Why so serious?

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R has been going to gymnastics for over a year. She goes to a fairly small club that emphasises fun over competition which is probably the healthiest approach to children’s sport. Yet we almost didn’t rejoin this term, and the main reason was that I didn’t see much improvement in what R was doing. She also often lost interest by the end of the class and instead of practicing she’d do absolute minimum and make faces at me, in her usual monkey manner.

I talked to a few parents while sitting on the bench waiting for R to finish her classes. One girl who used to be friendly with R dropped out after Christmas because her Mum didn’t see results (and it was inconvenient for the whole family to do sports on Saturday morning). A couple of people I knew from my previous jobs brought their kids – and then I didn’t see them anymore. Both of the parents echoed my secret desire to see their kids doing perfect cartwheels and flips when we chatted. I am not sure what happened after – all I know I don’t see them at gymnastics anymore.

In the end, I was talked into continuing by another mother whose daughter has been doing gymnastics with R for a while. I look forward to talking to her every Saturday and that was probably the biggest reason why I signed R up again. That, and R actually telling me she enjoys gymnastics.

By the middle of the term R’s cartwheels suddenly improved. She now pays attention at the end of class. And come to think of it, she’s generally far less clumsy than she used to be.

Somehow she still mostly just enjoys the class, sometimes getting things right, sometimes not. I can imagine myself if I was somehow transported into a child’s body without losing the tendencies of my own age and experience – I would try to get the most value out of each class, do everything just right, constantly increase complexity and compete with myself. In other words, I would probably take all the fun out of it. I’d take it too seriously and get frustrated. I’m pretty stubborn so I as that imaginary child would probably not quit – but I probably wouldn’t get any joy out of it either, too focussed on results.

Needless to say, when I was an actual child I did not have that mindset. I did quit ballet after two years and I didn’t finish music school. The approach towards children education both in sport and in music back in Russia had nothing to do with fun and recreation – you were expected to work hard to get results. And I know that a lot of my enjoyment of music was lost in my childhood because learning music was all hard work and very little fun. Only now, many years later, I allowed myself to play the piano very casually, occasionally, for my own enjoyment – although I suspect if I didn’t have the excuse of having three children, a full time job and too many hobbies, I’d probably start trying to get more serious about improvisations and all the other skills that were not covered in my childhood education, possibly getting to the place when playing the piano is not enjoyable once again.

Yet R who can be pretty resistant to any kind of pressure somehow, almost by magic, managed to acquire skills just by sticking to weekly lessons and not taking them too seriously. Yes, it took a long time – a very long time by the standards of our impatient times. But the big plus is, she’s still enjoying it, too.

I had a dream that my children would do nippers (train to be lifesavers) – who wouldn’t enjoy running around on the beach, training to be safe in the ocean? R, that’s who. She started just before she turned 5 and she hated it then and the next term when we tried again. She hated being last while running, she hated how sand hit her bare legs when it was windy, she was clingy and miserable and so we quit. And a voice in my head told me for years and years that R didn’t enjoy anything all that much and maybe it was worth persisting despite her wishes. I know that voice is not really an enemy, it’s the same voice that urged me to practice reading and writing with R and researching the best ways to learn spelling and maths. Yet in the end what often works best with R is just giving her time and agency to decide how she engages with whatever she’s doing.

And as it often happens in parenting, I am not sure who learns more in all this – the child who acquires a skill of doing cartwheels and writing complex sentences, or the parent who learns to let go sometimes and trust the process and their child. I know I am currently trying to apply whatever I learned in my own life: hold my desires very lightly and don’t take them too seriously, invest time in following my interests and slowly build skills without fixating on it. Maybe one day I’ll be able to do a cartwheel too.

Riding in the rain

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It was supposed to rain all day yesterday but it cleared up in the afternoon. On Saturdays we have fish and chips for lunch then I walk around the lake talking to my mother on the phone. Lately I started including R in these walks – she rides her bike while I run along (sometimes) or walk behind (more often). She decided to come with me yesterday too.

Since it rained a lot in the morning, the parking lot was nearly empty. We were off to a good start. R didn’t want to wear her rain coat despite the stiff breeze so I was carrying it myself. I knew it would be muddy in parts of the track but didn’t have the heart to tell R that her pretty new cardigan, t-shirt and her jeans would probably get mud on them once she blitzed over a few puddles. She rode off past one playground, the water sports shed then another playground and I smiled thinking how much more confident on her bike she got over the last few months.

I called Mum and we were chatting about the weather in Siberia (hot) and our updates for the week. All that time R was far ahead, stopping from time to time to let me catch up. Finally, we got to a muddier area.

“Too many puddles,” R said when I walked up to her.

“You can do it, just go faster,” I said, interrupting my conversation with my Mum, then pushed R a little to help her over a puddle.

R grumbled and groaned but went over a few muddy tracks. I kept talking to my mother until it became clear that R needed a better motivational speech than I was providing. I said good bye to Mum then turned my full attention to R. She was by then moaning that she’s not enjoying riding the bike through the mud. The back of her cardigan was now speckled with mud.

