We're having a battle with the bottle.
No, not the Boris Yeltsin "too many sherbets" common or garden variety bottle battle.
Nor even a Dr Suess beetle battle in a bottle with their paddles with the bottle on a poodle and the poodle eating noodles. ... a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle type battle.
We're talking the drinking bub bottle battle.
It seems that the irresistible force (that be workplace admin: "Mistress P, your planned maternity leave up") is meeting the immovable object (that be little Miss S: "I wont drink from no stinkin' bottle, gimme a boob you bastards").
And hence we have a battle.
We've tried warm milk, cold milk, slow flow teets, fast flow teets, mum feeding, dad feeding, holding her close, holding
her away, holding her facing down, holding her facing up, tickling the lips, itching her cheek, doing when she's calm, doing when she's happy, doing when she's hungry...
Nuthin.
Zip.
Well almost.
The light at the end of the force-feeding tube is that now she'll at least not howl with derision when she is just
shown the the bottle.
The only remaining thing to do appears to be the old hold out.
Who can crack first.
She who's hungry, dads sanity, or mums exploding norgs.
(If you never hear from this blog again you'll know who won.)
Not that life has been all baby bottle battles.
By our reckoning, as of 9 November, it will be 11 weeks since we had a night of continuous sleep.
Ahhh...
Sleep.
Alright, the girl is doing a lot better than she was, usually making it to 3 or 4am each night and mostly just one wake-up. And given daylight saving we really cant blame the boy for waking up AT 5:50AM ON A BLOODY SUNDAY, so we shouldn't be complaining. Still, all this sleep deprivation has lead dad to ponder the question of how to get a suitable quota of shuteye, and hence reach the considered decision that (and we quote) "I'd give my left testicle for 8 hours continuous sleep."
Seems a fair trade.
The other conundrum this raises is that of (child)free time.
In days of old, free time was measured in days and hours.
Now it seems to be minutes and seconds.
Hence come 9:00pm each night the question must be asked; kids are finally fedded and bedded, do we a) hit the sack and give ourselves at least a chance of near 8-hours accumulated sleep, or b) have some couch collapsing telly time just by ourselves like normal developed country humans. In the end it's a compromise; a quicky mug of Cadbury hot chocolate, ANZAC bikkie and a typically futile flick through the channels cos there's nothing to watch. (Dam you reality TV.)
Still, it hasn't been all bottle battles and scene setting for castration in the A+P+M+S household.
The last two weekends we've been out of town, making it three in a row. (Hence the lawns look
more like a jungle.)
Following on from Cry Baby weekend (see last blog post), the tribe packed the
Griswold family truckster twice more, the first time heading to the beauty of
Wilsons Prom where all and sundry gathered to celebrate Uncle Ray's 70th.
Not having accommodation in the Park itself, the tribe was ensconced in a cabin at a caravan park in Yanakie, about 30km away from the action, necessitating a somewhat "exciting" post-party midnight drive back to the shack dodging the scenery. Lets just say it was only through the grace of the mechanical geniuses at Fuji Heavy Industries (a.k.a Subaru) that we managed to arrive back at our humble adobe minus the coat of arms moulded into our bonnet.
And not by lack of trying either.
The following day was rather magical. While mum and dad contemplated a sprint for home during midday kiddie sleeping routines, the boy had other ideas.
"Nanna Pappa's caravan!" he cried, indicating a desire to head back to the Park and see his grandparents caravan, and presumably, grandparents too.
(We later learned it was the 'different from his' Thomas train collection in the van that he
really wanted. Kids eh...)
A quick call to N&P and the family was back in the truckster, only not to nanna and pappa's van, but to the northern end of the park and "Five Mile Road", where rumour was that there were some amazing wildflowers after the big fires of earlier that year.
And indeed there were.
As Master M noted, there were
Jeff ones (i.e., purple), Murray ones (i.e., red) "Yellow wiggle" ones (guess that colour...), but no Anthony (i.e., blue) ones. Hence an Anthony hunt was on, with Pappa and Nanna and mum and dad and little Miss S marching over hill and dale, until... there it was.
The one Anthony flower in the entire Park.
Which Mike tried to pick and bung in his pocket.
Oh dear.
(We luckily made it out of the park gate unmolested by enraged Rangers.)
The following weekend it was back to Sandy Point for the annual "
SHQ Melbourne Cup" weekend windsurfing event and hooten-anny. Only this time there was not much windsurfing (one brief session for dad) and not even much hooten-anny'ing. Most of the time was spent with Master M getting reacquainted with Miss C, his girlfriend from the previous year's windsurfing weekend (only last year she didn't have much hair, and hence he called her baby, even though she is actually older and arguably wiser - lucky he didn't try to
put her in a corner), and her brother Master D.
All the fun and excitement of weekend ultimately culminated in a "too little food, too little sleep, too late at night" tantrum of John McEnroe-esque proportions from Master M.
Oh the shame.
We're not sure if the first-time parents-to-be (in 4 weeks) sharing the house have recovered.
But it wasn't all tantrums.
There was lots of walking too, mainly a bit before 7am in the morning when Master M would bound into life and hence a stroll was in order with dad to prevent waking everyone in the house, and particularly the poor childless chap sleeping off the previous nights partying on the lounge.
During one morning stroll, a sad and sorry wombat that was somewhat passed his use-by date, courtesy of a mistaken believe it could out-headbutt a car, was spotted on the side of the road. He/she/it was still remarkably wombat-looking, though lying on its back with paws stuck up in the air.
"Wombat!" the lad exclaimed.
"SSShhh.." said dad. "He's sleeping".
On arrival back at the house the lad was very keen to tell others that they'd seen a wombat but
had let it continue its rest. Though he apparently failed to recognise it was still there the next day. And the next. Only it had been tipped back upright by a kind soul and didnt seem to mind the flies on its nose.
This was not the only wombat story of the fortnight.
There we were, reading "
Diary of a Wombat", when it occurred to dad that a) this was an Australian book (unless theres been a mass wombat immigration program going on we haven't been privvy to) and b) there was the odd Americanism in the book. This lead to the following dad/boy exchange;
Dad {reading book aloud}: "Wombat bashed the garbage bin."
Dad {pondering aloud} "Mmmm... wonder why they didn't say 'rubbish' bin?"
Boy {seriously}: "Maybe wombats like rubbish bins?"
The lad is a lateral thinking genius.
(If only he could work out how to win the baby booby bottle battle...)
.
