Louisette Interview Age Four
Based on a set of questions from Crappy Pictures, I’ve interviewed Louisette around her birthday at age two, three, and now four:
Me: What job do you want to have when you grow up?
Louisette: LOTS of jobs. I want to be a waiter….and work in a cafe. And in the cafe I will make cupcakes. And cakes. And bread.
Me: What makes you feel happy?
Louisette: Being with Dad AND TJ… and you. And I’m with you right now, so I feel happy. And I feel happy when I’m eating bacon.
Me: If you had so much money you could buy absolutely anything, what would you buy?
Louisette: The same bag as anybody in the whole world.
Me: What is the meaning of life?
Louisette: I don’t know. That’s just a silly joke. I know! That’s the question.
Me: What do you love?
Louisette: You.
Me: What makes you feel loved?
Louisette: Dad and you and TJ
Me: What are you afraid of?
Louisette: Without being with a grown up.
Me: If you had one wish, what would you wish for?
Louisette: I wish I could fly.
Me: What is the funniest word?
Louisette: Clowny bowny.
Me: What is the hardest thing to do?
Louisette: Play golf.
Me: What is the easiest thing to do?
Louisette: Ah…aha! Play with a balloon. and make this picture.
Me: What is the best thing in the world?
Louisette: You and TJ and Dad.
Me: What is the worst thing in the world?
Louisette: TJ usually snatches from me so he’s the baddest.
Me: What makes you mad?
Louisette: Someone holding on tight of me and I want to get out.
Me: What is the meaning of love?
Louisette: Bun! [Giggles]
Me: If you had all the money in the world, what would you do with it?
Louisette: Buy a lot of things, like this (her own drawing). Well if we wanted to get a real slide then we need thousands and thousands of money to get that.
[later]
Me: What is life for?
Louisette: Are you getting sleepy?
Me: No Louisette, I just leaned my head back to hear what you’re saying because we’re in the car. So what do you think life is for?
Louisette: For having…….life!
Me: Great answer.
Louisette: Now I’ll ask you a question.
Me: Okay.
Louisette: Why is Upside Down Town upside down?
Me: Because it’s silly.
Louisette: Why?
Me: Because silly is fun.
Louisette: Like Mr Klickety Kane?
Me: Yes! He’s VERY silly.
Deadlines
I love deadlines.
That’s not sarcasm. The writing life consists largely of sitting alone in a room (or worse, sitting in the same room as young kids who I desperately hope are sufficiently distracted by the blaring TV) scowling at a screen as I invent worlds and people that absolutely no-one cares about except myself. Deadlines give me a sense of urgency and excitement that is sometimes sorely lacking. When a deadline is approaching I feel stressed, but (unless something else comes up and sends me hurtling over the edge) it also gives the sense that someone is waiting for that piece of writing – and that it matters.
Whether writing “matters” or not is a can of snakes that I won’t get into today. But, I do like deadlines.
At the moment I have four and a half deadlines coming up in the next month. Wheeeee!
One is for a novel submission that I promised someone I’d send in September (ish); two are for interactive fiction contests that are ending soon; and the other one and a half are for collaborative interactive fiction pieces (one of which I’m running, and the other of which I’m mostly acting as cheerleader while also writing a significant section).
Before I stumbled across the glorious cornucopia of interactive fiction (think “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories but better), I was going to make 2015 the year that I wrote a novel slowly. It would be an experiment in writing against my usual nature, and perhaps discovering that my writing was much better if I was less manic about it. Then I found interactive fiction, and by the end of September my total IF word count will be around the 150,000 mark (two large pieces, two medium, and two collaborations). So I’m not exactly writing slowly, particularly since that’s roughly three times my usual annual output.
A funny side effect happened due to the fact that when Choice of Games – absolutely my favourite IF engine and company (and they pay well too) – is considering taking on a project for its premier label, they require a detailed outline first. Those outlines always run over 5000 words, including loads of choices and their consequences. To put that in perspective, the last book I wrote was based on a story told to me by my then 2-year old. I did some googling, scrawled a map and a chapter outline (maybe 200 words) and was writing the book within three days. I finished it a few weeks later.
