Blended Ballet with Banquet

The festive season has left me contently fatigued.

Instead of the usual emotional exhaustion from my starring role within the Blended Family Ballet, I am tired only due to extreme fun. The tutu remained in the wardrobe and there was no need for the tiara to be polished or the rouge to be applied.

After a long awaited epiphany, I informed those I love that there would be no more performances through gritted teeth.

I watched in awe as the magic wand was being waved by others. I was overflowing with love and pride as I witnessed those who usually sit with arms and feet crossed in the audience, prancing about on stage as a part of the most beautiful Blended Family Ballet I could have ever wished for.

While it would be easy to reprimand myself for not realizing sooner, the talents within the audience who I now find quite brilliant on the stage, I must remember that my own previous performances were not in vain. Family traditions, the sense of belonging and pride for what we all share, are the contributing outcomes from the times of tears behind my rouge.

I am optimistic that this feeling I have will be maintained. The seats in the audience were vacant as I joined the rest of the cast for our final bow on stage. The silent standing ovation was deafening. 

The Blended Family Ballet has transcended from a performance to a shared dance. One which I'm happy to learn new steps as our accompanying music score evolves.

The Blended Family Ballet Continues

If i wrote about every time I felt satisfied about my performance on stage in the blended family ballet, I would not have enough time to experience the joy during each of the many beautiful moments. When however, my performance is not satisfactory and the audience hurtle rotten vegetables at me on stage, I instantly wish to express it.

Sometimes, the tiara I wear while I dance, pierces my scalp. I continue to dance while thorns dig through my soul and pierce my heart. Of course I am an expert at hiding my pain from the audience because "the show must go on". This time however I created disappointment by throwing a piece of rotten vegetable from the stage back at the audience. What a raucous. How dare I?

Time to nip back stage and change costume. The fairy wings and magic wand is retrieved from the well used wardrobe. I'll powder my face to hide the tears while most of the audience is ambivalent to a miracle being performed on the stage. Meantime the two littlest audience members sit perplexed in their seats. I have discovered that they are not so easily tricked by my costume and stage makeup.

They see into the centre of my being because the step mother's tiara and tutu is invisible to them. These little ones see me as naked as the day I gave birth to them. I'm currently at a loss as to how to incorporate their needs in my performance. Do I dance for them while dodging the hurtled rotten vegetables?

Family and Puking

It's been a challenge to get into the swing of writing original blogs. By the time I polish a piece off, it has become irrelevant and not reflective of my state at the time of being published. Here's a new approach. Tweaking an email to my sister who lives in Japan. Names of course are changed to protect the innocent, loved and treasured.


Hey Sis,

I've had a torturous 24 hours preceded by a period of total joy.
Last night I popped into town to drop off something I picked for little brother at ikea. His new (yet exquisitely old) house is gorgeous. I then called in to baby sisters new house she is sharing with 3 of my step kids.

I enjoyed a bit of chatting and catching up with the household, but mainly with baby sis, then we watched the end of a film I had already seen but enjoyed enough to see again. On the way home I thought long and hard about you.
I am so looking forward to a time where you are also a local and I can just "pop in" and share life with you.

Before I tried to head off to bed, the preschooler woke and wanted a drink of water then called out for a tissue. I'm not sure if the poor bugger actually thought he was dealing with snot or if he was trying to hide that he had messed up his bed, but he had vomited everywhere. This is a kid who hasn't puked since a bump on his head at around 8 months old, so the whole concept was pretty foreign to him. I showered and I redressed him then left him on my bed with the husband while I stripped his bed and threw his bedding in the washing machine. I returned to find my little boy back in the shower, shaking like a junkie, after he had again thrown up, all over my bed.

Again I stripped a bed, gave the kid a bowl along with instructions as to how to effectively contain vomit, and checked on the muffin (who now has her own bedroom....another email). The husband and I deserve a medal for team parenting because we calmly bathed and dressed the kids, set up plastic based towel covered bedding on the lounge room floor and the commenced the parents nightmare i.e. watching your children in pain and distress and wishing it was you instead. While containing simultaneous vomiting in my funky brightly colored and rather useful mixing bowls, we got through two kids DVD movies before the husband became redundant and passed out on the couch and the two kiddywinks relaxed into sleep. I sat beside them both till 5.30 am, catching the occasional puke and desperately trying to get fluids into them.

