The Cerebral Mum

So now, after writing about my neurotic lack of coping with the first birthday party, I should probably record here what the party was actually like.

It was held here at Big Sis’ house in the front yard and there was no need to worry about rain. The weather caused a me a little concern, though. 33° (92° fahrenheit) is way above the average for October and raised the spectre of last year’s bushfire season, which burned out 1.1 million hectares. Later, watching California burn, I couldn’t help but think of the continuing drought and what may come with the summer.

After collapsing into bed the night before without finishing all my preparations, there was a lot to do in the morning but between Big Sis, B and I, nearly everything was done on time and Caspar was kept amused outside by B’s twins and the Jolly Jumper Big Sis and B had bought him for his birthday. The kids were impatient for the party to start and I locked them out of the house while I decorated the cake I shouldn’t have put off making to the day of the party.

When P (the other half of The Odd Couple in the house behind us) arrived with his two girls, we fired up the BBQ straight away although nobody else was here yet. The kids had been patient and were hungry. I had taken the little red table I bought secondhand as part of Caspar’s birthday gift of crayons and drawing pads outside and all the children sat around him there, fussing over him and playing with his hair, as girls are wont to do.

Caspar, like the far-too-advanced boy he is, sat on his yellow chair and fed himself, not at all bemused by the female attention. He has become accustomed to it. Indeed, I think he expects it. Not long after that a couple of my friends arrived and took a seat in our circle of big-people chairs. I, of course, flapped around a little trying to make sure everyone had something to eat and drink, not quite relaxed yet.

One thing I have been consistently amazed by since becoming a mother is how many hands and eyes are there to divert and watch over Caspar while I try to get things done. This assistance seems to be instinctual on the part of parents and non-parents alike and it is carried out so graciously that there is no need for words. I read so often of mothers, especially single mothers, overwhelmed by their parenthood so I must believe myself fortunate in this respect but I can’t help thinking that this is the way it should be. I do not think the days of community in childrearing are dead and gone.

So I had a chance to sit and talk and eat while Caspar belonged to everybody.

And then, of course, the cake. With the wind, it was impossible to keep the lone candle lit but it didn’t matter. Caspar would not have been able to blow it out anyway. He could, however, recognise that the slightly sad looking giraffe with its bright yellow icing was something good to eat and we had to move it away to be dished out as he tried to grab the whole lot of it for himself.

Not long after that, the children went home and Caspar went down for a nap, pink in spite of slathers of sunscreen and warm in just his nappie and a singlet. My friends and I cleared away the dishes outside and sat in the lounge talking over a glass of wine. Later, K, the friend that I had lost, arrived and I woke Cas from his sleep so they could meet each other. A bit bleary eyed and wobbly, it didn’t take him long to start turning on his charm and show off all his skills, running around, waving, clapping his hands and putting his hands on his head. And my favourite… Dancing. He’s been head-banging since before he could sit up, and his repertoire of moves just keeps growing. He can move up and down, shift his weigh from foot to foot as he sways, stomp, writhe and spin around in circles. He’s got rhythm and whenever he hears music, he starts rocking.

And then of course, the afternoon grew late and it was time for people to leave but it was lovely having that quiet time with my three friends, and Caspar loved having all the company. There were no tears and no stress on his part.

We had a quiet evening, B cooking up the last of the meat on the BBQ and Big Sis and Cas and I eating with him at the table in the garage as the sun went down and the air cooled. Caspar sat at the big table with us, for the first time in the portable booster seat which was my first birthday present from Big Sis and B.

I tasted the cake then, a recipe I hadn’t used before but I had been assured by the party guests that it was good. I wasn’t too impressed with the giraffe I had made, but for a first effort, without any guiding instructions, it was good enough. I’m sure the cakes I make will get fancier as the years go by. Until the day Caspar tells me to stop making him such silly things. One day he will be protective of his young man’s dignity.

The cake was good! I mean, really good! And so easy. I used a simple tea cake recipe (3 quantities) and blended it in the food processor. It only took 5 minutes. Try it at home and just brush it with some butter then sprinkle on a layer of cinnamon or coffee sugar. Because, really, virulent yellow icing is not that appealing to adults.

Tea Cake

60g butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 cup castor sugar
1 egg
1 cup self raising flour
1/3 cup milk

Cream butter and essence. Add sugar, then egg, and mix until creamy. Add flour and milk and mix until smooth. Bake in a moderate oven for 25 minutes.

He turned 1 today! See his year in pictures, from his first moments on earth to today. I’m sure you’ll agree that he is perfect.

View gallery…

Yes. He’s turning one. It’s wonderful. And it’s too fast.

A party date is set. The 21st. I’ve let people know but it’s time to get those invitations out. I ditched my picnic idea - it is too inconvenient to get us to a location convenient for everyone else. If only a few people come, well, that’s a bit depressing but it is the way things are until we move.

