Aftermath

Burnt out sparklers are bundled on the table outside. Two champagne glasses sit in the washing up.

The drying Christmas tree is outside on the front porch, awaiting its scheduled Council pick-up. A thousand pine needles have been swept from the lounge-room floor and two hand-painted nut-crackers, 60 tiny sleigh-bells, one giant musical snow-globe, three china Santas, two tangled ropes of twinkle-lights and a sizeable stack of Christmas-themed story-books and DVDs have all been packed neatly away, to hibernate for the next 11 months until we are ready to start breathing pine and cranberries again.

It feels cathartic. After all the chaos that was December, and all of 2015 really, I couldn't wait to pack and discard and clean.

I didn't love 2015, to be honest. Which is unfair to all the great things that happened and all the wonderful people who populated my year. After all, I am incredibly blessed and I have the kind of life and home and family and friends that people dream of having. The kind of life that, once upon a time, I dreamed of having.

But my dad once told me that, psychologically, you needed to hear 10 good things about yourself to negate just one criticism you might receive. I feel like maybe the same could be said about a perception of a year. Plenty of good things happened during 2015. But some pretty awful things happened, too, and maybe my subconscious needed them to be outweighed by good things 10 to one in order for me to feel like this was a "good year." It's not smart, it's not logical, but the bad things that happened do seem to dominate my memories and emotions when I think about the past 12 months.

Aside from that, I kind feel like I spent most of 2015 trying and failing to catch up. The whole year spiralled out of my grasp and I spent every other day feeling like a failure, with ever-stretching deadlines, ever-mounting work briefs, to-do lists un-ticked, big work-events in our home (the washing up, oh! the washing up!), and rushing and herding my over-tired children from one engagement to the next, running late for daycare late for ballet lessons late for music lessons... late for life.

I don't want 2016 to be the same.

I want to notice more things, appreciate more good things. I want to really commit myself to doing the things I love, and to get better at saying "no" to the things I don't love. I want to help, love, play-with, inspire, educate and just watch my children grow up. Even when sad things happen, I want to take the time to grieve.

I have some thoughts on how I might work towards this in the coming 12 months, and I'll share them on here shortly. But in the meantime, I just wanted to stop by and say hi, and to share these thoughts of mine, for what they're worth.

Happy New Year to you and yours! Love, Naomi x0

ps. I thought this was a pretty great start on preparing for the New Year

And so this was Christmas

So this was our Christmas. I hope yours was beautiful. And now it's time to say, see you next year! Can you even believe that?

Love, Naomi xo

ps. I've been on an unexpected blog-and-Internet break due to the sad demise of my modem (which I didn't discover for two days until I was suddenly out of data on my phone - grr!). All things considered, it was the perfect time of year to take time off. I'll be back in the New Year feeling refreshed, and very much looking forward to all the year will bring for us.

Pre-dawn

I had already been awake for at least an hour.

The hotel bed was one of those lumpy ones that felt like it was bruising my spine, no matter how I twisted and turned. The room was hot and stuffy, even with the AC on as high as it could go, possibly because it was 35 degrees outside and the seal around the windows wasn't great (as evidenced by the fact that the closed blinds had flapped and rattled against the sills all night, waking me out of uneasy slumber with every gust of summer wind).

It was so hot that both children slept only in nappies. Their bare little bodies made time roll backwards: they seemed impossibly young and vulnerable, still my babies for this night, at least.

When at long last the dark weakened under those flapping, banging blinds and the pre-dawn sneaked into the hotel room in stripes of grey, watery light, I took in a giant breath of relief.

To my right, tucked tightly into a ball on his belly, I could see my little boy asleep with his thumb in his mouth and his curly hair wild on the pillow.

Two today.

How am I even a mother? And I started that self-indulgent thing that mothers like to do, thinking to myself: this time last year... this time two years ago... now...

