4 months

Today marks 4 months of living this life that I hadn't planned, a life with a great lump of sadness, of something missing, of something that can never be made better.

4 months since we became the family that had the baby that died.

4 months of empty aching arms.

You know I thought it was getting better, but I think I may have just learned to not scrape the surface too much.

Sure, there is no longer that total numbness there was in the first few weeks.  And that terrible taste of constant adrenelin has dissipated.

Life goes on, we work, we play, we eat, we laugh.  But always there is something missing.  As time moves on, what I am missing now is the things we never had.  No baby trying to stand and trying to walk as she might have been doing by now.  No little girl learning to stack blocks, we knew her cry but we never got to know her voice.  As Raff said, she never got to go swimming or eat chocolate.

It's 4 months of hard work.  Weeks and weeks of being strong, being positive, being mindful, living in the moment, looking after everyone.

Even though it is only mid February the season is starting to change.   Their is a tinge of colour on the trees, some sting gone out of the sun.  The days are feeling a lot more like when Miss T's arrival was immenient, her first birthday is nearly upon us.

I still have a few thank you's to write and finish, Christmas and holidays saw the flow of writing these go off track.  However, I can see that box of unfinished business means something more, I know I keep finding other things to do as once that is done I feel like a chapter will close.  While there are still Miss T jobs on the list, she's still partly here.

As time continues to march on there is more opportunity for the "if only" and "what if's".  I'm sick of the highlight reel of the last week of her life playing in my head.  Thinking of things that I might have seen, something that could have saved her.  I'm sick of the sheer terror of hearing an ambulance siren.

I search for meaning, I find myself doing more and more things to help others, some sort of strange deal where I am out to prove we are good people who should not have had such a bad thing happen to us.

Everynight without fail when I walk to my car I have a split second where I panic that I left Miss T in the car.  I'm still finding little pink socks in all sorts of places.  I deliberate as to whether to pin things I like for her on pinterest.

There have been amazing times in the past 4 months too.  Of acquaintances who have become close friends through their support, of old friends who have become closer.  People who go out of their way to remember Miss T, to think of us.  The random email or text, the invitation.  The incredible love and support of our little family that has worked so hard when we went from 4 to 5 and now 4 and one in heaven.

There's incredible disappointment too, the awkwardness of people who can't handle us, of people who don't know what to do.  People who can't see how they could help make things a little bit better.

As sad as I am, my heart sings as well.  I had my little girl, I got to dress and cuddle her for most of her 7 months.  We know how strong we are and how much love we can share.

I just wish she was here.

The daily dinner battle solved

Wow! It's week 3 of term 1 already.

Is it just me or does everyone seem to be drowning in wave after wave of permission notes, dates to remember, homework schedules and the like?

The other day I had a fleeting thought that I might have to turn off my addiction to "organising" blogs as the thought crossed my mind that I may be spending a little bit too much time staring at photos of other peoples organised cutlery drawers and mudrooms.  Was it causing me to feel woefully inadequate or was it stealing from me time that could actually be used getting organised?

So instead I thought, if you can't beat them join them - I'm going to expand my blogging to include some of the little things we have implemented around here to make our busy lives run a little more smoothly.

Google "menu planning" and you will find a million mum's out there sharing there ideas for running the nightly dining table.  If you click on the American ones you will probably be inundated with a heap of ideas as to how to mix a few pre-made dishes together and call it dinner.  Ouch!

Since Remus started school we have been running a menu planning exercise during term time and boy does it take the pressure off, so here's what I do in the hop it might help someone who is going through the terror of "what's for dinner" regularly.

Prior to the beginning of each term (or on the first weekend of term this time round, the end of the holidays seemed to come quickly) I sit down with our folder of favourite recipes and a few new selections from my ever growing collection of cookbooks.

I quickly draw up a table of Monday to Friday for each week of term and mark out any special occasions I know are already scheduled - BBQ teas at school, birthdays and so on.

I used to not include Friday's but have found including something simple of a Friday means that we can limit the amount of take-aways if there is some small amount of energy left.

Wednesday is the day our cleaner comes (life saving) so I always make sure Wednesday's are assigned dishes that are pre-made and frozen as that leads to only a couple of dishes and one more day of the kitchen remaining clean.  With 2 young boys, there is no objection to spaghetti bolognese, lasagna, tacos and fajita's being on high rotation so they are rotated through Wednesday's.

