If I close my eyes I am instantly back there, sitting cross-legged on the floor of our family room underneath the IKEA shelves and fold-out “architect’s desk,” scribbling on scraps of paper. Sunlight slants sideways from a big wall of windows, the curtains decorated with lime concentric circles. There are lime-and-red cushions on the chairs.

The family room is dominated by a gigantic, yellow, vinyl, double-sized beanbag. On days that I am sick and stay home from school, I lie lengthwise in this beanbag and Mum lets me watch daytime TV. On one particular afternoon, one that has gone down in family folklore, Mum lets the dog inside to “comfort” me. He races through the kitchen and leaps onto the beanbag, not realising I am already in it until it is too late. He lands on my head. From that day until the day he dies, that dog will never leap into that beanbag again.

I’m not in the beanbag when I close my eyes. I’m on the floor, under the furniture. I’m writing a book. Scraps of paper surround me and on each of them is a new page of my story, thick with misspellings and childlike illustrations. Later, Mum will staple all the pages together to create my book. I am rewriting Black Beauty. “Black is my favourite colour,” I tell Mum, “because I love black horses.”

That is the first time I can remember thinking I want to be a writer.

In the years that follow, I swell with pride when my story is printed in my primary school newsletter, the Panorama (because my school’s name is Wideview, get it?). I pen self-conscious and intensely melodramatic dramas during my hippie stage in high school, inspired by a blood moon rising beyond the horizon. Once, I create a mythology for “the birth of the sun.” In my description of the “raw power and force,” I believe I have tapped something deeply inspired. My English teacher tells me she feels as though she is reading a motorcycle advertisement.

Later, I write a fable about time. A travel memoir about growing up in the country. Poems about broken hearts. I subconsciously turn every job I have into a writing job, until I stumble into a commodity analyst/journalism role and my editor becomes my mentor. Writing is now my profession, but the words I create are a long way from those motorcycle-advertisement dramas. Now, I write about wool futures and cattle markets. About business leaders and political decisions. The subject matter is less than inspiring, but my editor teaches me about plain English, the elegance of minimalism, the value of self editing.

Hunched over my desk under a flickering flourescent light on a contract writing-job for a client, I write a novella in between memos and reports. At home, insomnia turns my brain into the rabbit hole to Wonderland. My novella spirals with it, and transforms into something unintentionally tainted with magic. When the editors at Curtin University’s Black Swan Press approach me to publish my book, I am as proud as I was the day the Panorama sent out photocopies of my Nancy Drew-inspired adventure. Possibly more.

The day I get the letter to say cutbacks in funding mean Black Swan will be closing, and my contract is void, I am devastated. I take it personally, and it is months before I write again. But then I do write, and I burden my next character with more humiliation than I have ever known. It is cathartic.

I am writing this on the floor of my lounge room, cross legged, wrapped up in my dressing gown with my lap top on my knees. My two children are upstairs asleep. Madeleine is two and two months, and she loves to create stories in her little notebook. “One day…” she will promise out loud, while scribbling across a page. Then she will mutter for a little while over more pages and more scribbles, before closing the book with a loud clap and announcing, “The End!”

My fingers on the keyboard are my livelihood but, more than that, they are the outlet for my deepest emotions. The telling of my story, and of theirs. The retelling, the rewriting, the foretelling.

For one reason or another, I have been remembering snippets from my childhood lately.

* My father, singing in the shower. Every morning. Steam seeps from under the pale-blue door, and the sounds of splashing accompanied by the operatic yet essentially-tuneless tones of “Oh-ho-me-oh-ho” echo through the house. It isn’t until well into adulthood that I realise Dad has been singing his own version of O sole mio.

* I wake up extra early and set the table for breakfast each morning. When everyone else gets up, they say “Look! The fairies have been to set the table!” I beam with pride, even though I know they know. But my morning is fraught with tension because I am terrified of being caught. If anyone gets up before I am finished and comes in to thank me, I am devastated. I race out of the room in a temper of tears. I still don’t know why.

* My cousins and I are going to be detectives when we grow up. We set sticky-tape and talcum powder traps all over the house to entrap burglars and parents.

