This is a true story that happened to someone I know.  Not me, mind, my children are angels, my life is a Pinterest post.

Once Upon a Time….

To say she was looking forward to the first day of school was an understatement.  The kids, whilst generally lovely, were starting to grate on her nerves to the moon and back, just a little, so it was time for them to be, well, away.  For the safety of all.

So it was with great joy that she awoke on the first day of the first term and bounded from bed and into the kitchen to make French toast for her little chicks.  They gobbled it up along with their smoothie and their cereal, and it seemed like her day would be charmed.  She made the lunches, perhaps singing a line or two of George Michael’s ‘Freedom’ as she filled those Tupperware containers and thought about her day ahead.  She thought about silence.  And a cup of tea, drunk whilst still hot.  She thought of having a wee without anyone coming in to ask her if they could play Minecraft… Ahhh pissing in private: bliss.

*****

She pulled into the school at 7.57am, a mere thirty-fucking-eight minutes before the bell.  Not.one.single.spare.carpark.  So she drove out again, and over to the paddock, trying to remain upbeat, even though she knew her youngest always found the walk from there a bit much, what with her little legs and her lack of haemoglobin.  Today the kid would have to carry her own bag because of the bloody bookpacks that had to be taken to the classrooms.

She looked around at all the other families; beaming mothers, freshly licked children, and with a sinking stomach stone she realised: The Hats.  She’d forgotten the bloody hats.

No hat, no play.

She calmly broke the news to the kids: the oldest started whinging, the youngest screwed her face up like she did when she got a blood test (it meant a hard rain’s a-gonna fall).  So she decided to go directly to the uniform shop, and get some new ones, they’d come in handy, maybe.

They arrived at the uniform shop.  The queue was eighteen people long.  School started in twenty-eight minutes. A minute and a half per person.  It wasn’t gonna happen.   So she decided to dump drop the kids in their classrooms and come back for the hats.  This did not go well.  The youngest was crying, worrying about not getting a hat, and complaining that her bag (containing an oh-so-heavy lunchbox and a water bottle) was made of lead and she couldn’t carry it.  She gritted her teeth with a grimace that tried to be a smile and gripped the youngest’s hand to show she meant business.  The kid would walk. The kid would carry her own bag.  She might have squeezed that chubby little hand, just a teensy bit.

Whilst she was cajoling the kid to walk, the big one walked off ahead, to his classroom.  She finally got to his class, crying kid in tow, and leaving a trail of gluesticks behind her, but where was he?  He was nowhere to be seen.  She grimsmiled at more doting Mothers and sparkling teachers and went to find him.  “Stay here, right here, and stop crying, it was just a tiny squeeze,” she told the youngest.  The youngest did not stay.  The youngest did not stop crying.  She wanted to scream out one of the bad swears.  Where was that idiot kid?

After a time and a school bell, he came ambling up the path- the space cadet had toddled off to his last year’s classroom.  Sweet Jesus.

She dispatched Unit One and his bookpack, scooped up Unit Two, headed to the next classroom.

She only dropped four exercise books and two erasers on the way, so that was counted as a win.  They arrived just as the sugar-coated teacher was welcoming all the children.  She tried to disentangle, but the kid was wrapped around her leg like Christmas lights.  The more she tried to get her off, the harder that kid limpeted on.  Eventually the teacher got her free, and she was free.

She resumed a place in the line at the uniform shop, which inched forward.  Mothers jostled and jockyed for position, perhaps just so they could say “No, you go first,” to each other every few minutes, and imply greater indolence.  In the school ground nowhere to be meant good.  Nowhwere to be meant rich.

It was a long wait, and it was hot in the sun, and suddenly there was a cooling splash all up the back of her legs.  It was not water though, no, it was something much more zesty, a spew from the toddler behind her.  Everyone kind of helped the spew-kid’s-Mum (if by help you mean not moving once inch from their spot in the line, and giving her encouraging but not involved smiles).

No-one asked if she liked that the vomit was soaking into the cork of her Birkenstocks..

Finally, the wait was over, she got the hats, got them to the kids and got the hell outa there.  She came home, looked at her World Clock, found it was close enough to 5pm in San Diego, and so opened a bottle of reward.

