If it looks like a zombie...

Munchkin is walking around with her hands outstretched. "Mmmmooooo! Mmmmmooooo!"

We don't go trick or treating, but the kids celebrated Halloween at daycare. I presume this is where she managed to learn about zombies.

"Oooooh, scary!" I grin and turn to The Boy. "Check out Munchkin being a zombie!"

Munchkin looks at me. "No, I'm a cow!"

Three little kittens

see more Lolcats and funny pictures
From L to R: Munchkin, Smurfette, Jellybean

Mummy milestones

The kids had their first sleepover. Their grandparents picked them up on Friday night, and they didn't come home until bedtime today.

I thought it would be harder. For me, that is.

It just goes to show that when you're ready for the next milestone, you're ready. It's only heartbreaking when you're forced to go through the milestone. Like, say, kindergarten next year!

***

We babysat for a friend a few weeks ago. She and her husband had tickets to Wicked, and she offered them to me because she couldn't get babysitting. So I offered to babysit their 9-month old daughter instead--partly because I was cheap, partly because I know what it's like to scuttle plans due to babysitting problems, and partly because I'd been feel clucky lately.

It was their first date night since having a child.

They came in half an hour early and we laid down a plastic mat and some toys to keep baby happy in front of her parents. I remember how important it was to feel like your baby would be well looked after and happy in your absence.

The parents stayed for at least 15 minutes to play with us. They warned us that the baby doesn't like men. Sure enough, The Boy came a little too close and she wasn't a happy camper! But eventually, mum and dad had to go, and the baby had a bit of a cry. The look on my friend's face! (I recognised that look!) I told her to enjoy themselves and to call any time if they wanted to see how the baby was doing. I expected to hear from her within the hour.

They were barely out of our building when the baby stopped crying. To think of all those times when I left my wailing kid with someone and felt like such a cruel mother! I could've spared myself the guilt trip.

The baby's bag was well-equipped. It reminded me of my anxieties as a first-time mum.

My friend handed me a bottle of Heinz to heat up for dinner. It reminded me of my reliance on Heinz to avoid having to pre-cook meals, mash them up, then freeze them. They were so handy. She ate well, until I asked The Boy to hand me a bib, and he went over and leant over the baby to hand me the bib. He's a strange man. Oops. So I put a Wiggles DVD on and fed her a TV dinner. she ate like a machine, and I had to scrape the bowl. For dessert, she had a teething rusk. (I wasn't sure if she had any allergies. The rusk was in her bag.)

There was no milk, and I had forgotten to ask if the baby was on cow's milk. I knew she was breastfed, so I gave her water from a cup. She had a sippy cup, but I have trouble using those (it was one of those stiff-lipped cups and I can't figure out how to tell if water is actually coming out), so I used a normal plastic cup and water from the tap. I hope I wasn't supposed to boil it! The baby seemed curious about the cup.

While the baby was happy, I messaged her mum to let her know that the baby was fine. I suspected she wouldn't enjoy her night otherwise!

My kids defied expectation and loved having a baby around. One of the benefits of daycare, I suppose. Smurfette offered the baby her Elmo. The ultimate sacrifice for her. She roamed around the room picking up her favourite toys and giving it to "bubba". Munchkin kept trying to kiss the baby, so much so that she eventually protested and wanted to be saved from the marauding toddler. Jellybean sat next to us and proceeded to show the bubba how every toy worked. He was so gentle and sweet.

The Boy is heavily involved in our night time routine, so it was inevitable that he'd do something that would horrify the baby. (Speaking or appearing without warning pretty much set her off.) Eventually, she also grew weary of three boisterous kids surrounding her, kissing her and shoving strange toys at her. It was all too much for the wee bubba, and she WAS NOT HAPPY.

Munchkin finished her bath first and came out to find the baby in tears, me trying to console her. Munchin, wrapped in her white towel, bent down very low to look in the bubba's eyes, her small hands in front of her in a placating motion, and in a firm voice said, "It's okay. Calm down, calm down." That made me smile.

