It’s not going to change, but that’s OK because I am

Today I took Toddler on a tram – without the pram, by myself, with no real direction. I told her we were going on an adventure and every-time she dropped the bottom lip, I reminded her that no grumpy faces are allowed on adventures.

Now I’ve set an easel up for her out in the autumn sunlight and she’s mixing colours into greys and browns and painting with her hands and asking me if she can paint with her feet – the only thing I’ve said no to.

And as we’re making more mess and singing the alphabet on transport I think – wow, I did this. A month ago – a few months ago – a year ago, I wouldn’t have attempted transport on my own. I could hardly even go out on my own with her. Because I didn’t have the confidence and I didn’t have the help I thought I needed.

I still don’t have that help, not really – my husband works longer hours than ever, he works most weekends. I’ve accepted that this is not going to change – people are not going to change and the nature of his industry isn’t either. But that’s OK, because I am. She is.

It does get easier when they are older, in some ways.

Slipping

I think they key to me is regularity. I love it. It’s probably why I like patterns – I like things that are fairly predictable. Which is something I do not have and that sends me off the edge more than anything with parenting.

My husband’s work hours have always been an issue – but more-so since we had a child. Because instead of just the absence of him and my missing him – there’s another person who reacts to it too. And not only that – there is a lot more that falls into my responsibility and I have to do it alone for an unpredictable amount of time. Deadlines are always shifting, end hours and always being extended. Weekends are taken away, plans are always getting scrapped.

Toddler is still only two, so I can’t explain it to her and she begins to react in a myriad of challenging ways. The one at the moment is anger towards me, screaming and screaming at 4AM and refusing to sleep – no matter what I do. This is when all the Super Nanny tactics and 1, 2, 3 Magic things just do not work. Because she is reacting to a new situation. Of course, writing this I feel for her and I want to comfort her – but in the midst of it I resent her. I resent everything, I resent husband’s job and I resent extended family.

So combined with husbands completely consuming and unpredictable work hours there’s no sense of regularity in family life either. There’s no sense of belonging, love, or family.

My incredible friends offer as much as they can – my mum helps at times ( she too works long hours ) but with their young children and lives and sometimes I feel like such a burden. Lily and her melt downs. I want to help them – I just want things to be OK. To be regular. To be normal. Predicable.

But it’s not and now I am getting to a point where I ask Husband where in the world will your work hours be regular??

Let’s go there.

Transitioning Toddler

 

This is a house of little and broken sleep. Everyone is sick. I was going to write more about it but it is so boring, so I won’t.

But here’s another sketch of Toddler, just chilling out. She’s pretty special.

Back to painting and snotty tissues.

Please, bless us with some unbroken sleep.

Haircut

The before and after shots of Toddler’s first ever haircut! I was very anxious about cutting her hair as when I cut Husband’s hair ( back in Wales, 2010 ) I did such a bad job he had to shave it all off..

But I think this went really well, given my history of failing with haircuts and my subject was a wriggly two year old – no one bled or cried and everyone was happy with the result.

Back to the kitchen floor

I love my little girl. This disclaimer is for no one else but her, for when she reads this she knows that I love her to bits.

BUT – the bad days are really, really bad.

Really.

Like the multiple tantrums this morning when we finally had her Dad to ourself – even just for a couple of hours. The hitting and yelling at me to go away.

Then the empty house after he leaves and the hours that loom before me and I think GET OUT. So I pack bags and say to her “we’re going on an adventure!” I explain that she has to go into her pram, we’ll go on a train but she has to stay in the pram and then we can get to the gallery and look at art. Paintings, drawings, sculture – we can do some drawing.

So we take the train and she’s about to kick up but I remind her of our adventure, of what I have explained and then a junkie gets on and he’s not looking good. He’s got blood on his pants and he’s zoning in and out and weaving too close to the pram. He takes off his fanny pack, then goes for his zip and belt and I move us away from whatever it is the poor guy is doing.

We read Green Eggs and Ham and we laugh and make animal noises.

