Author: laranettle

Fish Frenzy

Mark and I did heaps of snorkelling in Fiji, as well as snorkeling from the island, we did a one day tour with the promise of a glass bottomed boat, but most of the coral around the island we visited was dead, so we were pretty dissapointed. The one highlight was feeding the fish, which I felt terribly guilty about – but it was very fun. The fish were all around me, and a few missed the bread and tried to get bits of finger. The good news is that they cleaned up my burn wound nicely…

Mama, why is it five o’clock?

“I don’t know baby, is it five o’clock?” – looks at clock. It’s 5.05pm.

“How did you know it was five o’clock?

Inigo points at the clock.

That kid just amazes me and amazes me. He’ll be three and a half at the end of this month, and is just going leaps and bounds with his learning. This morning (after multiple free trials), we bought a reading eggs subscription for him, and he is starting to read words of up to three letters. Everywhere we go, I have to read sign to him, and if I happen to get one wrong (or read the wrong sign), he often corrects me. For a while, he’s been able to read the names of all his nearest and dearest, and now he is also starting to spell them too. And for mothers day, I got a card that said “Inigo (heart) Mama”. He wrote all the letters himself – but daddy drew the heart for him to trace over.

I certainly don’t think he is the most brilliant child that ever lived, but watching him learn is so much fun, and every day is a new surprise.

And the emotional stuff is amazing too. This morning we were looking at a picture of Archie, and he said, “that’s Archie. He is my brother, but he died. I loved Archie”.

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Inigo on the bus to the marina from the airport.

Happy Mothers Day

Red – this one is for you. I know how you value correct punctuation 😉

Mothers Day and I have a turbulent history. This year wasn’t too bad, but the day before, and the day after were tough. Thank you to everyone who contacted me to let me know you were thinking of me. Knowing that others still expect me to be hurting makes it easier to get through the days. I often feel that six months is enough time to be getting on with things, but I know that is unrealistic.

And next Monday is my 41st birthday. No longer just 40 – soon I’ll be “over 40”.

As for my psych essay, there are over 900 students in my course, so we’ve been informed that it could take 4-6 weeks to get results back. I am trying not to sweat it.

What else do I need?

Inigo and I have been doing some gardening this morning. During a quiet moment, he put his arms around me and asked, “Are you OK mama?”.

I said, “Yes baby, of course. I have you and I have daddy, what else do I need?”.

“Archie and Aubrey”, he said.

Yesterday it was six months since my beautiful boy left us. I did nothing to commemorate the day, but I did think about him a lot. Six months, and my world has entirely changed. I’ve lost friends, gained friends, drunk a lot, gained a lot of weight, and cried a lot of tears.

I wonder what the next six months will bring.

Can you look at a brain, and tell how a person thinks?

And do we choose our actions? Or are our actions determined by something other than our conscious mind?

This made my brain explode.

Then I watched this.

And then Mark sent me this.

So to sum up. Your brain can signal that you have made a decision (and which decision you made) up to SIX FULL SECONDS before you are conscious that you have made a decision.

And if you vote conservatively, you are likely to have an enlarged amygdala (the fear centre of the brain). If you are more socially progressive, your brain shows more growth in the area that seeks out new and novel experiences. So, correlation doesn’t show cause and effect, but it does go a long way towards explaining Alan Jones.

*For our overseas readers, swap Alan Jones for Rush Limbaugh. Or any other appalling aging white man with a microphone and an agenda to frighten and alienate.

Mama, how do girls pee if they haven’t got a penis?

You’d be surprised at the vast array of things girls can do without a penis my darling….

Perhaps it’s to early to be discussing sexism and the other horrors of the world? I’ve told him that Libyans are getting killed because they don’t like their boss, that Japan got a big owie and it might get a lot bigger, and that having a morals clause on permanent residency is just plain mean, but I am not sure that feminism is going to sink in, since he is still not exactly sure what the difference between girls and boys is.

Comments?

Fiji

We’re off on Tuesday the 26th, and back on the 5th of May. We all have passports, and apparently I will be able to travel on my ticket despite the fact that my passport is still in my old name. We have Fiji dollars, we have sunscreen, and we have a small budget (Mark’s company will reimburse us for “expenses”, but I don’t want to bankrupt them with my daiquiri bill!).

Inigo asks every day, “are we going to Fiji today mama?”, and Bev and Ted have been showing him pictures of his father in Fiji at a similar age.

I’m not excited yet, because I still feel like it’s not real. It’s too amazing, and generous, and crazy, and I suppose I am still a little out of touch with reality.

I went to the neonatal loss support group at SIDS & Kids today, and consequently was a bit of a mess this afternoon. But there were women (and a man) there whose losses were a lot more recent than mine, so it was a positive experience to reflect on the rawness of their grief, and to realise that I really have come a long way in a short space of time.

Archie would have been six months old the day after we get back from Fiji. I’d be getting info about when to start solids for his adjusted age, and watching his gross motor skills develop in leaps and bounds. His curly hair would be doing its thing, and I’d be watching him get fatter and fatter week by week as I breastfed him, and breathed in his scent as he fell asleep in my arms.

Of course, if we had Aubrey too, the fantasy has a few more vomit stained tracksuits and a lot more screaming, but hey, it’s my fantasy…