Tortillas at Midnight

Surely the whole world is wondering where on earth last March went and how we got to this March somehow? It was March last year that COVID swallowed most of the world as we know it whole and somehow we’ve ended up here, one year later, and still a bit confused. Strange times, huh? Anyway I feel like I haven’t written on here in ages (okay, just a few days, but still) and I wanted to write a little update so that maybe in a decade or two I can read back and think, “wow, I somehow actually survived those early years,” while I’m drinking cocktails and getting a full night’s sleep and not vacuuming twice a day. So, onto the things! Most importantly , cakes . We will have a two year old soon! We can’t quite believe it! And we have challenged ourselves to make her a Bluey birthday cake! And I can’t quite believe that either! My husband is the one heavily pushing the artsy, ambitious, Instagrammable work of art for us to aspire to. Seriously, have a look at #blueycake. Some people are ridicu...

I swear that it was just yesterday that we met our second daughter, and now here she is, booked in for her six-week old immunisations, a smiling bundle of long limbs. I just wanted to write a little about who she is at this moment in time, or at least who we know her as. In short, she’s absolutely lovely and we fall more and more in love with her each day. At first it was strange not having that familiar loving with her that we do with our oldest. The knowing type of love that grows with time and snippets and experiences. The type of love that only develops as your relationship together expands. But we are getting to know her and it’s the best feeling, learning about who this little human is and building a relationship with them. Somehow you love them a bit more each day, even though today the love already feels like SO MUCH that your heart might burst. So, here she is. These past few days she’s started smiling; a deliciously sweet grin. She loves it when you lay on the ground next to ...

Fourteen days, baby! We’ve finally arrived at a point where I feel more like myself and I have hope that things are returning to a new sense of normal. It’s such a relieving feeling to just know, deep down, that things are going to be okay. Of course people tell you that all along and you know it logically, but to actually feel it within yourself is grounding. We’ve got this. I’ve got this. It’s not as scary as I thought and I’m feeling okay much sooner than I thought too. We don’t have a routine as such going, but I feel pretty capable of handling the situations that arise and they are predictable in a way. We eat, we sleep, I’ve had plenty of chances to run around with my toddler, and we’ve all been figuring out how to keep going forward. These past few weeks have been a really special time for the four of us, working things out. My husband has been incredible, as always, so it’s not much of a surprise, yet it does impress me over and over again to see him grow as a father. He was a ...

Seven whole days since our small bean arrived earthside! It feels unbelievable that she’s reached the one week mark already, yet it also feels like she has been here for much longer. And what a long week it has been at that! For the most part, things have been going surprisingly well (please touch wood). She’s a settled and happy wee thing who has kind of just slotted into our family. Her big sister talks about her all the time and is very curious, but a little bit hesitant to touch her. She has taken it all in her stride though and we are so proud of them both. Feeding is going well, sleeping is going well, and overall things feel manageable and good. It’s truly a very welcome contrast to our experience of becoming parents the first time around. We’ve definitely had our moments where things feel a bit much or the adjustment is tricky, but this time round these are only moments you know, rather than 24/7? I am afraid of jinxing things though, despite knowing that we will have our ups a...

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...

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...

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...

Dear Ruby, Dogs can’t read as far as I know, but if you can somehow translate all these squiggly lines into tangible woofs, then this is for you. I love you! We love you. We loved you and loved you and you’ve been the most wonderful four-legged family member we could have hoped for. You drove me up the wall on a regular basis and I’m so sorry for my impatience towards you at times. Having a baby that needed to sleep and a dog that liked to bark is a tricky combination to manage. I’m sorry for getting frustrated with you. I’m sorry for getting overwhelmed when you’d run around my feet in circles and I was trying to hold the crying baby and all the shopping bags. I’m sorry for being one very flawed dog mum, when all you wanted to do was love us loudly and chaotically at all times. I do hope that you believed me when I would pat your head and tell you I loved you each night before we’d go to sleep. Whenever my husband, your dog dad, was out at a work thing at night you’d happily take up h...