* The horse-mad phase. The outside of my bedroom door is a larger-than-life poster of a horse, gazing out into our hallway from over a stable door. The door-knob into my room is in fact a cast-iron stable latch. Inside, the floor is covered in straw matting. All my furniture is made of wood (“like a stable”), and aged and cracking bridles and spurs found in my great-grandfather’s garden shed are the chief decorations. A wall-frieze of Norman Thelwell cartoons circumnavigates the room.

* Mum has given me my own patch of garden, and we plant radishes together. The sun is hot on the back of my neck, the earth smells good. In the weeks that follow, I water and watch my radishes impatiently. I am so excited when we finally pull them up. Wash them, slice them, eat them in a salad. And then tears. “Mum, these are horrible!”

* Our tree house. It is up, up, up in a willow tree, accessed via rope ladder, and it is SO great. Why did I never decorate it?

* I’m in trouble for something, I don’t remember what. I hurtle into my bedroom and throw myself face-down on my bed, next to my cat Peppy. “You are the only one who understands me Peppy!” I cry. Peppy purrs.

* Peppy’s favourite place to hang out is the second floor of my Barbie Townhouse.

* I can’t decide what to call my new doll. In the end, I decide on Betsy-Ann-Amanda-Aunty-Rose and the name is never to be shortened.

* Which reminds me: Tikki Tikki Tembo-no Sa Rembo-chari Bari Ruchi-pip Peri Pembo. And his little brother Chang.

* My budgie Simon is a hand-me-down from somebody else and he is already old when we get him. He has a strange growth at the top of his beak. We take him to the vet to find out about the growth and find out that Simon is a girl. Mum tries to rename him Simone but it won’t stick. I try to teach Simon-the-girl to talk but if she ever speaks, it isn’t to me.

* Daisy chains, made from clover flowers.

* There is a soft, clay patch at the side of our house. All the neighbourhood kids come over to our house with plastic spades and we dig a really gigantic hole, big enough for us to climb inside and get covered in clay from head to toe, before we are discovered. We estimate it will take a good week to finish this project. We are digging to China.

What is making you nostalgic?

Photo is by Lizzy Gadd, licenced under Creative Commons

Sunday, 3:30pm: We are picking lemons. I LOVE picking lemons! Mummy says I’m very busy. I think I will shout. ME BUSY! ME BUSY! The lemons are up very high in the tree. This is so exciting, how can I contain myself? I know, I’ll yell. UP HIGH! UP HIGH! Now I think I will run around in circles. Oh there’s my dog Oliver! Catch Oliver! Catch Oliver! Why is he hiding under the table?

3:40pm: Mummy is picking lemons without me! Nooooo Mummy! How could you? I am devastated. Waaaaaaah! Me! Me! Where is Oliver? No, wait, I’m picking lemons. Me busy Mummy! Me busy!

3:41pm: I am very good at picking lemons. The neighbours should all know about this. YEMONS! ME BUSY! ME BUSY!

3:50pm: We filled the whole basket. I can carry it Mummy. Me!

3:51pm: Oh no! The basket tipped over and all the lemons fell out! Waaaaaaah.

3:52pm: We are picking up all the lemons and putting them back in the basket. Me busy Mummy! Me busy! Oh look there’s Oliver…

4:15pm: Mummy is washing the lemons, ready to make preserves. I help! I help! I know all about baking. I’ll just get my little stool. Here Mummy, I’ll bring you all the things you need from out of the cupboard and put them on the kitchen bench. Flour. Cocoa. Vanilla essence. Golden syrup. Hundreds and Thousands. Cornflour. Now I’ll bring your baking things. Big mixing bowl. Rolling pin. My pink mixing spoon with the pig on the end. A whisk. These lemons will make excellent chocolate cake!

4:16pm: No Mummy! Don’t put those things away! We’re baking! Waaaaaah!

4:17pm: Why is she putting lemons into little bags? The freezer Mummy? I open de door! I OPEN! I opened the freezer door for Mummy. I am very good at that. I closed it too. Oh look! Oliver is inside the house. Catch me Oliver…

Monday, 4pm: Mummy is stuffing rock salt into partially-defrosted lemons. It is probably chocolate cake. I will lick the bowl. I’ll quickly grab it before asking, in case Mummy says no. YUCKY! Waaaaaah! Lemon juice and salt do not taste like chocolate cake AT ALL.