The way he giggles when I tickle him: big, throaty, hearty chuckles. His current obsession with everything vehicular, our days punctuated with "chug" and "zoom" and "broom" and "beep beep beep." Chasing his sister, arm raised, and when I say "No hitting!" he responds "Just kissing, Mummy," and resumes the chase, baby-lips pursed. How he still sucks his thumb and curls his hair when he's tired. How everything new is "lovely" and "beautiful" and "I lub it!" At night when I tuck him in he sits straight back up and tries to make me laugh. "Lie down Ralph," I say, hiding my smile behind my hand. But when I leave the room he calls out, repetitively until I respond. "I lub you Mummy! I lub you more! Lub you por eba!"

The wind rattled again and on the other side of the room, Scout opened her eyes and looked straight at me. I crooked my finger at her and she leaped out of bed and tip-toed as fast as she could over to ours. I lifted her into the lumpy bed, in between me and a still-sleeping Mr B, and she wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed my cheek.

Then I heard a thump. Ralph had climbed out of his own bed, and thudded over to ours, all puffy-eyed and wild-haired, and I helped him climb into bed, too.

"What doing Mummy?" he asked, voice croaky with sleep.

"Shh," I said, "lie down."

So he simply lay down, half on the bed and half snuggled on top of me, thumb back in mouth. Scout lay down next to him and reached her little hand out to his curls, softly stroking them.

"Is that lovely Ralph?" she asked softly.

He let his thumb out of his mouth for only a second. "Yes," he whispered. And then, "Do my ear?"

So Scout tickled his ear, then his back, and then his hair again.

"It lovely," he breathed.

Then Mr B woke up and rolled over. "Happy birthday Ralph!" he announced, and both children sat up.  Ralph pulled his thumb out of his mouth and said "Yeah!" and the birthday began.

Home delivery coffee

Dear entrepreneurs and cafe-owners of Melbourne, here is a business idea. Consider it a gift from me to you.

Home delivery coffee.

Allow me to put my case.

Imagine, if you will, the thousands upon thousands of parents, grandparents, friends and nannies in Melbourne right now who have spent all day chasing after babies and toddlers. Anyone who has done this knows how BEHOND EXHAUSTING it is to do. And now imagine this occurring on the back of a night of little or at best broken sleep. Make that THREE AND A HALF YEARS of little or at best broken sleep, night after night.

And now imagine that at around two o’clock in the afternoon, by some happy confluence of hard work, planning, and sheer dumb luck, those babies and toddlers actually fall asleep for a nap. In their own beds. At the same time.

And so all those thousands upon thousands of parents, grandparents, friends and nannies who have spent all day chasing after all those babies and toddlers FINALLY get a chance to sit down. They know they should be cleaning, or working, or folding washing, or calling their mothers. But they are just so mind-numbingly exhausted that all they can do is sit and stare at that stain on the lounge-room rug left over from the Great Banana Mush Incident of ’13.

Do you know what they would love right now? Coffee. They would really, really love a nap-time coffee. Some might even kill for it, and most would probably pay through the nose for it.

But - and here’s the kicker - even if they had the energy to walk, they couldn't leave the house to buy it. The babies and toddlers are asleep, remember?

Now if someone was to develop an app via which all those people could ORDER a coffee, and have a barista with a coffee cart rock up at their home a few minutes later... Well, that person may well be in line to make their first million.

Just a suggestion.

Image credit: Lesly Juarez, licensed for unlimited use under Creative Commons

Tiny talismans

These two little onesies are all I have left of all the clothes my children wore, up until today.

On the weekend we completed an enormous and much-overdue sort-and-clean of our front room. Previously, I'd gone through the children's old clothes, those that didn't fit them any more, and sorted out some to give to friends, others to donate to charity, and the stained and tattered ones to throw out. These made a gigantic pile in the front room and, since Emily will shortly arrive to spend the summer holidays with us, I needed to get them out of the way - along with all the other junk stored in that room - so that she could actually see floor space. Mr B took three car-fulls of clothes, blankets, toys and other homewares to charity that day.