We bought the bike more than two years ago and R rode it a handful of times with training wheels. At the end of last year I decided that it wasn’t right that R still couldn’t ride it without training wheels – she had no problems on her balance bike when she was three but we spent less and less time walking around after having twins. We’d drive to a playground and there would be no time or space for R’s bike. I was hoping my parents who were visiting for Christmas holidays would take R out and teach her but after one or two times my Dad admitted defeat – he had no desire to run after a kid’s bike, even if the kid in question was his beloved granddaughter. Understandable when you’re almost 70. So one day I decided that James and I would both go to the park with R without the twins and make sure she learns. The night before she cried to me that she would never learn to ride it without training wheels. On the day she sat on the bike, started pedalling and ever since then the training wheels were a thing of the past.

I wanted R to enjoy her bike. Part of it is my own great memories of riding a bike everywhere. My bike was heavy (and was technically my sister’s) and the first time I rode it by myself I went over some dried up mud, fell down and sliced my leg open with a sharp part – I still have a scar to show for it. It didn’t deter me. I rode with a friend who lived nearby and by myself a lot. I was a little older than R and when I wasn’t reading I was riding the bike everywhere. I wanted R to have at least some of that experience even if I can’t imagine letting her go off by herself.

It started drizzling and R’s complaints intensified. I helped her put the raincoat on but her bell bottom jeans were wet and muddy up to her knees. I kept telling R that it was an adventure while considering putting my own raincoat on.

Then it started raining a bit harder.

You’d think we’d turn around but by then going back would’ve taken longer than pushing ahead – besides, I didn’t want to turn back. I wanted R to push through the mud and the rain and find if not pleasure then satisfaction in that ride. Something I felt many times while sitting on the rail of a sailing boat in the rain; dreaming of hot tea and bagels yet somehow also finding something compelling in that experience. Perhaps people climbing mountains while experiencing lack of oxygen feel it to a larger extent. While I don’t expect R to seek out uncomfortable experiences, I do want her to go through some to gain more confidence.

In other words, while my main parenting tool is cuddles, I have some of Calvin’s Dad in me (from “Calvin and Hobbes”) who always insisted that doing hard things builds character.

When it started raining harder, R was borderline crying. I started running next to her while telling her she’s brave and strong and capable. After a while she started arguing with me. “No, I can’t ride a bicycle as well as boys! I can’t do this anymore!” Unfortunately, by that stage there was no alternative. We had to keep pushing on to get back to the car. So I kept running next to R but instead of coming up with a somewhat intelligent speech I turned her semi-cry into a full-on scream, the excited kind. It seemed to work to an extent, at least R started pedalling much harder to keep up with me until we were out of the park and on to the footpath – a final stretch to the car.

I found uplifting speeches and books that teach behaviour completely ineffective as R’s parent (the twins are somewhat different). In movies a well formulated monologue always seems to help at least a little. R was always skeptical. And she could always feel an agenda in a book a mile off (when I tried to wean her and read her books about weaning she learned to hide the books very quickly). But running next to her and screaming into the void seemed to be effective.

Just when we thought we were in the clear, it started pouring down. “Go fast R”, I said without trying to teach anything anymore. “Go to the car as fast as you can, I’m right behind you.” By then we were both soaked and I gave up trying to avoid puddles as my socks and shoes were completely drenched. R got into the car and I loaded the bike in.

“I want to take off my pants, they are so wet,” R said.

“Don’t you want to go to Woolies? I’ll buy you any lollies you want”.

So we got lollies and a yoghurt for each of us, then R took off her soaked jeans off and I drove home. By then the rain completely stopped.

At home, we sneaked upstairs for a hot bath. When we were finished, the bath was covered in mud.

“Well that was an adventure,” I said.

“Yeah, I even liked the start of it,” R said.

We went downstairs where I told James and the twins how brave and strong and capable R was while she plopped on the couch to watch cartoons.

Drifting to music

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First time I listened to music to help me fall asleep was after my sister died. I was 19. My sister and I used to have identical beds pushed against opposite walls but after the funeral, when all the visitors left and we returned to somewhat normal life, my parents helped me move things around and drag my bed close to the window.

We lived on the ground floor of a typical Soviet apartment block with its thin walls and loud neighbours. At night, when everyone settled to sleep, there were noises coming from the outside, scuffling and scratching, that kept me on edge. I tried to convince myself that they were from cats or dogs until the central heating’s pipe started shaking – I am still not sure if there was a person in the basement underneath our apartment at nighttime. I don’t think I ever saw a homeless person on our street during the day but there were definitely rumours of them, at least among children. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to hear any of it and I also didn’t want to hear my parents through the wall so I would put music on, playing on the lowest volume setting. It created a presence in the room that settled me. Nobody talked to me about my sister’s death which seems weird in retrospect but felt natural at the time. Having Zemfira whisper her songs to me at nighttime was the closest thing to an intimate conversation available to me.

Next time I remember using music as my sleep crutch was in Moscow, during my first business trip. By then I moved to Saint Petersburg, got a second degree and was beyond myself with excitement about having a real business trip staying in my own room at a hotel. My coworkers and I spent the days in instructor-led training at the Microsoft office (my first experience with free lunches at a tech company). It was a trip I’ll never forget and as I was lying on my hotel bed I went through all of it in my head, the metro stations, the grumpy passersby I asked for directions, the never ending sleet and the tall buildings disappearing into grey clouds. My brain still does it after a day that is somewhat unusual, trying to process it all and not letting me sleep. I remember listening to Morcheeba and I still love that song and listen to it sometimes.