It was sweet.

The End

How did your first day go?  Did you get spewed on?

You know that poo baby I told you about yesterday?

Well I eventually went back for her.

I know, I know, I’m crazy, but I’d kind of gotten used to having her around.  Plus, curiosity got the better of me, and I started to wonder just how much poo a baby could pump out.  Turns out, it’s A LOT.  Turns out that when your baby dissolves all her internal organs and ejects the liquefied remnants out of her habitus and into her holder, it is enough to fill one third of a baby capsule.  This is a precise measurement and a scientific fact.  Which means if you are the baby still residing in that capsule,  you won’t drown, but you will have poo in all the creases of your umbilicus.  You will have poo in between your toes, and you will have poo in your ears (this last one is only true if your mother has been vigorously swinging you to and fro in an effort to look nonchalant and groovy in a cafe she really should have left twenty minutes ago).

So how did we clean her up?

We went to the baby change room in the public toilets.  We went there because there was no way that THAT chocolate milkshake was getting into my car.  We considered our options carefully, weighed up our choices, and we simply tipped out the poo.  We left the kid in the capsule (What?  She was strapped in remember?  I told you that yesterday) and just tipped.  I even sang the tune “I’m a little teapot”, tipping at just the right moment.  It was like Play School Halloween or something.  Luckily most of the poo-brew tipped out.

Kind of.

Then we put the job lot, child and contraption, in the REALLY BIG SINK that they always have in baby change rooms- now I know why- and turned on the waterworks.  We rinsed through the equivalent of the Wivenhoe Dam until the water coming through was almost clear*.  And then we went home.

Eventually that baby capsule got clean.

Eventually that baby got clean.

And eventually that baby grew up, stopped crying quite so much, learned to walk, talk and operate an iPad, got addicted to Sylvanians, started fights with her brother, got transfusions, left fairy costumes strewn around the house, ate Ben and Jerry’s and carrots as often as she could, made cubbies out of towels and blankets, wiped boogers on her clothes, learned to swim, read The Wishing Chair and sang herself to sleep most nights.

Tonight we could hear her singing Joy to the World followed by Say Hey- I Love You until she drifted off to sleep.

I like her style.  From some of the stuff I’ve seen and heard today, the world could use a bit more Joy and a bit more I Love You. And maybe a few less shit-splosions.

.

*This is a craftily inserted lie so you’ll think I’m a good Mum

In the interests of not divulging too much personal information about my children, lest they become famous and my blog becomes famous and we are all so famous dah-ling, I have been thinking I really shouldn’t, you know, overshare.  About them.  At least not until they are old enough to understand the implications of, and consent to putting information out there on the interwebby, that they may later become entangled in.  But its almost 8.30pm, I’ve been at a Christmas party and consumed some cheer, and The Agony of Christmas is about to start.  It’s on the ABC and therefore has no ads to type within.

So “stiff shit” as they say in the classics.  Although this is a tale of shit that was anything but stiff.

*****

When our second child, who for the purposes of this story we shall call Coco, was a baby, she was a little tricky.  Some days she would cry.  A lot.  And some days she just needed to be held, or she would scream.  A lot.  If you are a RR you will know she has a weird-arse condition that means she requires regular blood transfusions, and so I guess that’s why she was tricky.  Either that or she was a little shit.

But this is not a story about that, this is a story about bodily functions.

We were out doing the food shopping, back in the days before Coles online was available in our sleepy Sunrise town.  The shopping was done, and it was time for Coco to have a nap.  Instead of rushing home, we thought it would be awfully chic to have a coffee at a cute little cafe, and have her drift off to sleep in her baby capsule.  We were intent on not letting the fact that we were now mulitparous ruin our life, despite volumes of evidence to the contrary.

I gave her a little kiss, smiled at her beatifically, pulled the shroudy/blankety thing over the capsule, and began gently rocking her.  She gurgled and snuffled and grunted a little, as babies often do, and I sighed in the contented way that only a mother of a pigeon-pair of perfect children can.  I’m pretty sure the sun was slowly setting behind me, illuminating me in my glow, bathing me in soft warm light.  I suspect I have never looked or felt so smug serene as I sipped my decaf-skinny-chai-soy-latte.  (Yeah right, kids weren’t ruining our life- who drinks that?)

