Part of a Lego exhibition we saw on the weekend and in no way a freakishly accurate representation of our bedroom when it’s my morning to get up at dawn with Garnet. The last few weeks have involved a lot of of autopilot mornings. The kind where everyone has played musical beds all night, and when you realise there is finally a crack of dawn in the sky and there is no point hoping for sleep any longer, you get up. In this house, H and I alternately get up with the earliest ri

Gusto refusing to participate in a dramatic re-enactment of the sleeping arrangements at our house. Honestly, never work with cats. It’s been a while since I updated you on the state of sleep in the house of Gusto. I’m sure you’ve all been waiting with bated breath. Here’s the lowdown: May Blossom and Garnet share a room. Ostensibly, H and I also share a room. Every night, we read to the kids in their beds at bedtime. Because I am a very lucky duck indeed, H is almost always

Helpfully, May Blossom and Pipsqueak look like twins born four years apart, so I can illustrate this post with a picture of my own child to protect the identity of my niece. And yes, her hair was real. Two months ago my brother, Superchief, and sister-in-law, Doctor V, had their first baby. Pipsqueak, as she will be known on this blog, is, like both of her cousins before her, a beautiful, sparkly, dark-haired bundle of Refusal To Sleep. She is one of those babies who catch yo

It’s the Monday night of the Australia Day long weekend, and I’m watching my daughter jump on our rusty mini-tramp while my son steams around the backyard being deeply fascinated by everything from a plastic Ikea plate to the discarded paper lanterns they just peeled off the gooseberries I picked from my mother’s vegetable garden. May Blossom is telling me about a ladybird couple called Florence and Boris and Garnet is asking for ‘Dat’, which is his word of preference at the

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

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

‘It means he’s sad,’ I told her. ‘It’s a metaphor. Why do you think he’s sad?’ ‘I think it’s because he misses his mummy and his sister and his brother,’ she said. May Blossom is quite concerned with missing people at the moment. When I leave her, which is rarely, she frets about it beforehand, telling me she will miss me ‘so, so much’. But I’m not sure it’s really me she misses. Recently I went out without her for about five hours, and took Garnet with me. Their reunion upon

My computer, like my children, has sleep issues: it would not go to sleep, preferring to stay awake until it had completely run down its battery, and then would refuse to wake up again. Sound like anyone I know? Note to self: sleep troubles are clearly contagious and thus May Blossom should not be allowed near Apple products lest she infect them. The laptop got to go spend a week at the Apple Store, being spoken to severely and undergoing some sleep rehab, and now it is back.

Whenever May Blossom wakes up these days, the first thing she says is, in a very irritated tone of voice: ‘I didn’t want to go to sleep.’ She regards us getting her to fall asleep as a cruel trick. It might be because when she is complaining in her cot about not wanting to  sleep we have started telling her that she doesn’t have to go to sleep, she just needs to lie quietly. I think she believes us and is then hugely pissed off to wake some hours later to discover she slept a

But, weirdly enough, it was one of the loveliest nights I can remember. Partly because nights in general, in my opinion, are for sleeping and not for making lasting childhood memories, but mostly because I just lay and stared at my daughter’s face in the moonlight and loved her. On her other side lay H, doing the same thing. We are sappy idiots. Yesterday she was still ill: feverish and not hungry. The GP diagnosed tonsillitis and so our old friends antibiotics are back for a

Today nearly slipped by without a blog. Today was hard. Physically I feel like crap right now and trying to be funny feels forced. So grumbles it shall be. Sorry about that. I’m very sore and I can’t find a comfortable position to sleep in: the Internet and everyone on it suggests I try sleeping in a recliner. Who has a fucking recliner?  I’ll just book a business-class flight somewhere every night, shall I? The fatigue and pain make me sad because these are my last weeks as

I think we all feel like this today. Because of the wonders of Facebook, I know, for certain, that everyone else in the civilised world went to see Radiohead last night. I am not being paranoid or exaggerating. It’s just a Radiohead fact. But whatever. Grass is always greener and all that. They’re probably all wishing they got to have their two-year-old stay awake until 9 pm, then eat lukewarm curry on the sofa in silence with their spouse, then fall asleep at 9.30, only to b

Lunch out with a tiny nun always helps. I haven’t been feeling very good lately. It’s nothing that the birth of NB won’t fix (or possibly make much worse, but let’s hope for the best, shall we?), but between the aches and pains of pregnancy and the emotional turmoil that comes with being part of the human race (and possibly a bit prone to catastrophising), things have been rough. But today I feel better. I’m putting it down to a combination of factors. 1. Friends. I have sple

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

In the down column: 1. My 102-year-old grandmother suffered a small stroke. 2. The fate of our missing family cat, Tigercat, was discovered. It was not pretty and probably involved a fox. Vale, Tigercat. 3. Gusto, who is an indoor cat, got out and went missing for several hours on a rainy night. In the up column: 1. My grandmother was released from hospital and is now doing well at home.1. May Blossom slept through the night for the first time. 2. May Blossom slept through th

I bought the tickets a few months ago on a whim, because H loves Bonnie Prince Billy, who is a grumpy-looking, balding, blond bearded alt-folk-country musician. I like him too, I think, but I can’t actually remember any of his songs. Whenever I try to summon one up in my head I get a Bon Iver song. Nevertheless, I am excited to be going out. Or I was until I looked at the tickets to see what time the show starts. Nine o’clock. Nine pm. In the night. That means he won’t be fin

Here's a picture of some sort of spotty cat. H took it. I don't know how it's relevant to this post. Can't you draw some kind of connection? Why must I do all the work on the this blog? My friends and family: My parents are regularly accepting an underslept May Blossom being dropped off at their house at 7 am by her dad on the way to work, while I catch up on an hour’s sleep. They are also dropping by with cups of coffee and being hugely supportive of this ridiculous endeavou

In other areas of my life in which I am clearly not money, I went back to the gym today for the first time since I was five months pregnant. It was not, as they say, a complete success. It turns out there is a difference between fat and fit. I thought that since I had lost all the weight I gained with the pregnancy, and since I spend all day every day running around after a toddler, that I would be fine with a proper workout. Not so much. I started off okay. I did a five-minu

When we arrived in Perth three days ago, sixteen hours after Pappy’s death, we were running on what could charitably described as empty. Coming off close to a month of illness for May Blossom and me, with a few semi-emerged molars thrown into the mix, sleep was but a faraway dream. Twenty-four hours later, things were even worse. The three-hour time difference meant that we had woken May Blossom at 5 am Sydney time to get on the plane and put her to bed at 1 am Sydney time th

Fortunately, Other Jess turned up this morning with a tub of vanilla ice-cream and the words ‘iced coffee’ on her lips. I cancelled my doctor’s appointment and wrote myself an excuse note. So the tap continues to leak, the lights mostly don’t work, May Blossom won’t get into kindy and thus won’t go to a good school, or university and will have to do one of the professions on my Banned Professions List (top billing goes to Tobacconist, followed by Racing Car Driver). Full summ