24/09/2007

Long time no post!


Well, here we are again, with me wishing that I'd been posting updates regularly, because Asher is growing and changing so fast that I can hardly keep up with the things he can do today that he couldn't do yesterday. He's walking relatively confidently now and yesterday we went and purchased his first pair of 'big boy' shoes. What I mean by that is shoes that are actually designed for someone bipedal, that might protect from a sharp stick or a small piece of broken glass. This whole footwear issue is going to just get more and more expensive I suspect - we got sandals for him for half price and they were still $30 and not particularly fancy.

Enough about the shoes Keda!!! The huge leap we have had in the last few weeks is actually with language. It's interesting that the walking and the language are happening at the same time and I suspect it's one of those development things, and not co-incidental. When we are out and about now Asher will spot a bird, either flying or perched on something, point to it and say "bird!" and while his pronunciation is frankly hilarious he's very proud of being able to name something. He plane-spots too, but when he sees an aeroplane he just says "there!" (more like "dare" really) to let me know that he's seen something, but he knows it's not a bird. I wish I had the energy to teach him a few more signs at the moment because I think he'd be really receptive to them, and very happy about being able to communicate more clearly. I want to do a post concentrating on his language development soon, but I'm not too confident that I'll get around to it.

The other very major thing that's happened over the last week is that he's now completely weaned - no more breastfeeding. The last breastfeed was over a week ago and it's been really easy. He was only having one feed a day, just before his nap, and it seems that he doesn't need a milk feed to get in the right frame of mind for sleep. I put the wonderful Milk Bar pillow away in the cupboard so Asher didn't get have a reminder or an easy way to tell me he wanted a breastfeed and the whole process has been really easy. We've also completed the transition to one sleep per day and, surprisingly, Asher has decided that the car seat and his pram are now acceptable places to fall asleep - and he's OK to be transferred into bed! The child never fails to surprise me!

It's now 8:30pm and I haven't had dinner. I'm so hungry I can't think straight so I'll post this now and try to be better about posting more frequently in future!

09/09/2007

My life's work

For my school's 50 year anniversary I was asked, along with everyone else who ever went to the school, to put together a little blurb about what we "do in the world" now and what we got from the school along with a picture from then and one from now. As I was writing I was overcome with the depressing feeling that what I'm doing looks insignificant and incredibly boring. Despite paying lip service to rights of women to choose whether they worked outside or inside the home, I remember feeling scathing about women who gave up work when they had their kids. I felt like they were taking the easy way and although the work of bringing up children was important it also rotted ones brain and made one insular and concerned only with ones immediate environment. I think I have internalised my anti-full-time-mother stance - as I was writing I kept wanting to defend and justify by talking up the work that I used to do before I became a mother. I wanted to let people know that I used to be well paid and well thought of in the work that I did. This is not the first time I've felt negatively judged or wanted to let people know that I wasn't always 'just a mum' but this is the first time that my internalised mum-a-phobia has been this clear to myself.

I'm not sure where I want to go with this, but I suspect it's time for me to re-read Alison Osbourne's book 'The Post-Baby Conversation' to try and sort through a few things. I wonder what else is on the reading list for the course on cutting oneself a bit of slack?