In winter if I do a slow cooker meal of a Thursday that means the kitchen gets another night of minimal use and hopefully staying orderly.  In summer, a BBQ or weber meal can do the same.

Then for Tuesday's I try to plot in things that are favourites so we get them once or twice a term.

For Monday's, my theory is that either meals can be pre-prepared on the weekend or there is more energy earlier in the week so I will put in a new recipe.  I make a point of trying to include one or two new recipes a week to maintain interest and expand the repertoire.

This all goes in a spreadsheet.  Then to really minimise the hassle during the week I photocopy the recipe so there is no digging around looking for it.  This term I really excelled myself by then getting the spreadsheet and recipes bound.  This means sitting on our recipe book stand is the meal schedule for the term and all the recipes.  When it is time to do the shopping list it is just a matter of grabbing the bound collection and putting the list together.

Hopefully this is also a good way of keeping on the straight and narrow - if dinner is planned and ingredients are there much less chance of take-away or sneaking down to the pub for a parmy.

Being on a bit of a body-overhaul kick at the moment means most of the new recipes for this term have come from Michelle Bridges and Jane Kennedy - which also inspires me to do the really creative cooking from my more gourmet books on the weekend.

Plotting out the menu plan is only the first part of the organisation.

The second is the big freeze up.  I cook up a massive pot of bolgnese sauce and freeze.  I also cook a big batch of taco sauce to freeze.  I recently glanced at the ingredient list on those supermarket packs of taco mixed and was horrified to see the first listed ingredient was sugar (ah, yes feeling the influence of Sarah Wilson).  So, now I'm using a combination of inspiration from Thomasina Miers (fond of her for many reasons) and Melbourne's wonderful Gewurzhaus to come up with my own taco sauce flavouring that is still acceptable to more junior palates.

I also freeze up bags of chicken breasts cut up and marinated in oil and garlic ready for pasta and stir fries - freezing in the marinade really intensifies the flavour.

With all of that we are set for the term - and Pete then keeps a score-check of how closely we stick to the plan....

However, I can promise you the bit of front end effort this requires leads to massive reductions in during the term stress!

Balancing Act

It's fascinating how sometimes a theme seems to emerge between random things that cross your path.

This past week seems to be a lot about balance....

Suppose with the start of a new year there's a lot of people thinking about how to improve, how to get more balance: my twitter feed seems to be dominated by people seeking balance or "helpful" articles on how to get organised, stress less, drink less, eat less.

Then last week up popped the storm surrounding the disparity between the pay of male and female graduates - my legal industry being amongst the culprits.  That seems to be a lot about balance as well, a different type of balance.

Many jumped straight on the bandwagon of presuming it meant that a firm taking on male and female graduates were paying lining the two of them up and employing the male for more.  However, the study, which does have some questions around it, was looking at the median gap.  Now Pete will be horrified at the thought that I am analysing something so mathematical, but to me a difference in the median is demonstrating more that women are being employed in the lower paying graduate positions.  Now being someone who obtained my graduate position in the country (and was employed at the then award rate of $12,500) I can see how that might be happening.  I also know that there graduate wages in the law are now paid more realistically and that there is less of a gap between city and country on graduate wages but I suspect seeing less women in the higher paid areas might still be happening.

If my theory is even partly correct, why are women graduates pushed to that end?  Commentators were suggesting it has nothing to do with family issues as graduates are only 25.  Is it though that employers are cherry picking against those likely to be balancing family demands in the future?  For lawyers, is it because there are many mature-aged female graduates who have other demands competing with what jobs they can accept?

If that wasn't enough to make me feel a little unbalanced, I then got to an item on my to-do-list at work which put me right into the balance zone - been meaning to do it for a while but actually got around to having a go at drafting some family-friendly flexible work guidelines and practices for my own firm (yeah, shoe makers children not shod).  We have a number of support staff working a variety of arrangements and have that area done well.  But for our lawyers?  In drafting (ironcially occurying while Pete took the boys to the pool) I could draw on many, many experiences I have had over the last 7 and a bit years of combining full time work and being a mother to some very little people (including one very sick little girl).  But what is balance?  How do you help someone in that position? Isn't there a lot more we can do?

Load on top of that then the balance of the school holidays.  Having had 6 weeks away from the office this year at RCH (note I said away from the office, wasn't all not working) and so on I ditched my earlier idea of being able to take all of January off and came up with this complicated spreadsheet of sharing the holiday load.  It includes a week of me and Pete working what could only be described as one doing the early shift, one doing the late shift.  Then there was the working from home morning where I discovered our servers remote connection had shut off during Christmas - and it is not back yet!  