But the interactive piece I’m working on most at the moment – a fantastical pirate adventure called SCARLET SAILS – has a proper Choice of Games outline. And because I was waiting to hear back about a different project, I had to let it sit for a long time – which also meant I could discuss the basic plot with some intelligent people and discover major plot issues BEFORE I’d written a 50,000-word novel. So interactive fiction distracted me from slow writing, then brought me back to it.
The other interesting side effect of IF is that suddenly I’m collaborating. I’ve done that exactly once before, when I wrote a one-page play in high school. It barely counts as collaborating, since my (undying, I’m sure) prose wasn’t edited in any way except by the nature of performance. (I do remember one friend saying, “So I’m playing God? Mm’kay.” which was most definitely a positive comment on my casting choices.) I write because I LIKE sitting alone in a room inventing worlds and people out of nothing… and I like being the international expert and ultimate authority on every single aspect of my work. Like my actor friend, what I really want is God-like powers and unquestioning obedience.
But I also love a deadline. (I may have mentioned that.) So when someone on the IF forums at Choice of Games suggested some kind of game-writing jam, I leapt at the chance. I specifically said that I thought collaborations were a bad idea, and so naturally a few days after that I volunteered to lead what ended up being a cheesy 50s-style space adventure collaboration (and then someone asked me to whip their multi-genre bookshop collaboration into shape, and I gleefully did so).
And it is so. much. fun. It helps that everyone involved seems to have figured out that I will work very very hard to earn ultimate power, and so they say things like, “Go ahead and edit my bit however you like” which I’m pretty sure means I just became a benevolent dictator (and I LOVE it).
I will of course post an easy-to-play link here when the game is ready. It’s turning out surprisingly well (and the editor is fantastic). But here’s the front cover just to tease you.
Credit for the space background: http://palnk.deviantart.com
Medical Drama of the Week
A few months ago I had post-partum surgery #1. I wouldn’t call it a success, exactly, but things did improve – so much so that I returned to work after a year and a half of unpaid sick time.
I didn’t return to my old work (there’s a long and fascinating story there which I do intend to tell someday), but to a brand new private babysitting gig. It’s a very easy job, and is JUST within my capability at the moment. I’ve completed three weeks with no dramas, and I’m starting to feel vaguely competent. Also, I really like the family – and I get to take my kids along some of the time too. I adore watching kids interact with each other, so taking my kids along is much more than convenient – it makes the job glow.
About a month ago I saw a surgeon for post-partum surgery #2. He was a stranger to me, and I hoped going into the appointment that he’d be going over surgery stuff (fasting, etc), and giving me a bunch of pamphlets to read over. Instead he told me that although I certainly needed surgery, my GP might have misdiagnosed me (with a large gap in my abdominal muscles – a common post-pregnancy thing) and the public health system would therefore not cover me. He sent me to get a CT scan.
The CT scan was cool. I lay down on a table experiencing wacky effects from the contrast injection, all while alone in a giant room as the mechanical table passed me back and forth through a large ring, and a mechanical voice told me periodically to hold my breath. The ring part reminded me of Stargate.
The results were sent to the surgeon and to my GP.
My GP knows my entire family (four generations of us!) and I have so many medical dramas that I just keep a list of non-urgent things and then when someone is properly sick (eg Louisette had bronchitis last week) I take them all in to get sorted out. I went in for something else and asked for the CT results.
It turned out that why yes I DO have an abdominal gap…. of nine centimetres. So my guts are literally hanging out. (The abdominal muscles separate in every pregnancy, but generally go back together – or at least within a couple of centimetres.) This is brilliant news, because it means that I can still get the surgery I need, plus I feel like way less of a wimp now.
The CT also revealed two other things. One is a minor thing, but will probably require preventative surgery all the same (I’m hoping that it can be done at the same time as my stomach, but we’ll see – I’ll ask the surgeon on Thursday, when I next see him). It’s interesting mainly because I went to two different doctors a couple of months ago because of intense pain in my side. After googling, I figured it was appendicitis. They both said it was “yeah I dunno” and the pain faded after a few days, leaving me feeling kinda dumb. Actually it’s a splenal hemangioma – which sounds bad, but it basically just a benign lump – but one that’s big enough (2.2cm) that it really should be chopped out. The funny thing is that I would have come across splenal hemangiomas in my googling, and dismissed them for being too rare. Presumably this also means that I’m infested with dozens of fascinating diseases that haven’t yet been seen in Australia.
