Here’s a few things I’ve been reading online, when I’ve had a chance to put my feet up.

Here’s The Truth about Sex After Marriage:

” So what if some nights you’d prefer binging on Chinese food and watching “The Biggest Loser” to ripping off each other’s clothes? Isn’t that what marriage is about — being forever bound to someone who will love you even when the chow mein you just inhaled saddled you with a massive food baby?” (The Huffington Post)

 

A funny book on a serious subject? I want to read Kerri Sackville’s latest book, The Little Book of Anxiety. Check out the synopsis from Random House.

Navigating the Weekend – Ben raises a common dilemma for single income couples with kids. As a stay-at-home mum, I could really relate to this post.

“Having cancer doesn’t do much for one’s body image.” I was moved and challenged by this post on Macarisms.

Do you squirm at the thought of saying grace in public? Tamie asks a question about Christian idiosyncracies.

Speaking of which, here is a photo which I snapped (and yes, then instagr.ammed) of our two children. Going on the little man’s previous attitude towards tiny babies, I expected him to be quite jealous of his sister or at best, nonplussed. He’s turned out to be quite the opposite and constantly asks me to take her out of the bassinet so he can hold her, kiss her face and stroke her tiny hands. Love.

I’m not yet in a writing head space, but here are some random reflections on the weekend just past.

* You know how they say the second birth is generally easier, shorter and more ‘enjoyable’? Lies! I purposely didn’t have a birth plan and Miss’ birth wasn’t catastrophic by any means, but it felt so different from my experience with the little man. Much more stressful and difficult. I’ve already started to block out most of the labour (hormones are a wonderful thing), but I’ve been told I alternated between swearing loudly and apologising profusely to the hospital staff.
*But I will say this about having a second baby: the moment when they put that precious life on your bare chest, still moist from the womb, is just as priceless.
* Although there were points when I felt out of control, my midwife was fantastic. It made me appreciate being able to give birth in a country like Australia.
* Confidence makes a huge difference when having a newborn. Even though hardships like breastfeeding and sleeplessness don’t change, it’s incredible how feeling confident makes a difference to how you approach things.
* Gender balance seems to be why we have kids. According to 90% of people I talked to at hospital, I can stop reproducing now as I have a boy and a girl. Which I just might, if it means not having to go into labour again.
* I packed ridiculous things in my hospital bag. Things like a wheat heat pack, calming music, a book (why I have no idea…so I could read between contractions??) and, for some unfathomable reason, tampons.
* Have you ever noticed anesthetists at hospitals tend to be very attractive males? Just sayin’.

So I did.

There’s lots of things I like about instagr.am. It’s immediate. It gives you tiny glimpses into other people’s lives. It delivers automatic feedback and plenty of affirmation, like when I check my feed and get a heady rush because tania_cutie133starfish “hearts” my picture.

But what I like most about instagr.am is it allows me to seem a lot cooler than I really am.

Being an instagr.am-er requires a certain degree of affectation. This is true in a literal sense. Apply a sweet filter and you can make anything – your recycling bin, kids watching TV, the flippin’ satchet of oatmeal you ate for breakfast – look like a portentous moment from a Proust novel. The app turns iphone photos into vintage memorabilia; wannabe photographers into Artists.

This penchant for affectation is also necessary when it comes to constructing a public persona through photographs. In the online world, it’s easy to think everyone is out there in their second-hand clothes, growing vegetables, reading classic novels at cafes, riding bicycles around the city and cooking food from regions you can’t pronounce. Children are adorable on instagr.am. Homes are beautiful. Taking the bus to work is a whimsical affair.

My life looks also looks pretty charming too on instagr.am. In reality, though, I am not hip nor is my life whimsical. I’m a stay-at-home mum. I live in the suburbs. I listen to Taylor Swift, watch Offspring, wear Kmart ugg boots and frequent Westfields on the weekends.
The last time the husband went on a ‘date’ (and I use that word lightly; the husband and I spend time together, we do not ‘date’), we got such bad headaches from the red faux-burlesque club lighting of the bar we were at, we left after 20 minutes, ate KFC chips from the food court and window shopped at JB HiFi before rushing home to relieve the babysitters.