So a yard and a barbeque and a birthday cake. Home made, of course. And no balloons. Caspar is terrified of balloons. It is the first thing he has ever really been afraid of. He cries and clings and buries his head on my shoulder briefly before turning back to make sure that round and colourful air monster isn’t coming for him.

So definitely no balloons.

I bought some invitations yesterday and some 90 cent crayons as his present. Today I’m off to get some nice paper to print off as Wishes to send along with the invitations so that everyone who can’t make it can fill them out and send a birthday message for him. I’m hoping that I will also find a secondhand, Caspar-height table for him to sit and scribble at and I will get some colouring paper. After that, and the beer and the meat, all the preparations are done. It’s not the best party I have ever planned (And a generic invitation pad? Who does that?) but it will do.

So now I just have to deal with the fact that this first year almost over. Just the other day when I dressed him, I thought I’d try on one of the oversized polo shirts that my Mum had bought for him in July. Contrary to my expectation, it fit perfectly. It almost made me cry. Some of the welling tears were of pride. (Pride that he is growing? Does that count as an achievement? Well, yes. When you’re a mother.) The rest of the tears were for being forced to acknowledge that there is not a lot of baby left in him.

I remember when he was a baby and I went to the the supermarket and placed him in the infant seat as I usually did. Looking at him there and trying to do the straps up, I realised he was far too big to be in the infant seat any more and was ready for a real trolley. But I felt so silly for not realising this that I left him there and did my shopping with some chagrin. And it was just the other day that I realised I no longer have to carry him from the car to the house and then go back for my shopping bags.

He can walk, stoopid!

I can carry my bags and he can hold my finger and we can walk into the house together. Change just happens in the blink of an eye. Sometimes it takes me a while to catch up.

So on his first birthday he will wear his big clothes, feed himself cake, put his hands on his head, clap, dance, say dah-gah, play catch, lead everyone else around by the hand and tear the paper off his presents himself. As he should.

It freaks me out and bring tears to my eyes.

And that is how it should be as well.

That’s right. I am out of the netherworld and the monitor is on!

After my old one blew a gasket, I spent days in purgatory. The official definition of purgatory is no access to your hard drive and the punishments are thus…

• No music - My CDs are packed but I have them all on iTunes
• No feedreader - I don’t like the online ones and use the Brief extension for Firefox.
• No email - Not entirely true, but I hate reading web-based email.
• No address book - A fairly heinous punishment when you only have a couple of weeks to organise a 1st Birthday Party
• No passwords - Not even for my blog and blog stats. I had to reset them all.
• No bookmarks - Again, I hate online services. Are you noticing a theme?
• No photos - Printing a years worth of baby photos will happen when I sell the house.
• Limited computer time - Big Sis doesn’t like me using her computer until 3am. It’s in her bedroom.
• No personal space - It’s my desk and my desktop. My room of my own. I like it there.

This is not an exhaustive list, but thanks to the kindness of strangers… Okay, not strangers. Big Sis’ BF, B, collected a monitor for me today from a friend who never uses it. There was some worry, given the great age of my computer, that it would not be compatible with my video card but it was needless worry. Like I said… Plug ‘n’ play mama! Oh, the sheer joy of seeing that screen which said Windows Loading. Who would have thought that Microsoft could ever give me joy?

It was my intention to do some major work, catching up and backing up but I was invaded this morning by other people’s children. They happily sat on stools in the kitchen while I scrubbed the oven and the cupboard doors and mopped the floor.

Yes, I am totally THAT cool.

They even stayed despite my refusal to let them watch the Grand Final on television. Australian Rules football, like Microsoft, is the spawn of Satan. Instead, I taught them how to knit and bankrupted them both playing Monopoly.

One would imagine that when I sent them home for dinner and put Cas to bed, I would be free to indulge my internet addiction. But no.

Their dinnertime marked the return of Big Sis and B from the pub. B is one of the most wonderful men on the planet. He works hard and he is a phenomenal father. He is completely down to earth, completely an Aussie bloke, yet he is as sappy as a school boy when it comes to Big Sis. He works in construction and his favourite book is the dictionary.

He loves words and when he’s had a few beers, he likes to use them. All of them. Especially the big ones. He mashes up the English language in a phenomenal way, but with such enthusiasm, you can’t help but listen to him. Listening to him is like reading Jabberwocky.

So my night up until 11:30 was not the night I’d planned. While Big Sis watched TV, B wanted to read my poetry, then he wanted me to show him a million other things on the world wide web, like his father’s artwork, which as you can see is beautiful. He also wanted me to introduce him to the wild and wonderful world of YouTube.

This particular video caught both our attention. Watch it. It’s a cack.

So this is all you guys will get tonight. I’ll be catching up tomorrow. Unless I am inundated by children again.

The Pied Piper can’t compete with my cool factor.

My computer is at least 1000 years old and was cobbled together lovingly by my friends PC and Shaun using discarded parts and ingenuity. My monitor is the size of mouse poo and I had been rapidly shrinking the display on it as the edges became blurrier and blurrier. Last night it fizzed. This morning it popped.