Balance, it was getting there.

Despite those hitches I thought we might be right, I even had a chart of all our dinners for January organised, including nominating nights for new recipes.  However this grand plan was depedent upon Raff having some creche time and Remus having some office time .......then the balance was upended by a dose of the chicken pox.

Mentioning this to others, seems there's lots of parents out there doing the holiday shuffle.  I was amazed the other night to hear a talkback radio topic was how are you managing if you are a holiday bachelor/bachelorette - in the city home alone having left the rest of the family down the coast.  Does that actually happen these days?  That seems a world away from most experiences I know

So balance, it is popping up everywhere but I haven't seen too many solutions.  Sometimes I feel like there are a lot of hungry hippos around............. (and I must clean the top of that game, look how smudgy it is)

New Year Resolutions

Only one of these a day (the latte, not the random motorbike)

I love New Years Resolutions.....love the idea of a fresh start, a new chance, the daydreams of what life will be like with all the goals achieved.

Many a Christmas break has been spent lounging around with friends finishing the last of the Christmas bubbles and chocolates as we plan what our resolutions will be, sometimes focussing more on setting the rewards than the goals.  For a few years a group of us maintained a regime involving monthly spreadsheets where we reported on progress against resolutions.....there's probably an app for that now.

While many of the resolutions pop up year after year there have been some spectacular successes.  I think my best success was the year one resolution was to not buy bottled water, succeeded on not only doing that but sticking with it since then.  On the other hand there would be more resolutions thought that repeat from year to year.

So this year:

1. Lose 20 kilos

Yeah, a constant on the list! and I could aim for even more than 20kg but let's say 20 at this stage.  It's like hitting play on the recorder: record everything I eat and drink, drink more water, smaller serving sizes etc etc.  Really, the last 18 months has been a write off for focussing on such things, so here goes

2. Exercise 30 minutes every day

Yes, it is really part of resolution 1.  Yes it can be averaged out with the next day if you miss a day.  it's just about moving more

3. run a 5km fun run

So, resolution 2 if done well becomes resolution 3.  A big one.   Seems like the pavements are pounding at the moment with everyone doing couch to 5k, count me in.  Aiming to do this by August.

4. No more than 2 lattes per day

I can drink litres of milk a day on lattes, must stop doing that.  I can do it, just need to re-set.

5. Only buy lunch once per week

Yep, I'm signing up to one of the most popular New Years resolutions

6. Read at least 26 books in 2013

Read 18 last year according to Goodreads

7. No i-product use between getting home and 9pm mon to fri and before 5 of a weekend.

Starting when go back to work next week, obviously!  Must convince myself that as I no longer have the excuse of hours on the couch breastfeeding, that means I can't spend hours on the couch on the iPad.  Who knows, it might even motivate me to explore that new-fangled web-enabled treadmill at gym for pinning and tweeting.

8. Cake only once a month

In Melbourne for the day, I'm not here often (ha), must treat myself to something at Brunetti's.

It's been a tough morning, need to have a cake with that coffee at morning tea.

It's someone's birthday, yes I'll have that jelly slice.

Walking past Gillies (which is no longer called Gillies) may as well have an apple cake.

My ability to justify cake sees no bounds.  For most of last year such treats were about daily.  It has to stop.  And if it doesn't I'll even have to 'fess up to this little addiction -

9. Cheese only once a month

My cheese addiction is bad, nowhere near as bad as cake but more a "once it is in the house I have to demolish it and usually with a slab of quince paste as well".  Less frequently, but always high quality from here I say.

10. No Saturday night platters

The last 18 months has seen a lot of Saturday nights at home.  I initially blame Before the Game - established a little tradition of putting together a few nibbles (cheese, dips, olives, you get the drift) to have with a few drinks as Before the Game marked Saturday turning into Saturday evening.  The platters got bigger, there got to be more drinks and then I'd still polish off the dinner of the night - even after Before the Game left Saturday night.

11 Purchase no new clothes for me before St Patrick's Day

I actually achieved this resolution last year and will give it another whirl.

Some may think it was a bit too easy for last year - I did spend the time from New Year until 9 days before St Patrick's Day in the last trimester of pregnancy but anyone who has been there knows that is, contrary to rational thought, a time you want new clothes.  Probably saved me from a few irrational purchases.

