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