I gave The Boy a choice of being in charge of the bedtime routine or looking after our little guest. He chose the baby. I reminded him about the baby's aversion to men, and he shrugged and said they'd be all right. That ought to give an indication of how his own children torment him.

I did the kids' bedtime routine, noting that the I heard nary a peep from outside the room.

When I came out, the baby and The Boy were as thick as thieves watching racing cars on TV.

I couldn't get more than a few minutes with the baby after that. Especially when we managed to make her gurgle in delight. Her giggles were little belly laughs. The Boy got clucky.

And the baby? More than once I caught her looking at me smugly. She knew a pushover when she saw one.

Brought to you by the letter T

On Tuesday night, Munchkin came up to me and proudly showed me her latest achievement:

A debacle

I was on daycare drop-off duty yesterday, and the morning was just one stuff-up after another. When we finally got going, and as we were waiting for the lights to change, I turned to Jellybean and said, "Oh, Jellybean, it's been an absolute debacle this morning!"

Of course, he just looked at me.

"Do you know what a debacle is? It means lots of things went wrong! Do you remember what went wrong this morning?"

"Yes," he replied very seriously and without hesitation. "Three things went wrong."

Somewhat taken aback by his precision, and not remembering three actual incidents, I asked him, "Three things? What were the three things, do you remember?"

"We couldn't open the pram," he said as we started to cross the road. This was true. For some reason I couldn't get the stroller to unfold, and we had to go back up to our apartment because I was going to ditch it and just chance having three kids walking. Luckily, The Boy was still home and got the thing to work.

"Yes, that was such a debacle! Lucky, Daddy was still home to help fix the pram."

"And then ," Jellybean said, not appreciating my additional commentary, "we forgot my water bottle. And you had to wash it because there were no water bottles ready." I suck at household chores, can you tell?

"And what's the third thing?"

"We were lazy fusspots!"

What The Boy and I did on Friday night

Like his father and his father's father

On Monday, Jellybean had *the procedure* done. This was The Boy's decision, as we had agreed. (If you're curious, ear piercing is my domain. Yep, I think I got the better end of the deal.) Because a few friends have expressed interest in how we went about the whole business, this will be a long post which covers: the decision, the process, the disclosure, the procedure, and the aftermath. Skip to the bits that interest you most (the disclosure is particularly fun).

The Decision
There were several decisions we made regarding the surgery:

1. We would not do it until he was at least 2 years old. I wanted him to be able to tell me if he was in pain.
2. We would not follow the Filipino tradition of having it done to mark puberty. We felt it would be too late and traumatic. Plus, I'm pretty sure it would be harder to convince a doctor to do it. They don't generally encourage it.
3. We would not go to the local Filipino tuli doctor. We wanted to have it done in a hospital.

The process
The actual process of organising the surgery was slightly tricky. If you ask for it for anything but cultural or religious reasons, you'll have a very difficult time finding a doctor who'll agree to do it. Our GP questioned The Boy about his reasons. So did our paediatrician. And both tried to put a discouraging word. But The Boy was adamant, and when we called the paediatric surgeon's office, we had to make sure we cited "for cultural reasons".

We had one consultation with the surgeon who talked us through the procedure and did a quick examination.

Jellybean's reaction to the examination was to glare at the surgeon and say, "I didn't like that!"

Then total cost was $1100 for the surgeon and the anaesthetist. Our health insurance covered the hospital fees for day surgery in a private hospital. I'm not sure if any of the doctor's fees are rebatable.

The disclosure
The day before the surgery, I told Jellybean that he'd be going to hospital the next day so the doctor could "do a procedure" on his doodle. He was a bit concerned, and The Boy berated me for mentioning it.

"How would you like it if you woke up and suddenly your penis was painful and looked different?" I asked him. Yep, I thought so.

We told Jellybean that the girls would be going to daycare, but he'd have the day off because we were going to hospital. At hospital, he would go to sleep and then the doctor would do something that will make his doodle tingle, and when he woke up, it might be uncomfortable and a tiny bit ouchie, but that it wouldn't really hurt because the meds would make it feel better.

Me: "Jellybean, the doctor's going to make it so that your doodle looks like Daddy's."