I caught about 40 minutes sleep in the lounge room and then phoned for the cavalry at 8.00am. I had worked booked from 10.00am which I managed to attend to by 10.30 am after the husband's magical coffee and egg on toast breakfast. Mum and Nanna arrived and took over with the kids while I worked until the Macbook screen went fuzzy and I asked my colleague the same question four times in a row.

After chucking in the shake diet for a gorgeous chicken sandwich, another round of laundry and successfully administering a fair amount of hydrolite to the muffin, I toddled off to bed 15 hours after I had originally tried to do so. The husband woke me at 5.00pm and after the initial shock and emotional protest to waking so exhausted, I found my second wind and got back on the train. The preschooler was bouncing around the house like a loon but muffin was alseep in Nanna's arms, on the couch. The washing was in off the line, the husband and I were sufficiently recharged for the rest of the day's tasks and the kiddywinks were significantly better.

As I now reward myself with a glass of red, I think again of you and the niece or nephew you and my new brother in law will give me as one of the most wonderful gifts imaginable. I'm sure my husband and I would have survived today without Mum and Nanna BUT perhaps not as sanely. The husband commented that despite our kiddywinks being so awfully ill, it was a wonderful experience for them to be so cared for my their parents, grandmother and great grandmother. Surely a great individual grows from such love.

As much as the family will drive you mental, your move to Australia will only be rewarded with more than you could ever fathom. I miss you and love you.

Stay beautiful. xxoo

My Nanna's Order of Australia Medal

Our Mother's Day Weekend

Reviewing Priorities

On Monday, instead of doing my weekly dust, vacuum and organising, I threw caution to the wind and spent the morning JOINING the kids to watch their favourite ABC kids programs and then I took them to the park to enjoy the glorious sunshine. We shared many beautiful giggles and smiles as we played on the park equipement, explored the rotunda, walked around the gardens and closely inspected a council tractor.

Whilst I dont think I could completely give up my neatness obsessions, I figure the world wont fall apart if I share such days with my kids more often. Yes I do things with them all the time....between work etc....but it's not often that I give them the gift of mummy being totally focussed upon them all day. I had been thinking about my husbands days when he looks after the kids while I work from home. He takes them on fun adventures that the 4yo raves about....even if its just sharing a milkshake between the 3 of them at the beach.

I decided to stop being resentful about disneyland daddy, and to trial giving my kids a mummy wonderland....even for just a day. We all enjoyed it so much that it will just have to happen again on a more regular basis. I am a self confessed diary demon and I always manage to set time aside for work and commitments. Now I plan to diarise mummy wonderland days too.

A day in the bush

Those I love

Frogs vs Chickens

April 21 2008

Tonight we allowed the 4 year old to stay up after the usual bed time in order to watch Sir David Attenborough’s documentary “Life in Cold Blood” in which he asks how amphibians first managed to invade the land, by examining frogs and salamanders from all over the world. Our boy was as fascinating to watch as the program itself.

There really is something exquisitely beautiful in viewing the natural world through the eyes of a child. The marvelling we experience as adults is infected by the years of accumulated knowledge, no matter how minute, which predisposes us to a level of acceptance of “how life just is” that a child is yet to possess.

The exclamations of wonder from our boy were simply magic. Towards the end of the program when his head was lying on my lap, I asked if he was still awake and watching the TV. He replied “yes…but I’ve only got one eye open”. He was soon after in bed and before drifting off to sleep with my lullaby, he declared that while he thought frogs were amazing, he would still prefer to have chickens (as pets) because we can eat their eggs and we cant eat frogs eggs.

Painting a wall defines home ownership

April 19 2008

Technically I am not a first home owner. The first home I owned was the land and self house build project I left behind in Scotland. Yes I did sleep one night in the house in Scotland, after a roof warming party, but never had the opportunity to call anything but the dodgy cold caravan on the building site as my home. So the Scottish house is now finished with my ex and his new wife all cosy and happy within.