So, lemon preserves. I followed this recipe. Two big jars are now resting quietly on a dark shelf at the top of our pantry, ready for the eating in about a month or so. Unlike Madeleine, I am doubtful that they will taste like chocolate cake. On the other hand, I am hopeful that they will be delicious. Do you have any recipes using preserved lemons that you’d recommend?

ps. more from Madeleine’s diary here and here

This post is slightly off-topic but it seems a lot of my friends have fallen pregnant lately, and some of the questions and comments they’ve been sharing are pretty familiar. And I thought if they were raising these questions and I had raised these questions, then quite possibly a lot of other people would have these questions too. So I thought I’d share what I discovered in case you or someone you know might find it handy.

So first of all, hey Mama! Congratulations!

And secondly, arg! How annoying is that ‘pregnancy elimination diet’!?! That gigantic list of things you’re not supposed to eat when you’re carrying around a little one inside you, that miraculously as soon as you CAN’T eat them you really, really want to? Yeah that one.

Of course deciding what you will and won’t eat while you are pregnant is completely your decision, and I’m not here to judge. But in case you found this entire field as tricky to navigate as I did, I thought I’d share this handy printable list I created, to help you out.

Basically, the key reason it’s recommended that you avoid certain foods while pregnant is because of the risk of consuming a bacteria called Listeria monocytogenes. The risk of Listeria infection is low, assuming you eat properly prepared and stored foods. So a lot of people don’t worry too much about it. I get that. But if you DO happen to consume Listeria, even a mild infection can cause your baby to be born prematurely or be very sick when they are born, or even cause miscarriage or stillbirth. As a chronic worrier, that was something I wasn’t going to risk, so I was all up in the faces of the FOOD DON’T lists.

I found the most difficult time to follow a “pregnancy safe” diet was when I was eating out. Which happens to be a lot. You could almost guarantee that there would be at least something on any menu item that was on the DON’T list. So I created myself a little check-list, the size of a business card, that I carried around with me. Wherever I was, I could look up the food on my list to see what was safe to eat and what wasn’t.

(Embarrassing confession: this list came in especially handy with all the cheeses – simply saying “no soft cheese” wasn’t enough for me because there are so many cheeses that half the time I didn’t know what they were called. I’d think I was reading the name of a mushroom or something.)

Alongside Listeria, the other thing the health experts recommend you limit when pregnant is your mercury intake, which can damage the foetus and is found at high levels in some fish. This isn’t a big risk because you’d have to be eating these types of fish quite regularly for the mercury to build up in your blood (and it is recommended that you do eat fish during your pregnancy), but I included the high-mercury-content fish on my list, just to be sure.

My food card is a kind of amalgam of the NSW Food Authority list of foods to avoid when pregnant, and a similar list from the Victorian Government Better Health Channel. Bear in mind that my list is by no means authoritative, and you should do your own research and/or check with your doctor if you are unsure. Also, I erred on the side of caution in most cases so if the lists said “don’t eat unless you have done X, Y or Z,” I just put it on the “don’t eat” list, because honestly that was easier to remember!

>> Here is my Pregnancy-Food-Safety-Card. It’s business-card sized, so you can simply print it off then stick the sides back to back (or just print it double-sided if you have that kind of printer). I laminated mine so that it would survive nine months in my purse.

>> If you want to adapt the card to your own food-choices, here it is in Word format so you can edit it.

I hope this helps! xx

Do you have any handy tips or resources from your own pregnancy that you can share with other mums to be?

How is it possibly even Monday again? I mean I know it’s a cliche to talk about the weekend going by so fast but I HONESTLY think I blinked and missed it.

Approximately two hours ago (in my head) it was midday on Friday and one of my best friends in the world, Cara, was due to arrive any minute on a visit from Sydney. Then she DID arrive and I couldn’t even go to the tram stop let alone the airport to meet her, because a) I didn’t have a car and b) Harry was sleeping upstairs in his cot. Poor Cara made it to our place in between showers and hailstorms and… we think that was SLEET. What? How cold was it in Melbourne this weekend!?! I kept seeing friends’ feeds on Facebook of frolics in the snow basically just outside town and it was all so beautiful.