Years later I was in hospital after giving birth to twins. 2020, height of COVID, no visitors are allowed in the hospital and the midwives are run off their feet. A room in a maternity room is almost never quiet. Newborns always grunt even while asleep, there is medical equipment everywhere and you can hear people outside. The inside of my head was even noisier, as usual, and I found myself unable to sleep despite being exhausted. So I got my AirPods and listened to a Spotify playlist: Zero 7 and Thievery Corporation and all the other dreamy, trip-hoppy stuff with gentle voices that feel like comforting presence when I need someone to whisper in my ear to settle my restless mind. I kept up listening to that playlist for a while after getting home until it was no longer needed as I was dropping off to sleep whenever I could, no external help needed.

I traveled for work recently, to Vegas and then to Singapore and once again I was shutting down my brain at the end of the day by listening to music. I didn’t realise it was an unusual thing to do until I mentioned it to someone. Maybe people find other ways to wind down – they do body scans or count sheep or take melatonin – I’ve tried all those things myself, too. Yet I find nothing as effective and as comforting as music mumbling into my ear, just at the edge of my consciousness. It never crossed my mind to think why, until now. And now that it did it’s tempting to wrap all these little anecdotes together in a neat narrative. Interpretations come to me easily, unbidden. Maybe I need a voice from outside of my head to relax the inner voice? Maybe the gentleness of that outside voice compensates for the harshness of the voice inside of me? Or perhaps I’ve been so lonely throughout different periods of my life that music bringing an illusion of closeness was what I needed?

I know an explanation would make for a more compelling story. Yet more and more in my life I tell the part of me that tries to analyse everything to shut up. Explanations inevitably reduce things to the very basics and that’s not what I’m looking for in life. Besides, things closely examined tend to lose some of their magic and do I really want to use my mind on something that helps shut my mind off?

It’s good advice that you just didn’t take

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The other day I overhead R giving W advice in a sweet patient voice reserved exclusively for her sisters when they haven’t annoyed her yet: “Don’t say that you can’t do it. You can if you keep trying! You already learned to do so many things so just keep going and you’ll get there”.

Excellent advice. It’s always uncanny to hear your words repeated by your kids to someone else. And when I tell her the same thing (R tends to say she can’t do something a lot) it doesn’t help much in the moment and I sometimes wonder if she can even hear me. Apparently she can.

Kids love giving others wise advice, at least mine do. Before the twins were fully toilet trained, my parents who were visiting at the time took them to a playground and W had an accident in her undies. The entire way home I. was lecturing W that she should be using the toilet. Should I mention that she herself was wearing a nappy at the time?

So kids are little hypocrites. But so am I and I don’t claim to be little anymore. I tell R to stop striving for perfection and just start doing whatever she is afraid to do instead, step by step. I try to encourage her to try different things (with various success). I tell her how much I love writing (she hates it to the point I sometimes wonder if she is my child). But do I listen to my own advice? I am exhausted all the time so instead of writing or even reading I stare at my phone even though reading Reddit makes me feel slightly nauseous, like eating too much cake. Sometimes I catch myself watching meaningless videos on Facebook, it’s my way of disassociating and numbing myself (especially when I’m overwhelmed by noise, both inside and outside my own head).

We are all told that the best way to encourage kids to do something is modelling. It doesn’t always work in a straightforward way but we definitely normalise whatever we do in front of them. So I better model not being a hypocrite. And when I tell R I love writing I should probably back it up by actually writing. And when I say there are many fun things to do, I can point out to her that I play the piano at least occasionally and sometimes I crochet. Maybe one day I’ll even have time for sailing again. One can dream! Most importantly though, I’m learning to be kind to myself so they at least know that it’s the best (and normal) thing to do.

Another year has flown by

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I often think about being a little numb to life; how a monumental tantrum or some unexpected mini-disaster takes over my life for an evening / a day / a week and then it’s gone and I move on very quickly, returning to my morning walk, my customer meetings, my school pickup and I have no time to mull it over, to obsess over it, to think of better way to handle certain things. I am still not sure this is what people talk about when they advice against rumination. To me, it seems like I also lost the mental space to consider and digest, not just ruminate. A friend asked me, to my delight, if I was going to write another yearly reflection and I have been writing in my head in little spurts ever since, hoping I’d be able to fit in at least another blog post before then, and yet here I am. I am still grateful for this quiet, rainy day when I can sit by myself and think about a year it has been.

It’s a year when the world felt broken again, with the continuing war in Ukraine and many civilian victims in Israel and Gaza. Interest rates are going up and everything is getting more expensive. The tech world was obsessed with AI and Chat GPT. In an attempt to control what I can I started going to the gym and managed to finish a strength training program I heard a lot about but had never done before. Then I started another one. At times going to the gym felt amazing, and sometimes it was just a pain, another thing that I had to do. I had some business travel this year and the girls were sick during winter a lot so my workout routine was interrupted quite a few times – yet I got back into it and even when it wasn’t perfect it was much, much better than not doing it at all. I probably won’t go back to the body I had pre-kids but I am determined to have strong muscles even when I am in my 60s and 70s.

Work was challenging this year, with a hard economic climate and constant changes and me finding my stride in a deeply technical field. I’ve worked, laughed and ranted with some fantastic people (some of them became good friends) and I have learned so much. And at the end of the year I am finally taking substantial time off – my parents are coming tomorrow!

