Reasons Why Being A Mum is ACE!

I love being a mum because I get to say all the really annoying things that I swore I'd never say. That irritated the life out of me when I was growing up (and until now, let's be perfectly frank). That came out of the mouths of my parents and other parents I see/hear/come into contact with/observe.

Namely, but not limited to:

The whiney parent voice -
"Will you PLEASE hurry up!? It cannot possibly take THAT long to put your shoes on/clean your teeth/eat your breakfast/go to sleep/take your shoes off/put your cars away!"

The out of control in the supermarket/street voice -
"No, Jelly Bean."
"Why?"
"Because I said so."
"But I want a dough nut/a new car/to go back to the park/to stay FIVE MORE MINUTES!!"
[Tantrum starts to bubble.]
"You don't get what you want if you talk to me like that."
"Mamaaaaaaaaaa!!!"
[Tears begin to well!]
"I said no!"
"But whyyyyyyyyyy?"
"Because I'm the mum, that's why!"
[Crying ensues]
"That's it, we're going home."
....
"WILL YOU JUST GET IN THE CAR!"

The absolutely astounded at the logic voice -
"WHAT? Why is all the washing I just folded ALL OVER THE LOUNGE ROOM FLOOR?!"
"I was helping, Mama."
"Got to your room."
(Not proud of that one!)

The I've said this too many times voice -
"Will you please stop throwing those cars?"
"I'm not throwing them, Mama. They're landing on the floor."
or
"What do you say?" (Inferring that manners are needed here/now - this phrase comes out of my mouth about 76000 times per day)
or
"Mama?"
"Yeah?"
"Mama?"
"Yes."
"Mama? um... Mama?"
"Oh my god, I'm changing my name."

The option to say goofy words voice -
Some of my favourites are 'Holy Moly!' 'Holy Ca-roly' (I made that one up myself to avoid saying saying Holy Crap once), dangle, swishy, Jelly Bean, spunk face, Ha-Ha (his asthma pump, cause you have to breath 'Ha... Ha' into it), poos, wees, poooowee! plus the option to talk about myself in the third person whenever I feel like it - "Ok, you just do that, and Mama will do this!" (It's fab!)

I also love being a mum because I get to help The Bean with projects! He had his first show and tell today. They are having Multi-Cultural week at creche and he took in lots of photos from our trip to Malaysia. He talked about the photos and the other kids got to look at ticket stubs and baggage tags and photos of his mum with snakes draped all over her head. I couldn't have been prouder than when two little boys asked me today if I was scared when I touched the snakes. I was also so proud of The Bean for being so brave and standing up at group time and explaining all about his holiday to all of his friends in the Rainbow Room.

I love being a mum when it's really cold and you get extra cuddles on the couch in front of the heater. Especially in the 'zone out' time not long before dinner needs to be made and we both stare out the window for a few minutes watching the 'swishy tree outside'.

I love being a mum when I have finished all my homework and I get to pick him up from creche and not have to get on the computer when I get home.

I love being a mum when he reads books back to me.

I love being a mum when you have to check for head lice.
"Honey, if you just stand still I'll be finished really quickly."
[wriggle, squirm, walk away]
"But I want to play with my cars."
"If you stop wriggling, seriously, stop wriggling, it'll take two minutes."

I love being a mum when he asks for Wasabi peas and you give him one and he takes one and then eats three in total before he asks for a drink.

I love being a mum when he is in the bath and the steam fills up the shower screen and he calls out,
"Mama! I found a raindrop for you!"

I love being a mum when I get to say good night to him and he is safe and in his bed and clean and warm and full and happy. I love getting to kiss his face off even when we've argued about what toys he can and can't take to bed with him. I love saying "Goodnight, baby. I love you so much."

I love it even more when he loves me so much right back.

Things The Bean has said:

After staring at our empty gold fish tank.
JB: We need to get a new black fish.
Me: Really? (Insert skeptical, unexcited tone)
JB: Yep. And he needs to eat those trees for dinner.
Me: Those trees are plastic.
JB: No, they're not plak-stick. He can eat them.
Me: Fish can't eat plastic.
JB: He can eat some rocks.
Me: Fish don't eat rocks!
JB: Hahahahahahahahaha
Me: Heheehe
JB: Well, you'll just have to get him some fish dinner, then.


