Happy Birthday Junior C

Dear Junior C,

How exciting! You're a year old already!! We have already started thinking about trying for a little brother or sister (crossing fingers) for you...but that's another story.

This is about you. And the amazing year we've had so far. We celebrated that year with two parties! One party was with your family in Perth, and one party was in Canberra with your baby friends. You are a very lucky little boy.

You have changed so unbelievably much. You're really growing into a little person. You are very happy and easy going, even though your daddy says you're very serious. People are always commenting on how cute you are and how they want to steal your gorgeous, long eyelashes.

You're a well travelled baby. You've been to Perth twice, Tonga once, the Central Coast and Sydney numerous times. You are loving your swimming lessons, but you still can't blow bubbles in the water yet. We go to mothers group every Thursday. You love going for walks in your pram. And we love taking you in the pram because you fall asleep.  Last weekend we took you for a ride in your bike trailer and you fell asleep on the way to the shops and the way back.

You take after me with your very healthy appetite, which makes me so proud! But you take after your daddy in the sleeping category, and you STILL haven't slept through the night yet. But I've resigned to the fact that this is my lot in life. To cater to your needs during the day AND the night. Unfortunately, you have been cursed with mummy's eczema riddled skin and you have terrible rashes behind your knees, elbows and wrists as well as on your collar bone. And it looks like it's spreading. I'm so sorry, my baby!! I hope you grow out of it like the doctor said!

You have 8 teeth that I can see. You can't walk yet, but you are crawling around everywhere! You can pull yourself up and stand while holding on to something. You can wave good bye. You say Mum-mum and Da-da. You and daddy love to wrestle on the ground. "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke was your absolute favourite song. It would always make you smile and dance every time without fail. We know this because we tested it during one of your tantrums. But now we've discovered a new wonder song, "Roar" by Katy Perry. Only this song has a more hypnotising effect on you. You are definitely a little groover.

You are an amazing little kid. I am so proud of you and I feel so lucky to be your Mum.

Love you,
Mum-Mum

Little Band-Aid Solutions

I have a friend who has an autistic son. It has been a real trial for her as he has limited function. Perhaps her greatest struggle is with people's "good intentions".

Many times she has recieved comments that are both insensitive and ignorant. One person once told her that Autism is the result of vaccinations. How nice to hear that someone thinks you deliberately had your son injected with a vaccination riddled with autism. And then to live in regret, wondering, "if only I hadn't gotten my son vaccinated!" Well that would have fixed everything now, wouldn't it? Not only does it offer constructive help for her situation, it also leaves her feeling so much more positive about it. Not.

This is probably one of our strongest bonds between my friend and I. We had both been on the receiving of these well intentioned criticisms. Only I had to suffer in silence and nod dumbly in agreement. "OK! Let's just throw out a joke I've prepared earlier and deflect this whole conversation away from the grating truth!!"

My mother-in-law had innocently made a remark about a friend of hers who was struggling with IVF. She unwittingly made some comments that she would not have said if she had known about the struggle her son and I had in conceiving her grandchild. As her friend's husband worked away a lot, she remarked how the lack of sex wasn't helping. This really grated against my nerve, as we all know that you could be having sex 5 times every week and you still won't fall pregnant unless you do it in that small window of opportunity. And even then! It's not going to fix cysts on someone's ovaries. Or increase someone's sperm count. Or regulate someone's menstrual cycle. The sex isn't the problem. It never was. And the frequency of it has little to do with it either.

Unfortunately, it's easy for other people to apply a simple little band aid to fix the gaping wound of a problem they don't understand. Sigh.