shark - not at all. It's just annoying.

Speaking of which - have you ever noticed how annoying other people are when you're pregnant? They say stupid things, and think stupid things, and do stupid things. It's like they've been hiding their idiotic ways for all the years that you've known them, waiting for you to be at your most vulnerable, and then POW! They spew forth their annoyingness in a great sea of irritation that you slowly drown in every day.

And they wonder why you're so moody. "It's the pregnancy hormones." you see them whisper knowingly behind their hands, after you justifiably made the idiot who just ate the last cookie cry.
And you have to respond, because for some reason people believe that now that you are pregnant, you can't hear them when they are sitting two meters away gossiping about you, and you need to let them know that it's just not true. So you open your mouth to kindly tell them that deafness is not one of your symptoms, and what falls out instead is:

"No actually, it's not the pregnancy hormones, it's because I'm not a fan of drowning slowly in an endless supply of your stupidness,"

Hmmm, maybe just a teny bit of pregnancy hormones....

It did not help that all the other pregnant people I saw seemed completely in love with their pregnancies and unborn children, while I was still waiting to feel 'at one' with my miraculous miracle, and failing miserably.

I didn't bond "properly" during my pregnancies. I wanted a baby, I was hopeful, I was excited, but I didn't feel the great and powerful love that seemed to smack everyone else in the face as soon as they conceived. This worried me for a while - I was obviously going to be a pretty sucky parent if I couldn't even love my fetus - until I actually sat down and considered my beliefs regarding love. Then it made perfect sense:

First, I believe that all love is the same. We play various roles within love; romantic, friendship, family ect, but it is the relationships that we attach to love that are different. Love in essence is all the same.
Secondly, I believe that you have to know someone to love them. You don't have to meet them, in fact, it's probably better if you don't - that takes out all the compatibility, and 'how they make you feel about yourself' junk, and lets you just see the person. (Yes, stalking is completely acceptable in this scenario.) If you love someone, it should be for who they are, and since a persons core self very rarely changes, it should also be forever, regardless of what they do, or whether or not you are still in their life.

And now back to my original point:

I didn't know my pre-natal children. The fact that they were a part of me at the time was irrelevant - I didn't know them any better than I knew my kidneys or my liver. I couldn't fall in love with the idea of who they were, when who they actually were would probably be completely different.

While figuring this out was a relief (maybe I wasn't going to suck at parenting, yay!) It also meant that I had to wait until I met my baby before I could experience any awesomeness.

Hmmm, waiting. I don't like waiting.

And pregnancy is looooooooooooooooooong. By the time you have hit 30 weeks, you feel like you've been pregnant forever. Seriously, you start saying things like "Remember back when...." and "There was this one time, back in the day...." like you're a nostalgic old man reminiscing about his childhood.

I actually started hunting for information on the longest known pregnancy, and found a woman who had been pregnant for three years. Now that I am sane again, I realise that that was most likely uber-crap, but at the time it seemed completely plausible.

All people that say things like "No one is pregnant forever you know." And "As soon as it's born you'll be dying to be pregnant again." Should be kept out of arms reach of the pregnant person they are speaking to. Do you know why heavily pregnant woman are not famous for murder? It is because they can't run fast enough to catch and slaughter stupid people. That is the only reason.

During my last month of pregnancy with Connah, a friend asked how I was feeling, and I told her. A woman who overheard us felt that it was her responsibility to inform me that some people can't even have babies, so I should just be grateful and not complain about a little discomfort. (Yes, she did walk away from this encounter with all her limbs still attached. Just.)

I know some people can't have children. I know some people lose their babies during pregnancy. I know some babies die. I know.
But me smiling and telling people I feel great when I don't, does not change any of that.

I was miserable while I was pregnant. But I wasn't miserable about being pregnant, I was ecstatic to be pregnant, I just wished I didn't feel like crap the whole time.

I get a lot of people saying: "It can't have been that bad, because you decided to have a second child."

Yes. Yes it was that bad. Worse probably, because it was four years ago and now I have brand new sparkling memories to fill up my brain, so have trouble remembering the horror.

But yes, I did purposely put myself through that horror again, because the child you get out of the deal is totally worth it. Worth it a thousand times over. Worth being pregnant for the rest of my life for - though I'm sincerely grateful that that is not necessary. Because I would go crazy.



xox