I am now going to do something which goes against the grain with me and talk about money. I say goes against the grain partly because I think I have read too many English novels and partly because I have a very specific notion of “class” which is worthy of a post in itself. But this is my blog and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to…

Money is just money. You can do fun things with it but beyond covering the bare necessities, it’s really not that interesting. This morning when I heard that ominous sound, it really did seem like being able to access my computer was a bare necessity. It was a disaster of untold proportions.

What was I to do while I drank my morning coffee if I couldn’t look at all my site statistics to see who had been reading my blog? How was I to transfer the loan payment for the house I can’t afford to live in, already a day late? How was I to download the forms I need to fill out so I could go back to university next year? They are due in 3 days and I can’t afford the late fees. And tomorrow is Big Sis’ birthday: I need to make a lemon meringue pie. All my cookbooks are packed. If life without books is hard, life without books or my computer is untenable.

So panic. I need a monitor. I need a monitor now.

And I needed to buy laundry detergent. And toilet paper. And baby formula. And a present for Big Sis’ birthday. And I’m scraping the bottle of the change barrel. Last month we were down to our last few cents to keep us in milk; this month… Money is sometimes depressing. So off I go, with $35 in my pocket for the next three weeks, hoping against hope that somehow I will find a way. If only formula wasn’t so bloody expensive. It’s not like I would have ever started feeding Cas the stuff if I had had a choice. (Cleft palate children can’t breastfeed.)

Fortunately, or so I think, I live at the end of the earth in an outer suburb that used to be a separate town, where dead-end drug users shoot up behind the op shops and pawnshops which breed here like flies. I try one. I try another. The only monitor I find even close to my price range is $25. That’s too much.

And that’s depressing.

So my mind starts adding up all the things I wanted to do, that I cannot. Like the present I was hoping to buy for Caspar’s first birthday, that present I’ve had my heart set on for ages.

And I cannot buy it. My little drummer boy’s first birthday and I cannot buy him that special gift I know he will love.

Now that’s depressing.

So I move on. I find good laundry detergent I can afford, $2 a box. I find a pink leather iPod cover for $3.50 to give to Big Sis. That’s a nice present. I realise that Caspar doesn’t need the most expensive baby formula any more. He eats 3 meals a day and his digestive system has matured enough so that it won’t make him constipated and gassy like the last time I tried an alternative. I find some on sale for less than half the price of my usual formula. I have $10 left. And my mind, so hooked on the percussion desk for his birthday, lets it go.

Maybe for Christmas.

I start to calm down.

I leave a message for Shaun. He always has computer junk lying around. So what if he’s on holiday. I won’t die. Big Sis has a computer and it doesn’t matter if I have to reset every password I’ve ever had because I rely on my computer to remember them for me.

And two days ago, Caspar took my pen from me and did real scribbles in my notebook. I can afford crayons. He will love crayons. And I will love sitting and drawing with him and pinning his artwork on my fridge.

That’s right.

Money doesn’t matter.

I don’t like getting down to my last penny, or having to pay my bills a little late. I don’t like not being able to fix the things that break or go out for coffee every other day. Sometimes it’s stressful. Today, I had a bad hour. Verging on tears, it was still just a bad hour.

In a few months, when the house is sold and I have no more debt and I have a five figure bank balance (hopefully), Cas and I can live a slightly easier life. Perhaps I still won’t be able to buy whatever I want. Perhaps I’ll only go out for coffee once a week, but what can money buy that compares to the delight in my son’s eyes when I blow raspberries on his feet, or his giggling pride when he toddles back and forth across the room?

What can compare to his slimy kisses in the morning or the way he hands me my glasses when he thinks it’s time for us to get out of bed?

The death of my monitor was a bad hour. Not the first, and not the last.

But it’s only bloody money.

Well, Caspar’s first birthday is only a couple of months away now and I’m all turned around about what to do. The budget is very very tight so a party seems out of the question and, quite frankly, the thought of organising it seems pretty daunting while I’m working so hard to get the house sorted out so that I can sell it.

At first glance it’s a pretty major milestone but it seems fairly obvious that a first birthday celebration is more for me, and for some photos in the album. Is Caspar even going to notice it? Chocolate cake he would definitely notice. Mum got him quite attached to the stuff while she was here. In fact, I ate some chocolate the other day (which is not like me!) and his lips started trembling and the tears started welling with the injustice of it all. My sensitive, maternal response was, of course, to start laughing my head off at him. And not give him any chocolate.

But my question is, is a first birthday party worth all the effort? Do I even have anyone to invite? It kind of appears to be a pointless exercise but not making a big deal of it goes against all my instincts. What are everyone’s thoughts? Comments here would be most welcome.

I’m currently toying with the idea of having a picnic-style get together where I don’t have to provide everyone with food and drinks. But then how to transport myself, and Caspar, and a cake, and presents to, say, the Botanic Gardens (which is more central for my friends) without us both being completely exhausted before the party even starts?

Grrrr. It makes my head spin.