Around my birthday this year I had arguably the biggest freakout about my age I’ve ever had. A friend casually dropped a comment about the importance and my lack of social life when we were catching up and it clearly resonated and awoke something dark in me as I cried on a morning walk thinking how I don’t have any friends anymore. Thankfully, another friend talked me off the ledge (in hindsight, it is a little strange to complain about lack of friends to an actual friend).

I. and W turned 3 and their personalities continue to be very different. R and I. are now in a semi-constant state of bickering mixed with sisterly love. They are now playing together more – but also fight much more. Willow mostly prefers her own path, either quietly chilling, angrily demanding something or giggling her head off. All three like playing “The floor is lava”. I remember R’s early years so vividly and it seemed like they lasted for so long – yet the twin’s first 3 years feel much more like a blur. I also remember R getting progressively easier each year – yet it sometimes seems to be the opposite with the twins. I have now braved the playground by myself with all three and everyone survived even if it wasn’t an easy (or particularly enjoyable) experience for me.

After a conversation with R’s teacher I started obsessing over helping her with writing and, to a lesser degree, maths. The education system is quite different in Australia to the one I went through and both have their strength and shortcomings. I am now reading books about better spelling / math instruction – or rather those books look at me forlornly from the overflowing bookshelves as I stare at my phone, overwhelmed. I did manage to help R improve her handwriting and some of her general writing skills but not nearly enough (she asked me how to spell “if” yesterday…). She also seems to be enjoying reading much more. Last year she attempted to sign cards to everyone in her class – but ran out of steam pretty quickly. This year she completed all of them and another one for her teacher, she’s done it in batches and 99% by herself – all I did after buying the cards was making her a list in the middle of the process so she could see who she’s done the cards for already.

It feels like I’ve done at least 300 loads of laundry this year (I am tempted to start counting and put it in a dashboard somewhere). I caught thousands of Pokemon on my phone (I installed the game to play with R but instead it made me go for walks more often – I walk more than 50 km each week including a 2 hour walk on most Saturdays). I changed loads of nappies (then the twins seemingly toilet trained themselves… at least partially). I’ve been thrown up on more times than I care for to remember. I managed to read some books. I felt awe while looking at a sleeping child almost every night (some nights I was way too exhausted). I went to Las Vegas and Auckland for the first time in my life. James and I went to a wedding in New Zealand by ourselves. I finally bought myself a piano and played the entirety of “Fur Elise” and not just the easy part. I feel like I worked hard all year in all areas of my life and I felt like little changes overtime added up to something significant if modest, even when it’s not all that noticeable from the outside.

My wish for next year is for more peace, more creativity, less sickness for the entire family (and more fishing for James). And if you got to this paragraph, I hope you have a wonderful holiday break and a great year ahead.

Goodbye 2022

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This year, 2022:

  1. After some beautiful weather in early January, it started raining. It rained so much that sewage and dirt ran off into the sea spreading brown patches of pollution along the shore. It was too dangerous to swim in the ocean or in the rock pool for months – and then the winter came. It rained so much that cars were trapped in flood water on major roads. It rained so much that Riley’s school was closed and we were asked to pick our kids up as soon as possible and as I was driving back in the rain the tires were sliding on the wet road, the car beeping in alarm. It rained so much that one day it took James two hours to get the twins home from daycare (as opposed to usual 20 minutes) because so many roads were closed due to flooding. We were lucky – we live on a hill so our place didn’t flood apart from a small leak from the roof on the day it was raining particularly hard. It’s impressive, considering there are little trees growing out of our gutters (we have been waiting for several months now for the real estate to organise them to be cleaned).
  2. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 and I lived in a state of disbelief, anger and sorrow for months. The war in Ukraine is the main reason I haven’t been updating my blog(s) this year as nothing felt good enough. The general horror about this war was interspersed with personal worries: would I ever see my parents again (after two years of COVID when they couldn’t visit)? What do I say to my Ukrainian friends here in Sydney (one of which brought comforting homemade food to me when I was struggling with tiny twins)? What do I say to my friends in Russia? The anti-Russian sentiment online was overwhelming and I struggled to deal with it, too. This year made me feel more Russian that I have felt my entire life as I grieved for all the good things about the country, my childhood, my friends and relatives. It’s been immense relief that my parents got a visa and are coming for a visit just before Christmas (in two days!).
  3. Our family had a new virus seemingly every other week. We all had gastro (it’s real fun with 3 kids) and numerous unidentified viruses where kids (and James) vomited occasionally and had awfully upset stomachs. James ended up in emergency with dehydration once because he couldn’t hold any water. Willow spent a week in hospital again, this time not with pneumonia but with RSV. James was looking after her during the night in the hospital and I wrangled the other two kids, getting them to sleep then making sure that Riley goes to school before handing Ivy off to James and spending the day with Willow. Later in the year one of my teeth got infected under the crown and I had the worst toothache of my life. It eventually got extracted and local anaesthesia didn’t quite work so for the first time ever I had to run to GP in tears begging for strong painkillers. James was out of town at the time so after getting the painkillers, still uncontrollably crying at the pharmacy, I had to rearrange my face and go pick up Riley from her after school care. We also got COVID-19 for the first time, and I copped it the worst in our family even though it was fairly mild. We treated the entire family for nits – twice – and I am not keen to repeat that particular experience although at least we got rid of them. On the plus side, after much anxiety I got started on a tooth implant and had a consultation with a much better eye specialist than the one I saw previously. The eye doctor said I probably wouldn’t go blind in one eye, after all, and my future surgery might have much better recovery than previously expected.
  4. We bit the bullet and bought an investment property in Brisbane, a house much better than the one we are renting in Sydney. The interest rates immediately went up, property prices in theory went down but in reality there are now fewer houses for sale and fewer again for rent. We dream of owning a house and never having to rent again, not dealing with landlords and owners who can kick you out at any point but that dream won’t come true for at least a few more years while we have two kids in daycare.
  5. I changed jobs twice this year and each decision had merit at the time even though in hindsight I might have done some things differently. I learned a lot and not just in tech. By the end of the year I started feeling so burned out I promised myself I wouldn’t change jobs again for at least a couple of years.
  6. Riley started and finished kindy this year, her first year in “big school” with its own challenges. By the end of the year she started doing some team work with other girls but I was still unable to urge her to say “Hello” to the lovely lollipop lady. At times I felt like tracking sports uniform / library books / news day / reading folder days was a full-time job in itself, plus drop offs, pick ups, lunches and fruito-vego boxes, birthdays and trying not to feel like a total weirdo while talking to other parents. James and I were both too exhausted this year to organise a birthday party with friends for her this year and she didn’t seem to care much so instead we went to her grandparents’ house with its pool and the jumping castle hired by her Nana. She can read now but doesn’t particularly like it. We also established that while she’s physically active she hates organised sports so we gave up on nippers and she started swimming lessons again.
  7. The twins turned two and Ivy is speaking in sentences. Willow talks quite a bit too but she’s generally quieter (although she tends to complain more). All our kids are quite strong willed in their own ways but the twins are somewhat less intense than Riley used to be at that age as in they still destroy the house very quickly but are not as prone to extended meltdowns. Sometimes all three children even cuddle and comfort each other instead of fighting. All three probably use screens too much but we are still in survival mode and I am slowly trying to guide them towards books instead.
  8. I started drawing on my iPad and privately writing for myself a little, tried a dancing app and routinely dedicate time to walking in the wetlands nearby as much as I can. I managed to catch up with a friend for dinner for the first time since Riley was born. We also travelled to a wedding in New Zealand leaving kids at the grandparents for 3 days, something we had never done before. It was glorious. James managed to get one twilight sail in (I do still miss sailing…).