Unfortunately, he accidentally also took the items we'd reserved to give to friends. Even more unfortunately, somehow he took the one little bag of tangible memories I'd kept aside for my babies.

Do you know the bag I mean? Most parents have one. Inside it, the soft, star-patterned muslin wraps that Ralph had slept in every day for the first 18 months of his life, that still smelled like him. Milestone outfits: the red, knitted poncho that was the first item we bought for Scout, ever, while I was still pregnant; the cream cardigan and matching bonnet with crimson ribbons, crocheted by my mother, that was Scout's "coming home from hospital" outfit. The pale yellow onesie with the drawing of an elephant that my friend gave Ralph: he always looked extra tiny and precious when he wore it. The blue gingham dress that perfectly matched Scout's eyes, which she wore from the age of three months to as recently as six months ago, translated into a top, because she (and we) loved it so much. The matching Piccolini "hot dog, pretzel, NY" t-shirt and onesie that were gifts to the children from my dear friend and surrogate sister Misha, in New York.

There were more. Not so many, but enough to fill a small bag. Clothes that dressed my memories, so vividly that just holding them or, better still, pressing them to my face and breathing them in, could transport me instantly back to my children's babyhoods. To those tiny, milk-soaked, sleep-deprived, heady days, when time was somehow suspended in a flood of exhaustion and "new things," and every step dragged, as heavy with overwhelm as with abundant love.

But as slow as those minutes were, cupping tiny life in my arms at 3am, sitting propped against my pillows and feeding a hungry infant for the umpteenth time in 24 hours, time was racing cruelly and relentlessly, even then. And now, well, every age is the best age. I can't decide whether I want to stop time, fast-forward time, or roll it backwards. But those clothes were my time-machine, the key to temporarily rolling time backwards, when I needed to.

And I needed to. I need to. They say smell is the most emotionally powerful of the senses. I miss the sight of those clothes. But the smell, oh, the smell. I will never again bury my nose into those muslin wraps.

I'm not ashamed to tell you I sobbed pathetically when I realised they had gone. I made Mr B race back to the charity to see if they were still there. "You do it," he said. "You know what you're looking for." But I couldn't. "Look at me," I wailed pathetically, pointing to my red and swollen eyes. We both knew that as soon as I got there, sorting through hundreds of boxes for the most precious mementos from both of my children's babyhoods, I'd probably fall apart.

Mr B loves me and so he went back to search, but the bag was gone. Its contents sorted, loaded into a semitrailer, and taken off somewhere. To a charity store, maybe? Or to be given to families in need, or to be used as rags. I don't know.

I cried so hard, Mr B grew frustrated. "You haven't lost your babies," he said, exasperated. "They're upstairs sleeping right now!"

And he was completely right, of course. Later when I recovered my equilibrium, it got me thinking about the value of "things" in our life. I felt a bit guilty. After all, if there was a fire in my house, I'd save my children, not the clothes they wore.

But there is a power, a potency, to the things we associate with those we hold dear. That's why, every summer when I was growing up, my mother packed a suitcase with a change of clothes and our photo albums, nothing else, and kept them near the door in case of bush fire. When my friends' apartment burnt down, they were left with nothing: only the clothes (pyjamas!) on their backs. But they didn't lament their computers, jewellery, art, clothes, refrigerators or anything else of practical or monetary value lost from their lives. It was for their wedding photos, and gifts from loved-ones, that my friend Annie cried. People as far back as the neolithic era have been found buried with small, personal items: talismans of emotional and spiritual significance so important that they choose to take with them into the afterlife.

It was by pure chance that the two onesies in this photograph survived our clean-out. I don't even know how. They must have fallen out of the bag when Mr B picked them up and, of all things, they happened to be the first clothes that each of my children wore, ever. Scout's onesie, the yellow one, swam on her. Her tiny arms were comically lost inside the sleeves, and her adorable little feet reached to about where the knees were meant to be. But I hadn't known how big or small she would be at birth, and this was the little suit I'd chosen to take with me into the delivery room, to dress her in it, moments after she was born. Ralph wore the bow-tie onesie, teamed with cute little white pants, and he looked so dapper and unearthly and darling in it. That one was a gift from my parents.