Cara and a bunch of our other friends joined us at the Epworth Gala Ball on Saturday night, which was organised by Mr B and his team. Just us and more than 1300 other people, raising money for medical research. (Cara was adorable because she’s from Sydney and the cold weather was killing her so she wore thermals under her dress. She is a stunner so she could get away with it, but I still thought it was pretty funny). And permit me a little boast but I am so incredibly proud of Mr B and the people who work with and for him because that night they raised $5.6 million to go to medical research. That is INSANE. There were two people on our table who pledged a million and 1.2 million each to this cause. When the first woman announced her gift – a lovely lady in her 80s – you could literally feel 1300 people hold their breath. We were all thinking, “Did she actually say what I think she said?” and then the whole room erupted in applause.

The ball had a “Rio Carnival” theme and later we were all up and dancing to cheesy Latin music, including the 80-something-year-old lady. I want to be like her when I’m old. Not just rich and generous (although that would be nice), but also fun and cheeky and celebratory and go-get-em fun-loving. She has lost her husband, and battled cancer more than once. She and her late husband made their money by sheer hard work. They weren’t tycoons or heirs, they were hard-working, careful-saving, and smart. And now she gives and gives and gives again to charity, because she genuinely cares. Then she laughs and cracks a slightly-blue joke, and tears it up on the dance floor.

Another highlight of the evening was when, during the Latin-style dancing, they announced a conga line. I said to Mr B “Let’s sneak away,” because there is NOTHING WORSE than a conga line. And he agreed. So I started to walk back to our table and he had his hand on my waist and the next minute we looked behind us and there were six or more people all holding onto us and it turned out WE HAD STARTED THE CONGA LINE. Which was horrifying and hilarious in the same moment.

We stayed in a hotel that night and Mr B didn’t get in until almost 4am and I didn’t sleep much before that because babies and hotel rooms don’t always go well together, and we all four of us ended up in the bed together. Thank goodness for luxurious, king-sized hotel beds! When we woke the next morning, bleary and tired but on massive highs from the night’s success, it was so beautiful. Everybody smiled at each other all at once. Madeleine threw herself across my body to kiss Harry, and Harry exploded into giggles. Then we ordered a big breakfast and ate it in our room overlooking the city.

I strapped Harry to me in the Ergo and walked out into Melbourne’s coldest morning in 16 years. Cara texted me. “It is 1 degree!” and I said “Isn’t it great?” and she simply responded “ONE DEGREE.” I guess she was glad of those thermals. Harry and I were each others’ hot water bottles so he quickly fell asleep and we were fine as we walked from Crown Casino to Gertrude Street where we met Cara, and Madeleine and Mr B caught up with us. By this time the day had warmed up to one of those perfect sunny winter’s days that are like peering at the world through the finest layer of ice and nothing is more clean.

Madeleine was a trooper despite the night of broken sleep and no nap, and only had one meltdown all day. So we all rocked up to yum cha before heading home, where Madeleine and I picked and washed lemons to make preserves while Mr B and Harry had a nanna-nap together.

And the next minute the kids were both asleep in bed and Mr B and I were watching something cheesy on the TV and the weekend was over just like that and I SWEAR everything I’ve just written only happened a couple of hours ago, and the weekend is about to begin.

Treasure Island,

X marks the spot.

DAGGER IN THE BACK!

Blood running up,

Blood running down.

Blood running up,

Blood running down.

Crack of an egg!

(Spiders and bees).

Cool breeze?

[Whisper]: Tight squeeze.

{From my bloodthirsty childhood, to theirs. What was your favourite game?}

At any given moment, if you were to pop around to our house unannounced, there would probably be piles of washing waiting to be folded and put away, overflowing the green chairs in our hallway. As you stepped over the plastic toys and pushed passed the jolly-jumper hanging from the door frame and waded through the various baby-bibs cultivating dribble and milk and browning banana and finally made it to the playroom, your feet would probably crunch over a thick layer of dry Weetbix crumbs. Madeleine likes to crush her own Weetbix each morning before the milk goes on and, as much as I’d like you to think otherwise, I do not vacuum every day.

If you looked inside my handbag on any given day you might find, nestled in with the purse and keys, a couple of broken crayons, a half-empty container of bubble liquid, a sippy cup, yesterday’s gummed-up rusk in a zip-lock bag, and about a thousand used tissues.

