Six weeks of Little

Esther pretending she hates the play gym thing. She doesn't, I swear.

Six weeks old and finally able to be put under toys and interact with some element of enthusiasm (for 2 minutes). My arms are very grateful for this brief respite.

Six weeks also brings the old breastfed-baby-poo-strike – she’s on day 5 of storing up. And the same age as her sister’s 10 day poo strike extravaganza, the culmination of which I remember only too well.

We’re heading to a wedding on Waiheke this weekend. I’m taking bets on whether Esther will end the strike either just before we head to the ferry (inevitably late), actually on the ferry (with limited bathroom facilities), or during the wedding ceremony. You just know it’s gonna be at the worst possible moment.

Not-so-red-headed-devil-child

Little at 6 days old

In my usual style of dropping major life news like it ain’t no thang, Nick and I had a baby.

Yeah, yeah, all within the year. I’m nothing if not efficient.

Anyway, she’s quite lovely. And she’s Little. And so Hannah is now Big. And she’s besotted with her little sis.
Thank fricking Dog as she’d been VERY WARY about this little sister business throughout my whole pregnancy and requested a baby gate for her door about sixty-thrillion times.

And so now we’re here and I’m at home for a year hanging with Little while Nick does the work thing. Well, that’s the current plan. So we’ll see if I can’t manage some blogging huh?

The next bit

It feels a bit weird leaping in to this given that the last post I made was about buying my little house and D and I splitting. I was really tempted to start a new blog but that feels a bit disingenuous so I’ll stick around here and lay out as much as I can. I figure there’s no use pretending to be perfect, right?

So Han and I have a new man in our lives. We have for a few months now. It happened pretty soon after D and I… the same with him and his girlfriend. It all felt weirdly natural. I mean, I wouldn’t change the timing as it’s worked so well, but it does make me wonder how long we’d been together, not really being together (if that makes sense)?

Anyway, my surfer guy. I’ve known him for a wee while and he has had the misfortune of being stuck in an office with me for a year or so, 45ish hours a week.

Now he’s lucky enough to spend even more time with me. ha. Although separate offices now.

Lion rock, North Piha, Piha kitchen, surfer’s bedroom

We have fun together. And he gets as riled up about social justice as I do. And indulges my slightly hippy tendencies. And is great with the kiddo. Even if she rolls her eyes and calls him ridiculous.

It’s looking pretty likely that we’ll be living together very soon. If I can drag him away from Piha. Although I imagine I’ll only be able to do that with promises to get back there at some stage. We probably won’t fit in my little house for very long anyway.

Ballerina

The weekend just past was Hannah’s ballet concert. Weeks of preparation culminated in the production of Alice in Wonderland held at a fancy theatre at a fancy Auckland school. I’m trying to be vaguely subtle and hope like crap this doesn’t turn up in anyone’s googling as photography was STRICTLY FORBIDDEN. It turns out that the woman I have designated as my child’s spiritual guide and support in times of I-hate-my-mum, Fairy Godmother Gemma, is as rebellious as she always was and stealthily snapped some pics (top pic courtesy of her). SO BAD. But also, awesome. Because I am forever a slack mother and got barely any photographic evidence of the child as ballerina. (FYI: She’s the navy blue flower on the left with the red hair, obvs.)

But yeah, holy fricking exhaustion, man! I’m still recovering. It doesn’t help that the ballet teacher has identified my lack of ability to say “no thanks!” so I’m roped in whereever one can possibly be roped in eg. sewing costumes.

Luckily I have slave labour these days.

She was a trooooper. And ironed every damn petal that I painstakingly painted with non-fray stuff and sewed into skirts for the flowers. Mind you, this was after her whinging about having to attend the ballet concert fundraising BBQ at Mitre 10 Mega where I had to cut up close to 20kgs of onions. And she had the cheek to complain that she was sick of bouncing on the bouncy castle. Oh, you’re sick of the bouncy castle? MY GOODNESS, HOW HARD IS YOUR LIFE?! Yeah… I launched into a 15 minute lecture about me giving up my Sunday afternoon to pitch in to fundraise for activities that already cost me a small fortune and cause me a shit tonne of stress. She zoned out about 30 seconds in but I felt better once I’d finished.

During the performance she was the cutest little flower and the coolest card and I had fun as a dresser for the older kiddos. Family attendance at Saturday night’s concert was the best bit – good times rock and roll with my mama, and my granny, and my sister, and my Gaz, and my little tiny niecelet, Podgey, all in attendance.

And holy moley, ballet does good intermission food. I had the BEST red velvet cupcake that I’d ever tasted for $2. $2! I encouraged them to mark the price up to $5 next year.