Jellybean: "The doctor will make my doodle look like Daddy's?"

Me: "Yep! How exciting!"

The Boy: "Yeah, it'll make your doodle massive!" (I rolled my eyes.)

Me: "Don't give him unrealistic expectations!"

Jellybean: "Daddy's doodle is hairy."

A few more years for you, mate.

Jellybean, of course, was mostly excited about not having to go to daycare. Oh, and we bribed him with DVDs.

The procedure
We arrived at the hospital at 11.30am, and thank god for internet kiosks and YouTube and Thomas the Tank Engine because we didn't go into surgery until after 3pm. Jellybean had had nothing to eat since 6.30am, although he never really asked for food. (But we also didn't get to eat until 3pm, which made me rather grumpy.)

In general, the hospital was accommodating. Except for the long wait, we couldn't complain about the standard of care.

When Jellybean was asked to lie down on the bed, he was a bit concerned, but had fun being wheeled to the operating theatre. They staff were very good with kids and very reassuring. But when he had to lie down on the operating table, he started to cry because, well, it did look a bit scary. He had to have a canula inserted, which I think hurt, so he was very teary. But once the anaesthetic was administered, it probably took less than a minute for him to go under.

Then, The Boy and I went off to eat.

When the surgery was finished, our buzzer went off, and I went into the recovery room to comfort Jellybean. He was very teary and kept telling me, "I wanna get outta here!" When he was settled, they wheeled us (with me on the bed!) back to the ward and we had to wait at least 2 hours so they could observe him. The nurse came in to ask Jellybean if he wanted jelly, ice block or juice.

"I just want jelly, please."

And then, once he'd had a couple of spooonfuls: "Mm, good jelly!"

What a sweetheart.

At this point, The Boy had to leave to pick the girls up from daycare. Luckily, he worked out how to get the Thomas the Tank Engine DVD playing on my laptop, the Jellybean was quite content to veg out and eat jelly and, later, an ice block.

Jellybean was given a cortal block that was supposed to block most of the pain for 24 hours. However, as soon as he saw the blood he got a bit hysterical. I had to give him breathing exercises by channeling all the Lamaze breathing I've seen on medical shows. (Generally, Aussies don't use it for labour.) And we told him that we couldn't tell if it was ouchie if he was crying for no reason. Finally, when he settled down, we told him to tell us if he's "worried, or uncomfortable, or ouchie" which seemed to work. The nurse was lovely. Firm but kind.

Well, talk about trauma--what about mine? I noticed that The Boy was absent while all this was going on. Yes, he was picking up the girls, but that's not the point.

The nurse told Jellybean that when he got home, he was to lie down on the couch, eat nice things and watch DVDs all day. I told you she was a good nurse. Even so, when she left, Jellybean turned to me and whispered in a very urgent voice, "I need to get out of here now."

The aftermath
We naively thought that Jellybean could go back to daycare the next day. Yeah, right. Basically, when we got home, there was much trauma over changing his undies because the gauze was stuck from the bleeding. Finally, we just had to soothe him while I slowly peeled it off. I think he was crying more out of fear than anything else, and because he could feel some tugging. Fortunately, he managed to pee, which was surprising. He also slept through the night, which means the pain relief worked pretty well.

The first day home was the worst. When he woke up, the gauze was stuck because he'd bled overnight. He said he was in pain, but he wet his pants (in the bathroom, luckily) and I eventually realised that the "ouchie" wasn't really pain from the surgery but pain from trying to hold in his pee. (This happened a few times before I caught on.)

He mostly spent the day lying on the couch and watching DVDs as instructed. I mostly spent the day trying to work while dutifully pampering him. I didn't mind, actually, except it was difficult juggling work because I couldn't properly concentrate for more than about half an hour at a time. Also, I had to sit next to him on the couch because one of the Thomas DVDs had a ghost and it was scaaaaaary. By the evening, he was a lot more comfy about having the gauze and getting in and out of undies. He was also on painkillers every 4 hours. Pain Stop apparently doesn't taste very good, so it was a trial getting it down the first couple of times. After that, I used a syringe. Later, I thought to bribe him with a treat after the meds. That worked really well.