Are you an instagr.am addict?
Have you ever appeared cooler than you really are?

“We’re very, very tight as a family unit and the children are our life, but I know the order of my love…It’s my wife and then my daughters. I just think it’s really important for the kids.

There are too many parents who start to lose the plot a little and start to give all their love to the kids, and then the partner starts to go without. And then everybody loses. As a kid, all I needed to know was that my parents were solid. Kids shouldn’t feel like they are being favoured. It’s a dangerous place.”

I agree with Keith. Not everyone does. I’ve always believed a strong marriage (and accordingly, a stable family) is the best gift you can give your children. Loving your spouse comes first, then loving your kids. Having said that, the experience of love with a husband compared to a child can be different. My love for the little man feels protective and instinctual; I experience a innate sense of responsibility for his upbringing and safety. My love for the husband feels more mutually beneficial, like a relationship of equals. It began something extrinsic to me (I met and fell in love with him, as opposed to growing a child in my womb and knowing him from birth) but has since grown to become a vital part of who I am.

Do you agree with Keith?
Should a woman love her husband more than her kids?
(And on a different yet related note, is anyone else completely addicted to The Voice like I am??)

It’s good fun – there are eight families in the group and we each take turns to go to Flemington markets, early on a Saturday morning, to buy food for everyone. We pay about one third of supermarket prices for fresh produce, and I have a constantly full fruit bowl in the kitchen. I also love the surprise element of receiving a box of goodies on your doorstep every week. You never know what someone will put in your box. One week it was a bunch of different herbs – coriander, mint, parsley, shallots. Another week, it was a big, crimson-coloured dragonfruit, begging to be sliced and served straight off the chopping board.

Shopping at the markets is also a surprisingly fun excursion for the family. I was hesitant at first, as I wasn’t sure if the little man would cope with sitting in a trolley for an extended period of time. Grocery shopping tends to be punctuated with lots of whingeing, food bribes and the odd tantrum. I was worried market shopping would be much the same.

It turned out to be great entertainment with brightly-coloured fruit stalls, bustling crowds and loads of noise. Oh, and the vehicles! The place is a toddler boy’s dream. Trucks, forklifts, vans, trolley cars…the little man, eyes wide and gleaming, had a great time pointing out all the machines he could see. The fact that fruit sellers would slip him pieces of fruit to eat (as seen in this photo; I think he’s eating a peach or an apricot) didn’t hurt either.

Being part of a co-op also means that come the end of the week, I sometimes have a large amount of softening vegetables to get rid of. This was the case last week, when my crisper was full of soft tomatoes and slightly wrinkly capsicums. What to do? I put together this very simple homemade pasta sauce and liked it so much, I thought I’d share the recipe. Hope you enjoy it!

Roast tomato and capsicum pasta sauce

Ingredients (amounts are approximate):

6-7 tomatoes, halved
3 capsicums, deseeded and halved
2 tbs balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper
2 small red onions, peeled and halved
olive oil
1 bulb of garlic, left whole
A handful of chopped basil leaves (if you have any)
1/2 cup of white wine (adult version)

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees.
2. Place the tomatoes, capsicum, onion and garlic on a tray lined with baking paper.
3. Drizzle vegies with olive oil and season generously with salt and pepper.
4. Roast until the tomatoes look shrunken and brown, and the capsicums have blistered skin. This took me about an hour.
5. Cool until room temperature, then peel off as much of the capsicum skin as you can.
6. Chuck the tomatoes, capsicums and red onion in a saucepan. Peel the garlic and squeeze the innards into the saucepan too. Whizz entire contents with a stick blender.
7. Add the balsamic vinegar, white wine (if using) and basil. Bring to a boil, then turn the temperature down to a gentle simmer. If you want the sauce to go a bit further, you can add a can of chopped tomatoes.
8. Simmer for about 10 minutes, then take off the heat and serve with pasta, such as spinach and ricotta tortellini.

