It turns out my kids are lying liars who lie. On Saturday night, my brother, SuperChief, babysat Garnet and May Blossom. They totally saw him coming. Here are nine lies they told him. He wrote them down and presented them to H and me on our return and I have transcribed them here. Anything in quotation marks is a direct quote from the child in question. Lies Garnet Told He is allowed to play the ukulele every night while falling asleep. Gusto is a secret tiger. Garnet can onl

One night I let things escalate horribly. I was so tired of being shouted at and told I was very, very mean, when really I am only a bit mean. I shouldn’t have let it get to me but I did. I told her that it was not acceptable to speak to me like that. I said that I too missed Daddy, and he would not agree I was mean, and he would not like her speaking to me like that either. She disputed this again, so we rang him. Because there’s nothing like being in the wilds of Africa and

Well, I say not much, but I guess there have been some fairly important milestones for other people around here. Garnet has learned to talk. He seems to have downloaded English into his head overnight, which I know is impossible because our internet connection can’t even download an episode of House of Cards without taking six hours and crashing the computer and generally carrying on like a pork chop. So he must have learnt it some other way. I suspect his sister is involved.

Others are more prosaic. Take ‘Molly Drops Her Phone’. In this game, May Blossom is Molly. Molly takes my phone, puts it in her handbag and leaves the room for a moment. Then she comes back with an empty handbag and exclaims ‘Oh no, I’ve dropped my phone in a shop!’ I then make all kinds of helpful suggestions about how we might get it back, and like so many clay pigeons, May Blossom shoots them down with deadly accuracy. ‘Well,’ I say energetically. ‘Let’s go back and see if

Why the italics, you might ask. What has Gusto done to merit that? Nothing. Gusto is being an exemplary feline. It is the jellicle cats that are the problem around here. The cats created by T. S. Eliot in his 1939 book of poems Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and made more annoying to the power of infinity by Andrew Lloyd-Webber in 1981. You see, about three months ago May Blossom, Garnet and I tagged along with Other Jess to a Year 6 Production of Cats at the school wher

So sweet, you’d never know they have tiny ear canals brimming with filth and germs. Nor that the one on the right is about to throw up in that car seat. My big brother emailed me today with two queries. ‘When you gonna blog again?’ and ‘How’s your wedding Adirondacks?’ The second question is easier to answer. The Adirondacks to which he refers so grammatically incorrectly are two chairs that he gave H and me for our wedding present. We got married in April 2009. He dropped of

Tomorrow is May Blossom’s third birthday. If you’d asked me three years ago what I thought my life might look like now, I would have looked at you like you were crazy, because I now realise I never really looked much further than a few days ahead. Pregnant, I could only focus on the birth. Once I had a newborn I couldn’t picture her as a toddler. As a toddler I couldn’t picture her as a pre-schooler. When I was pregnant with Garnet I couldn’t see how I could ever love another

Thing 1: Since one or other or another of his or my recent colds or ear infections or other random maladies that have blurred into one long misery I like to call Winter, baby Garnet stopped sleeping in his cot at all. He now sleeps in our bed at night, or in the car, stroller or carrier during the day. This is good because he sleeps much more soundly at night when he is with us, neither H nor I have to drag ourselves out of bed to resettle him, and he is a delicious bundle of

Every Tuesday, she will go to a fantastic home daycare, which is, happily, run by my parents’ neighbour. She will be one of five small people all roughly her own age, and she will have to learn to navigate her way through all the pushing, shoving, frustration and misery that entails. Yesterday went okay. Not brilliantly, but okay. It was probably not as bad as I am making out, because I am a noted catastrophist of our time, but still, I found it hard to deal with when her car

An optimist is one who happily rides her friend’s bike with no pants on. I am a pessimist. I specialise in negative visualisation. Much of my spare time, which these days is usually from 4 to 6 am when I can’t sleep, I spend constructing imaginary conversations with People Who Are Out To Get Me. At the moment, those people are usually involved in one of my many worst-case scenarios surrounding the birth of our new baby. I’ve made plans for how to stand up for myself and talk