Meantime my new husband and I bought a beautiful old house in the most amazing location over two years ago. We have furnished our home and made all necessary changes to make it safe and habitable (i.e. filled in the baby drowning pond and cut down the kid killing Oleander). Slowly our garden is developing and the back yard is a kids’ play heaven. Today however I feel I have made the biggest step signifying that I am a home owner. I painted a wall.

Okay so the wall has been painted with coloured blackboard paint (Jungle Frog Green) for the kids but I still feel very grownup and proud of myself. The sense of permanency is very satisfying. There is of course a blind faith that my husband and I can maintain the mortgage to keep our house. From now on, whenever I pay the mortgage before the due date each month, my sigh of relief will be exhaled as I turn to look at our new green wall….and whatever chalk creation our children have drawn on it at the time.

Does it take a village to raise a child ?

April 15 2008

I know it’s been used to the point of cliché, but they say it take’s a village to raise a child. There is controversy as to how this old African proverb is best made applicable to contemporary western society, but I must say it certainly prompts me to think a little and evaluate expectations.

One challenge with being a mother in the 21st century is that we have a window into the child raising experiences of the globe. Historically when woman bore children in small communities, they’re parenting skills were only compared to other woman in the “village” who were usually raising children within the same environment and circumstances.

Most woman raising children in Australia today, are exposed to scenarios that vary vastly from their own. The stay at home mum, the part time/full time working mother, the working/studying mother, the mother surrounded by family and friends, the mother isolated and alone……these women only have the name mummy in common. Even woman within the stay at home category have differing scenarios which affect the strategies and skills needed to raise their children.

How many of us are aware of the torture we are subjecting ourselves to by comparing our parenting competency with others? There are no super mums. I despise being referred to as a “super mum”. We are all just being mothers. Sometimes we cope and sometimes we don’t. No matter what our mothering demographic is.

Why are we forgetting that our children need us to cope as best we can within our individual circumstances? Why do we worry so much when our coping strategies differ from others? Why do we question our right to seek and or accept help? Why do we so often forget that as parents, we play a key role in the way our future society is shaped?

What is my message? Yes I do believe it takes a village to raise a child. Let’s say yes to family, friends, communities and services helping a mother with whatever it takes for her to feel on top of her role. Let’s also accept that our village in the 21st century is rather huge and a woman’s experiences and needs are individual. A child doesn’t care how Mrs Smith next door copes with her role as a mother. Our children only care about how we manage to cope raising them.

If we need help, perhaps it’s not a question as to whether we as women deserve it. Perhaps it’s a question as to whether our children deserve mothers who cope with and enjoy their crucial role in a child’s life….whatever it takes.

The independent child

April 10 2008

After swooshing away some baby vomit at a park yesterday, I asked my 4 year old son to return the bucket to the visitor’s centre. Except when inside the small building, he remained in view at all times and was less than 50 metres away from me. He seemed so proud to have stretched the imaginary elastic band between us.

It is however such a differnet world we live in now compared to my own childhood. I remember being sent across the road to the corner shop for bread and milk and getting into trouble for talking to a stranger. You see, I had taken longer than usual to return home and expressed much excitement to my mother at having made a new friend. We were both both 3.5 years old and are still friends today.

I must have been much older when I started catching the bus into town to run messages for my mum. Maybe 8 or 9 years old. I recall freaking out once when I spotted my Dad’s car driving through the main street earlier than arranged to collect me on his way home from work. I somehow confused myself and started crying.

I was spotted in my state of distress and bundled off into a car with a kind man who drove me home. Yes he was a stranger but I just wanted to get home. At the time I didnt understand my mum’s fury but appreciated her comment that perhaps I wasnt quite old enough to venture so far. In a time of no mobile phones, I cant imagine how scared my dad would have been when I didnt show up at the pick up point.

Some time later when I was obviously thought to be old enough, I remember having a shopping list of items to pick up for my mum in town. It was just before Xmas and I had to buy Madera Wine from the bottle shop. I felt so embrassed that the booze dude wouldnt sell me alcohol and I cried saying I would get into trouble if I didnt take it home for mum to make the Xmas cake. The dude phoned my mum and once my story was confirmed, I was sold the wine. I must have been 10 or 11 years old.

Well I cant imagine sending my own little children off to the shops in the next street to run my messages and I know what would happen if I sent them up to the local bottle shop for me. What will become of my children though without the opportunity for pure independance at a young age?