This morning started out fine, but when he did his mid-morning pee, there was a lot of blood on his undies, and I made the mistake of saying, "Oh, there's blood!" At which point the hysterics began and it took aaaaaages to calm him down, get the undies off, have him pee and then get new undies on again. I had to yell at the top of my voice to get through his panic. I hope none of my neighbours were home. In truth, I doubt it hurt that much since he was loaded up on painkillers. It was mostly the idea of bleeding that scared him. Well, hell, it scared me, too. I rang the hospital to see if this was a problem, but apparently it's quite common, usually because a scab has fallen away. Yech!

It was at this point where I questioned why I was at home dealing with this mess when it was supposedly The Boy's decision. Maybe I'll leave the girls with him right after they get their ears pierced.

This evening, Jellybean had his first bath. It was fine until it was time to dry. Hysterics again. What's worse, we were out of gauze and the nurse told me that once they were used up, we could just apply Vaseline straight onto his undies. But of course, Jellybean was now used to the gauze and couldn't imagine life without it, so he was petrified of having just undies on. We must've been screaming for about 10 minutes--him because he was scared of the thought of putting his undies on, and me because I needed to scream just so he could hear me on top of his voice--and I don't even want to imagine what my neighbours thought was going on. The Boy came home while this was happening, and finally, we just held on to Jellybean's hands and popped the undies on. Two seconds later, the screaming stopped.

"There. Was that ouchie?"

"No."

I rolled my eyes.

At bedtime, he had another bought of hysteria, but not as bad. The Boy tried to do the peeing routine and Jellybean was having none of it. The Boy wanted to help, but frankly, he had no clue, didn't know our routine, and Jellybean just didn't trust him, so Jellybean started yelling that he only wanted me. Good cop, bad cop--why didn't I think of it before?

And now Jellybean's tucked in bed, humming himself to sleep. And I'm trying to relax. I haven't read a book since Monday, and that's just not right.

But first, I have to finish my work. *sigh*

Within His Sight by Denise A. Agnew

Within His Sight
by Denise A. Agnew
(Liquid Silver Books)
Full disclosure

Women respond to a man's testosterone without any thought...

Tainted by bad memories of past betrayal, Mary Wickes knows getting involved with SWAT team member Dace “Hard Man” Banovic would be a big mistake. Yet working with him for six months at the sheriff's department has proven that her hormones don’t care what she thinks--only what she wants.

Men respond to a woman's softness without any thought...

Dace is puzzled by Mary's avoidance tactics, and although he's tried to ignore the powerful attraction he feels for her, he can't help wanting to learn everything about the woman he's desired for months.

When danger comes, sometimes it takes a special man and woman to see it through to the end...

When a hostage situation forces them to confront their fears, Mary and Dace must find the courage to face the feelings they’ve tried so hard to deny.

I know this is no longer a new release, but I've been a bit slack. I should mention that I've stopped editing for the moment because I just can't keep up with the amount of work I have to do. Poor Denise had been waiting ages for me to return her next manuscript, so I ended up having to pass it on to another editor. It's a shame because I do love editing, but it's unbelievably time consuming and I need to have a life! Anyway, I hope you enjoy this novella, and if you prefer a full-length book, In Her Defense is the second book in the Heart of Justice series, and it's available now.

Click here for an excerpt, or read some of the reviews:

• Mrs. Giggles gave it an 86
  
• Wild on Books

You can buy the book here.

So I think I can dance

I haven't talked about my latest hobby, but The Boy and I have been going to dance classes for over a year now. We started with salsa last year but we kind of got bored with it late last year. At around the same time, we discovered zouk lambada. Let me tell you, if we hadn't prepaid for an entire term, we might never have made it to the second lesson. The Boy HATED the first term. Zouk is much dancier than salsa and I think it was very challenging for him.

Luckily, he had a chance to relearn the basics in a more gradual way and he grew to love it. Mostly, he loves the music and as his dancing improved, he grew to love the dance.

Or maybe he loves it because there are never enough guys to partner with, and there are some very hot chicks dancing zouk.

