Dimply goodness

I wonder what it is about dimples that makes us love them so much. They are just indentations in the skin, if anything they are an imperfection. But I love them, especially on babies - who doesn't enjoy seeing a dimply, chubby baby?

One out of two ain't bad either; what Stickybeak lacked in the chubba department he has more than made up for with his dimples. Aside from the dimples that appear on his cheeks when he smiles -- which is utterly charming if I do say so myself -- he also has others in quite unexpected places. My favourite at the moment are the dimples on his hands where his knuckles should be. Sooooooo cute.

Here they are in all their glory, the little fingers and the crease between the hand and wrist are pretty cute too :)



One day the knuckles will grow bigger and those dimples will disappear so I am taking this moment to appreciate them while they last.

Do you have a thing for the knuckle dimples too? Any idea how long they last?

-- Natalie

Making a heel of myself

Trying flats on for size. photo credit: photo pin cc

When Stickybeak was in daycare the other day I decided to use my free time to do something that I hadn't indulged in for a long time -- I got out my high heels.

Nothing fancy, just my pair of everyday runaround heels that I pretty much wore to death before I had a baby. They are a moderate height (I gave up the skyscrapers long before the super skyscrapers became the fashion du jour) and I thought they were a good choice to get me reacquainted with my more feminine self.

What a mistake that turned out to be. Walking in them no longer felt natural and more than that, I felt like a fraud. It reminded me of the times when I would steal into my mother's closet, put on her heels and walk around in circles on the foyer tiles to get the clacking sound. Thirty years later I was a little girl playing at being a woman all over again except without the fun. The balls of my feet soon started to ache and the act of walking was all a bit too hard. I had ducked up the shops to just get a few items and I soon pared back my list of things to do because it required walking too far. How limiting.

So it wasn't quite the boost to my self image that I imagined. Rather than feeling glamorous and together instead I felt like mutton dressed up as lamb. How did it come to this? Before baby I wore heels to work nearly everyday, I even clung on to a low heel for the first few months of my pregnancy until lower back pain made me give them up (now all of the maternity-wear ads of women in their last trimester wearing enormously high heels really shit me).

I'm going back to work in a few weeks and I realise it won't be as simple as digging out my old work wardrobe. Flat shoes will be bought (well, flattish) and pants will be taken up. No doubt heels will slowly creep back into my life but for now I appreciate that they feel as ridiculous as they are (and they are). It also makes these images all the more farcical:

Victoria Beckham carrying baby Harper in New York. Yikes. (Zimbio)

An ad for a maternity dress, which is like most ads for maternity clothes.

An ad for the Mountain Buggy Swift pram, it's oh so realistic. 

Have you had to give up on heels too?

-- Natalie

And some times I dream of running away....

When the clocks went back an hour marking the end of Day Light Savings recently I was so excited about gaining an extra hour of sleep I made the rookie mistake of staying up way too late. Instead of enjoying that extra hour tucked up in bed, GeekDad and I tended to one sick baby and one distraught toddler by playing musical chairs beds.

DreamBaby upchucked his dinner yet again just after midnight (thanks to a nasty gastro/ear/chest infection combo) and was promptly relocated to the portacot in the lounge room and I had the pleasure of sleeping next to him on our spare single mattress. 'Mattress' is quite frankly too nice a word for this 'foam number' it barely takes the edge off the floor, but just like camping some padding is better than nothing.

After trying to get comfortable and enter the dream zone, CheekyMonkey decided he needed to join the party in the living room. In the space of an hour, I moved from the foam mattress, to my bed, back again to the foam mattress to finally end up in my bed with CheekyMonkey in tow (GeekDad was sent packing to the 'foam number' to placate DreamBaby).

I think it was close to 3am when I finally went to sleep and I remember thinking and praying the kids would sleep late.  The joke was on me when they started the day at 7am.

Bleary eyed and one coffee in I kept thinking it would have been nice having an extra hour up my sleeve to help me make a dent in my current to-do list. Did I mention this list exists only in my head, yeap its all tucked nicely away for easy access. Unfortunately much to my husband's despair there is no way to download a copy in any format for him to access. I'm still hoping my husband will one day magically acquire mind reading skills!

So I was delighted when I stumbled across the Real Simple: Women & Time Chart App, you can choose to create a chart for 'A Typical Day', 'A Typical Weekend Day', 'What Others Think You Do All Day' and 'Your Fantasy Day'. One flaw was it kept insisting I keep to a 24 hr day, I mean really, have they not heard of multitasking?