It did set me up for a year of reduced purchasing.  In 2012 I purchased only 12 new items of clothing.  I would usually buy 12 items in one visit to one store.

In some ways, the year that was last year was probably not the best time to not indulge in my favourite hobby (shopping) and best stress relief (spending money), but it did open some new horizons.  I shopped my wardrobe - finding things that I had forgotten I ever purchased, finding new combinations of what to wear with what.

Of course last year it was replaced with shopping for baby girl outfits, shall be interesting to see if I can last as long when I have nothing exciting to shop for (sorry boys, it's not the same).

Why St Patrick's Day - it gives 2 and a half months of no purchasing to break the habit ( a habit which really hasn't been indulged since mid-October in any event)  but gives in to my worry of what would happen if there was something I really had to have for winter and it was sold out by Easter?

And if I stick with resolutions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10 I will be 3 dress sizes down by St Patrick's Day (in which case I have 4 unworn black dresses in my wardrobe that would get me through winter.....)

12 Finish renovations

It is now 2 years at least since our renovation plans started in earnest: time they got some focus

13. Travel overseas

Mmmmm...

Some would say 13 resolutions is far too many - but really 8 of them are all part of the first resolution, quite focussed really

They are terribly self centered resolutions: none benefiting the wider community, people in need, no career or professional goals (though I admit they are a separate list).  I think it is time to focus on me for a little while.....

Think I might check in here monthly to advise of progress - and hopefully cross most of them off in 6 months time!

thanks for the memories 2012

This time last year we were only weeks away from welcoming Miss T into the world.  Now at the end of 2012, we have had 11 weeks without her: what a lot can happen in a year.

A few people have commented to me: "bet you can't wait for 2012 to be over".  No, 2012 has been an amazing year and in lots of ways I don't want it to end.

The end of the year always brings a lot of reflection - given my birthday is Christmas Eve I suspect I reflect more than others as I contemplate "another year over and a new one begun" both on the calendar and my age.  The thought I can't shake today is as the clock ticks over tonight that will end the only year in which we had Miss T.

Thankfully, largely as a result of the last couple of years including "take a photo a day" resolutions we have lots of pictures....here are the favourites.

From our own cameras, in no particular order:

So, tonight frock up and raise a glass of bubbles in memory of Miss T......

'tis the season

It is certainly starting to feel a lot like Christmas - the hot and balmy weather we have been experiencing exacerbating the Christmas pressure that seems to be on - lots of people out shopping, lots of traffic, Christmas catch ups, the rush to the end of the year.

Everyone in our house seems exhausted, the school year seems to be taking a long time to finish and getting people out of bed in the morning is getting harder.

The world of family law is particularly sensitive to Christmas.

Christmas can be such a difficult time to manage for separated families.  It is logistically difficult, it's emotionally difficult, it's even financially difficult.

This year will be my 19th Christmas as a family lawyer, so here's a collection of hints and tips I have gathered over the years for the separated family:

• Plan ahead.  If you saw the list of things I need to do in the next few days to get my own Christmas organised, you would be forgiven for thinking I am no expert at planning ahead for this festive season.  However, here I am meaning don't put off the difficult conversation with the other party about Christmas arrangements, the closer you leave that to Christmas the harder the task will be.

• Step away from the hype - time and time again I have seen family law negotiations that have almost reached agreement either fall apart of take an unbelievable amount of time and pressure all because of trying to sort out Christmas arrangements.  My observation is that often this happens because people get too caught up in the hype of Christmas and wanting arrangements that either fill that hype or satisfy the expectations of their wider family and friends.  Does enjoying Christmas with your children have to be about seeing them on the day every year?  Will your children benefit more from other special arrangements on another day?  A childhood friend of mine always had Christmas with his Dad on the first weekend in December - I even went along a couple of times and it was great to have a whole different special event on a day dedicated to it.

• Try to work out presents jointly with the other parent.  Don't use Christmas as an opportunity to bribe the kids with gifts, or to compensate for something.  In my work as an Independent Children's Lawyer I often see the negative impact of such games around presents for kids.

• In negotiating Christmas arrangements do your best to ensure that children don't have to be transported long distances on Christmas Day.  Christmas day is not a great day for travelling.  Combine that with the stress and tension of changeover and the risk is heightened.  Avoid it if you can.