The sheer amount of stuff involved in modern parenting staggers me, and accepting at least some of that stuff into my life and home was one of the most difficult transitions I had to make as a parent. (When I lived alone, I would actually take pleasure in adjusting a book on a table until the seemingly ‘casually-put-down’ angle was just right. Yes, I am that person.) As someone who likes everything to have a purpose and a place, and as someone whose home is also her workplace, cumulative kid-detritus can quickly feel overwhelming.

While I was pregnant with Madeleine I had plenty of noble ideas about children in “the olden days” not needing all the STUFF that our consumer society deemed necessary today, and that I would make up in interactive play for what we limited in toys and things. But as any parent could have told me, stuff creeps in. And some of it, while not strictly necessary, does actually make your life easier. Parenting two small children while working, and on extremely limited sleep, is tough. It is tempting to take the easy way, to let the stuff in because it saves five minutes here or buys 10 minutes of peace there. I’m not going to feel guilty about that.

But not all stuff makes life easier. Some stuff just gets in the way. In the way of creativity, of clear-thinking, of mental health, of the path to the kitchen. And some stuff might be good stuff but when combined with about a billion other small pieces of “good stuff” it becomes bad stuff. Claustrophobic, messy, over-crowding, unwelcome stuff.

Last week was not a good week around our place. For various reasons were were all stretched, capacity-wise, and tempers began to fray. By Friday afternoon, my subconscious had somehow centred the entirety of my own unravelling temper on all the stuff in our house. It was driving me crazy. WE HAVE TOO MUCH STUFF I CAN’T BREATHE IN THIS HOUSE. And so I started on a paring-back rampage.

It was cathartic in a way that probably should have been predictable. I worked until late that night on the playroom, sorting out toys to give away or throw away, putting some in a cupboard out of rotation, and bringing others out. At the end of it I’d removed two giant garbage-bags worth of toys and other bits and pieces from the room, and Madeleine’s previously overflowing toy-box was only one third full. When she came down in the morning, she was thrilled. There were her favourite toys, easy to find. Here were some “new” toys she’d never discovered because they’d been buried under all that stuff. Harry had his own little cart in which to store his toys, and Madeleine quickly cottoned on to putting Harry’s toys away whenever they were dropped.

That afternoon, Madeleine lined up her two dolls in chairs next to Harry, pulled a collection of books from the shelves, and proceeded to “read” to all three babies. I hid in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea while leaning on the bench, and listened to the stories. Later we pulled out the paints, one of Madeleine’s favourite activities, and it was approximately 78 percent less stressful than usual for me because with the room so much cleaner and more organised, the combination of two-year-old and brightly coloured paints didn’t seem anywhere near as chaotic.

Not once did she ask where all her stuff had gone.

Do you want to start your day off really well? Listen to this.

Is there any sound in the world better than a baby laughing? It is right up there with a cat purring and the tea being poured. Probably better than both, which is saying something special.

Sometimes when I am in the middle of my everyday, just going about my business of feeding children and dressing children and changing nappies and kissing scraped knees and bringing out the craft paint and putting away the craft paint and changing the children’s clothes and washing the paint-covered clothes and finding the lost toy and finding the other lost toy and feeding the children again and reading stories and playing chasings and playing hide ‘n seek and changing more nappies and supervising ‘sharing’ and, and, and…

… Sometimes in the middle of all that I will get a lump in my throat so large I can barely swallow.

It happened to me yesterday as I was carrying Madeleine upstairs for her afternoon nap. She wrapped both arms around my neck and rested her head on my shoulder. “Just a little nap, Mummy,” she reminded me. And there was the big fat lump, blocking my words, making my eyes swim.

It is in ordinary moments like these that I am reminded of just how extraordinarily lucky I am to have Madeleine and Harry in my life. And how narrowly I missed out on having them, if I hadn’t changed my mind about having children until after it was too late. The thought that they almost weren’t here leaves me breathless.

Ours was a chilly and sometimes wet weekend, tailor-made for staying home. For jaffles and baking and craft and family dance-parties. Madeleine hosted her very first slumber party, with one of her cousins, and you have never seen a two-year-old more excited. She quite literally jumped for joy at the prospect of it, and the reality sent her into a frenzy that was so extreme she could barely contain herself. At one point as we sat around the table having dinner with her aunty and uncle and two cousins, already an hour past her bedtime, Madeleine repeatedly kissed me on the lips. Not for any reason, except, UNCONTAINABLE EXCITEMENT.