Things have been awfully quiet, here on Life With Gusto. That’s because real life has been a bit hectic. Hectic and befuddling and tiring and wonderful and dreadful. All at once. My kid has decided both taking naps and doing what I say are optional. I’m tired and emotional (which is sadly not, in this case, a euphemism for drunk) and I look and feel like I am gestating the moon.But I’ll be back soon, with a post of substance for you. Or possibly, let’s face it,  something ins

The next book we’re borrowing from the library is ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’. Right now one of May Blossom’s favourite books is We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury. It has been in painfully high rotation for about a month now, which means we read it to her at least twice every day. To its credit, Bear Hunt is not yet shitting me to tears in the way some of her previous favourites have – the day she didn’t ask for Oxenbury and Mem Fox’s Ten Littl

One of the many stunning gender-neutral outfits May Blossom will be handing down to her sibling. According to the medical establishment I am now 24 and a half weeks pregnant. That is more than halfway there. More than halfway to having equal numbers of parents and children in this flat, which frankly scares the bejesus out of me. At the mid pregnancy scan, which is also known as the anomaly scan (yes, Anomaly is a lovely name for a girl and it is on our list), we had the oppo

1. You have to stay somewhere as good or better than home. My very clever friend Other Jess once told me this, and I think she is right. Once you have a child, and probably until they are at least five, for a trip away to in any way resemble a holiday you need to stay somewhere this is not inferior to your own home. Staying in a crappy hotel when you are travelling in Mexico without kids is fine. You can eat out every meal, spend all day sightseeing, and just use it as a plac

Is it just the hair? On Play School Humpty’s hair is usually styled with a centre part, but the toy’s hair just wants to go to one side. When I do manage to part it he looks like Robert Smith from The Cure, which is definitely an improvement on Hitler. I hope I’m not seeing connections where there are none, but it is a bit strange that they both have six-letter names beginning with H, they both lived in countries with Walls and they both suffered downfalls. Make of these fact

Wild scenes: May Blossom out of control in the moshpit. Tip her over, pour her out. We’ve just returned from the Play School Concert. If you’re not from Australia, I ought to explain that Play School is a half-hour television program made and broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for pre-schoolers. It has been running since 1966. Each episode is hosted by two actors, appearing as themselves, and basically they mind your kid in a educational way for half an hour

This pregnancy I have been plagued with insomnia, which is not something I have ever experienced before. I was the kid who could fall asleep in two blocks in the car, or while sitting on the front step waiting to be picked up to go to school in the morning. I have, until now, remained a good sleeper. But these days, about four nights a week, I wake around 3 and don’t drop off again until ten minutes before May Blossom starts her morning litany of requests for pasta, peanut bu

Um, no. I haven’t got a good reason. I was just off, you know, living my life and trying to keep warm. Oh, and GROWING A HUMAN, too, thanks very much. I passed from the first to the second trimester of pregnancy with little fanfare, except perhaps, maybe a few little wriggles deep in my belly. The nausea seems to have passed, as has the excruciating heartburn (but I know that little chum will be back to visit in the third trimester, so not getting too cocky on that front). My

Here’s a blurry picture of the creature to be known henceforth as NB. Those are the initials of its in utero name, but could equally stand for New Born, Next Baby, Nota Bene or, optimistically, No Bother. (Or Nasal Bone, which may be why NB is stamped next to its Nasal Bone.) I’m twelve weeks pregnant, so I’ve finally given myself permission to write about it. You may have been wondering – or you may not have, I do realise you have other things on your mind – why this blog ha

1. When she walks down steps, May Blossom has taken to sometimes refusing the proffered hand of her father or me and instead holds her own hand. Independent much? Lacking understanding of the concept of the stabilising force an adult hand can offer? Very, very funny to watch? All of these things. 2. When she wants to warn anyone of anything — that the heater is on; that there is a flight of steps approaching; that the cat is nearing dinner time and could remove the next digit