Where do you buy your fruit and vegetables? What have you been cooking lately?

I must confess: I have a knack for complicating The Dailies. Instead of making a simple meal, I’ll try to make two dinners in the half-hour before friends are coming over and end up with a bombshell kitchen to clean. I’ll forget to update my calendar or check my emails, double-book myself, then run around like crazy trying to make things happen. I’m also notorious for letting things run completely empty before doing anything about it. This means I’m constantly stuck with no phone battery/nappies/food in the fridge/clean clothes/petrol.

People have given me advice over the years on how to reduce the amount of energy I spend on The Dailies. Personal organiser Hellen Buttigieg, who I found through Jelssie, also has some helpful tips (one hundred, in fact) on how to uncomplicate your life.

Here’s three things that I’ve managed to put into practice over the years.

1. Do a load of washing every day. Even if it’s the weekend. When you come home from a holiday, tip your dirty clothes into the washing machine rather than leaving them to fester in your suitcase for days.

2. Reduce the amount of stuff in your house. The maths is simple. Less stuff = less things to clean and put away. I’ve done this with toys and my wardrobe. A few years ago, I pulled out every item of clothing I own and culled it down by 50%. I only kept clothes I wore at least once a week, clothes that served a purpose (e.g. gym clothes, feeding tops) or sentimental items. Everything else I gave away. Now, I only buy clothes to replace an item that has become worn (note: this takes a superhuman amount of self control!) and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to learn you don’t need a lot of clothes to have a decent wardrobe. The trick? When you do buy clothes, be incredibly choosy. Find one well-made garment that you really love, rather than four on-trend tops that will end up at the back of the wardrobe in a month’s time.

3. Clean out your fridge at least once a week. No “oh I’ll save that 1/4 cup of sour cream, who knows when I’ll need it” or opening a can of tuna and leaving a few skerricks behind, covered in gladwrap. Get a garbage bag. Open the fridge. Toss anything that’s soft, smelly or *shudder* growing things.

4. Lower your expectations of how clean your house has to be. Hellen Buttigeig gave me that one. I’ll add to her advice “lower your expectations of how many vegies your child should eat, how much television you let him watch, or how well written your post should be”. Learn the art of drinking a cup of tea in a room littered with toys and letting the washing pile up now and then. You’ll be the happier for it.

Got any more tips to share? How do you reduce the amount of time and energy spent on The Dailies?

Image source.

The fact that I’ve lost weight in my third trimester isn’t as unusual as it sounds. You would too if you were nauseous, refluxing and recovering from a nasty stomach bug. What struck me, though, was the comment she made next. “Oh you must be happy!” she burbled. “You’re already losing weight. That’s fantastic!” I was bemused. If I had to choose between a couple of extra kilos and constantly having my head down a toilet, I’d take the love handles any day.

My midwife’s comment about weight loss and pregnancy isn’t out of the ordinary. A quick scan of current advertisements and the women’s magazines on supermarket shelves reveals what the media thinks pregnancy should look like: slim bodies, perky breasts, taut bellies, flawless skin. No publisher will show you the reality of pregnancy, that is, the cankles, the stretch marks, the fact that most maxi dresses will make you look like a floating tent, not the bronzed fertility goddess of your imaginings. Remember when we used to talk about that pregnant woman glow? These days, glowing is not enough – nor is it enough to be happy, healthy or simply thankful a woman has been blessed with a pregnancy. Today expectant mothers need to look sexy in order to be appealing – or more specifically, conform to a specific definition of sexiness that tends to look like an extremely slim woman with a basketball neatly tucked under her top (or sans top, if you’re Christina/Jessica/Britney/Demi).