It’s been a difficult year with a lot of changes and challenges and I don’t expect 2023 to be much easier although I am hoping for less sickness next year and no more job changes. More laughter, more creativity, more time with the family and friends, less weather surprises and dare I dream of no more wars?..

Zoom zoom

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I started driving fairly late in life, and learning to drive will be forever entangled with the early years of immigration for me. The theory was easy but the practical skill of driving turned out not to be. It’s hard to separate my own lack of confidence and skill from the culture shock I was feeling, and the ever present shadow of a dysfunctional relationship with the boyfriend who taught me to drive.

After I got my license (and eventually broke up with the boyfriend) I drove quite a bit for a while. But the moment I didn’t have to, I stopped. It was never quite relaxing. I always preferred to walk if I could. We bought better cars for our growing family. Riley, our first, was a fireball of a baby in many ways, and she hated the car. I attempted taking her to a few places by myself and ended up on the verge of tears as she worked herself up into a screaming mess of pure distress and anger. After a few times I almost completely gave up driving, even by myself. I still haven’t driven our car with all three children in it.

These days my life is very different from those early years in Australia when I was learning to drive and tried desperately to fit in, it’s better in almost every possible way. I’ve got a family who keeps me grounded even when I feel like I’m losing my mind. I have deep friendships. Better job. Better job prospects. And today, probably for the first time in my life, I realised that driving to a shop well and truly felt easier than walking even though it’s not a long walk. There was no struggle in my head over it. No “everyone is doing it so you should be too!”, no “don’t be a chicken and just do it”, no “oh well I know I can do it and I will”. Just getting into a car, driving there, parking, getting the ice cream and driving back.

It truly felt like amazing progress, even after over 10 years of driving.

For most people in Australia it probably is nothing. They might have not moved to another country by themselves with no money to speak of or rebuilt their life from scratch by themselves; they might have not mastered another language or got two degrees or had twins; but driving – that’s a given for most people, more natural than walking in many cases. But it is significant for me.

These days Riley loves being in a car and we go to the beach together. We got a second car so I could drop her off at school (she’s starting “big school” in a week!) and she enjoys the simple little car even more than our big fancy car with reverse camera and leather seats. In some ways, so do I.

It’s the little things that strike me sometimes when I look at my past achievements. Being able to make small talk and joke around in English. Being comfortable with phone conversations and meeting new people (a double bummer for introverts who speak a second language). Hopping into a car and just driving wherever you need to go. We concentrate so much on bigger things: our relationships, our jobs, our bank balance but the little things can be such a struggle precisely because it’s something that is seemingly effortless for everyone else but you. I might strike another little thing off my list now and that’s a great start to a new year.

The Monster

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We nearly didn’t go to the inspection of the house. I was pregnant with twins and nauseated by the drive; Riley wasn’t that interested in the places we looked at. And James was about ready to give up after both houses we had seen that day turned out to be not what we were looking for. We had some time before the third, the final inspection for the day and we sat on a bench gazing at the lake and considering just going home but then eventually James said, well, we might as well have a look since we are so close anyway.