The other thing revealed by the CT scan is damage to my spine – damage that is degenerative.
The up side is that I feel a lot better about all the times I’ve chosen not to lift a kid/stand up/help someone/change a nappy/etc because of my back. The down side is that bones are a bit tricky to fix. Also, I’m not sure if it’s degenerative (that is, getting worse) because of the stomach stuff (which will be fixed), because of my usual bad posture (which is not an easy thing to fix, especially when everything already hurts), or because of my body just being annoying/aging.
And a big part of my post-partum depression has been fear of further injury due to picking up/playing with my kids. That fear had been fading, but now it’s been given a new lease of life. Congratulations?
Again, something to talk to the surgeon about.
And here’s TJ in his best suit, because why not?
Reflections on a Scrapbooking Mania
Today was my daughter’s third birthday party. It started at 9:00am. I was up until 2:00am scrapbooking – again. Why on Earth would I do that?
I know why.
Last June, Louisette became a big sister. It was also the time when we realised she was now actively forming memories – which meant that if we took her somewhere cool, she would (a) Actually enjoy it, and (b) Maybe even remember it. I take quite a few photos, and I realised that we could reinforce her memories by talking about them, over and over, and looking at pictures – plus maybe buying a toy memento (each time we’ve gone somewhere with animals, we’ve bought a soft toy).
The first big excursion was to Sea Life Aquarium in Sydney (taking decent photos in an aquarium is HARD). Then the Dinosaur Museum in Canberra (where I accidentally scared her by holding her RIGHT up to the mouth of a dinosaur, thinking it was a statue – then getting a huge shock for both of us when it turned out to be an animatronic on a sensor). Then the beach with my parents. Each one of these got a large poster with photos and stickers, plus sandpaper for the beach (and the dinosaurs had “fossils” that Louisette collected herself thanks to “My Pet Dinosaur” who brought two small animatronics and a lot of fun to her daycare. . . greatly assisting in the recovery process from her scare at the Museum).
When I talked to a friend about the posters, she said, “Why don’t you do a scrap book, so you can just keep adding to it?”
Brilliant!
The idea kicked around in my mind – with the focus on TJ, of course, because his birth was by far our biggest family event post-Louisette. And so it was that I sorted through the three months’ worth of daily photos, picked the best or most significant of the lot, and printed them at Kmart – buying a purple binder, a pack of scrapbooking paper, and stickers to go with them. Along the way it became more than a repository for memories. It became a therapy tool, to help Louisette process her new role as big sister. And it became a powerful piece of propaganda.
All photos are propaganda, in a way. Family photos almost always carry the same motto, writ large and sometimes ironically across every picture – WE ARE HAPPY.
The message is so common that a large number of people reflexively cringe at it, particularly when there are a lot of photos with the same message over and over and over again until it starts sounding more and more like an insult to the everyday shabbiness and complexities of life. Sometimes it’s a message designed for others to see – defensive, or even bullying (“Look at my beautiful life/family. I am better than you”). Other times it is a desperate question – “Are we happy? Is this happy?” Still other times it is a desperate lie, spoken by people who know something is wrong but do not know how to fix it except by catching a fleeting moment that seems to have everything in the right order (husband, kids, dog, car, etc).
It is always complicated.
I took photos of Louisette every day for the first year. In the early days, as I sorted photos and saw a smile, a curled-up fist, or bare toes perfectly caught in pictures before they changed forever, I realised photos were a kind of therapy. A message to myself saying, “Look! Actually, today was a good day. Maybe not the whole day, but this moment was good. Keep this one, and throw away the rest.” It was also a message saying, “It doesn’t feel like it, but this time is going very quickly. See how her face has already changed! And again!”
Those two messages – “There WAS a good bit today” and “This too shall pass – and fast” are so much more important to me this second time, with PPD and a feeling like I’m failing both of my kids simultaneously almost every day.
