Want To Know Why I Haven't Posted Anything Recently?

You’d think God would be kinder to me. I mean, s/he’s thrown half a dozen significant earthquakes at me in the past nine months (hell, by comparison even pregnancy’s fun), and we’re being put through thousands of aftershocks, not to mention the loss of job security. Our city’s broken. Isn’t that enough?

I took on a part-time job. Just a little one. Hell, it barely even counts as a job! But it’s enough to let us have takeaways on a Friday night without a dose of the guilts – and that, folks, is a Big Deal for us just now.

A real job! Excellent idea, I thought. Beloved agreed. The cosmos, apparently, did not.

Within days (it felt like hours), our home turned into a House Of Ill. Drop the ‘Repute’ bit at the end – we’ve been so ill we haven’t had the energy for anything that exciting!

Little Miss Two – croup. Deduct one week.

Little Miss Two – gastro virus. Deduct two days.

Little Miss Two – croup (again). Deduct one week.

Master Seven – croup. Deduct four days.

Me – gastro virus. Deduct two days.

Little Miss Two – bronchio-freakin’-litis, for crying out loud! Deduct one looooong week.

Beloved – sprained ankle. Deduct zero days. No time for sympathy pampering, because…

Master Seven – serious infection. Hospitalisation. Deduct one night’s sleep.

Master Seven – severe nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea brought on by vicious, kill-the-bug-and-you-with-it antibiotics. Deduct five days.

And somewhere in the middle of all that I have to meet a major deadline in my new job and find time to write.

Guess what fell off the list? (Sigh.)

Post-script. Oh. My. God. Little Miss Two has come down with another cold. If it turns into croup, so help me, I’ll turn to drugs. For me, not her.

Am I the only one this kind of stuff happens to? Please, if life does this to you too - share it with me! Let me know I'm not the only one the cosmos is punishing. Give me permission to overdose on chocolate - or suggest an even better way of drowning my sorrows. :)

My Lifeline With Sanity

On the odd occasion - you know, like 90% of the time - when things seem as if they're going from bad to worse, or from worse to desperate, it's good to know I've got friends who'll help get me through.

Take this week, for example. It wasn't enough that my Beloved was working out of town. Little Miss 13-month-old (aka The Destroyer) decided this was a good week to come down with Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease.

No, our ancestry does not include any cloven-hooved beasts. (Though I do have a devilish streak - does that count?)

Who thought of the name for this virus? What were they thinking? Were they thinking? It's bad enough that we have to quarantine The Destroyer for over a week. (Ye Gods!) But suddenly she's got an illness that, by the sounds of it, will result in her baa-ing or moo-ing like a farmyard animal.

Which is quite funny, actually, because this week she developed a serious interest in the different sounds animals make. So at least two hours of every quarantine day has involved her repeatedly thrusting a Hand-Foot-and-Mouth-saliva'd book at me so I could point to pictures and make animal noises.

I studied my butt off, all through high school and university and a post-graduate qualification - for what? So I could make cute animal noises a couple of hundred times a day, that's what!

Who says education is an investment for the future?!!

My saving grace this week has been the daily school drop-off and pick-up routine. I probably would've gone mad(der) if I hadn't been able to laugh about it with other mums who've been-there-done-that with the illnesses, quarantine nightmares and animal noises. These friends have been my lifeline with sanity. You know who you are, girls! Thanks a million!

Tropical Paradise Holiday

So off we went. Our first tropical holiday in years. Our first ever as a family of four.

We coped with the 5am start. We mostly coped with the first six hours of our seven-and-a-half hour journey, thanks to drugs (for the baby, not us), an in-flight bassinette, and individual in-flight screens which Master Six loved.

Then the baby woke.

If you're a parent, imagine your child at their very worst. Then imagine holding them in your lap while they do it. For an hour, maybe more.

Okay, we won't talk about that.

Our destination was indeed a tropical paradise, with fancy-wancy five-star hotel and super-friendly staff. None of which made any difference when Baby decided she wouldn't sleep anywhere except her own cot back in Christchurch.

We soothed her. We ignored her. We tried feeding her up. We fed her so much she should've doubled her body weight. She should've slept like a… well, a baby.

She didn't. She woke every two hours, all night. EVERY night. For TEN NIGHTS. We ignored her some more. We decided the neighbours would kill her (or us). We ssshed her until we couldn't dredge up another bloody sssh.

Sleep deprivation is a horrible thing. It takes away the sparkle in your eyes, the glow in your skin and, ultimately, your will to live.

Master Six had a fantastic holiday. Why? Because, God knows how, he slept through our nightly hell, woke refreshed each morning and had a great time at Kids' Club.

Myself and my beloved? We paid somewhere in excess of $NZ6000 to lose the will to live. Then flew back without the luxury of baby bassinette. (It went to some tiny days-old scrap of baby who couldn't even roll, let alone create havoc.) We arrived home with bad necks, bad backs, bad moods and a baby who had decided life worked pretty well at two-hour intervals.

The moral of the story: just don't bother. Wait until your kids are five. Better still, make them save for their own damn holiday. In the interim, buy a bottle of non-duty-free, set up a deckchair in the lounge, and drink yourself silly so you don't feel the chill when you strip down to your swimwear.

Hints For Campers With Kids

1   DON'T be casual about departure time. Packing ALWAYS expands to take up all available time + twenty percent.
2   DON'T assume thick black clouds on horizon won't come your way. They will. Thick black clouds = rain. Rain = misery for five-year-old over-excited campers.
3   DON'T assume swiftly-moving thick black clouds will bypass campsite. They won't. They'll just arrive fast. Swiftly-moving thick black clouds = wind + rain. Wind + rain = bad news if erecting tent and minding over-excited five-year-old and fretful baby simultaneously.
4   DON'T take mobile phone with only one blip of battery left. It won't last the day, let alone the trip.
5   DON'T believe you'll survive without your mobile phone. You won't. You're addicted and needy, just like all those pesky Generation whatever-they-are's.
6   DON'T use five-year-old son's new Transformer mug as handy vessel to transport hot water in. So what if it's handy? It's a TRANSFORMER mug = magnet to son.
7   DON'T forget location of nearest cold water supply. IF son burns himself you need readily available cold water. Especially if it's your fault (see 6 above).
8   DON'T assume you'll sleep longer than 40 minutes in one stretch during night; not if you have six-month-old baby with you, anyway.
9   DON'T believe (even for a moment) that baby needs to adjust to your life. Forget  articles and expert opinions. Baby doesn't need, or want, to go camping. Baby doesn't need, or want, to sleep in portacot or tent, to play on hard ground, to amuse herself, to enjoy outdoors or experience weather extremes. Baby doesn't enjoy sand or grass. Baby doesn't enjoy camping. Get it?
10  DON'T expect five-year-old son to eat anything cooked over camping stove. Five-year-old son doesn't like change. He doesn't like charred, or even mildly-blackened, potatoes or sausages. He doesn't like anything that looks different. He doesn't want to expand his food repertoire. He doesn't intend to be less fussy just because he's camping. Son would rather starve.
11  DON'T decide starvation is fitting punishment for son. Son disagrees. And soon, when son's blood-sugar levels get low enough, you will observe carnage and also disagree.
12  DON'T conclude camping is bad idea. Kids will look back on these days with fondness. You will recall sleep deprivation and hard work. Kids will recall endless summer days of trampolining, cycling and playing with friends, long evenings spent playing instead of sleeping, long nights feeling cosy in tent as wind whipped through trees outside.

Oh, the joys of camping!