Anyway, a few people have asked me what zouk is. It's actually what the music is called and the actual dance is like a slow lambada (hence, zouk lambada). This video shows about the level that we're at (sorry, can't embed).

That's how I think I dance. In reality, you'd have to double the dancer's weight and make her a bit shorter and, obviously, what I see in the mirror? Doesn't come close to what she looks like. But in my mind the resemblance is uncanny!

(And if you're not that impressed, here's a more advanced routine.)

---
And in other news, Smurfette is no longer on the boob. When offered, she basically laughs in my face and runs off to find real breakfast with Daddy. Of course, when I mention "boob" at night, she's all over me like it's the only thing that can possibly make her happy. A little actress, that one.

Munchkin is almost fully weaned, too, but I have a confession to make. She was probably already self-weaned, but I cajoled her back to the boob. She might be the last baby I breastfeed, and I'm not sure I'm ready to let go yet. I love that she gets cranky when she can't find me in the morning. Even if she only stays for about 2 minutes before she runs off to find real breakfast with Daddy.

There are blazes I remember

Although I've not been blogging regularly here, I thought perhaps I should post to say that the bushfires that are making international news are nowhere near me or my family. Most of the fire is in Victoria, which is quite a way from us---although we'll be driving around it when we go to the Australian Romance Readers Convention in a couple of weeks. As you can imagine, I'm somewhat apprehensive about this, but The Boy reassures me that he's looked at the travel route and it's going to be okay. It remains to be seen if this will still be the case closer to our trip as these fires can be pretty unpredictable.

I hadn't actually realised that these fires were raging until the weekend. Last week, my mum rang my dad to come home from his Friday night mahjong game because she could see smoke and thought there was a chance that they'd have to evacuate. My parents live quite close to a national park and so we're a little paranoid about bushfires. Luckily, that fire was quickly doused.

What pisses me off is that the fire was started by an arsonist. Fucker. Sadly, this is a common story. Some fires start off from random sparks or lightning strikes, but from memory, the vast majority are started by firebugs.

I've lived in two suburbs that, while not bushfire prone, have been close enough to major bushfires to be put on alert. I remember one year when we'd find burnt leaves in the backyard, blown across by the wind. We'd go out to the yard and the sky would be dense with smoke. Even though it was unlikely that the fire would jump to us, it was sobering to think that some kilometres away people's homes and lives were being devastated.

The other big bushfire year that I remember was when I lived in the house that my parents are in now. Roads less than 10 minutes away were being closed due to fires. Looking back, I don't think we were even close to being evacuated, but I remember the stress of living in uncertainty. I can only imagine how much more difficult it would be for people who have to decide whether to stay and defend their homes or evacuate with nothing more than a carload of their most precious possessions.

Because I'm a total wuss and I have absolutely no idea how to defend a house against a bushfire, I'm quick to say that I'll evacuate as soon as it even becomes a topic for discussion. In reality, it's not that simple. It's easy enough to talk yourself out of the danger and act in a riskier way that you may realise. It's also easy to misjudge the danger simply because bushfires spread on the whim of the wind and, as this year's victims found out, even 5 minutes could mean the difference between surviving and perishing.

As of this morning, the death toll stands at 173. That's a huge number when you consider that the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983, previously touted the worst in Australia, claimed 75 lives. When you watch and listen to interviews, you can hear the shock and anguish of ordinary people who have not only escaped within minutes, but who know people who are missing or have died, some who survived but whose spouses or children didn't. I've heard stories of people who were found near fully loaded cars, just about to leave when they were engulfed by the fire.

It rained here yesterday, though I'm not sure if any of it reached the bushfire areas. At the very least, we can only hope that the winds will die down long enough for firefighters to contain the remaining fires. The wind is the unknown factor and poses the greatest danger at the moment.

For anyone who wants to help, you can donate to the bushfire relief fund via the Red Cross (1800 811 700) or donate via your local bank. The blood bank is also urging people to come in and donate urgently needed blood.

And in case you didn't know, North Queensland is dealing with flood, which is just mind-boggling. They, too, need help and have suffered casualties. You can help by donating via the Salvos.