But I was talking about Louisette. That first scrapbook is loaded with propaganda phrases such as, “Louisette is so gentle with him!” (Saying it makes it come true.) It also contains many of the phrases that Louisette herself has repeated over and over, for whatever reason (she tends to acquire language by repeating a phrase lots of time, and she’s working out her emotions the same way), such as, “Two boys, two girls.”
That was a lot of fun. I felt like I’d given Louisette something both loving and useful, and I also had a beautiful object, something to do with all those photos, and reinforcement for my own story (“We’re doing fine. This is okay. . .”). I was on a high.
A few weeks later, feeling depressed, I decided to make a scrapbook of Louisette’s babyhood, in order to celebrate her achievements and help her understand that TJ won’t always be as. . . well, boring and fragile. . . as he is now. TJ had just started sleeping on his own during the day (rather than in my arms). We bought supplies together, and I got to work. And he woke up. And I had to go pick up Louisette in a couple of hours. And everything was spread out in complicated piles on the table (“Photos of kids lying down looking cute”, “That time the kids played together in the backyard pool”). I freaked out utterly and sent an SOS to my sister, who came over and held TJ so I could finish the thing.
I finished the thing. Later on I updated the original “TJ and Louisette” book, and did a whole one just for TJ’s first six months (why? For me I guess, because I sure can’t think of anyone else who’d really be interested).
Lately I feel like Louisette has had enough of people talking about TJ. So for her birthday I made her a scrapbook that picks up where the “Louisette as a baby” book ends – her first birthday – and is actually about toddlerhood rather than babies. This one goes from her first birthday to her third (today; I left pages blank at the end). It was 80 double pages long in the end, which JUST managed to fit into the 20-page binder I’d bought (along with three packs of refill sleeves). It’s time for Louisette to hear about how special and wonderful and talented and beautiful she is RIGHT NOW, rather than two years ago (much as I do genuinely appreciate the fact that she can walk).
So that’s why I do scrapbooking. It’s a story to tell Louisette – and myself – that my kids are loved, that we have nice times despite all the heat and panic and irritability that I remember, and that things are getting better all the time. These are the stories that matter – they heal wounds and give hope, and they make us all better for the reading.
But now it’s almost 9:00pm and I need to get to BED.
Plans Made While Pregnant
When I was pregnant with Louisette, I wrote down some of the stuff CJ and I were desperately looking forward to doing with our kids. Lately, Louisette is old enough to appreciate most of these, so I’ve added comments – three years after writing that list.
And on to today’s official topic! Here, in no particular order, are some of the plans CJ and I are looking forward to doing with our future children (and yes, there are some significant differences in the costs or age-relevance of these items):
Take the kids to the zoo.
I’m deliriously excited about taking Louisette to the zoo for her third birthday in January. She still talks about going to the aquarium a couple of months ago (partly because we made a poster with the photos in order to consolidate her memories), and the zoo should blow her mind.
Buy a house with a yard (but make the kids share a room – if we can all stand it).
We have a yard now! Also a trampoline and cubby house. When TJ starts mostly sleeping through the night, we’ll move both kids into the bigger bedroom (with a backup mattress elsewhere, for bad days/nights). I’m hoping it’ll happen this year.
Take the kids to Questacon, especially in Winter.
We’re on our second year of having an annual membership. It’s so good to always have a fun place to go that’s reasonably well contained and safe – and inside.
Play with plasticine, and playdough, and make potato stencils.
Turns out I’m still terrified of playdough (grind some into your carpet and you’ll soon see why) so I’ll probably get into that only when the kids are quite a bit older and neater. BUT I built up the courage to make painting a part of our lives, and Louisette and I have painting sessions – inside, even! – quite often. I’ll have to use potatoes someday.
Buy primary-school popularity for the kids by having a pool.
I still like this idea, but it’s extremely unlikely our yard or budget will handle an in-ground pool. Still, younger kids just want water, so I hope it’ll still happen. In the meantime, we have those blue plastic shells for paddling, which is lots of fun – even TJ has endured a go.
Expand the house (or shove CJ out of his study) so the kids get their own rooms around the onset of puberty.
