Oh Mom

Mothers are actually incredible beings. Listing all of the reasons for this bold statement would probably bore you to tears, unless of course if you are a mother!

Instead I will settle with my main reason for this amazing claim, which is the person of my wife. But I could also include my mother, and my wife's mother, and just about all mothers.

It is not unusual for dads like me to be very wary of babies. I did not play with dollies or spend hours dreaming of the day I would have myself a live one. My experience with babies started the day the doctor delivered my first born, and then plonked him into my open inexperienced and well suntanned arms. The race was on for me to develop my well hidden baby talents before baby moved on to toddlerhood. Needless to say, I was very glad when he exited his baby days and took his first steps at nine months. The error of my thinking was soon revealed as my walking boy catastrophe could go where he wished but had no communication skills whatsoever!

I was a little more prepared for baby boy number 2, in that I had built bigger arm muscles through learning to surf. Matt got old and wise rather quickly and knows pretty much everything at the ripe old age of five. Now I enjoy debating the benefits of nuclear fission with him on the odd occasion!

Matt had arrived just three years behind Luke and so I could reap the benefits of my vast remembered baby experience, whilst watching my wife handle him from a good distance.

Work afforded me the wonderful luxury of being able to escape into the relative bliss of my car, zoom into peak traffic, and doze my way into the office. There the day would pass in a haze of sleep deprived email responses and sporadic outbursts at meetings. Understandably my stress levels would rise significantly at the end of the day as I feared my return to the mother ship. Walking in the door, an urchin would automatically attach itself to my leg, and I would find myself juggling a laptop, and a screaming baby that had been aggressively thrust into my arms. A fine welcome home indeed! In time I got better at leaving the laptop at work, dodging the crawling limpet, and screaming louder than all of them. It didn’t help matters but boy I felt good!

Bring on baby number three! Just five years on and my baby memory banks seem to be worryingly empty. Perhaps there was never very much in them to begin with. Baby number three finds me working at home, a significant change from that long gone age. Now I am immersed in the new life of a growing baby and am appalled at what I have discovered.

Donna spends just about every waking moment with baby Isabella, as well as a number of non waking moments! Life for her has become an endless stream of dirty nappies, gurgling, crying, eating, puking, and variable timed naps. There is also a fair bit of screaming, and the jury is out on who is louder, mother or daughter!

I look on in horror as Donna calmly deals with the inanely boring routine of rearing a baby, and then mixes it up with the continuous demands of mom’s taxi. I certainly missed all of this whilst beavering away at work. I am beginning to think that it is far easier to bash out business plans, create national strategies, deal with belligerent customers, and fire some staff, than devote your waking day to the needs of a young mushroom completely unable to communicate.

I have come to the conclusion that there can be no substitute for a mother’s love and no doubt mothers pay dearly for that love in terms of their sanity. I do need to come clean and publically announce that I could not do it!

In just a couple of months (or perhaps a year or three), my daughter will proudly don her pink wetsuit and tightly grasp her pink surf board under her arm. Then perhaps I may be on my game then!

For now, I can but bow respectfully to my wife and thank her for her incredible patience with all of the rest of us, for her great sacrifice in terms of her body and her time, and for the endless quantities of love that she pours into this new being. Our daughter!

And to all the other moms out there – you guys rock too!

Boys, Balls, Babies, Birth

I have to share this story – all names omitted to protect the innocent, and they really are innocent!

One of my son’s friends came over to play for the afternoon. My wife happened to be nearby and overheard their conversation, which was more than a little interesting. Babies it would seem have a way of getting everyone to talk about them even thought they are not yet present!

This kid asked my son if he knew how babies are born. My son replied of course, although he is quite sure that they are mainly cut out ala a discussion with his mother about his brother’s birth. This child then said to my son, “Do you know that you have to be married to have a baby?’ Again my son replied, ‘of course!’ He then added, ‘it’s because the men have the balls!’ Fair enough!

At this point, this child turns to my wife and asks, ‘so what do the balls taste like?’

Oh Boy!