A typical day at work vs with kids

It was very easy to do fill in my 'Typical Days', check out my images above, but when it came to creating 'My Fantasy Day' - I blanked.

If I'm lucky once a weekend I get a few hours to spend sans children and its usually spent catching up with one of my girlfriends, maybe a pedicure or a trip to the hairdresser to tame my unruly curls into submission. But its a rare occasion when I don't call/email/text to check on the kids when they are not in my line of vision or earshot.

Becoming a mother is everything I dreamed of and more, I just didn't fathom the mental frustration in not achieving all I want to in a day. I have days when I feel like superwoman and everything is on track and then there are the unspeakable days, days which drive me to despair!

Its these days when I know exactly what 'My Fantasy Day Chart' would say, 'Í ran away today, I'll be back tomorrow'.

-- Hannah

Babies aren't accessories

Some people think that January Jones taking placenta pills is weird, others think Alicia Silverstone pre-chewing her baby's food is weird, and I have even had some people tell me that they think breastfeeding is weird.

For the record I think none of the above is particularly odd. Except for breastfeeding, I have to concede that is a little weird, but still it's awesome. Way more awesome than weird.

The one thing that does sit firmly in the weird category for me though is the term "baby wearing". That's wearing, not weaning (very different). And unlike how it sounds -- which to me is a tad psychopathic -- it actually refers to holding your baby in a carrier such as a Bjorn or sling. I first came across it when we bought the US brand Ergobaby carrier which came with an instruction DVD (those things are complicated!). On it were video testimonials of happy customers talking about how much they love to "wear their babies". In a word: Creeeeeeeepy!

Since then I've come across it a lot on US websites and blogs but disturbingly I have also seen it on Australian websites. And to that I say, please please please let's not start using that term here. There are many fabulous things that we should import from the US -- pulled pork sandwiches, HBO, and cinnamon bun dough in a can come to mind -- but this phrase isn't one of them.

Which leads me to this: babies aren't accessories. We don't wear them. They are human beings (albeit little ones) that we can cuddle, hold, carry and cradle. As cute as they are they do not complete an outfit and will not land anyone on a best-dressed list. So I urge you all to hold your babies in a carrier, because that too is awesome, but to never ever wear them. That's just weird.

As a demonstration, here is a pic of Noisy Daddy wearing carrying Stickybeak.

-- Natalie

Look at those matching dimples, too cute!!

Miranda Kerr and me

Miranda Kerr with newborn Flynn (January 2011).

Remember this pic of Miranda Kerr breastfeeding her newborn baby Flynn? I stumbled across this recently and what was interesting to me was how my perspective on it has changed.

When I first saw this pic I was about halfway through my pregnancy and really had no idea of what I was in for. At the time I thought Miranda choosing this particular image as our first look at her baby was an odd choice and I wondered what picture I would send around when Stickybeak was born. I figured it would be a bit weird if I sent around a breastfeeding one but just to be sure I ran the idea past a colleague. Yep, it would be weird she said. But I guess the rules are different for supermodels*.

Fast forward a year and, my, how things have changed! When I saw the image again recently what immediately struck me was the position of her hand. In my previous post Parenting, it's all in the wrist, I wrote about my wrist problems and her pic is an excellent example of how it happens.

Lots of things combined to cause my injury but breastfeeding was the main culprit. It just took so long in the beginning (up to an hour was the norm) and I was using the football hold which had me cradling his head the whole time ... not good**. I was also so focused on the baby (is he latched ok? ouch that hurts should I try again? he isn't suffocating is he? Is he getting enough milk?) that my own comfort didn't really get a look in and by the time I noticed a problem it was too late. And you know what really sucks, I recently cleaned out all the baby-related pamphlets I collected during my pregnancy and among them was one from the hospital warning against wrist injuries. It even had pictures of what not to do which looked a lot like Miranda's image above. If only I had paid attention! But, what can I say, cortisone is a marvellous thing.

As for her releasing breastfeeding photos, all feelings of weirdness have vanished. I am still not about to send around pics of me doing it but I really appreciate that she did. Once I was ready to try different holds I went off searching for breastfeeding images for inspiration, so it is great to see photos of other women doing it (hear that Facebook?). Now with the benefit of hindsight I am impressed that Miranda could pull off a lying down position so soon because it took me a couple of months at least before it worked for me.
And all of this is a roundabout way of saying that so much has changed for me in a year (I talk about breastfeeding holds for one thing!) and it's funny how one image encapsulates that.

*The rules are always different for supermodels.

**I highly recommend breastfeeding pillows.

-- Natalie