Recently, our small person turned the big ol’ 18 months (or if you’re sleep deprived and can never work out the months like me, it’s one-and-a-half) and I can’t quite believe it! That’s halfway to three, folks! It’s not really in terms of all the time passing that has my mind blown, because although most people would probably say, “oh, where did the time go?” I know exactly where the time went. I still feel deep in The Time. It’s been a non-stop whirlwind of tears and gummy grins and sleepless nights and making big, beautiful messes. Really it’s been just living out 547 days in their fullest, most humanly imperfect form. Whoever said, “the days are long, but the years are short,” was mighty spot on. What is making me feel so in awe of her being the big 18 (months, that is, I’m scared for when she actually turns 18!) is who she has become in this time, as well as the people my husband and I have become to grow alongside her. She’s fiery and sweet and bold and funny and determined. She l...

  I’ve read that it’s common to lose yourself in motherhood, but I reckon it’s more of a falling, a grieving, an insatiable longing to be someone again, beyond the sameness and fatigue of the everyday. Where do we go, exactly? Our babies arrive earthside and our entire lives and turned upside down, shaken about, and then tossed away. What was once normal is now a never, or a possibility with great difficultly. Who we once were is overrun with our bodies doing berserk stuff and starting a 24/7 job with no pay, no recognition, and no breaks. I think we just stop being seen. Not even by other people, or by our lovely little babies, but quite possibility by ourselves. We lose who we once were because there is no room for her anymore. She is drowned out, deemed non-essential, cast aside into a net that only nostalgia can drag in. We wouldn’t change being mothers for the world, obviously. But we are deep in mourning too, in remembering that we used to be someone beyond one little person’...

“You’re creating a rod for your own back.” This is a statement that’s said to many new parents when they’re told that they are doing things wrong by responding to their baby.  It’s a statement that’s designed to scare you about the “bad habits you’ll create”. To make you question following your own instincts. To make you feel guilty for responding to your child in a way that feels natural and right. It’s normally said with regards to sleep. When new parents worry that their baby isn’t sleeping through the night. When they worry that their baby just wants to be close to them. When they worry that their baby can’t do the mysterious, holy grail of “self-soothing” that all the sleep programmes worship. Once I read an article which said that if you don’t teach your baby to self-soothe, then you’re disrespecting their need for sleep. This same article was also trying to sell the reader a very expensive sleep training programme which was designed to “fix” your supposedly broken baby. ...

As soon as I named my blog, I just thought "why?" Why did I do that? Am I going to regret not calling it something meaningful or sophisticated? Probably. But here we are. Tortillas at midnight. Let's go. You see, I'm in this season of life and it's kind of difficult and lonely and sometimes happy. It's the messy, not-very-pretty, jumble of days and nights that all feel like one and trying not to constantly wish it was the weekend, season. The parenting a toddler and growing a baby season. The grand Who Am I season. The grass is always greener on the other side season. The What Am I Doing season. The laundry season. The housework season. The grumpy season and the joyful season. The eating tortillas at midnight while praying my toddler doesn't wake up season.  This is one of many attempts to have an outlet for this mess I'm in right now. I've tried blogging about this before, but nothing felt like it flowed and ultimately it was just frustrating. So ...

It’s just after midnight and I’m trying to open up one of those mini Sistema pea containers as quietly as possible. I always wonder if anyone actually uses them for peas. Personally I’ve only used them for packing grapes or marmite sandwiches, well and now a dry, folded tortilla, so I do wonder what other people put in them. Anyway, I manage to carefully snap the sides open while the dog keeps snoring at the other end of our room and our toddler keeps snoring with her feet in my face so this counts as a win. Tonight, I need these small wins. She woke up just after ten and it was fine at first, I was rocking her back to sleep and made the mistake of smugly thinking that I could go back to bed and eat my tortilla soon. She must have heard my hopeful thoughts and out of nowhere threw her giraffe on the ground and became inconsolable. One bottle and five attempts to put her back into her own bed later, it became clear. I would have to eat my tortilla in stealth-mode. You might be wondering...