Chattanooga Choo-Choo!

Hi Milla.

It's Mom.

We're a week away from your 1st birthday (can you believe it?) and you're getting cuter by the minute. You're also talking. A lot.

So I figure that, before you get any older (and start talking back), I need to document some of the utterly adorable things you say.

1. 'Up.' You say this perfectly clearly. And in context. When you want to be picked up, you go up a stair or you get to the relevant bit in 'Twinkle, twinkle...'

2. 'Go.' You say this one in context too - but with Lourancia's accent. So it sounds like 'goh', not 'goe'. Very cute. Especially when you're marching out of a room, after the cats. But possibly something we should nip in the ol' bud (the pronunciation).

3. 'Yay!' This is my favourite. If you do something clever (d-uh, all the time...), I clap my hands and say, 'Yay, Milla!' So you've started saying 'Yay' and clapping your hands. Complete with a waspy private school accent. I love it.

4. 'Ba-ba.' This is your version of the first bit of Baa Baa Black Sheep a.k.a your Go-The-F**k-To-Sleep song. BUT it's also how you say 'bear', 'book', 'ball' and a host of other things that start with 'b'.

5. Right, now I'm just giving a list - cos I'm tired: 'doh' (door), 'deh' (there), 'ta-ta' (goodbye), 'gogo' (Hilary), 'didi' (Cindy), 'gak' (cat) and 'woo-woo' (dog). But no bloody 'mama' or 'dada'. Can you get a move on with those, please? Thanks.

May the next week be filled with fun, laughter, kisses and good times. And then you'll be O.N.E.

I love you.

Mom x

P.S Dad doesn't actually believe that you can say any of these things. The doofus. But you can chew on demand. Flippin' genius.

This has been a hard day.

Hi Milla.

It's Mom.

I'm going to have a bit of a whinge now. I'm sorry. But before I do, let me congratulate you on being cuter today than you've ever been. Dad and I agree: you are the ultimate deliciousness.

You're walking like a champ. You're able to understand most of what we say, and can bring us specific things - like your socks, your shoes, your book, your duck, your sunglasses, a ball, our phones - on request. You're also talking, and this blows me away. Cos it's real talking. Not babbling.

A week ago, the only word in your vocabulary was 'deh' (there). As of this afternoon, you can also say 'goh' (go), 'boo' (book), 'doh' (door), 'poon' (spoon), 'gak' (cat) and a few others. Amazing.

You're AMA-ZING.

Right, the whinge.

1. We're ... Jew-ish.

And this is a problem now that I'm trying to find you a school. My heart wants a Jewish school for you, because that's what I had, and loved, and what made me feel secure and comfortable with who I am. My heart also wants a Jewish school because I feel horribly, hideously guilty not sending you to one.

But my head acknowledges, albeit resentfully, that the oft-lauded Jewish education of old is not what it once was. There are better schools out there. Better-run, better-financed, better-equipped, better-staffed schools.

The fact that I probably can't afford one notwithstanding, and aside from the very real fact that I should have put you down when I peed on those (two) sticks... and not waited til now.

Anyway, bottom line? There are two pre-schools on the shortlist. One, a Jewish play school and pre-school nearby; the other, a multi-faith Montessori pre-school. I've provisionally registered you at both. I need to visit more schools, clearly, because I want a mix of them. I want the best of both for you.

Alas, there's only one primary school on the current shortlist. But my odds of winning the Euro Lotto are higher than those of getting you one of five coveted places at this particular establishment, as you're not a sibling of a current student, nor am I an alumnus. So, here I go again, darlin'. Lookee, lookee.

2. I'm feeling sensitive.

Twitter was a twitchy place for me today. There were under-currents and tensions and innuendoes, and while I'm usually super-chilled about those sorts of things, I took them very much to heart today. I've decided to lay my cards on the table in future and to take the risks inherent in saying what I think.