These two are the precious talismans I will carry with me, maybe not into death, but at least through my children's lives as they grow and flourish. The only fabric left to me that their tiny hands touched, that their baby-breath coloured. If I have to leave this house in a hurry, and after saving my family (of course), I will probably grab these as I run.

A lot of words about not having words

Lately the words haven't seemed to be coming. And I'm not unhappy, in fact, quite the opposite, but I think I am maybe just replete with my simple family life. I have moments, flashes of something so real and powerful, through the day, and I want to share them with you, but the words don't come.

I look at Scout's face as she bends over the toy train-tracks she is fixing for her brother and there is so much human intelligence inside that furrowed brow, I can't even explain. She's just SO REAL, this little girl who was once just a fantasy (like, I am back in my home town of Sydney and I just so happen to bump into somebody from my past and here, by my side, little hand clasped in mine, is a tiny blonde angel. And I say to this person from my past, so matter-of-factly, "Oh, this is my daughter..." And that scenario has never played out but my point is that once it was a fantasy because I never expected to have children and nobody who knew me ever expected me to have children but now, if I happened to TAKE Scout with me to Sydney, it could absolutely be a reality. And that... well, that blows my mind!). Here she is, loving me, challenging me, negotiating with me, making me laugh, this bright and affectionate little humanoid supernova dressed head-to-toe in pink, and the full comprehension of her very existence makes me dizzy.

I'm not telling this very well. I don't have the words.

Ralph wakes up in the morning and calls out for me from his cot. When I go into the children's room and open the curtains to let the early sunshine in, he launches into action. "Hide! Hide!" Still standing up in the cot, he grabs a blanket and throws it over his head, often staggering backwards because he can no longer see: a strange, teddy-bear-patchwork-quilt ghost in his sister's hand-me-down Peppa Pig leggings, missing one sock.

Ralph runs his entire life at 100 percent. From that first, ghostly moment until lights' out, Ralph plays, laughs, runs, kisses, talks, jokes, sings, rages, laments, eats and even sleeps at 100 percent. Again, language fails me. I want to tell you how substantial he is, with his meaty little paws and chubby, bare feet like bricks. Funny faces pulled to make me laugh, and a constant, foot-thumping, shadowy presence in my life as I go about the house: "What doing Mummy?" I feel like I can't do justice his adorable nonchalance when it comes to cheerful disobedience.

Me: "Ralph, turn off the television please." Ralph (not lifting a finger): "Just watching, Mummy."

Me: "Ralph, you can keep that car in bed but it's only to cuddle, not play." Ralph: "Not for playing, just cuddle?" Me: "That's right. It's sleepy time." Ralph: "Broom broom! I playing with my car!" Me: "No Ralph, only for cuddling, or I have to take it away." Ralph: "Alright Mummy. Just playing. Broom broom!"

Me: "Ralph, where are your shoes?" Ralph (with a grin): "Maybe in water?" (In case you are wondering, sandles do not float)

Ralph (in my arms, spotting the cat): "Ruby! Ruby!" Me: "You can pat her Ralph, but you must be gentle." Ralph: "Pat her very gentle?" Me: "That's right, Ruby likes you to be very gentle. You mustn't chase her." Ralph (leaping out of my arms and diving for the cat, who races under a chair): "Ruby! Ruby! AAAAAAAH!" Me: "No Ralph! You mustn't frighten the cat." Ralph (with an angelic smile and a demeanour as though he is reasoning with a dullard): "Very gentle Mummy. Just CHASING her Mummy."

I dunno. These aren't the best exchanges. I can't remember the really good ones because I'm just IN them and not remembering to record them, but I guess what I'm trying to say is just how much I love being a mother to these two incredible, opinionated, emotional, intelligent, loving little balls of electricity.

And how much I am learning from it all. Like, learning about how OTHER people learn.