Our house has three bedrooms and a converted garage, so CJ and I will most likely share the garage (as we’re doing at the moment, with difficult) as a study and the kids will have the actual bedrooms. I’m hoping that we’ll feel less cramped when we can give away the last of the baby paraphernalia (porta-cot, stroller, etc)
Have a granny flat so the kids can be “neighbours” for a while between living at home and moving out. Charge rent based on their income, until it reaches market value.
It wouldn’t be easy, but we could re-work our house to accommodate that. Probably by having the master-and-ensuite set up as a self-contained flat (with electrical cooking appliances – I lived in a similar arrangement back in the day) for one of the kids, and the garage set up for CJ and I (we’d enter the house from that direction; it has a door and will someday have windows).
Play with frisbees.
We own a Frisbee – I even know where it is – but I suspect the running and fetching would be too much at the moment.
Fly a kite.
Louisette is just old enough (according to CJ), so this will happen soon.
Take them to Canberra’s best playgrounds (the castle, and the snake playground).
We’ve been to both of those playground in the last month 🙂 Lots of fun!
Go camping with my brother and his family.
He’s just about to have a second child (of hopefully lots) so there’s still a long time to wait until our kids are up to camping. Not to mention me.
Lots of cousin time! (My sister and her family might even be living in Canberra, which would mean all my direct siblings are here in one city!!)
Yes! Louisette and my TJ and my sister’s girls see lots of each other, and it’s wonderful!
Go paddle boating.
We’ll need to wait until the kids’ feet can reach the pedals. . .
Rent a four-person bike.
When TJ can reliably sit up, this can happen.
There are quite a few cool things not on this list – CJ takes Louisette to playgrounds on his bike, and she and I often cook together. And there’s plenty more excitement still to come.
Party Time
Louisette is turning two, so we had a party this morning. It has been my belief for a while that first birthday parties are about the parents celebrating having kept their bundle of joy alive for a whole year. It’s certainly not about the child, who is usually terrified by the whole thing, and spends their party crying (we were lucky; Louisette is a very social creature and she had a great time. I think it also helped having it in an unfamiliar environment, so she didn’t get thrown by a whole crowd being in her safe place).
This year’s birthday party, in my mind, was all about school. Louisette is in day-care (has been for about six months – long enough for her to have genuine friendships), and the centre is also a school, which she and her friends will attend (and where I work – putting me in the peculiar position of knowing the children very well, and the parents not at all – I learnt several names for the first time because of this party). I invited her whole class, and ended up with all three of the other girls (awesome! A full set!) and one of the boys. My ambition was to get a photo of all four girls together, and I technically succeeded twice – this is the better one:
I’m pleased with that, despite the facial expressions. I also caught the three girl cousins together –
Louisette was thrilled with her balloons and with her paint (we bought the paint for the party, and this was the first she knew of it):
It was a raging success, I think. Today’s weather, like at her party last year, was always going to be hot – over thirty degrees – but fortunately my parents bought us a gazebo for Christmas (we had NO idea, and it’s just brilliant and beautiful), and my father-in-law brought over a huge length of shadecloth and clipped it to the roof and fence – turning half the yard into a kind of tent. That meant we were able to stay outside, which meant that all the post-party mess is out there – all the crumbs, all the water (there was water play too!), all the icing smears, all the paint, all the watermelon juice! The difference in post-party stress levels is amazing. Half of it gets hosed away or put straight in the wheelie bin. This was SO much easier than last year, when everything had to be carried to and from a park, because we had nowhere else to go.
Louisette had fun, and so did I. The stress of it was enough to make me physically sick beforehand (my pregnancy is severely messing with me) but I feel very good about it all now – and it was enjoyable during the party, too. I lay down afterwards to recover and was trying to think of anything I could have done better, and I basically came up with one thing: A bigger water jug for outside.
In my hormone-addled mind, that is a truly epic achievement. It was very brave of me to invite people who I fundamentally don’t know, and to get into (washable) paint for the first time (ever seen a group of toddlers with paint?). I’m terribly impressed with myself, knowing I could never have pulled this kind of event off a few years ago – let alone while sick (I’m not even going into work this year – at all).
(And CJ managed to set up a slideshow of Louisette photos, for which I was very grateful – I spend MANY hours sorting through the last year of Louisette pics, and a birthday slideshow was the perfect result.)