It is on weekends like this that our house comes into its own. When squeals of laughter bounce off the walls and little feet thump-thump-thump down the hallways. When the kitchen smells of toasted cheese and chocolate cake, and tiny fingers reach up to trace circles in spilled flour on the bench.

Half-wilted flowers grace an old jar on the dining table: they were carried home in sweaty palms by my beautiful daughter and niece after a coffee-run with Mr B, and thrust at me with so much pride.

There are many things I love about my home and, of course, many things I would change and many things we have yet to do. That’s what happens when nesting and budgeting go hand in hand, I guess. But the thing I absolutely love most about my home, towering above everything else, is having a place from which to welcome the people we love. Even with no pictures on the walls, and so much left to do, my house feels like a home because I am able to make others feel at home here too.

Do you ever read design blog Design Sponge? It’s a favourite of mine. One of the regular features, called “Spaces,” opens up beautiful homes from around the world. In each post, the home-owners (or renters) are invited to share something they love about their home, or their favourite thing to do or place to be within their home. I find it really interesting to read this. We are all so different, and yet there are definite themes that emerge.

What about you? What do you love most about your home? What do you like to do most in your home?

Photo credits: all images of “home notes” are used here with kind permission from Grace Bonney at Design Sponge. See the homes they come from at (from top) 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5, or click on the photos themselves. All other photos are either mine or licensed for unlimited use under Creative Commons. They do not relate to the homes in the comments.

It is dark when I wake up, and Harry and I spend our winter mornings together on the rug of the lounge room floor in the gentle quiet of the predawn. I draw the curtains to let the day in but outside, the stars are still bright. Harry wiggles and squeals. “Dad dad dad dad dad,” he says. I kiss his impossibly soft cheeks. “Say Mummy!” I tell him. “Dad dad dad.” The door is closed to keep the heat from escaping. Through it I can just hear the soft click that means the kettle has boiled and I ease my way off the floor, feeling ancient, and shuffle into the kitchen to make tea. “DAD DAD DAD DAD” Harry yells cheerfully at my retreating form.

I love these early mornings and guard them jealously. Sometimes on a weekend, Mr B will offer to get up with Harry to give me some more sleep. It is tempting. I am sorely tired, and I haven’t had a true, decent night’s sleep in more than two years. Not one night. But these mornings are worth even more than sleep. So I drag my body out of bed and hold Harry’s chubby little hot-water-bottle-body close as we climb down the stairs. Flip the kettle on. Ease Harry onto his mat on the floor. Tickle his ribs. “Dad dad dad dad.” “Say Mummy!” And so another day begins.

It is so rare that I am still, in life, ever. Still of body or of mind. I multitask obsessively. I can’t even relax doing one thing: I’ll draw or craft or write while watching TV. I’ve never been good at meditating, I’m one of those people guilty of composing shopping lists and having imaginary conversations with people at work while supposedly entering a guided meditatively-zen state at the end of a yoga class.

But these winter mornings teach me to be present in a way that meditation never has. I sit on the floor and smile at Harry. There are books and magazines and my phone and my computer nearby and they call to me, but I have learned that the best mornings happen when I leave all those distractions closed. It’s just me and Harry and that cup of tea.

I know I’m not the only one finding the pace of life almost insane these days. It’s such a cliche to talk about the progress of time but have you realised that this year is already more than half over? Wasn’t it just New Years? Just last month? Life tilts in a dizzying chaos, and any tasks I put off can languish neglected for months that feel like mere days. It’s as though the rush and roar of our planet and its moon hurtling around the sun can actually be heard and felt, and in the cacophony of that cosmic journey we all have to yell and scream and jump up and down just to be heard. Even to hear ourselves.

But in the still, dark morning, the planets pause. The world hovers. Venus hangs like a jewel outside my window while the dawn waits to happen. My legs are crossed on the rug beside Harry (“Dad dad dad dad”), my fingers are laced around the Pantone colour mug I have chosen to match the mood of my waking (orange or yellow for energy, blue for creativity, sage green for calm), and it is perfect peace. Dawn can wait.

{All photographs licensed for unrestricted use under Creative Commons}