Another Thing The Bean has said:

JB: "Mama, there's a phone-asaurus in my dinosaur bag."
Me: "A what?"
JB: "He's not a tyrannasaurus rex. He's silver. He's a phone-asaurus and he goes like this 'olololololoooolololo'."
Me: "A phone-asaurus?"
JB: "Yep, and he can talk."

Definition of a Bean - circa 3.5 years old

I felt like writing a list.

Here are the things that are typical of my Jelly Bean as he stands today, just gone three and a half years old.

1. His diet consists of food that he thinks are his favourites 'cause they're yum but have secret hidden nutrition therein
- My homemade Sausage Rolls (secret mushrooms, onions, carrot, zucchini, egg, garlic, capsicum)
- Special Cheesey Eggs (Mushrooms, spring onions, tomato, capsicum - and even sometimes tofu!)
- Special Orange Soup (everything orange you can think of on the vegetable scale! Plus a few white vegies that won't change the colour)
- Special Dip (Either home made Tsaziki or Tuna dip with grated cucumber, spring onions and garlic)
- Spaghetti (Everything I can get in there, including lentils, beans and 'leaves' with a few tins of tomatoes to make him think it's just spaghetti sauce!)
- Pita Bread Pizza which he helps to make - the sprinkling of sliced mushroom, tomatoes, spring onions and rocket leaves make such things edible if you get to do it yourself
- Plus a standard breakfast of a banana, 2-3 Vita Brits and 2 pieces of bloody fruit toast (no inherent nutrition - this is where I have an epic fail!)
- Snacks of either Brown/Purple/Blue/Green yoghurt - depending on the colour of the lid/container!

2. He loves planes, trains and automobiles. This is an often returned to topic of conversation, irrespective of time of the day or length of previous conversation about planes, trains or automobiles.

3. He has numerous 'best' friends - including, Kade, Daniel, Ella, Ben and Will, and today it's Ethan.

4. He has zero skills in getting his dangle to actually wee in the toilet. Bloody men!

5. He has become a little obsessed with talking about his dad, that's ok, and I've shown him photos and explained some things, but his little brain doesn't really get it, yet.

6. He wants to go on a 'Globbily Train'. It's either silver or white and if anyone has ever seen one could you please explain what it is to me, as I have no idea.

7. He loves dinosaurs but they seem to only be played with whilst in the bath.

8. He still wants to have a bath in the baby bath sitting in the base of our shower. I'm not sure what's going to happen when he really doesn't fit in it anymore. The skinny-stringiness of The Bean allows for his little butt to fit in it now so we'll cross that proverbial bridge when we get to it, I guess.

9. He loves going to Creche, the Brown Park (???), the Lighthouse Park and Ninna and Papa's.

10. He wants to go to Kinder and School "Right now!"

11. He told me I need to get him a yellow coat for when he goes to school and I flatly refused, no child of mine is going to where a bloody yellow school uniform - ew!

12. He doesn't unerstand when people are tricking him - one of his teachers at creche tried to playfully block him from the door one day when I picked him up. She told him he had to stay with her all night. He looked at me and burst into tears.

This morning I tried to trick him when he told me the sunshine was out and it was time to get up. I said it was just the moon. That I was going back to sleep. He looked at me confused and when I smiled he said, "No Mama, it's the sunshine. You can't go to sleep anymore."

13. His favourite words are - difficult, train, racing car, globbily, boat, exciting, 'alaysia, aeroplane, important, aero-port, AMAZING, oops and Mama.

14. He doesn't think that going to work is a good enough reason to not go to Malaysia.

15. He has approximately 18 different laughs, all but one are fantastic. The one that isn't is the fake one. That one is just a little embarrassing.

16. His favourite musicians are Lily Allen, Corb Lund and the Dixie Chicks. 'Thank God he's a country boy!'

17. He has developed a habit of sitting DIRECTLY in front of the heater. When I tell him to move he tells me he's 'very cold'. But I raise my eyebrows and he moves, one centimetre by one centimetre until my eyebrows have come down.

He also has been going missing at creche, the girls figured this out after they kept finding him sitting on the floor underneath the hand dryer. He would sit down until it stopped blowing hot air. Stand up, press the button, sit underneath it. And repeat. Until they'd tell him to come out of the bathroom. Probably with their eyebrows raised.

18. He likes going to the doctor because they have an endless supply of lollies.

19. His new favourite thing is the hot water bottle.

20. He doesn't like people that 'drive silly'. He tells me constantly to turn my lights on and my blinkers on. To turn left. And to go over the 'boomps' (speed humps). He's the worst back seat, driving little person I've ever met.