Battles Lost, Won, and Ongoing
Destruction of Books (board and pages)
We have a LOT of books just for Louisette. About a hundred paper books, and thirty board books (most of them secondhand, hence the sheer bulk). She loves playing with them, and rarely actively destroys them – yet. So this battle hasn’t truly joined yet, and may never occur. If I notice her tearing a book apart, I’ll generally say, “No tearing. Gentle.” and put it on a high shelf. Pop-up books are doomed from birth, though.
Score: Parents: 1 Books: 1
TV/Computer
CJ and his dad both have ADD (now called ADHD whether there’s a hyperactive component or not – which, mercifully, there isn’t in this case) and some research suggests that cutting out TV altogether for at least the first two years may help limit its effects. So we decided, with a healthy amount of caveats (including the all-encompassing, “Well, we’ll just see how it goes”) to try to never watch TV or use the computer when Louisette was in the room. We made exceptions for holidays, for when I was babysitting other children, and for those few seconds as I set a show to tape – but we did it. At least, we did it for TV. Perhaps even more remarkably, CJ almost never uses his iphone when Louisette is around (this is a man who will play on his phone while watching TV – welcome to ADHD). This means a lot to me in terms of modelling polite human-to-human behaviour – something her generation will need a lot of help with.
But we slid slowly and surely into “Meh” on the computer front. We don’t play videos when she’s in the room, but everything else is fair game – even when it’s me alone with her (emailing, checking I have at least one not-too-blurry pic for the day, etc). She limits this to a certain extent by simply not liking it – I’ll do emails and look at photos, but I won’t write novels or browse the net if she’s with me (unless CJ is playing with her).
Overall, we’ve done pretty well.
Score: Parents 1, Meh 1.
Hats
I’ll generally put a hat on her as we go outside (and one for me too, for role modelling). She’ll generally take off her hat and play with it.
Score: Parents 0, Louisette 1.
Socks/shoes
As soon as the weather got above really cold we let her go barefoot. It was conveniently timed for just after she started actively removing her socks every three seconds.
In late November she began showing signs of walking soon, so we girded our loins and went to buy shoes – only to find they’re not recommended for several months yet.
Score: Pretty much even…so far.
Food/mess vs independence
Feeding Louisette has been pretty miserable from day one (no, that’s not quite true – it was day four that things really turned sour). Breastfeeding problems & machines, breastfeeding in public and while travelling, wind (much screaming), reflux (much screaming), teething (screaming), hatred of sitting still and especially being buckled in (screaming), longing for full eating independence (screaming).
Louisette neatly solved the dilemma of, “Should I keep breastfeeding when I desperately hate it?” by refusing to breastfeed at all from three months of age (this is a fight I won’t waste myself over nearly so much next time).
We started her on solids pretty early, and I was SO excited about things getting better feeding-wise. They got so much worse, and stayed that way for months. But nowadays they’re pretty good. Mostly. I walk the line between Louisette’s growing independence/screaming about her lack of independence and the desire to keep her semi-chewed food out of my hair, clothes, ears, furniture, and rental property. At the moment her breakfast and lunch have a spoon-fed section (for messy things such as stewed fruit and yogurt, or meat) and then a larger self-fed section (toast, grated cheese and vegetables, crackers), and I shake out her drop cloth up to three times a day (we have no yard and no grass so at some point one of our neighbours will politely ask me to stop depositing cheese etc into the communal carpark each day. Or possibly they’re glad about the increased bird life). She has a water bottle on a low table that she drinks from often, and generally goes through two or three outfits a day. She also hates bibs, and pulls them off (we start with two – one cloth one plastic – at each meal).
For most younguns, spoon feeding is neater. This (and much screaming) is what happened at lunch a few days ago, when I attempted to spoon feed her from a packet rather than letting her (mostly) self-feed (she started with two bibs, as per usual):
Score: Hard to say. Things are getting better on both sides, but I still dread all her meals, and both of us get desperately frustrated sometimes. Sidebar: It is hot enough inside that grated cheese will melt and stick to any surface (cloth, plastic, wood, metal, etc).