Coco started to grizzle a little, so I rocked her with more vigour.  She could be a bit challenging to settle sometimes, so I rocked a little more.  She started to ramp it up a bit more, so I rocked a bit more. Ramp. Rock. Ramp. Rock.  Until eventually I was standing up, legs apart, holding those handles and swinging her side to side like The Pirate Ship Ride at the Melbourne Show in 1986.  UpUpUp one way, almost to inversion, then DownDownDown.  UpUpUp the other way, then DownDownDown.  I almost wanted to go all the way like that water-in-the-bucket trick we did when we were kids, but I didn’t (What’s wrong with that?  She was strapped in).

Eventually the grizzle>cry>scream was so loud there was nothing for it but to break the rule of the latest parenting book I was reading, and pull back the muslin.  “I won’t get eye contact,” I said to myself- there was something in it about no eye contact- something about being manipulated by a baby.

I whisked that blankie back, and like a magician revealing his trick, I saw that Coco was, well, Cocoa.  Totally brown.

Completely, utterly and absolutely covered in shit.

It was impossible not to get eye contact, for in fact her shocked blue eyes were the only things recognisable as human, in this baby capsule poo bath.

She was basted from head to hand, torso to toe, in runny, lukewarm baby diarrhoea.  I have never seen so much poo in my life, nor do I ever wish to. Nobody does. Nobody should have to. It’s not human.

I didn’t know what to do with all that shit, didn’t know how I would clean it up, just did.not.know.where.to.start.  Where can you start?  When you are in a cafe.  And you have maybe twenty baby wipes.  And you have a kind of gurlgly-screaming baby who looks like a runny Chicco.

So I just dropped that poozy Jacuzzi and ran.

That’s okay, right?

Three year olds say some funny things, and Liam often springs his on me in the car.

“Mum, Mum,” he said with some alarm, “I can’t find my biblical area.”

“Pardon?” I said, surprised, “Your what?”

“My BIBLICAL AREA. I can’t find it, and I’ve looked and looked and it’s gone.”  The pitch and the decibels rising in the concern for the missing biblical region.

“Mate, I’m not sure what you mean,” I tried to sound soothing whilst hurtling along the motorway, almost late, as usual.

“The biblical area. That Dad made me. When he cut my biblical spring,” now sensing that I was bewildered, “when I was a BABY.”

The ‘Aha’ moment.  His UM-biblical tea. And in my concern, and then relief, I may have let the pedal stray a little closer to the metal.  Flashing red and blue lights in the rear-view mirror confirmed it.  I pulled over, and wound down the window, awaiting my fate.

“Hello,” came the cheery voice from behind mirrored lessees.  Skin smooth and sparkling, not long from acne and first shaves.  Youthful enthusiasm bursting from all pores.

“Do you know what speed you were doing Ma’am?”

“Um… Not really… About 90?” I asked hopefully.

“No,” came the helpful voice from the backseat, “you were up to one and one and zero Mum, I saw it on the speedo.”

“Was she really?” said Liam’s new best friend, beaming at me, and putting his hear a little further inside the window.

“Yep. She always does that. Is that a safety violation?”

“Yes it is,” said the teen-cop, laughing now.

“And how about driving your car and talking on your mobile.  Is that a safety violation?” asked Liam, warming up to one of his favourite topics.

“Yep, that’s one too,” said junior plod, gleefully as I squirmed in my seat, trying to give Liam meaningful “thats’ enough young man’ looks and the policeman innocent ‘I would never do that’  looks simultaneously.

“And how about when your Dad says ‘fuck’ in the garage when he hurts his thumb? Is that one?”

“Well… Not really a safety violation, but obscene language in front of a minor, certainly a reportable offence,” from the embyronic officer.

“A reportable offence,” echoed Liam thoughtfully, tasting the sound of a new phrase for his repertoire.  I could tell that one would be used at a later date.