3. I'm feeling PND-ish.

So, I've been better for ages and ages. The meds work, I'm loving motherhood (even working motherhood), and I'm more or less back to the old, mad, energetic me. Except that I have the odd daily bout of sadness. Of heartsoreness. Of pre-panic-attack-twinginess. Nothing actually comes of them, and they're not helped by my chronic inability to eat properly or get enough sleep, but they are there all the same and they're taking it out of me. I'm depleted. There's not enough of me left at the end of the day.

4. I'm feeling guilty.

At this moment in time, I don't want more children. I wanted my perfect little girl. I got you. I adore you. And you're all I want, need and - if we're being honest - can handle :) So I'm not in the market, so to speak, for another birth or another baby (I loved being pregnant, so I'll gladly do that bit again.)

Is there something wrong with me? A lot of the moms I'm friends with, even those who work and are utterly, utterly exhausted, are gearing up to gear up for #2. And when they ask if I want more children, and they all ask, and I say No, it's all they can do to thinly veil their absolute horror. Some even tell me that it's 'cruel' to have only one child. Bullshit. I had a great life. But that requires its own post...

So, there you have it. Mommy's four whinges for Monday 13 March 2012. It was 72 months (six years) yesterday since Dad and I became a couple, and sadly, this has been a hard day. But now I'm off for dinner and a movie with Dad (you're sleeping over at Yiayia), so it can only improve.

May you have mostly easy days - and be able to handle the few hard days that come.

I love you.

Mom x

'Support panty thin' isn't thin...

Hi Milla.

It's Mom.

Sunday morning. 9am. You're asleep in Dad's arms, on the couch. He's asleep in yours. It's a delicious thing to watch, but more than that it means an hour or so of free time for me. I've had a strong coffee and run a bubble bath. And guess what I'm doing?

Yup, blogging.

Why the fek is this girl wearing Spanx?

Sitting on the edge of the bed - bath going cold in the other room - and blogging. Because something interesting occurred to me this morning, while I was browsing on The Fancy (my favorite iPhone app and the most fascinating thing ever, for the moment):

The kind of thin you look when you wear granny broeke a la Bridget Jones is not real thin.

I have become (or, if I'm being honest, I've been for a while) the kind of person who looks okay in most clothes but requires the heavy-duty assistance of Woolworths Spanx to look truly streamlined. And that's not okay with me. It's not good enough.

You see, The Fancy is characterised by many, many haut couture photos of, among other things, women is exquisite clothing. And while I'm usually not altogether wowed by fashion in general and expensive, floaty, skinny-person fashion in particular, I've realised that the open back look is quite lovely.

Like this.

But you can't enlist the help of granny panties for your back.

So, the time has come to stop farting about, to re-read my '10 breaths, 10 kilometres, size 10' post, to start eating 3-5 meals a day like a normal person, and to lose those last 3.5 blasted kilos (tho' by now it's probably a nice, round 4kg) sometime before you're old enough to grab my belly fat, shake it and sing 'The Wheels on the Bus'.

Your birthday is in three weeks.

Yes, in three short weeks' time you'll be one year old. Kan jy dit glo?

Aside from the amazingness of that, and aside from the fact that you've been in our lives for a whole year now, making us happy and proud and being funny and cute and clever and generally wonderful, in three weeks you'll be a toddler. Not a baby.

And I'll be a mom. Not a new mom. Just... a mom. A normal mom.

And as I've said many, many times to anyone who'll listen, any baby fat I still have by then isn't baby fat. It's just fat.

However, since there's no way in hell I'm going to have lost those 3.5 (okay, 4) dratted kilos in three weeks, I'm going to focus instead on eating more often, eating more slowly, exercising with purpose - not just because it's in my diary - and not snacking on your leftovers.

Onse Charlize. Circa 1980-something.

I swore I'd never be that mom. Too late, she cried.

And just in case you're starting to wonder how vacuous I really am, you can stop wondering, beautiful child of mine. I am vacuous. Some of the time. I believe it's healthy. A measure of vanity, vapidity and vacuity is perfectly acceptable in a person, provided that they're also sufficiently intelligent to accurately define all three.

May you be mostly a rocket scientist, but sometimes a vain one.

I love you.

Mom x