Scout has been doing some little reading exercises. I show her the sentence "I am Sam." I ask her, "Where is AM?" and she points to it instantly. "Where is I?" Where is SAM?" and she points to each of them in turn. So then I point to AM and ask, "What's that word?" Scout pauses, one finger goes to her mouth. "Um, I don't know." She looks to me for reassurance. It's the same word, the word she just picked out without hesitation only a moment ago. But her brain hasn't learned yet how to make the connection between sight and sound, when it comes to reading. She's great at recognising letters but struggles when I try to get her to think about sounds."Where is M," I'll ask, pointing to a page of text, and she can pick them all out. But then I'll ask, "Which word starts with an M sound, mouse or baby?" And she'll say "Baby!" because she likes babies better than mice.

Anyway, this is all probably very boring for you and I promise to change direction the next time I post on this blog, but honestly I find it all FASCINATING and I don't know how to write about this motherhood thing properly, so instead, I'm blithering on in a fairly pointless overflow of words.

Oh, this is Ralph *not* chasing the cat.

A video posted by Naomi Bulger (@naomibulger) on Sep 21, 2015 at 3:07pm PDT

Storms and sunshine

At around 5.30 on Saturday morning the storms rolled into Melbourne and crashed and flashed and by all tokens made a bit of a fuss. An angry wind bent the new trees in our new garden this way and that and then both ways at once, sending droplets flying sideways as rain the size of grapes began to tumble. I watched it from my window, pyjama-clad, hands wrapped around a mug of too-hot-to-drink tea, and it was glorious.

By the time my cup was empty, sunshine was making rainbows out of the leaves on the fledgling hydrangea. I vacuumed the downstairs part of the house before everyone woke up, then stepped into the shower and washed my hair. When I came out, wrapped in a towel, I was greeted by an almighty clap of thunder. Soon, the rain began tumbling…

Melbourne did this all day, rolling in the thunder and rain and then rolling them back out again, to be replaced by steaming sunshine. Thankfully, by the time I stepped outside at five in the afternoon with a three-year-old Belle from Beauty and the Beast and an almost two-year-old Fireman Sam minus the fire helmet that he refused to wear, each with jack-o-lantern buckets in their hands and in the company of old friends and new, the sun had finally won the day.

We blinked and squinted in the sudden light, and put up our hands to shield our eyes from the white glare of the giant Halloween spiderwebs that laced half the houses in our street. There weren't as many as last year, it has to be said, nor were the crowds of miniature humans in adorable costumes as thick. Maybe because Halloween fell on a weekend this year, everyone had better things to do? It didn't matter to Scout and Ralph, tramping the streets shod respectively in pink plastic high-heels and blue gumboots, and calling out "trick or treat!" (and also "twick-a-twee!") at each new door, while I waited with the other parents on the footpath and prompted "Don't forget to say thank you!"

When we grew tired and the children's buckets grew heavy with loot, we ambled and stomped back to our place, where there were dips and fruit and four different kinds of cheeses waiting in the garden, alongside juice and water for the kids and various alcoholic options for the grown-ups, plus a cubby house and a bubble machine with flat batteries. Scout hurt her finger and cried inconsolably until her little friend Izzy came to the rescue, first playing doctor and then nurse. Izzy sat down and Scout rested her head in her lap and cried and then laughed while Izzy patted and sometimes cuddled her and not long after that, the Nurofen kicked in and she leapt up to play again.

All afternoon and well into the night the doorbell kept ringing. Each time, Mr B would race the length of the house to hand out lollies and chocolate to more and still-more spooks and monsters and Disney princesses and medieval knights and vampires and dinosaurs and ninja turtles and fairies and ballerinas and at least one walking, talking pumpkin. Later that night, Mr B complained mournfully, "My feet hurt!"