The entertainment media’s preoccupation with sex appeal isn’t limited to expectant mothers. Throughout various stages of a woman’s life, the drive to be sexy is ever present. For young mums, it’s about being a Yummy Mummy and losing that baby weight as fast as possible. For young teens, it takes on more pernicious forms with pressure to dress and act in increasingly sexualised ways. Then there’s the biggest perceived enemy of looking hot and sexy: age. With cosmetic surgery becoming the norm and pop icons like 53-year-old Madonna setting a new standard for what older women should look like, the ageing process (or or if you’re an advertiser, ‘the Seven Visible Signs of Ageing’) is fast becoming an unwanted element in our culture.

Of course, our physical appearance plays a significant role in how we feel about ourselves. I’ll be the first to admit I’m in a better mood when I step out of the house in a nice top as opposed to trackies splattered with dried weet-bix. However, I do find our culture’s obsession with sex appeal concerning. Sexiness is a limited definition of beauty. While the image of a beautiful woman can encompass many things – personality, creativity, sense of style, humour, different body types, etc – sexiness in our culture tends to be a homogenous concept; limited to the plastic, hard-bodied fantasies of a teenage boys.

Sexiness also seeks to eradicate the physical manifestations of motherhood as flaws. Something I’ve noticed in my conversations with other women is how we talk as if there’s a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’ way to look when you’re pregnant. While it’s okay to gain weight around your middle (aka the skinny basketball image), we react negatively to the idea that a pregnant woman would gain weight anywhere else: her hips, legs, arms, face, feet or chin. Once, when my top accidentally rode upwards and revealed stretch marks from my last pregnancy, an acquaintance physically reacted to it’s appearance and asked if my stomach bothered me (short answer: no). Another friend was horrified at being told her breasts would not only get bigger, but oh yes, start to sag with the effects of gravity post-pregnancy. It’s only natural to find the physical symptoms of childbearing confronting, even difficult to adjust to, but our culture’s narrow concept of sexiness doesn’t help. It has no room for the necessary (and in my opinion, amazing) changes that happen to a woman’s body when she bears children. Which is a shame.

me pregnant and wearing ugg boots at the beach

Instead of buying into concepts like anti-ageing sexy pregnancy bellies and Yummy Mummies, I say we redefine what it means to be a beautiful woman in our culture.

Let’s broaden the concept to include different types of physical beauty rather than confine it to a size 8. Let’s treasure how strong our bodies are and the battle-scars women wear to bring children in this world. And as ridiculous as this sounds – without pouring too much cold water on my midwife, who is actually lovely and was only making conversation with her remark – let’s give ourselves permission to gain weight in pregnancy, permission to relax and enjoy this temporary phase of life without feeling the need to rush off to a gym and shed the kilos straight away.

What do you think? Is our culture obsessed with sex? Do you feel the pressure to be a Yummy Mummy?

But life isn’t always perfect. Sometimes you have nothing in common with a fellow parent, even though your kids really get along. Other times, you like enjoy the adult company but the kids are a problem. That is the case with a friend of mine, a mum with two young kids. We were chatting about her dilemma and I admitted I had no answers, having never been in this situation before. She asked if she could draw from the collective wisdom of The Fountainside readers instead. Her question is below:

“What do you do if you don’t like your friend’s kids? What do you do when you still want to be friends with the adults, but are concerned about your kids learning bad behaviours by spending time with the kids? Do you keep quiet, or speak up?”

Okay, brains trust. Any advice to offer my friend?

Image credit

I couldn’t find the extrovert version, which made me wonder whether we think extroverts don’t need as much care as their introvert counterparts. I did, however, find this list from The Daily Huff:

How to care for extroverts:

1. Respect their need to share, to ‘talk it out.’ They get their energy from other people.
2. Just as with introverts, never embarrass them in public. If you do embarrass them in public, go along as much as is reasonable if they play it off like a joke.
3. Don’t be surprised if they dive into a new situation headfirst. Don’t freak out either if they flounder a little. They’ll find their way.
4. Extroverts blurt. It’s the nature of the beast. Most try to leaven it with charm, but try to be patient when they don’t.
5. Expect interruptions that may seem rude, to some. Most of the time, they mean well.
6. Build surprise into your lives together. Most extroverts love the thrill of not knowing what’s up – as long as it’s positive.
7. Be prepared for what looks like ADD. The organically outgoing among us feed off the environment around them. They are often the best multi-taskers around, so understand that they are often paying much more attention to you than you think they are.
8. A flashover temper goes with the extroverted personality. The bad thing is it can look like a much more severe storm than it is. The good thing is it’s over quickly.
9. Many extroverts live for the intuitive leap. They reach for it. If teaching an extrovert something new, have patience with them jumping ahead of you.
10. They will always have lots of friends. But most extroverts have a core of best friends, and their loyalty can be fierce and aggressive if they feel the need to defend those friends. As with so many aspects of the extroverted personality, you may have to be patient with this.
11. They love compliments, but can usually see right through insincere flattery. Well-timed encouragement, though, can help an extrovert soar.
12. Sometimes, it’s okay to just go along with the “show.” Consider it free entertainment.
13. Respect their extroversion. Don’t try to pin them to your board or cage them. And do them a favor, if you are not yourself outgoing, extroverted – gently but persistently remind them to read the above graphic as often as possible. They probably will need the reminders.

As helpful as they are, lists like these are too black-and-white about personality types. Rather than placing people in the introvert or extrovert box, I think it’s more helpful to imagine people on a sliding scale. Everyone has some extrovert and introvert tendencies, even if you tend towards one camp. I grew up as a pretty extreme introvert, but these days I tend to sit more towards the middle. If I were to put a numerical value on it, I’d probably say I’m about 35% extrovert, 65% introvert. While often I like nothing better than to be left alone in the couch with a book, I also go a bit stir crazy if a whole day goes by without social interaction. I can relate to points 5-7 on the Introverts graphic, but 1 and 3 don’t apply to me (and what’s the deal with 2? I don’t think anyone likes being embarrassed in public!). On the Extrovert side, I can also relate to points 9-11. Yes, I do love a good compliment.

Personalities are also fluid. I hate the idea that people are boxed in; confined to playing the introvert or extrovert. Life experiences can dictate whether people display traits from one camp or another. When I had a media job that sometimes required me to play the extrovert, I learned to develop ways of relating I never knew were in me. With my husband’s job as a minister, I’ve been challenged to take more initiative with new people (arguably an extrovert trait) and found that it isn’t so difficult as I’ve previously thought. I’ve also appreciated the opportunities to wear my introvert qualities like a cosy blanket: qualities like listening intently, pausing and thinking before giving opinions, giving others space to shine in conversations.

Understanding your personality type is one thing; challenging yourself now and then to express parts of you that aren’t second nature is even better.

Do you express more introvert or extrovert tendencies? Do any of the points in the above graphic apply to you?

When I first started doing the stay-at-home mum thing, I used to dread this question. I feared my answer would sound a) boring, b) trivial, c) unproductive, or d) a combination of all three. The one day, something occurred to me. People with paid jobs don’t have terribly interesting answers to this question either. If you were to ask me two years ago, “so what did you do today?” I would have said, “caught the train, sent a bunch of emails, did a stack of phone interviews and ate sushi for lunch at my desk”. Actually I probably would have said something more like, “oh nothing really, just went to work then came home and watched the 7pm Project”. But you see my point.

Life at home with a child can be incredibly boring at times. There’s lots of repetition, little affirmation and the constant temptation to stay in trackies and ugg-boots all day. There’s lots of joy too; bursts of light I wish I could bottle. A spontaneous hug. A cheeky, jam-smeared grin. A funny comment uttered by the little man in the car, making me wish there was a video camera handy. And there are the frustrations that no one sees; moments that test my faith and challenge me to practice what I preach. The days feel mundane, but the trick is to delight in the small; to treat every moment as if it matters – even the ones that involve folding endless piles of laundry and cleaning cereal-splattered floors.

So, what did you do today (or do you dread that question like I did?) How do you delight in the small?