My baby Liam is just one month away from being ONE YEAR OLD! How exciting!

This month has been particularly fun, because both my big kids are at full-time school… so I get to hang out with my little baby all day.

It’s like having a first child again. Just me and a little kid who doesn’t talk back.

I’ll say things like: What shall we do today buddy? What about sleeping in a pram for 2 hours, while I catch up with some girlfriends in a cafe and then go shopping?

Oh, the glorious free time! Oh, the lovely long quiet mornings!

OK not really. The reality is that Liam sleeps 2 hours in the morning. And I do things like check my email and creep around the house trying to do the housework as quietly as possible.

Sometimes I might sit in the garden with a cup of tea and read a book. That part is pretty bliss.

This month, Liam has been a little sick. With teeth coming through and a chesty cough, he has been clinging onto my legs for most of his waking hours. For 3 days straight he cried to be picked up, cried to be fed, cried to be entertained. He was super-glued to my hip.

I get the impression that Liam is quite bored in the house – because, he stops whinging the moment I take him out.

It made me suddenly remember what I used to do when I was a first time mum – I went out every day!

I was busy with mother’s groups and play dates. I went to play gyms, music lessons, baby swim classes. I went out to the shops, the library, galleries, baby movie sessions. My schedule was fully booked!

And now? My schedule is also fully booked, but with work and chores!

I recalled that list someone wrote about how things change after each baby:

1st baby: You take your infant to Baby Gymnastics, Baby Swing, and Baby Story Hour.

2nd baby: You take your infant to Baby Gymnastics.

3rd baby: You take your infant to the supermarket and the dry cleaner.

(I wrote it all out here…)

Argh. It’s so tragic, but it’s so true. I hang my head in shame.

Anyway, this week I’m lifting my game and scheduling a lot more fun baby stuff for us.

On the development front… Liam can take 4 steps.

He does lots of clapping, waving bye, shaking his head, trying to repeat words we say, and trying very hard to walk.

Ah, won’t be long before he’s riding a bike!

My son Liam very often does a poo while he is eating.

About half way through me shoveling food into his mouth, he will suddenly stop chewing, get a “far-away” look on his face, and then be overcome with intense concentration for a few seconds.

Then, when the “poo moment” has passed, he will look at me as if he is saying…”Well, I’ve done my bit… aren’t you going to clean it up, so I can get on with my lunch?”

And then he won’t eat a damn thing till I change his nappy. It has become part of our daily routine together.

But recently, he tricked me.

As usual, I took him to his room, lay him down, took off his nappy… but this time, I discovered that he was still doing the poo. It was just starting to come out.

Now obviously, as a mother, you get to see lots of baby poo. You get used to it.

And I have three kids, so I have certainly seen my share.

But even I have never had the experience of having to actually watch poo come out of another person’s bottom.

I’ll spare you the exact details, but it was a lot like watching brown toothpaste being slowly squeezed out of a pink toothpaste tube.

Wow!

And when it was finished, it was coiled up in the nappy like a fat little snake.

Just another memorable moment in motherhood!

Here is a really nice picture of some flowers in my garden, to make you feel better!

Sometimes I get so darn sentimental.

My oldest boy is moving up yet another shoe size.

I thought the image of the two boots would look cute. And as I crouched over them in my backyard, I was struck by the power of the image.

Time is moving on. New things will be old. Journeys will be travelled. New memories will be created. Life will be lived – no matter what.

And they’re just a couple of old boots.

Liam is 9 months and has 4 teeth. They have gown out of correct order, and it just looks so cute when he smiles. He looks like a drunken sailor with his teeth smashed out.

Over the space of a month, Liam’s development has EXPLODED and progressed at lightning speed.

It’s so scary. It’s like watching all the home video of our FIRST child – in fast forward! Eating solids! Picking up food! Crawling! Cruising!

Argh! Someone slow it down! It’s going too fast!

Liam used to crawl like a slow creeping lizard. He would pause and carefully examine the seam of the curtain, or the edge of a cardboard box.

Now he’s bolting around the house on all fours, like a little BULLDOG, getting into the toilet, the bathroom and all the rooms of our house. He even goes out the front door if we leave it unlatched!

But the weirdest thing is – he can now stand up by himself for 15 seconds, straight off the floor, without holding onto anything. He just goes from his “doing-a-poo” squat to standing straight up.

