(journey to the centre)

black and white cat

Dear Ben,

A few days have passed now since you suddenly disappeared.

We knew something was up right away. Usually you beg us for food all day long, miawing noisy figure eights around our ankles, whether you've eaten or not. But Tuesday night you didn't come back for dinner, and we haven't seen you since.

I called the vet on Wednesday afternoon, you know. I asked if anyone had brought in a black and white cat. They told me no.

Instead, they told me that one had been reported dead, out on the tourist road. You weren't there though. Maybe they took you away before we could find you, so as not to disturb the tourists on their way to Devonshire Tea and knick-knack buying.

Poor old Benji. I'm sorry we were so mean to you. I'm sorry for all the times we told you to go and play on the road. We didn't know you would. I mean, you never even went in the front yard. But still. You were just so annoying, you see. A. Really. Annoying. Cat.

I'm sorry you were second best for so long. When I first got you, I had just moved out of home, and you were so spoiled. You slept curled up in my neck for the first year, Benji, and followed my moods as I ran around drunken and crazy in the city, or else slumped depressively in my bed. When I first met T. you were so jealous, and in typical annoying Ben fashion, you pissed on my bed almost every night for the first couple of weeks, patiently waiting and planning your deed until we returned home from the movies. Very romantic of you.

At least in later years you discovered the bathtub.

Poor old Ben.

You seemed to tolerate Felix' insanity with nobility, mellowing out finally. When he died last year, just a month before Jasper was born, we realised you hadn't mellowed out at all. We had just been blaming all the squabbling on him. In reality, you still loved to sink your jaws, your sharp claws into live, juicy flesh.

And you did. Remember the time you leapt onto T's hand and punctured a vein, sending fountains of blood flying across the kitchen? Remember how you would loll, relaxed, on the hallway floor, waiting for me to walk past, then you would pounce, clasping my calf in a needle-sharp, vice-like grip? Or how about the three tiger-lines you put across Jasper's cheek last month?

Ah, the fun we had, Ben.

I'm sorry for not being sadder. I'm sorry for knocking you off my pumping chair all the time. I'm sorry for yelling at you for breaking open my blocks of chocolate, and for ignoring your relentless calls to go in / go out / go in / go out.

You were just so annoying.

To be remembered with fondness and exasperation.

Tomorrow it will be a year.

This time last year I was pressing publish on a post about how painful Braxton Hicks contractions were, not knowing it was true labour.

My boy. One.

O.N.E.

Already his infancy is fading from memory, as he moves steadily now towards toddlerhood. There was a list in my head once, of things I wanted to remember about the early days: his downy head as I put my arms in the humidicrib, that first, politically incorrect laugh, the roundness of his belly. But I have forgotten, unbelievably, now.

How did I let it happen?

He's a beautiful boy, my Jasper. He is gentle, smiling, affectionate. He kisses strangers, wide-mouthed and flirty. He says dadada and hides his face in his forearm, already shy in a delighted kind of way. He is a real little pisces, the model I ordered, in the end.

At one year, he has self-weaned, learned to crawl, learned to pull up on the coffee table. He's a big boy, like he was when he was born - nearly five pounds for all his early gestation. He was ten kilograms - or around 20 lbs - two months ago  - I shudder to think what he weighs now. Suffice to say, I am needing the twice-weekly yoga sessions these days, with my shoulder blades under constant baby-pressure. 

Jasper loves music, like his dad. When there is music playing, he rocks back and forth on his hands and knees, beats his plastic drum. For his birthday, he was given his first infant-sized guitar - and would not let it out of his sight for tuning. When he grizzles from his car seat, I tune the radio to opera, and he sings tunelessly, adorably, along, sighing long high notes: Ahhhhh, Ahhhhh.

He is lovely.

And I miss my good ol' blog.

I've been thinking about it for a while.

I think it's time for me to finish this blog.

