Random Acts of Poo-mess

You have a few coffees, it's natural, it's going to happen. You're aware that it will and you plan accordingly.

I know my kid is only 3 but the instant urge he has to take a crap right then and there is still a bit beyond me.

Yesterday in the supermarket. I've got a full trolley.

Alfie: "mum, poo's coming out my bum."

Me: "ok, let's pay the lady and get you to a toilet."

Alfie; "it's coming out now. RIGHT NOW MUM. I can feel it!"

We abandon the trolley. The poo was coming out. I throw the Paw Patrol undies in the bin. I shouldn't have waited. It wasn't his fault. I just assumed he could hold it for 2 minutes and 48 seconds longer. 

He couldn't.

Today in the main street of Yarraville. Alfie starts riding his bike standing up.

Alfie: "mum. I need to do a poo."

Me: "ok, let's find a toilet. The pub's open."

As I rush towards the pub carrying his bike I turn around to see him doing a poo in a shopfront with a garden. I pick it up with a doggy bag and turf it in the bin. Let us never speak of this again.

I think I'm becoming a lot more patient as a parent. I can deal with things easier as they happen, I'm  crap when it comes to planning. 

And that's how I had a rad weekend. 

We had our first open for inspection at our Yarraville house. Loads of attractive bearded men and chicks with patterned socks checking out our goods while we peeked at the house traffic from 50 metres down the street in the pissing rain. The three of us held hands while Cheef Dog weed on the neighbour's fence.

I was an anxious mess before it happened. The inspection was planned. There was lead up. There needed to be a result. There was waiting. Someone recently told me that having an open for inspection was like holding a massive party and not knowing if anyone would turn up. 

Once it was over Alfie and I headed to the NGV with mates to lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling. Today a random massive bike ride lead to hot chips in the park watching sprinklers turn on and off in places where 'ginger turtles' live. Splendid, rancho relaxo stuff.

Reg finishes up at work this week. That's a big milestone. Hopefully we lease out our Yarraville house this week. Another big milestone. Then we settle at our Trentham house on the seventh of November and from there... golly, who knows?  We don't even have daycare let alone an inside toilet.

So in the meantime, I'm liking the 'winging it' theories of life at the moment. Going with the flow seems to be the only way we can get a grip on this tree-change. 

I'm not saying that if you need to take a crap, just drop your dacks and do it in a shop front, but there's something to say about not over-thinking the big things in life and just letting them happen. Even if it is a poo.

Have a most excellent week.

Ali xx

Social Truths

It started with homemade pesto. 

My son Alfie and I had collected, well I collected while he yanked, the delicate spicy smelling leaves off the plant in our front garden. I smashed the greenery together with some pinenuts, some parmesan, some olive oil and whizzed it around in the food processor. Then I gracefully heaped a few spoonfuls in with some cooked pasta and put a warm bowl down on the table next to a Lightning McQueen cup.

My kid ate it all and asked for seconds. I posted a heavily filtered pic of the pasta dish on Instagram and shared it on my blog. I’m a champion.

But actually I’m not. I failed to mention that my son had ONLY been eating pesto pasta or ‘green pasta’ as he likes to call it, for almost two weeks. Straight. He refuses to eat anything else except apples. Whatever. But I didn’t mention that.

This is the absolute joy of social media isn’t it? It hides all of our secrets. And we all know that we have those little secrets, no matter what your social media pages say.

I’m ready to come clean. Remove myself of the guilt.  Shake it all off Taylor Swift style. Reveal it all in the hope that someone else comes clean or throws shit at my car.

Ok. Here goes.