I’m completely horrified. He looks much too young to be balancing. It looks demonic – as if his head might spin around and around and he’ll say “I’m watching yoooouuu” in a deepy, raspy voice.

Fortunately, all he does is realise that he doesn’t know what to do next, so he just smiles stupidly, and then sits back down on his big nappy-bum. Then he runs away on all fours like a never-ending wind-up toy that just keeps going and going and going and going.

A few weeks ago, Liam first pulled himself up onto some furniture. What happened to the quiet, placid baby I had a month ago??

He used to be happy to be plonked into a room full of baby toys, but now he just wants to be where his older brothers are. And he’s not happy to just sit and watch. He wants to join in. He’ll get right into the action, grabbing his brother’s toys or messing up their pencils. Or he will scramble over to the TV, grab the Wii Remote Controller, and wave it around at the screen – obviously copying his big brothers!

It’s made me a little sad to see Liam bypass all the BABY BOY TOYS (think Thomas the Tank Engine) and go straight for the Teenager Mutant Ninja Turtle toys.

Under the worrying influence of older brothers, my last, iddy-biddy baby is growing up so much faster than the other two!!

OK. We don’t really have cleaners. And if we did, it would be such a shame, because I really love stumbling across weird “remnants of play” left by my kids.

This is me approaching my son’s bed. I was actually looking for my slippers, which I left by his bed, when I said good night to him the night before. Looks pretty normal, right?

But when I looked under the bed…

…toys were strewn everywhere, dust balls were collecting in the spider webs, and the fridge magnets were arranged in the words: “cubBy hoUse”, on the steel bed frame.

It reminds me that my kids live in a different world of imagination than I do. And I love to be reminded of that.

It’s gold I tell you.

I found this great online shop for mothers and expecting mothers, Queenbee.com.au.

They have SO much good stuff. They have the biggest online range of STYLISH maternity clothes in Australia that I’ve seen, but they also ship anywhere in the world.

I picked out a few items to try!

A lovely nursing top, in a smock style and a gorgeous nude colour. I love the fact that it can be worn as a regular top too.

I’m wearing size 8 skinny maternity jeans!

I was super curious to know whether you can fit maternity jeans when you don’t actually have a bump – the answer is YES! They fit surprising well. I really like the stretchy band at the top of maternity jeans… I wish regular jeans were like that.

The QueenBee website sorts out all the pregnancy basics and best buys, and their range is HUGE with maternity essentials, tops, dresses, skirts, jeans, pants, work wear, sleepwear, lingerie etc.

As I look back over my three pregnancies, my advice is to invest in some good clothes that will last!

The online shop also offer gorgeous gifts, nappy bags, travel accessories and a great range of carriers and gift ideas.

You must take a peek at these Petite Change Mat Clutches in vintage floral designs!

For all you mothers and expectant mothers, enjoy!

…

Check out more of my favourite online shops in my Online Fashion Shopping Directory.

Two weeks before Christmas, I was getting very, very tense.

Liam had grown teeth, and breast feeding had become quite a chore. I was also anticipating family-in-law coming to stay, kids being on holiday, and all the other dreadful routine-destroying carry-on that comes with the festive season.

Both my older boys were becoming more and more rebellious, and treating me like a junior house maid. My husband seemed to be more distant, impatient, and less helpful around the house. In fact, I was pretty sure he was planning to leave me.

I knew this because every time he asked me if everything was alright, or if he could do anything to help, I could just tell he was purposely pushing my buttons and just trying to start a fight and I would blow up at him.

Then, one day as I was folding a towering mountain of laundry, and contemplating life as a single mother of two ungrateful aliens and a nipple chomping toddler, all of whom look a lot like the man that my mother warned me not to marry…

BAM!

I burst into sobs with a “OH MY GOD NOTHING IS GOING RIGHT IN MY LIFE! I’VE BEEN WORKING SO HARD AND I JUST FEEL LIKE SHIT! I CAN’T SEEM TO DO ANYTHING RIGHT! WHAT’S THE POINT TO ALL THIS? WHAT’S WRONG WITH MEEEEE? AAAAAAARRGHHH!!”

As I blew my nose into a towel from the laundry basket, a little voice inside my brain said, “Oh hey, we haven’t seen you around here in a while!”