To all the wonderful friends I've made online over the last almost two years, thank you for your support. I will still be reading all your blogs as religiously as ever - I just don't feel like I have very much to say right here, that's all.

However, I do want to keep you all updated.

I thought what I would do is put together a mailing list and send updates every so often. Please, if you would like to be on this list,leave a comment.

I'd love to stay in touch.

You know, after everything.

 

screaming competition

At some point I'm probably going to regret encouraging such vocalising. (Do you like the saliva splotches on my shoulder?)

*

So, things here have been a little exhausting the last couple of weeks. I have still been spending my nights alternately working on the school magazine (which goes to print tomorrow, thank GOD) and compulsively playing on Etsy and salivating on my keyboard over people's awesome skillz while attempting not to use our nearly-maxed-out credit card.

The real problem, however,is that Jasper's sleeping has gone to ABSOLUTE SHIT.

He is doing that thing in his cot where he cries and wants to be picked up, and when I pick him up he stops and goes back to sleep, and when I put him down he wakes up and starts crying again. He is waking up to five or six times a night and on a bad night it will take more than an hour to get him back to sleep. Of course, I'm paranoid that he's hungry, but feeding him doesn't stop it, so it's not that.

Some nights he is ok. But usually not.

The whole thing has become rather a point of friction in our house, actually. At 3am, it is just easier to go to sleep with Jasper on the couch. In fact, as I keep pointing out, co-sleeping is a valid parenting choice for a lot of people. So sometimes I do it. More than sometimes, if I'm honest. But T. is kind of cracking it with me a little bit about that, having been through sleeping hell with my step-daughter when she was little and not liking to be abandoned for his son, too, I guess.

So we have been having many circular and occasionally ugly arguments about it, that usually cumulate in me calling him by his father's name and accusing him of being rigid and 1950s and anti-attachment and so on, while he accuses me of wanting Jasper to be too dependent on me. Etc. Etc.

But such is the flavour of marriage post-baby for many people, I would imagine. We make up quickly, which is the important thing.

Anyway, blah.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Ms Prufrock of Barren Albion and the awesome baby food blog, Mush, is organising another Christmas card exchange for this year.

Head over and sign up.

the inspiration for cabbage patch kids...

Sorry, all, for lack of postage. It's been nearly a month; too long.

But there hasn't been that much going on, really.

T. has recovered from evil illness which was finally diagnosed as a form of glandular fever. Jasper has finally decided he wants to roll back to front and has been waking up multiple times in the middle of the night with his legs caught in the cot slats. I have been very busy trying to master Indesign to complete the school magazine. (Yes, it began as "doing a few collages" and evolved to "complete the whole thing becasue the Year 12s have finished classes without finishing it." I am being paid CRT rates for this though, so I can't complain too much. It beats the glorified babysitting I was doing before.)

In other news - solid foods are going down a treat here. We are now playing with fingerfoods. It is classic baby stuff. It is super-grotty and involves having to wipe down the high chair becasue it is covered in spitty, soggy bread-goob. It's incredibly cute, of course, but I tell you, it takes some kind of work to relinquish control over the mess and accept the fact that there simply is going to be food mashed on everything and there's nothing on earth I can do about it.

The other thing that has been happening is that it is getting harder and harder to go anywhere. My boy, the best sleeper on earth - the baby who could stay out at poetry readings until midnight - is now not such a great sleeper. He doesn't want to nap during the day at all, for starters. He will usually only sleep if we are driving round in the car (Which does happen a lot, admittedly, due to the fact that I tend to go crazy if I sit at home for more than a few hours.)

And it's also been getting a LOT harder to put him to bed. He doesn't want to go. He wants to stay awake and try to watch the Simpsons and hang with mum and dad. He just sooks if I put him into his cot (and the sooks are getting more violent these days). So I have been breastfeeding him to sleep every night. Which I know is controversial and is supposedly the "wrong' thing to do, but meh. It works. You find a way to cope, right?

So things are cruising. The baby is growing. I am getting increasingly boring.

But I do like it.