The house was huge and it appeared even larger to us after our cramped two bed unit. There were a lot of people looking but what I remember the most is the garden: the lemon tree full of ripe lemons and a mandarin tree and flowers everywhere; and a tiny golf area behind the house. I remember white walls and white shutters and the fireplace which I knew would excite James (and – secretly – myself) but probably would be a hazard to the unborn babies in my belly. The back room would be good when my parents came to stay with us, the whole COVID business hopefully behind us soon enough. The huge amount of space and the lemon tree; relatively close to the beach and the lake but not so close that floods would be a threat. We started calling it a beach house before we even put in our application.

Only after we got approved we realised that the place didn’t have a dishwasher. “I’ll just do the washing up myself in the sink”, James said, ever an optimist, but I knew we’d struggle, especially once the twins were born. So we talked to the agent and then directly to the landlady who didn’t hesitate to just drop in at any point of the day; she sent a handyman in who cut a hole under the sink to put the dishwasher in. “I don’t mind,” – she said. “When I move in I can just slide my own dishwasher in there!”

That gave us pause. Our lease was for a year but we assumed we’d be staying far longer that that; I was slightly panicked at the thought that we’d have to move when the babies were so little. It was too late to cancel on the move. We paid for the installation and bought a slimline dishwasher as a bigger one wouldn’t fit in the provided hole; the plumber commented that the pipes were very old and would cause trouble eventually and I told him we were renting and wouldn’t be replacing the pipes.

The house was ancient, minimal repairs done for a quick sale. The gardens around it were majestic and covered in spider webs. The bathrooms smelled of mould and we immediately changed the old toilet seat which stank of urine no matter how much bleach I put into the toilet bowl. It was a stark contrast to our previous place with a fully renovated bathroom and the beautiful deep bath I spent hours in while pregnant with Riley. We told ourselves we could make the place our own though; I had a cleaning schedule going and got a cleaning appliance specifically for the ancient wooden floors. When I got too pregnant to move too much, James kept up with the cleaning as best he could. I put removable stickers in Riley’s room and got her a star projector; she finally started sleeping through in her own bed. It was getting cold and we had the fire going making the whole place cozy and welcoming and as much as I missed our old neighbourhood sometimes I also started to enjoy my daily walks to the waterfall and looking out in the garden and the clothesline outside that made laundry so much easier. We found a tiny playground just around the corner and Riley was always excited to go there on her bike as I tried to keep up, huffing and puffing and holding on to my giant pregnant belly.

James investigated and it turned out that the landlady’s other property was for sale. He called her and she said she was going to move in to the house once it sold. That made us anxious once again but our neighbours told us not to worry too much – the place had been for sale for ages so who knows when it would sell. We had no choice but stay and we chose not to think too much about it for the time being.

We had enough on our minds regardless – first preparation for the arrival of the twins and then their actual arrival. Life became a blur of feeding, newborn naps and cuddles, Riley’s adjustment to being a big sister. Christmas and New Year were strange that year, with our neighbourhood the only area in the whole country to be in lockdown. We ordered Christmas takeaway (Riley, the pickiest of eaters, had none of it). When James went back to work after the holidays I was all consumed with caring for the twins, a never ending, overwhelming task, as the house fell into a messier state.

And then one day our landlady showed up, as was her custom, unannounced, and told me that she sold her other place and that she’d be most obliged if we moved out by the end of March.

It was a shock. Not only because it was barely 10 months since we moved in (the agent told us we were actually safe in the house until the end of May), not just because the market suddenly went crazy and it was insanely hard to find a family house to rent. We were struggling to keep afloat with our everyday life caring for three little kids, how on earth could we possibly find a new place, pack and move? And who rents a place to people expecting twins only to yank it away with barely a thought while the babies are so young?

Despite all that, we started looking straight away – the house was poisoned to us and all the little things that we shrugged off or laughed about before turned into massive sources of irritation growing into something reminding hatred. The ancient cupboards and pantry with doors that never stayed closed. The creaky floors and lack of any sound proofing so you couldn’t clean up the kitchen after the kids were asleep as it was too noisy. The spiders everywhere you look, outside and inside. The mould in bathrooms and seemingly starting to grow everywhere. It seemed like the house was suddenly possessed by a monster who spread its mouldy tentacles around everything. The landlady kept calling me suggesting we move to an apartment with a view or a two bedroom house (she told the gardener I was too picky when we declined).

The citrus trees were still there; and so was the space. Riley still played outside in the yard sometimes. But I couldn’t wait to leave. And we were lucky enough to find a different house a few weeks later despite the crazy market. We even moved out in time to make it easy for the landlady who moved in the moment cleaners left. We now live a 5 minute walk away from the house and I walk past it with the pram daily. James told me he felt weird when he looked inside one last time: it was our place and we were booted out of it. But when I think of it I only remember the monster tentacles; the stink and the mould and the feeling of dread while the wonderful memories of the cozy fire and the tiny twins we brought there from the hospital belong to us only and are fully divorced from the place that was once our home. The new place is smaller and it doesn’t have a garden, just a small backyard but it’s full of light and it has newer bathrooms and kitchen. And while we are not enchanted with it we also expect no monsters to show up.

Growing pains of parenting

alenaroo3 Comments

When Riley was between 3 and 4 months old I woke up one day to the loud noises of tradies preparing to trim the palm trees outside our apartment.

