Tortillas at Midnight

2020 has been one hell of a year and although it’s not over just quite yet, 2021 is within close reach now. Will it be better? Will it be terrible? Nobody knows. We only know that it’s fast approaching in just a few short hours and that the best way to prepare - physically, mentally, and spiritually - is to forget the resolution writing or the partying. Simply go forth and read something on the internet that makes you feel inadequate and tells you to buy things. If I may say so myself, this list is the mother of all lists. Sure, you can follow the list that tells you to spend $347 on backstage Peppa Pig passes or $76.32 on organic-keto-spf0 sunscreen, and you might have a successful year. Alternatively, you could also spend approximately $34 on a booty shaking llama to entertain your toddler or $8 million to hire Rhianna (provided she’s allowed in at the border of course) for a private concert, as a nice way to unwind while you parent through a pandemic. There are clearly options for...

Something quite prominent in this season of life, of becoming a parent and navigating the world with a whole new purpose, is learning how to surrender. Like really surrender, not in a popular-influencer-post kind of way where you have to wonder, what exactly are they surrendering to? The joys of only drinking shakes during their latest cleanse or to releasing a new boho preset? Who knows. But anyway, I’m talking about surrendering in an - If You Don’t Learn How To Lean In To It All, Then You Will Actively Lose Your Shit On The Daily - type of way. It’s a bit less pretty and a bit less fun, but all the more necessary. One of the trickiest parts I’ve found of this whole motherhood gig is challenging my own expectations of how I thought everything should be. All the things from my identity as a mother (what do we do? What do we look like? Who are we?), to housework, to how my child sleeps. A big part of this is also learning to challenge my expectations of what other people think of me,...

We're having a baby very soon! Well apparently very soon anyway, according to an educated guess. However, I'm trying hard not to get my hopes up, because who actually knows when everything will happen? Last night I woke up at 4:45am and couldn't get back to sleep because I realized that I don't know where all the muslins are. This became a very pressing issue despite the early hour and I was half ready to go down and search through the storage boxes in the garage at that very moment. Thankfully, the effort of simply standing up at this stage in pregnancy is a bit much (it's kind of like a doing a ten-point turn while driving), so the location of the missing muslins still remains a mystery. And the stretchy wrap. I need to find that too. But I’m trying not to think about that one. Anyway, I definitely have to find and wash the muslins before going to sleep tonight (and by that I mean, alternating laying in bed wide awake and puking until around midnight), otherwise t...

A few days ago I was peacefully scrolling, minding my own utterly mindless business, when I came across something that made me do a double take. It was like something out of a sitcom with a fake laughter track and all. But instead of canned laughter, it was more a horrified exclamation of, “surely this has to be a bad joke?” And then actual, pure horror upon realizing it wasn't. No, The Grudge (2004) with her memorable grumble wasn't waving happily from an ad banner. Nor did the pandemic deniers run an ad, promising that if you join them, you'll get to burn down a 5g tower for free. Far worse, actually. It was this. The Garmin Vivofit Disney Princess Activity Tracker. And this is just one example of the many different fitness trackers out there that are aimed at children. Yes, these devices actually do exist. I would blame it on just being another slice of fresh hell brought to you direct from 2020 itself, but turns out these watches have already been on the market for a f...

I'm going to start this by talking about how wonderful our midwife is. She really deserves her own PSA; she's honestly the best. We are so, so happy that she is the one who supported us through having our first baby and that she will also be the one to support us through our second. I reckon she deserves to win Lotto and to always have hot coffee and to never lose things down that annoying crack between the console and the driver's seat in the car. Our midwifery system here in NZ is bloody amazing. Sometimes I think about all the people in the US who are having babies and the thought of birthing there truly gives me the hebe-jeebies. We are so lucky here. And midwives deserve to be paid way more. End of. Anyway, when everything went kaput (or perhaps I should just say tits up, that would probably be more fitting) with feeding our first baby, she was so incredibly understanding and helpful. It was one of those times when you cry because someone is just being too dang nice  a...

 A little while back (okay, turns out it was all the way back in July! This year has been so weird), I wrote about the " rod we had created for our own back " by not sleep training our toddler. It was extremely cathartic at the time, being in the trenches of sleep deprivation and all, to clearly refocus about the why of our choice. And here we are now! It's December and our daughter is 20 months old. There are a lot of changes going on in our house and pretty soon she's going to become a big sister. I figured it was time to write a wee update about our sleep journey. It has gotten so much better.  Honestly, I can barely comprehend how much has changed. I'm no longer facing each day on a few hours of broken sleep! It's incredible! I mean, all of this is going to change again very soon, but for now it's so blissful.  Logically, I always knew that things would get better, that sleep is developmental and a skill that just requires time, all that yada yada. Bu...

I’ve always gotten a weird kick out of doing everything the hard way. In my last year of school, I convinced the assistant principal that I didn’t need a study period, because I had to fill it with calculus instead, even though I was already taking statistics. Did I want to do calculus? No. But that was beside the point. If I could fill my schedule more, I would. If I could take a more challenging subject, I would. If I could empty my cup and then smash it to smithereens, just because I could, I would. I don’t really know where this ridiculous need to make everything difficult and then to suffer through it comes from. I have a few vague ideas, but this is a subject for future blog posts and for when I have time to research. In short, every decision throughout my life has been so strongly influenced by this innate need, this stubbornness, to push myself beyond breaking point. And boy, did I push.  In the past, I’ve ended up in a handful of really bad situations because I just couldn...

This season it’s almost Christmas. It has been raining a lot and the beach is very windy, but we've had a few sunny days in there. I've been listening to Hands I Can Hold by Ziggy Alberts a lot lately, having found it watching Rebecca Keil’s beautiful surrogacy birth video . This was the first birth video I've watched since having my first almost two years ago and I can't deal with how magical it is. I feel like I’m bursting at the seams, like the baby is just going to claw her way through my stomach at any given moment. A while back I read somewhere that when you're pregnant or just after you've had your baby, that your belly button might look like a cat's butthole. This is very true. Sleeping is near impossible, but that's just kind of life with small children. There is so much to do. Always cloth nappies to fold, always a kitchen to clean, always a hug to give.  Wrapping gifts is on the to-do list today and I'm so excited. We've been making C...

Lately, headlines have been filled with *shocking* *controversial* news regarding children’s lunchboxes which are arguably too extravagant or too plain or just too anything really. They keep popping up on my Facebook feed and I'm not sure why. Perhaps this mega controversy has always been around and I've just been blissfully unaware and ignorant of the kerfuffle. I never knew the fury that could spew towards the parent (let's face it, it's always the towards the mum) who packs their kid a lunch with an avocado sliced into the shape of a pine tree. Or the high-pitched shrieks when a different parent includes pistachios. Or heaven-forbid the terror that arises when a parent that makes a sandwich with white bread. It's all extremely controversial, apparently. The comments section for these articles are basically on the same level of hell as anything to do with vegans or feminism. Everyone becomes very enraged by popcorn and bento boxes and wraps. Basically, if a lunchb...