My mum says I was born independant which apparently explains leaving home at 17, moving to the BIG SMOKE at 18 and then heading off overseas at 22 not returning till I was 31. Surely some of it had to do with opportunities at a young age to stretch that elastic band between mother and child. I am at a loss as to how to replicate it with my own children.

A blended family ballet

March 22 2008

I have a dance routine I’ve been working on for the past 5 years. The small important audience appear dependant on the success of my performances. My dance steps are usually gracefully precise ensuring that there are smiles on their faces and warm secure hearts beating in their chests.

At times I get so lost within my character, my imagination tricks me into believing I am a part of the audience, and I change my dance steps accordingly until I trip and fall flat on my face. I feel humiliated as I lay sprawled in my tutu while being reminded of my role.

While I have no doubt that the audience appreciates and adores my dance routine, their applause is so much fainter than the gasps exhaled when I fall during any improvised steps. After burying my shame, I stand once again on the stage and continue the performance they seek and I weave my magic around them to provide their longed for sense of belonging and kinship.

Only when alone, do I sometimes allow myself to take a peek at my true self beneath the rouge. To slip out of character, away from the stage, is always a lonely and conflicting experience. After indulging in a little private self pity, I powder my cheeks and then prance off ready to perform on cue.

It is time to blog

March 19 2008

I regularly read a friends blog. She has a new baby therefore it’s impossible to know when it is a “good time” to phone and catch up. Instead, I read her blogs and feel quite intimately familiar with both her and her baby boy. The current world’s technology allows me to feel closer to those I love yet have little time with. What a bizarre world we live in but hey….it works for me.
Perhaps it’s time to subject the world to my own drivel.

I affectionately recall the first blog I ever read by step son no.2. It was a simple statement “I hate blogs” so perhaps he won’t be reading my recollections of life however there may be others who do BUT it doesn’t really matter. It’s kind of like a Shirley Valentine type of experience but instead of saying “hello wall” and conversing about whatever ails me at the time, I could perhaps use my blog to reflect/moan/rejoice etc about the very exciting and fulfilling life I find myself leading.

Is it just a woman’s thing to love to talk? I’m a woman, who works from home and sees the world predominately through the eyes of a 4 year old son and a 17 month old daughter between glimpses of the “outside world” via the internet and a largely dysfunctional sector of society I am paid to write about. My gorgeous husband is like a scout for information on the “outside world”. He comes home from taking the kids out on yet another fabulous adventure and then goes off to work and returns to share “grown up” conversation with me which usually starts off with the kids and then expands to many glorious non parenting related subjects.

This type of conversation is of course so fundamentally crucial to my sanity considering my frequent seclusion within our beautiful home where I play the role of working from home mummy. There are some days that I really have to think carefully to calculate when I last ventured beyond the veranda to farewell the children and husband and of course out to the laundry and clothes line, hence the handle moretolifethanlaundry.

So, from the confines of my office and house today, I have actually enjoyed a rather pleasant and productive day. I spent the morning writing new court report drafts thus adding to my bewildering list of “work to finish off and email”. More work after morning tea which ended up being lunch and then I made an Easter card with my son to send to my in laws, fed and bathed the kiddywinks (which involved a frightful episode of baby diarrhoea in the tub….bye bye squeaky bath toys) and then some crafty time cutting out bunny concertinas in preparation for my sons 4th birthday on Saturday which coincides with the Easter Bunny calling in on Saturday morning (he has to time it when the youngest step kids are visiting).

The two highlights of my day are 1) sitting at the kitchen table tonight talking with my spunky husband and 2) watching my son fall asleep insisting that he hold his baby sister’s hand……shame she woke up screaming about 45 min later….it was a lovely goodnight vision.

To finished off my first ever blog, I’d like to quote and old friend from an email I read from him this morning:-

“It is easy to take what we have for granted, but the way we live does come at a cost- when we forget that we become spiritually impoverished and alienated from the planet that sustains us- acknowledging this cost is a first step to reducing it, while offering a path to a richness of connections unavailable to blinkered aliens. Engage your senses and immerse yourselves, occasionally, in gratitude for what we have”.