Night settled. The jack-o-lantern I had carved the night before, which was more accurately an owl-o-lantern because I had purchased the second-last pumpkin in all of Barkly Square and it was rather non-traditional in shape so a tall owl made more sense than a wide grin… The jack-owl-o-lantern I had carved the night before began to glow, and the doorbell kept ringing, and we ordered pizza for those who stayed on in the garden, and there weren't even that many mozzies.

Later I sat on the floor of the children's room and read them a story, two hours past their normal bedtime, and minus a bath. Scout sat on my lap and leaned heavily against me, playing with my hair. Ralph eschewed his usual place on my other knee and instead simply lay down on the floor, face down, snuggled against my leg, and sucked his thumb. I rubbed his back and kissed Scout's flushed and sugar-sticky cheek as I read, and my heart felt just about ready to burst.

These are the days. These minutes and moments tumbled about with storms and sunshine, real and metaphorical, that I want to remember. My children, my friends, my community. I will cherish them and hold on to them and I hope I will never, never forget.

Birthdays

It was my birthday on the weekend. I was up before everyone else, as I often am. I let the cat out, and surveyed the still-dark garden in my socks. I love our garden in the early morning. Beyond the garden walls are the rustlings of pre-dawn morning; birds, stretching and yawning. But inside my little oasis, all is still and silent. The daisies are shut-tight, fast asleep.

My socks left a trail of wet footprints through the playroom as I came back inside, because the grass had been wet from overnight rain and I hadn't noticed. I filled the kettle and flipped it on, then unpacked the dishwasher and tidied the kitchen a bit while I waited for it to boil. Poured a cup of tea and carried it into my office, then sat down to work on my book. After about an hour of typing, I realised my cup of tea was empty and I couldn't think who might have drunk it. I took the empty cup back into the kitchen, flipped the kettle on, and waited for it to boil again. While I was waiting Mr B came downstairs and said "Happy birthday," and that was when I remembered this was a "special day."

Off and on throughout the rest of the day, while Scout made me chocolate birthday cupcakes with florescent pink icing and sprinkles, in her favourite Peppa Pig casings, I got to thinking about birthdays. Here are some of my thoughts.

One. People are worth celebrating. It doesn't have to be a birthday, but birthdays are always a good place to start. There's nothing wrong with choosing a day to make much of someone you love. I feel the same way about supposedly-commercial holidays, like Mother's Day and Father's Day and Valentine's Day: so what if they were created by greeting card companies? It's still a good reminder to celebrate the people we love.

Two. I should feel ok about celebrating myself. I shouldn't feel embarrassed to say "It's my birthday" and let people give me hugs or wish me happy birthday or come over for dinner. That's NICE. Why am I so embarrassed / ashamed about being celebrated? I'm totally up for celebrating YOU, I just feel very awkward when it comes to celebrating me.

Three. After I had Scout, I had an a-ha moment about birthdays. I mean I totally got it, at last. Birthdays are MASSIVE deals for the parents of the birthday boy or girl. As far as Scout was concerned, her first birthday was about seeing people she loved, getting presents, eating chocolate cake, playing with balloons, and singing a strange song. All of those are nice things, I'm sure you'll agree, but not exactly deep. That's all birthdays will ever mean to a lot of us. After all, none of us remembers not existing.

But for me, Scout's first birthday was a phenomenal marker of an event (her birth!) that was long-anticipated, extremely hard-won (they don't call it "labour" for nothing), and resulted me creating, growing, nurturing and pushing into the world an actual human being who wasn't there before, and now is, and thinks and laughs and cries and creates and loves. I did that and I'm doing that and that, my friends, is PROFOUND.

So the next time someone glibly says "Oh, the first birthday is more about the parents than the child," so what? Hell yeah it is! Let them celebrate, let them go ridiculously, ostentatiously over the top if they want to. Because for the parents, that first birthday marks the remembrance and the continuance of unfathomable mysteries. Life where there wasn't life. Love that you didn't know you had in you. That birthday and every birthday to follow it marks a turning-point in the life's journey of the parents, after which nothing will ever be the same again.

This weekend, and every year on my birthday and on Scout's birthday and on Ralph's birthday, I think about my mother.