“Any other safety violations?” asked constable youth, putting his head all the way into the car now, having a great time.

“Hmmm,” said the informant, “what about when your Dad cuts off your biblical spring, then you can’t find your biblical area any more?” asked Liam, all the while making violent slashing gestures towards his nether regions.

“Um…er…not sure about that,” said the cop, pulling his head back out of the car a little.

“And what about if you get your Mum’s tampons, and put them up your nose?” Liam in full cry now, loving every minute of this parry.

“Well. Um. I don’t, um, don’t know.” he almost stuttered, hastily retreating now.  Eyes flicking from me, to the whistle-blower, and back.  The thought “loonies” flashing like neon across his forehead.   “You just drive slower next time okay lady.” he said, walking quickly backwards, and almost stumbling in the rush to get away from the biblical-tampon-violators, or whatever he thought we were.

“They were just tampons he found in my bag,” I yelled out futilely to his disappearing back, “they were new.”

Without a look back he jumped into his car and was off in a screech or gravel.  I could just imagine his wide eyes behind those TV-cop sunnies as he took off along the motorway to the relative safety of bikies and druggies and robbers.

“That guy didn’t know very much about tampons Mum,” from the back “and he made a black mark on the road. That’s a safety violation.”

“Yes. Yes it is,” I thought as i set off at a sedate pace. The things kids spring on you.

Biblical springs.

Sprung by cops.

And a new spring in my step as I realised we’d escaped a ticket.

Three year olds say some funny things.

Hope you enjoyed this one…. From The Asher Archives xx

And just to give you some perspective, today, the kids did not eat all their breakfast easily and quickly and without single-handedly desalinating the entire Himalyan Mountain Range.

They did not make their beds, get dressed, brush their teeth and hair quickly.

They did not play with just one toy.

Instead, the evil geniuses did the exact opposite of the graceful and wondrous things they did yesterday.

They went downstairs, and they went very quiet.  Very.  After yesterday, I saw this as positive, rather than portentous.  Sucker fact #1.  So I did not go down to investigate, I assumed, on the basis of one day of unprecedented excellence (that shall henceforth be known as THE Golden Day) that they were silently and systematically completing all of the set tasks.  Sucker fact #2.

They were not doing any of these things.

They were in fact recreating the aftermath of Cyclone Tracey in each of their bedrooms.  They were efficient and effective in their re-enactment, and just like Tracey, they moved quickly and then they were silent.

If you’d like a list of the damages, here it is:

• Every Sylvanian and it’s accessories were strewn across the floor. The floor has a rug.  With a heavy shag-pile.  So now there are stupid tiny, tiny, minuscule pencils and bottles and lipsticks that will ne’er be seen again.  Their sound will be heard as they are hoovered up next week.  And no, I will not be vacuuming with a stocking over the vac to find these tiny agents of evil.
• All of the Lego was out, but only some of the Lego was invisible.  Invisible, but not undetectable to the soft, delicate arch of my bare feet.
• Every stuffed toy was out of it’s drawer.  I usually have them shoved in a drawer.  I had no idea there were so many. Inexplicably they were lined up on Liam’s bed, a row of strange cyclone survivors.
• A box of musical instruments, unopened for over five years were ALL out.  Maracas, harmonicas, home-made shakers, castanets, bells, xylophones, ukuleles, whistles and bells. WHAT?  WHY?
• A scrapbooking class must have come to visit, had their way with Coco’s supplies and then vanished, as every.bit.of.craft.crap was out.  Even the never-previously-used stamp pad.

There was probably more, but I’m sick of talking about it now, almost as sick as I was of cleaning it all up today.  Usually I wouldn’t have done it.  Usually I would have made them do it themselves, with the threat of the big green bin to get the task done with alacrity, but today was different.

And those little axes of evil knew it, because tomorrow:

(Insert Jaws theme, or Death Star March, or the shower music from Psycho)

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW COMES.

So all must be perfect.

It is as Liam said when he clocked the state of his bedroom and the bathroom this afternoon, “It’s like the Queen is coming to visit.”

Mission Accomplished.

How about you, do you clean up after your brats?