Snatching
This is a battle that has to start early and never stop. Louisette often interacts with other very young kids, and I intervene every single time I see either party snatch from the other. This gets very repetitive very fast, but that’s just the way it is. She has already shown signs of improvement, however, so that’s good.
Parents: Almost 1. Louisette: Approximately 0
Respect to cats (and dogs)
Again, this battle has to start early and never stop. She got her first cat scratch the other day (very very minor, and washed with antiseptic), which I was hoping wouldn’t happen for another six months or so, but neither party was actually injured and I think they both learned something. Louisette is pretty darn good with the cats. Ana will approach her (nervously, but she IS a cat after all) for a pat.
Parents: 1. Louisette: .5 Cats: .5
Please and thank you/ta
I keep forgetting to say ta instead of thank you. I can’t remember if I say please.
Parents: 0 Manners: Non-existent.
Safety – electrical cords, heights, water
Despite her determination, I still don’t let Louisette play with electrical cords. Ever. She never goes to any place anywhere without going to the cords at least once (the ones in our living room, kitchen, and her room are all gaffa taped and/or hidden, which is a mercy).
She can get down off the couch safely 99 out of 100 times, and no longer tries to go headfirst off furniture. I’m working on teaching her how to get down off higher things (such as her change table) because she’ll soon be climbing onto them. She climbed onto a couch for the first time yesterday.
After MUCH effort, she will now put her full face underwater and blow bubbles. She loves the water, and if she ever manages to fall into a body of water she won’t necessarily panic herself to death.
Parents: 3 Baby:0
Dirty face/clothes
She’s pretty much always 90% clean or more. Her mum has inclinations towards OCD. So. . . yay?
Parents: 1 Baby: 0
Respectable hair/long hair
I really wanted to grow her hair long as fast as possible, so tried so so hard to train her hair to go sideways (rather than directly over her face). Once she started pulling out her own hair clips and ties, it got harder. At last I realised this was a stupid battle and once her hair was heavy enough it’d all work fine. So I cut a fringe.
Parents: 0 Rationality: 1
Sleep
We tried a bit of controlled crying (that’s when you let the child cry a little while before going in to comfort them, so they eventually learn to sleep without you there) when she was very young. It was, in my opinion, far too young. From 2-4ish months she settled only with us holding her hand (and with a dummy etc, although she did and does have the ability to fall asleep almost anywhere). From 4-11 months we needed to be in the room, within sight. Then she started really getting into playing, “Fetch my dummy and/or I’ll scream at you” so in the Christmas holidays we did controlled crying again, and (except for a few times when she got her leg trapped between the bars) it went very smoothly, and is now about 90% reliable. We just say, “Good night Lizzie, sleep tight” and walk out. It still takes her up to an hour to actually sleep, but she does it by herself. Amazing! In my opinion, we timed the controlled crying perfectly the second time. She was old enough to not get upset, but young enough that she couldn’t climb out of the cot and lose all chance of settling.
Parents: 1 Baby: 0
There are plenty of battles still to come, but that’s plenty for now. The main thing is that we’ve all survived so far.
Parents: Infinity. Baby: Infinity.
Suit Up
CJ will be acting as best man to his brother very shortly, and this is the suit he’ll be wearing – the first proper suit he’s bought since his Year Twelve formal.
For reasons that are patently obvious, I have encouraged him to wear it around the house. A lot.
So much better than flowers or chocolate
The other day, when I was still pregnant, CJ was driving me home from church.
“I’ve realised,” he said, “that, should the technology come about in my lifetime, I still can’t time travel.”
“Oh?” I said. “And why not?”
“Well, I worked out a while ago that if I time travelled and ended up in an alternate timeline, I could probably still track you down, either by attending the pirate ball where we met, or through one of our many mutual friends. This is Canberra, after all.”
“Indeed.”
“But once we have Louisette, and she actually exists in the world, it would be statistically impossible to reproduce exactly the same set of precise circumstances required to bring her – specifically her, not some other child – into the world. So time travel just isn’t worth the risk.”
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I actually gasped, I was so touched. This is a man who not only plans ahead to save our marriage in the event of a time-space event, but who would give up one of his favourite fictional technologies for the sake of our little girl.
I love you too, CJ.
Felicity Banks 