The sounds of them laughing and yelling out instructions filled me with a mix of helplessness and rage.

At the time I felt trapped. It was a very hot summer, 40 degree days interspersed with tropical downpours and even if I did manage to get out of the house Riley hated our brand new expensive pram and started screaming before I could reach the nearby park. I also struggled to reverse our car out of the narrow car port but that didn’t really matter because Riley hated the car most of the time, too.

She was a very alert baby who did not go to sleep easily; I couldn’t encourage her to go to sleep by rocking, bouncing, shushing, patting her bum. The only thing that worked most of the time was breastfeeding her in bed. She also liked the baby carrier but mostly when James carried her, not me.

So when I heard those loud noises I realised that sleep would not come easily that day (not that it was ever easy with Riley). I tried – but understandably Riley was very curious about all the commotion and had no interest in sleeping whatsoever and I was sure she was headed into the dreaded territory of overtiredness. I eventually loaded her and the baby carrier into the pram and walked towards the park taking the opportunity to glare at the tradies who so inconsiderately ruined my day.

As I was walking, I was seriously contemplating writing a short story called “The worst day of my life”. Some part of me did think it was slightly ridiculous to call it the worst day of my life even back then. I lived through the collapse of a country, my parents losing all their savings, queues for bread, a death in the family. I moved to another city then to another country by myself, survived crappy relationships and worked for an employer who didn’t give a hoot about me, overcame depression that was mostly caused by my personal choices. Yet it really did feel like the worst day at the time and I could feel myself cracking at the seams.

I wasn’t sure I wanted another child for a long time after Riley was born. Her sleep was terrible for ages and she never stopped being a fairly intense kid. Eventually though James convinced me to start trying. For a while it didn’t look like it was going to happen, then came the shock of a miscarriage and then I found out that I was pregnant with twins.

While remembering my early days with Riley I promised myself that I would not be calling James in tears this time, that I wouldn’t be a blubbering mess, that I wouldn’t doubt myself nearly as much. I have since broken that promise. Only James knows how much I struggle some days.

Riley is not the challenge she was when she was a baby. Sure, she has her moments but there are also wonderful times. She is now four and says the funniest things. And she sleeps! She tells me she’s tired and climbs into her own bed and asks for cuddles. She adapted easily to new daycare when we moved and made friends and tells me what they do there every day and she’s an absolute angel with her grandparents and it’s not rare at all for us to have great moments when we are both giggling about something silly while making cookies or just horsing around.

At the same time, when your family grows from 3 people to 5 in one go, there are inevitable growing pains. Babies need to be kept alive and happy; the older kid wants as much attention as she used to get; parents are outnumbered at all times. We now have not one but three kids to put to sleep and for some reason they all want me. Some days there is just not enough of me. We have had all three kids crying at the same time a few times. I grieved about losing my exclusive relationship with Riley. I yelled at her in the fog of my exhaustion. Yet most days we manage alright. James is a much more involved father, not the guy who called me 10 minutes into my first walk alone after Riley’s birth (she was 6 weeks) telling me he couldn’t stop her crying. He now knows that if I don’t spend some time alone during the week I’ll be in a bad mental space and it will affect the entire family. He’s looked after all three kids by himself plenty of times. I have changed, too.

For a lot of us the desire to be a good parent who goes beyond the basics of physical care means that we also have to confront our own demons: our hidden triggers, insecurity, anxiety. If you don’t have kids you might never be pushed to your limits. People seek enlightenment in extreme sports and silent retreats but you might learn a lot of (unpleasant) things about yourself when your preschooler screams “Yucky Mama!” because she can’t wear the dress she peed on the morning after a night of multiple feedings of newborn babies and the said preschooler wailing that she doesn’t want to be by herself. You will discover that you feel angry when you’re screamed at, even by a little child with an underdeveloped brain or a tiny baby. You might find out that the never ending work of parenting does not feel rewarding at times. There are no promotions or breaks. And you might judge yourself harshly for anything that you perceive you are doing wrong.

I’m sure my kids won’t remember or think much about the years of breastfeeding and night wakings and managing tantrums and illnesses – not until they have their own kids. Not sure I even want them to. Let them be happy and well adjusted, surrounded by love and interesting challenges. I’d prefer them to hang out with me when they are older because I’m fun and because I’m the ultimate place of comfort for them, not out of the sense of obligation and filial duty. And I want them to remember me as a happy person throughout their childhood, a gentle source of support who doesn’t get easily overwhelmed herself.

There is a lot of messaging out there to ask for support if you’re struggling. I’m a little skeptical of it. For once, the reason you even need to tell people to ask for help is that asking is somewhat frowned upon and seen as a sign of weakness. We are surrounded by pictures of happy families and immaculately dressed babies and toddlers surrounded by wooden toys; yes, there is also a plethora of mummy blogs about the struggles of motherhood but a lot of the time it swings too far in the opposite direction with copious amounts of wine for the mother and nuggets served for all meals to the kids. Then again if you do ask for help what if you don’t get it? Nobody owes us help and especially not specific types of help; struggling mothers are routinely sent to Tresillian and other sleep schools that might work for some and terrible for others, well meaning bystanders often offer what seems like terrible advice (mostly about decreasing responsiveness even though it’s been shown again and again to provide best outcomes in the long term). What do we do when sleep deprivation and changing nappies all day are not the biggest problems, when the biggest problem of all is staying content among it all without daydreaming of abandoning your family to live in a cave where nobody ever needs you ever again?