Any Mother-In-Law tips?   (Just joking Jen)

Today was transfusion day.

My Girl

By the time you read this it will all be over, and my girl, will be tucked up tight in bed, dreaming of who knows what.  She usually stirs quite a bit, this night.  If sleep is the subconscious downloading, then I guess she has loads to down.

When she was a bub, we would have fractious nights in the lead up to a transfusion, but the night after was always the worst for me.  Leaving the hospital that night was always wonderful.  I’d sink into the seat of the car, Coco all bundled into her capsule, and I’d just sit.  I would bask.  In the relief and the relief and the relief.  There was no other time in my month-or-so quite like it.  In that car, at that moment, we were as far away from the next transfusion as we could possibly be.  Every second from then on moved us closer to the next one.  So I would bask.  I would waste some of those precious moments, allowing the soothing to trickle over me, knowing that the night ahead would be long and strange.  That she would wake and cry and stir and wake.  She would need feed on top of feed to try and rehydrate after the mid-transfusion diuretic.  Nappies soaking.  Mind churning.

Things are easier now of course.  We have grown used to the process, and the procedures.  She told me today that if she looks at the cannula before it goes in she feels “all funny in her tummy” and that even though she can’t feel the blood actually going in, it hurts if we move the tubing too much.  These are things I haven’t known before.  So perhaps it will get easier still.

She has a good memory, my girl.  She recalls all the parts of these two days.

On the first day we get the blood taken for cross-matching, and she remembers the time her skin got pinched and drawn into the tourniquet and had to be pulled out.  She remembers the time blood went spurting everywhere.  And she remembers all the times, like yesterday, when it takes one or two or three attempts to get that sample out.  So sometimes she might cry when it doesn’t seem necessary.  Because she remembers well.

On the second day we receive the blood.  We present to the hospital and we wait until hand-over is done and rounds are completed and then, at last, it is our turn.  She is on edge until then, my girl.  She knows what is coming, and that no amount of playing in the little park, or watching the fish in their tank will blunt that feeling of foreboding, or the feeling of that needle piecing the plump baby flesh, just near her dimpled knuckles.

She remembers well, my girl, so she tells the doctor that her right hand is the best one for puncture.  “This vein, right here”,  she says, tracing the blue feint on the dorsum of her hand.  They hear but don’t listen, so the left hand is tried first.  Then back to the right.  Usually she starts crying at a reasonable volume, well before they take the first stab.  I lie on top of her, and hold her arm firm at the shoulder, to make sure she doesn’t move, but she never does.  Even as an infant, when they wanted to wrap her up like a cat in case of writhing, she never did.  I know without looking when the needle goes in, and then, when they blow that first vein, as her screams spike and spike.  He eyes widen, as big as the moon, as if she is surprised, still, at how it feels.

This day, it was different.

Earlier on, the music therapist had spent some time with us, singing to Coco, playing and showing her instruments.  Calming her.  She asked Coco’s favourite song, and I said: The Lion Sleeps Tonight, regretting it instantly, as the therapist played that stupid song over and over, those wimmewehs scratching on the blackboard of my jangled nerves.  But it soothed my girl.  She snuggled into my arms, and as that beautiful hippy played and played, and it was true that music is a salve for the soul.

When we went into the treatment room we played the wimmewehs on the iPod, and as that first vein was blown, she cried, but perhaps not as much as she used to.  Calmer or not, there’s only so much sleeping one lion can do, so we changed to Green Spandex.  The funeral song, from the when that feels like yesterday.  We stared into each other’s eyes, my girl and I.  I think she was expecting me to cry, and I know I was expecting her to, both for different reasons.   Blue eyes locking onto brown.  We couldn’t be more different sometimes, my girl and I, but we held our eyes, and we held our strength.  I’m sure we both felt like weeping, for some reasons different, and some the same, but we didn’t.  We breathed deeply and we held each other and we waited for the pain to pass.  It hurt.  But we got through another little bit.

Sometimes we couldn’t be more alike, my girl and I.

Blue eyes and brown

If you have already donated blood in the last 3 months, Thank you, From The Ashers.

If you haven’t, you could call 13 95 96 to find out how.