•          My three year old can ride a bike with pedals like a champion but still wears a nappy and has a dummy.
•          I bribed my son with a jelly snake last Saturday night to get him to get in the car in his pyjamas so I could go to the shop to buy chocolate. My hubby was working and it was the only way. I was desperate.
•          I lie to my husband saying that I have diarrhea and secretly play Tetris on my phone in the toilet.
•          I hide snacks in my house.
•          Sometimes I rummage through the Lost and Found box at daycare to see if there is anything good that has been left behind.
•          I choose new Lego based on my own capabilities and enjoyment, not on my son’s.
•          I’m still wearing maternity leggings. And there’s a hole in the crutch. And I need to throw them out. Tomorrow.
•          There’s fish fingers in my freezer and sometimes I wedge a few in a white bread roll with mayo and eat pretending I’m hungover so I can whisper to myself that it is a ‘one off’ and that I will never do it again.
•          I had a skiddie on my pants from my kid and didn’t realise it until 11am when I was at work. I cleaned it up with a wet paper towel in the work bathroom.
•          My kid farts and I think it’s funny, so I laugh. I know this is not what I’m meant to do, but I can’t help it. It’s funny.
•          I like to dress like a toddler.
•          I let my son watch Jurassic Park and it was the worst decision of my life (I forgot how scary that movie is). I didn’t tell anyone in case they judged me for being a bad uncaring mum, which I was for letting my 3 year old kid watch that film.
•          My son was yelled at by another mum in the park for kicking sand. I was too busy hanging with my mum pack to notice, but turned when I heard her yelling and calling him a brat. I called my son away quickly and stopped him from kicking sand but secretly wanted to pick a fight with this lady, which would not have helped the situation whatsoever (I would, however, have had my mum pack back me up).
•          I was once so tired I put the film Cars on for my son while I dozed on the couch, ever since this day I’ve had a creepy fascination with Owen Wilson and his purring voice.
•          My son is three and cries for his dummy.
•          I cried during the film 27 Dresses a few nights ago. It had been a tough day that seemed to never end. It started with the bmx track at 7.30am and ended with a nudie run through the house where my kid slipped and scored a giant egg on his head. I don’t know what made me cry more during the film – my parenting skills, James Marsden’s inaccessible self or simply the out of reach love scene, so far removed from my house complete with a dog walking around with a pair of jocks caught in his collar, that just made me bawl into my lukewarm beer. But fuck it felt good.
•          My kid drinks more milk than a potty calf. I’m sure it’s an addiction.
•          Sometimes I pretend to cry when my kid is too rough so I can get a cuddle.
•          Sometimes I pretend as though I’m three and it’s so much fun.  Sometimes Alfie and I call each other ‘best friends’. Then I realise I’ve got to be a responsible parent and I stop building the ramp that was to be used as a bike jump.

That’s just the surface. I’d love to hear your secrets. Or maybe you just want to check out my pesto recipes. 

Whatever you do, keep it real.

Peace.

Ali

This story first appeared in BubbaWest magazine. Since I wrote this over a month or two ago, I have to totally come clean and say that MY SON NOW WEARS UNDIES AND DOES WEE AND POO IN A TOILET NOT BEHIND A CURTAIN.

Thank you. 

Caravan of Courage

Just returned home from THE BEST weekend.

This was the equation:

Caravan + kids + beach + pals + fire pit + meat + mud + bikes + hikes + swimming + beers + dirty feet = THE BEST weekend.

We hired a rad caravan down at Skenes Creek. If you've never been to this hideaway caravan park near Apollo Bay, it's time to try it. This sensational area is like a time warp to 1986, in the best possible way.

The on site caravans with their chocked up wheels and dusty annexes are like holidays from my childhood, the beige exteriors bringing an instant feeling of calm.  The smell of charcoal and sausages bringing back memories of fortnight-long vacations in Mallacoota, Nelsons Bay, Port Stephens, Caloundra.

The sight of packs of kids racing their pushies along the track, taking a risk and smashing out metre long burn outs wearing only thongs and a pair of faded boardies. Filthy children with sand stuck between their toes, their parents sitting by the caravan stoking the fire pit, iceburg lettuce ready to fill a rissole sandwich.

No money is spent on these holidays. No TV is watched. No bedtime routine is followed. Sometimes there isn't even a shower before bed coz 'I had a shower on the beach and I've wiped my feet with a towel, mum'.

It's the best.

I love waking in the morning and watching the zombie-like parents in their checkered ill-fitting pj's (some dads just wearing their jocks) heading towards the shared toilet block, still glaring out its 1980s sunshine pine coloured rendered brick, with concrete planters filled with succulents and cigarette butts standing like two soldiers at the entrance. Sometimes the parents look nervous, knowing they need to shit but aware of the queue.

At night, you might bump into the same person, no longer a stranger because you had to tell their kid off for licking the communal bin, and you chat in front of the mirror with your mouth full of toothpaste.

It's the best.

Our pals, with their sons in tow, would run around with our boys at the beach, on their bikes, up the track. Jumping, wrestling, smashing the sand. Kids being kids. No adults in sight.

At night, we would nestle in after the kids had gone to sleep for tea out the front of our caravan, watch the fire burn and discuss the difference between Aldi and Coles, favourite pizza toppings and holidays of our youth.  Adults being adults until someone would let off a fart then we'd all cack ourselves with laughter.