Things The Bean has said:
The Jelly Bean is a procrastinator (no idea where he gets that from).

I told him about 70 000 times to put his shoes on one morning and he kept finding other 'important' things to do.

I got grouchy and shouted.
Me: Jelly Bean, we're going to be late, will you please HURRY UP!?
TB: (with his hands over his eyebrows)
OK, Mama! Put your eyes down. Say it nicely.

Rocks and Waves and Around the world in 70 days!

Periodically, since The Bean was a baby, in fact, maybe from before he was born, I've experienced times of over emotional, waves of love/panic. It doesn't last very long as an entity but it reveals itself from time to time over the course of a few days or even up to a couple of weeks. This love/panic wave tends to reveal itself as a feeling of guilt or a feeling of fear or a feeling of joy or dread or confusion or excitement or a combination of all of the above.

The first time I had this wave was when I was about 7 weeks pregnant, in the plane on the way home to Australia, from Canada. I talked to The Bean about radiation and aeroplanes and how if it stayed where it was, (he was an 'it' then) I would keep it as safe as possible, staying away from wings and engines etc, until we got home. The second wave I had was when I found out about a few complications I was going to have with my pregnancy. The third, major, wave I had was when I thought The Bean wasn't going to make it out alive, literally, when I was rushed into an emergency ceasarian section.

These pre-birth love/panic waves were nothing on the now alive Jelly Bean waves. And I've definitely gone through my own share of crazy in life. Before and after The Bean, not because of The Bean, but in my head. And these waves hit me hard. I'll just be doing something seemlingly unrelated and I'll look at The Bean and POW - Right in the kisser! I get hit by a love/panic wave that stops my heart and makes me feel crazy emotions, crazy protective, mother lion instincts that would force the Devil himself back to Hades rather than mess with me type emotions.

The love/panic wave has hit me a bit in the past couple of weeks, on and off and I wasn't sure why. There's been some stress in my job. I had an operation to remove my wisdom teeth, I've been a bit sick and The Bean's been a bit sick but that's all normal life stuff, really. And I realised, bit slow on the uptake sometimes, that the holiday my folks are going on is less than two weeks away. They'll be gone for ten weeks and I'm so excited for them and proud of them that they are finally going on a round the world adventure. They're in their early fifties and for their whole lives they've busted their butts looking after me and my little brother that now, that they've got some time and they've paid their stuff off, they can actually go and enjoy themselves and be free of responsibility. And it's awesome!

And I'm cool.

And my brother's cool.

And The Jelly Bean has a pretty awesome mum that rocks it home, lookin' after him and stuff.

But holy crap, Mum and Dad won't be there. They won't be 15 minutes drive away. They'll be on the other side of the world.

And it's ok when I decide that I'm going on the other side of the world, I'm cool, like I said.

But the rocks that have always been there, the rocks that have been, well, rocks, throughout an entire lifetime, literally, mine and then The Bean's, the rocks that have supported this mum in her journey of single mum-ness, aren't going to be around the corner.

And I guess the love/panic waves are hitting a bit more often and a little bit harder than they have in the past, they are hitting, pummelling, crashing into me on the shore that is my life (oooh, LOVE a good metaphor!) and they are showing up 'cause I might be just a teensy bit scared of doing this mum thing without a rock, or two, to cling onto, when the waves crash. (Get it? I extended the metaphor even more then, clever, I know! See how I also made a joke at my own expense because I'm getting nervous just writing about it?)

Anyway, musing to figure it out. It'll be ok.

And I'm so excited for them. I want to make sure, that, in writing, I tell them to eat lots of yummy food, drink pints in pubs with locals that they can't understand, buy lunch then sit in a park or near rivers or lakes and watch the world go by in a place in the world they've never been before, never eaten lunch before. I want to tell them to wander around markets, take photos and breathe. Because these were the best bits about travelling for me.

That and coming home with a magical little tiny Jelly Bean.

Things The Bean has said:

This morning my mouth was hurting and it was my first day back at work after the operation.

Upon waking...
Me: Owwwww...
TB: What's hurting, Mama?
Me: Mama's still got a sore mouth. Come on babe, time to get up.
TB: From your operation?
Me: Yup.
TB: Ugh, gross.

I'm by this stage in the bathroom, turning lights on.

Me: What's gross?
TB: In my mouth.
Me: What's gross in your mouth?

The Jelly Bean walks into the bathroom.

TB: There's bits of snails in there, look!