• Create new Christmas rituals with your children in your new circumstances, try and create a new magic of Christmas rather than making the old feel awkward

• If you find it difficult to communicate with your ex, avoid alcohol so that you are in the best place to maximise the interactions being pleasant

• Make sure your wider family is on its best behaviour and be particularly mindful of the negative impact on kids of "bagging" the ex.  Be mindful that kids pick up on not only the words but also the unsaid - make sure your mum isn't huffing and rolling her eyes every time your kids mention their mum/dad (yep, I have seen that come back to haunt people in court proceedings)

• It's too late for this year, but start now planning to budget for Christmas next year.  Being worried about not having enough money for Christmas or managing debt after Christmas is added pressure that can lead to blow ups.  

• Again, too late for this year but if you think you and your ex could benefit from some mediation to review or fine tune Christmas arrangements, don't wait until next December - start arranging mediation now.  If you are disappointed with how you have handled things this year, think about a new year resolution of getting some counselling help to work on developing your skills to handle these tricky situations.

There is no denying that following separation, Christmas will never be the same as when your family was together. However, putting the effort in to carefully manage the situation can go along way towards making sure your kids have a great Christmas!

Grief in the digital age

It's 2 calendar months today since Miss T died, I actually only just realised this late in the day that it was the 13th.

Now that sounds ridiculous, everywhere you looked yesterday you were reminded it was the 12th - reminded that it was the 12th of the 12th of 2012.  So of course today was the 13th.

I would have written the date dozens of times today in file notes, looked at it in the calendar, seen it everywhere.  Somehow, it hadn't actually sunk in it was the 13th.

I think it might be one of those strange things that happen to make sure you keep going, I think my mind has shut off from the countdown of how many days since.  In its place I am instead constantly thinking about what if Miss T was still here - that she'd be nine months now, that she would be sitting up, that she might even be crawling or at least moving around a bit.  That the constant worry about coughs and colds probably would have disappeared and instead been replaced by worry about keeping her cool and hydrated in this heat.  And of course the game of what outfit would have she worn today...

I keep going to the reference points I have created, looking at the babies I know that were born within days of Miss T and looking at their progress.  Looking back at the photos of R and R when they were 9 months old, just to remind myself of what she might have looked like at that age.  In my mind's eye she is stuck looking like she looked at about 12 weeks, not even the bouncy baby she was when she died at 28 weeks.

It's funny that even when I wasn't really clicking that it was the 2 month mark today, without even thinking about that consciously, I found myself wanting to talk about Miss T, heard myself cautiously mentioning her name in conversation a few times today.  Saying her name out loud is hard, once it is uttered it spookily sounds as if she is still here.  Plus there is the shudder of people who hear you say it.

It wasn't just me feeling like that today though.  Raff clearly had a day full of Thommy thoughts and for the hour after he on arrived home tonight he managed to bring every conversation back to his Thommy - an explanation of what he would say to someone if they asked where she was (she died so now she is in heaven with God), a description of how her coffin was lowered into the grave and did it land gently or with a bump, even hypothesising how she would have been reacting to him teasing his brother at the dinner table.  All delivered very matter-of-factly by an amazing kid with an incredible ability to think things through, at the age of 3.

I have often thought about the many empty spots in family trees, the many of our ancestors who had children die.  In my maternal grandfather's (there's a phrase only a family lawyer drops into conversation so easily) this was to the extent that one family had a number of names repeated when a later baby was given the same name as their pre-deceased sibling.  I have thought about how those families coped with such grief, was it easier or harder because the death of a baby was more common.

One thing that keeps striking me is how different is grief in the digital age.

Those grieving mothers probably packed up a box of memories of the baby and tried to move on - the box is pretty unwieldy in the digital age.  Turn on the iphone, there's Miss T, turn on the computer, there's Miss T on the screensaver, same for the iPad.  Scroll back through your facebook feed: it's her life in a nutshell.  Feel like remembering with a photo, there's thousands of photos carried with you on the ipad ready to be looked at any hour of the day or night. 

Gee,  if you are feeling brave enough sitting on your phone are the photos of the family holding the still warm but gone Miss T in a random back room of the ED.  Yep, the digital age means you have your camera with you everywhere.  

But the digital age also means we have amazing instant connection.  Amazing support from wonderful friends, interesting banter, constant knowledge to occupy your thoughts.  The ability to engage in 140 characters when it is too hard to hold a whole conversation.

Yeah, I think I'm grateful that I'm not stuck with some small print from a box brownie, even though sometimes turning on my phone causes me to gasp.