Caravaning. Camping. This is the way forward with our holidays now. Long ago are the days of five star resorts and stunning hotel rooms. But by golly, it's so much fun to be disgustingly grotty for a few days, acting like a kid, just like it was 1986 all over again. I can't wait to return next year.

A hole lotta love

Last weekend I took my son to the oval. We rode there on the bike and squealed the whole way, waving at trucks as we spun ahead.

We arrived at Yarraville Gardens and I helped my son out of his plastic seat, popping him on the ground to stand as I held the back of his t-shirt as he pulled. His head was pushed forward with his eyes on the horizon. I could see steam come out of his nose as he scraped the ground with his Volley. He was ready to run.

My kid was born ready. The birth was so quick, he popped out and said “Yo dudes. If you can just give me one hour to sort this entering-the-world shit out, I will be ready to go. What have you got planned?”

I said “rest.”

He stuck his middle finger up at me and blew a raspberry.

So here I am, seventeen months later, gripping my son’s tee as he revs up for his run like a bull to a red flag. My two-speed kid, who naps and runs and is so time poor to fit in any activity outside these two categories, has the energy of an Olympian. I mean, this kid wore out his pre-walkers before he could walk.

My time with my son is spent at the pool, climbing park equipment, at the beach (because the ‘sandpit’ there is more interesting), at the oval, at the farm, on the swings (he pushes me), on the bike/trike/supertrike/motorbike, or just running alongside the dog chasing after his tail.

I don’t think I have ever been this fit in my life. It’s extraordinary how much of my local suburb I know now off by heart. I have got to know this little town, albeit at a toddlers pace, like the back of my hand.

Yesterday it took forty-five minutes to walk the five minutes it normally takes to walk from home to the Village. The only reason being was all the holes along the way - my son LOVES holes - otherwise I reckon the kid could run to the Village in three minutes without a puff: the fence holes, the holes in the ground, the holes in the dirt, the letterbox holes and the hole in the end of his sneaker. These are all great obsessions that can distract an athlete in training.

We now ride the bike a lot. So when we got to the oval, my son knew exactly what he was there for: Baby, he was born to run.

I counted down from three and let go of his t-shirt and he shot off like a bullet. He ran so far I had to run after him. Then he saw me running and ran the other way, even further. And he kept running and I got a stitch. I stopped to catch a breath and he turned around, and then ran even further. As far as the cricket cages. Then stopped.

I waved to him and started jogging over to him. Then I realised what he was about to do. It was so obvious and I wasn’t fast enough to stop him.

He squeezed between the two locked cricket cage gates and ran into the cage. I caught up to the gates and there was no way I was going to squeeze through unless I had a pair of wire cutters handy. I put my arm through the gap and tried to reach him. He ran further towards the back of the cage. I called out his name and he repeated it, thinking that was hilarious.

A dog walker stopped by and asked if I needed help. We shook keys together, got the dog to wag its tail, sang ‘Old Macdonald’ and other nostalgic tunes to encourage interaction and he just played in the corner laughing at us.

A jogger came by to see what the fuss was about. He had one of those lanyard things and he shook that about and did a funny dance in his bike shorts (which was quite creepy). Alfie turned his back and played with the fake grass in the corner.

Two more dog walkers with four dogs, a female jogger – who instantly caught the attention of the male jogger, a couple of teenagers and a small soccer team joined the cricket gate posse. There was singing, dancing, shaking of numerous items, calling out, clapping. You name it. We all did it.

Then Alfie started getting upset. Who were all these people? He started stressing and came towards me at the gate wanting to escape the cage but not knowing how. The joggers had become engrossed in their own (hot) conversation and were leaving the scene, soccer practice had started so the mini players went off to play, the teenagers went to be cool somewhere else, leaving just the dog walkers and me and my scared little son.

Then Alfie saw it. His favourite thing in the world. A hole. He squeezed between the gates and ran towards the dog who was digging with its bum facing towards my son. I grabbed Alfie just in time, before he stuck his finger in unknown territory.

We said thank you to the dog walkers and waved goodbye to our new park pals and got back on the bicycle. We were both tired and didn’t say much on the ride home.

When riding through the Village we saw the two joggers having a wine together, their knees touching while they had a little giggle. Alfie and I high fived each other, I winked at the couple and we peddled home. 

This post first appeared on Bubba West.