11 pieces of really annoying advice

Yesterday I sat in the sun in our back garden with the children and our friend Tonia, and we ate watermelon and spat out the pips and sipped prosecco (me and Tonia, not the kids) and talked about life, the way girlfriends do.

Tonia said something about someone who had been giving her a hard time, "I know I have to earn her respect, but..." and that was enough for me to get RIGHT UP on my high horse. "You don't have to earn her respect!" I thundered. "Everyone deserves respect, as a given." When I meet someone new, I absolutely show them respect, well before they have had time to 'earn' it.

And that got me thinking about some of the other common sayings that I want to spit out with those watermelon pips. Platitudes and pieces of advice that I think do more harm than good. Here they are. What about you? What would you add to this list?

You have to earn my respect No. You deserve my respect from the get-go, and you will have it. You can, however, lose it

Work smarter, not harder Sometimes. But sometimes you just have to put your back into it, kid!

Honesty is the best policy Not always. I'm not saying lie, but sometimes it's kinder / smarter / more appropriate / downright safer to just hold your tongue

Blood is thicker than water No. There is so much more to a relationship than whether or not you are related. Love, respect, shared experiences, the other person's needs and personal choice spring to mind

Good things come to those who wait Rarely. Get off your backside and go chase those good things!

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer No way. Life is too short to be hanging out with enemies

Never apologise for who you are Occasionally you are rude, obnoxious, prejudiced, hurtful or even cruel. We all are. Apologise for that

Never go to bed angry Actually, maybe a little time out would be good for both of you!

Don't take no for an answer Honestly? Sometimes you need to learn how to hear and accept the word "no," and move on

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again This is similar to the above. I get that perseverance is important, but maybe try coming at it from another angle? I mean, isn't it one of the definitions of insanity to keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome?

Your high-school years are the best years of your life Please god no!

Scout says

"When I grow up I will be Father Christmas. Ralph can be my elf." ("Father Christmas" is pronounced "Farmer Kitmass")

* * * * *

Scene: the cherubs are yelling at each other.

Me: Use your words. Scout, what words do you have? Scout: Umm, PINK!

* * * * *

"When I grow up I want to be Mummy."

* * * * *

Ralph (pointing at TV): Daddy! Me: That's a talking boat. Is Daddy a talking boat? Scout: No, silly. Daddy is a person. Me: Daddy is one of our favourite people, isn't he. Scout: Yes. (Pause) But he is not very good at cleaning.

* * * * *

While baking biscuits...

Scout: Are we using your special recipe book today Mummy? Me: Yes, and when you grow up and move out of home I will give it to you so you can cook all your favourite recipes. Scout (dissolving into tears): Why do you want me to move away from you? I don't want to go!

Scout got two biscuits that day.

* * * * *

Scout: Why did the button fall off my jacket? Me: It's just getting old. Scout: No YOU are getting old.

* * * * *

Said every night at bedtime, like a litany of love:

"Mummy I love you forever. I never want another Mummy. I never want another Daddy. I never want another Ralph."

* * * * *

"We are going to have noodles and croissant! That's what I'm going to type on the Internet."

* * * * *

"Not 'boddle' Mummy, 'bottle.'" And just like that, my child calls me a bogan.

* * * * *

Scout (wearing her pink, plastic high-heels and carrying two hand-bags): Bye-bye Mummy, I'm heading out. Me: Oh ok. Where are you going? Scout: To the Lost City.

* * * * *

Scene: kids are playing with their doctor kit. Without warning, Ralph jabs me in the leg with a toy needle.

Me: Yoww! Scout: We are doctors Mummy. It will only hurt for a second. Me (nursing actual bruise): Oh good. Will you both be doctors when you grow up? (This is a previously-stated ambition) Scout (bursting into tears): WAAAH! No! I want to be a duck when I grow up! Can I be a duck? Me: Um. Okayyy... Scout (after a thoughtful pause): But will you still let me come inside the house when I am a duck?