Insecure, psychopath, moody, angry Karen! Welcome back!

The next morning, I discovered that my body had resumed it’s normal monthly routine. Everything was working just fine. I was so relieved!

I wasn’t going mad! It was just the temporary madness of PMS!

8 months have passed since I gave birth and I’ve enjoyed a great ride of non-stop, cruisey, happy hormones. After so long without a cycle, I was completely unprepared for the return of the PMS rollercoaster ride.

But little Liam’s teeth are a sure sign that my life, like his, is moving on again to a new phase.

And I’m okay with that!

I am now armed with emergency chocolate, and listening to boy band music from the early nineties.

Flowers from hubby. Some expensive chocolate. And a foot rub. He knew all along, and he was just waiting for me to settle into my new cycles. God, I love him so much.

Last week, I plonked him on the beach, which happened to be covered with lots of different varieties of seaweed.

The poor little guy! He was so confused by all the green and red vegetable-looking seaweeds. He chewed them for a long time, sand and all, bemused by the textures and flavours of the seaweeds. And I think he swallowed one of them, which is not actually recommended in any good parenting guide I have read.

I just keep reminding myself that it’s all good experience for him, and it must be doing his immune system wonders!

He has become aggressive, ridiculously and recklessly noisy, unthinking, deliberately provocative, and shouts “No!” to everything – except offers of chocolate.

He was grumpy as an old man, until he found out why his bike wouldn’t go anymore. Then he thought it was hilarious!

His first ever word was “NO!”… so it is not really a surprise that when he discovered that he was no longer the baby in our family his reaction was… anger. At first, he thought he was getting promoted when he discovered that he was going to be a big brother: and that is certainly how we sold it to him before Liam was born.

But Sean has discovered the truth. Every boy in the family (including my husband), has actually been DE-moted one place so I can pour my attention on Liam.

But my husband is a big boy, and he wanted a third child as much as I did.

Callum who is 6.5 years old, is bitter. But he has had the experience before, of course, when Sean came along.

But for Sean, it is all new. At least Callum still has the unmovable status of first-born child and biggest brother, whatever happens. And Liam will now always be the baby in the family. But Sean has gone from being the protected baby to… well… nobody in particular. He is just – in the middle.

A few seconds after these pictures, he waved his hand and knocked the cup on the floor, and it broke!!

When Sean is alone with Mum or Dad, or at school, he is a co-operative joy to be with. Playful, witty, funny, sharing, considerate clown. But when he is around Callum, he fights, bites, spits, taunts and teases until Callum explodes in tears, and Sean ends up in his room, which he trashes. He is pretty good at slamming the door!

So, this is what the parenting books are talking about when they say “Middle Child Syndrome”.

I worry and worry what he will turn out like as an adult.

And then I realise that…both my husband and I are “middle children”.

Ahh! So that’s why hubby is so stubborn!

And maybe that is why he always says I am also so stubborn?

So my husband decided to try and re-engage them with the promise of building a “funny bike”. My 6 yo, Callum decided he wanted a bike with a HUGE front wheel, and a tiny little back wheel. NO PROBLEM, said my husband, with no real idea of how this could be done.

They started dragging home old bikes of every imaginable size and variety from rubbish piles, as a supply of parts. Callum loved  hunting and collecting for parts with his Dad! The collection grew over several weeks to twenty or so bikes, which were piled together in a jumble of snagged spokes and pedals next to the washing line. Pretty soon, the spiders moved in. Great.

Work began on the funny bike, and when it became obvious that it wouldn’t actually work  (because the front wheel interfered with the pedals and it would tip over backwards) it was renamed a “prototype”.

The boys were unimpressed, but hubby was undefeated. More bike gathering. A new project was started. And after several weekends of bolting, grinding, and some very bad language…..TADA!

The funny bike lives!

There are parts from at least five different bikes in there. Callum rode it proudly in the park one day. People gawked, other kids went COOL!, and Callum was very, very happy. Hubby was even happier. I could feel his do-it-yourself pride glowing quietly.

But Callum hasn’t ridden the funny bike since – it is too heavy for him to ride as an everyday bike.  So the funny bike stands idly against the fence, with an uncertain future.

My husband is not concerned though. He says –  “It’s the journey, not the destination.”

And I realise he is right. They did it together, and that’s what counts.