Then we’re at Flinders Street and she’s running across the bridge, pointing at the sky-scrapers and old ladies smile and say lovely things to my girl because she is lovely. But then she decides she wants to go a different way and runs away from me. I get her and force her into her pram and she kicks and screams and hits and yells at me to go away and people are staring and I feel that dreadful hopelessness I’ve been keeping at bay for a while now.

I push the pram to out front of the Spiegeltent and lock it. She screams and screams and screams and I just sit. People are watching and staring so I put my head down so at least I don’t have to see it. See the judgement, the curiosity, the whatever. And then I think about my life and the years I spent in this area making art and money and how now I’m invisible except for the screaming child and how I’ve been doing so well but it’s one fucking thing after another.

Nothing is working with me.

I can’t study – I can’t afford it. I am not entitled to child care rebate. I can’t put a foot right. I don’t feel like I belong. I thought Melbourne was home but it isn’t – it’s just a place where I have history. I’m on a bench again, crying, like I was in Berlin.

No matter where I go.

I eventually hand her her dummy, I turn the pram around and we get back on the fucking train. I come back to the house and I sit on the kitchen floor and just cry.

Like I did in Berlin.

Less is more

In the above drawing I have appropriated Toddler’s drawing of a rainbow, I hope she doesn’t mind.

I’ve been trying to work out how to compose this post all weekend, but I find doing my thinking while I am typing works better than just thinking while thinking. Because I try and compose a blog post much like a story – thinking about which details to share and not to share, tone emphasised by observations, perhaps build up and then the point of it all, if there is one – but this isn’t a story, I’m not that kind of writer.

I’m not sure I am any kind of writer.

So I’m tired, there’s a deadline for a film coming up and my better half has to work twelve hour days for six days a week. Which means a lot more work for me, and him – obviously. We have had to cut childcare because it is just so expensive here and I’ve got less time to make work since Toddler was a newborn. Though it is in no way as difficult as when she was a new baby – mostly because I am no longer in shock – it’s difficult because here is still so new, everything seems so far away. I need a freaking car.

I’m also trying to balance my life a bit more than what it was like in Berlin – ‘Free time’ is still about groceries, the domestics and work but it’s also about love and me time. So as much as I want to go to everything all of my friends – old and new – are doing, it’s simply not possible. And though I make a little less work, I’m online a lot less – I feel like I am coping. I hardly ever feel hopeless and that is so important. I think I was over doing it for a little while there, trying to damn hard. Trying to be part of things, everything, and it’s taken me a long time to just accept that I can’t – I can’t do everything, I can’t be everywhere. I’ve got to follow my own pace and routine and that’s simply the best I can do.

Which is good enough.

Moments: Gathered

Since becoming a mum, I feel like life has intensified. I feel love like I’ve never felt it before, I feel joy like I’ve never felt before. I feel boredom. I feel less in control than ever before.

The world can really hurt me now.

I come up with elaborate ways that Toddler could kill herself and I can become frantic trying to toddler proof a world that is not mine – which can leave me desperate, frantic and feeling powerless.

So I take moments to gather myself. Go through the list in my head and divide them up to what needs to be done, what can wait and what is just completely insane.

When I am gathered things are better, so I make time to do this.

But those desperate, intense moments are all part of the love that I feel for her and when kept in check – they can be turned into positive and thoughtful things. They’re there for a reason, it’s just that they are so strong and sudden they can often just translate wrong.

Moments: Sweet

I’m doing the 31 day creative challenge and this month is a month of moments. 

Today is ‘sweet’ and this is Anja at the Arts Centre today dancing to Giggle and Hoot. Her dancing was so sweet I laughed until I cried, I spent the whole show watching her.

Thank you to Lauren for such a thoughtful gift ( the tickets ) and thank you to Mandy and Sebastian for coming with us.

Afternoon nap

I have a lot of trouble sleeping so sometimes during the midday snooze I draw.

 

Sketches of Toddler

 

 

So, I tried to convince Anja to do some drawing – so I could draw her drawing.

The first sketch she is just starting to get bored of drawing – after about a minute of drawing – the second she is watching and singing along to Play School and the last one is of her on me.

I think he first two kind of look like her but also look like other children. Something I would have freaked out about a year ago – drawings not looking like their subjects – but now it’s something I find interesting about the process.

Pfft to accuracy.