There seem to be a lot of resources about productivity and hustle yet not enough about dealing with everyday challenges and our mental health; I’m not sure the skill of staying on an even keel through tribulations of life is taught routinely to anyone. With time I found resources that were helpful to me: some Facebook groups and books and real people who were happy to talk about their own struggles too. There is the most wonderful Possum Education clinic with its free tips for parents with babies and a book by one of its founders. She also refers to another wonderful book called “Becoming Mum”. I found ACT (as in acceptance and commitment therapy) hugely helpful and wish I got into it way before becoming a parent. I would also recommend the podcast called “The one you feed” to anyone who struggles (it’s not parent specific).

As a process of improving my own mental health I finally realised that feeling my daughter’s pain is not helpful. I was very attuned to it when she was a baby and as a result often found myself overwhelmed. I could not go down the same path with three kids instead of one. Plenty of people proudly call themselves empaths these days saying they feel other people’s pain acutely; that’s very similar to what I felt with Riley. Yet there’s research that shows that feeling other people’s pain actually prevents us from helping them – we just try to avoid people in pain. These days instead of getting upset myself when Riley has one of her intense reactions I try to separate myself emotionally to an extent and really listen to her and not my perceived impression of what’s happening; what I find a lot of the time is that when what we call “empathy” is in fact projection. And if you really listen instead of trying to stop someone’s extreme reaction the situation often diffuses itself and your connection with them is restored much faster. It works with babies too. You can’t stop them from fussing sometimes and there are few things more frustrating than trying to calm down a baby who doesn’t want to calm down. Their cries sound like the worst performance review of your life. It takes time to really feel it in your body that it’s not a reflection of you – you are the source of comfort for your children but they are still separate people who will inevitably react the way they want, not the way you expect them to.

I’m far from having found the way of perfect parenting, I still struggle. Yet now the sting of anxiety has been removed sufficiently from my everyday life for me to enjoy my babies when they are not fussy and to react with humour when they are (most of the time anyway). I now trust James to do his own thing with the kids as I go for a walk. I’ve taken all three of them for a walk by myself. And when I’m having a shit day it doesn’t cross my mind that it’s the worst day of my life anymore as there’s always a moment of two that I enjoy. And I know that after a while the photos of that day will most likely make me miss the times when my babies were little and needed me very much, so much that I used to daydream about running away and living in a cave somewhere.

Adventures in the night

alenaroo4 Comments

The twins woke me up at midnight for a feed. It was an uncomfortably warm night and I was parched. I shook James and whispered, “Can you get me a glass of water please?”

“Yes”, he said in a very sober voice. I waited a second. He was asleep again. I kicked his shin and said, “Bring me water!”

He stumbled out of bed and as he headed towards the bedroom door I hissed “Water!” again.

I heard him open the tap in the kitchen, filling a glass of water then drinking it. Then there was silence. The twins were feeding contently while I was straining my ears.

Where was my husband? He could be in the back bathroom. He could be in our older daughter’s room where he slept while I was pregnant. Or he could be on the Moon, I thought darkly.

Time passed. The twins finished eating and went back to sleep. I seethed.

Finally, my dear husband appeared at the base of the bed, empty handed.

“Where is the glass of water I asked for half an hour ago?!” – I hissed. He looked startled and injured in the semi-darkness of our bedroom. A minute later he finally brought me a glass of water which I gulped greedily while glaring at him.

He climbed into the bed and curled on his pillow.

“I am very upset,” he said and immediately fell asleep again.

15 minutes later Riley, our older daughter, woke up sobbing “Mummmmmy!”

After some persuasion James went to see what was wrong. Nothing was wrong except Riley didn’t want Daddy, she wanted Mummy (again).

“I don’t want to sleep by myself!” – she wailed.

It’s hard for me to understand her struggle with being by herself because I would like nothing better right now than sleeping a whole night by myself. It seems like a dream that will never come true. An uninterrupted night in a big clean bed with no other hot bodies in it… any time by myself is precious but at night especially.

After some whispering and cuddles Riley went back to sleep. I realised I needed the bathroom.

As I tried to get to the bathroom door opposite our bedroom I felt the unmistakeable horror of a spider web on my face. It was a terrible déjà vu I realised as the exact same thing had happened to me the night before but I somehow blanked it out of my memory. At that moment I was far more awake and I saw the culprit, a big spider, on the wall.

Once again I woke James up and hid in the other bathroom. The offending spider wasn’t even a huntsman (which are quite common inside houses in Australia), it was an orb spider which are all over our garden. A harmless thing really, except when it’s on you at 1 am in the morning.

Last time James decided to get rid of a spider in a humane way it didn’t end well. He caught a big huntsman in a takeaway container, walked out of the gate and let it go. It scurried toward the road only to be hit by a passing car.

“It would rather be dead than captured,” I said.

“Must have been one of those Japanese spiders from World War II”, – said James.

This time James didn’t try to do the right thing, killed the orb spider with a thong and disposed of it in the rubbish bin after wrapping it in a paper towel. No spider can escape a paper towel, right?

Miraculously, all three kids slept through the commotion and I spent some time after listening to everyone’s breathing and trying not to think of spiders. Then I slept too.