I do have to say that I’m glad ballet is over. This lack-of-sleep-in on a Saturday business wasn’t overly cool. I’m so looking forward to this blissfully unscheduled weekend. Woooooo.

Now, someone remind me to plan a lengthy overseas trip in the lead up to the ballet concert next year. It’s the only way I’ll escape.

Adventures with Granddad

Hannah is in Christchurch with my Dad for a week and a half. She’s been there since Wednesday and has already been ice skating, toured the Antarctic Centre, given great-Gran a technology lesson, spent several hours making herself a prune in the spa pool, Little River Motukarara rail trail, played with my cousin’s little one, Amelia, and churned out a gallery’s worth of art works.

And today her and a friend, Lucy, are off to the snow with Granddad. He does good adventures.

Summer roadie

Among other things, this summer included a trek over to Akaroa. Where we did some speedy sight seeing.

Played with a special auntie and uncle.

Hung out with extended family at a cousin’s wedding.

And got to meet the squishy little Podgey cousin for the first time.

Basically that was the first and last of our summer sun. Dismal.

Tea for me

For Jute‘s birthday today, we took a family trip to Sweet Pea in Petone for high tea. My little brother Robbie even put on a shirt for the occasion (after his flatmates suggested that it might be appropriate high-tea-wear). He didn’t iron it, but that’s possibly asking a bit much of an 18 year old.

Not to be outdone, Gaz amped the class up by ordering a crate bottle of Lion Brown to accompany his asparagus rolls and strawberry tart. Yes, Sweet Pea have Lion Brown on the drinks menu. Gaz officially stoked.

Jute also stoked with delicious food and has committed to making it her local now that she’s a lady of leisure (/overworked and extremely un-paid stay at home mama).

And like a good little kidlet, Podgey slept her way through the whole outing.

The culmination of much good

And many, many stickers, was a trip to Rainbow’s End.* Turns out I started the chart almost a year ago. Ha. That was value for money! Even with the hideous entry charge.

The Child was so into it and luckily was tall enough for most of the rides, including the Fear Fall and the roller coaster. Unfortunately that meant I had to accompany her on both those rides. And despite the fact that Rainbow’s End is an amusement park, I was not amused.

I can safely say that the Pirate Ship was her favourite ride. She was fine about the roller coaster and Fear Fall but I don’t think she wanted to go back on them after. And there was no way in hell she was going back in the Motion Master. The dinosaurs scared the crap out of her. Isn’t that bizarre? Not terribly phased by dropping 18 stories, but won’t head back into a glorified movie theater? heh

I survived, the Child had a great time, but I think the person that got the most out of it may have been this slightly larger kid…

*New Zealand’s half arsed attempt at an amusement park

Blog iz sleeping

But I am not! I’ve been doing exciting pro-choice campaign organising in Wellington and squeezing in a few visits with rad peepz on the way. Some of them were a good antidote to my feminist raving about anti-choice weirdos.

And then there were the Feminazi Boner Killer drinks which weren’t at all an antidote to my feminist raving, but very freaking fun all the same. Although I must tone down the confessions of internet stalking as apparently it freaks some people out. I guess I’m not quite pulling off the endearingly enthusiastic fan type persona like I thought I was. I’ll work on that – can’t promise I can contain all my excitement when I meet some of my Internet based heros!

I really managed to get quite a few bulk visits in which was super awesome in such a short space of time… including checking out Tash’s absolutely gorgeous new yarn shop and catching up with some of my fave kidlets in the world and their equally rad parents. (Thanks for the couch Niamh!) I seriously need to do a proper Welly trip to catch up with everyone I missed.

Most importantly though, I got to visit this crazy woman, her husband, and my little brother who is now at Uni in Wellington. I might miss them just a tad.

I’ll probably be doing a bit of a write up at some stage over at Mothers for Choice about where to from here, but in the mean time you can read the press release that came out of the Pro-Choice Gathering 2011 and also a taste of the Queen of Thorns at her best.

So.

I accidentally left the blog a bit. And then Christchurch had an earthquake. And then I couldn’t blog because it was all very serious and scary and my natural reaction in that situation is to make bad jokes. Not good. People don’t like bad jokes.

Turns out I’m not the only one as Dad emailed me a picture of him and friends out fishing on Saturday, with the clear blue sky as the background, and a caption reading: “Matt is helping me with earthquake recovery”. Good work, Dad. [He’d flown up to the North Island the day before the earthquake… which happened on his birthday.]

But, bad jokes aside, so glad all my Christchurch based family are OK. And really sad for those whose families aren’t.

Oh mannn. Look at me getting all serious and shiz. Better go think of something else to write about so I can bury this post down a bit and repress all those human feelings again.