One year later

I have rejoined the work force. My littlest turned one and it was the most ordinary day in our new ordinary. The preceding month before that had all been about packing for the move, unpacking after the move, ordering, receiving and building new furniture whilst making sure the baby is safe in the new house.

We have our dream home and I still love it everyday. I love it more and more as we put our own stamp on it each day. Sure it doesn’t look as much of a show home as we initially fell in love with but it is our lives on display there. The strewn toys, the child’s bath tub, the various toothpastes with each family member’s fluoride needs cluttered on the bathroom sink and each person’s towels hanging on the towel rails all representing each of our footprints in the home and I do not let it irk me.

I do feel robbed of my last month of Maternity Leave as the amount of time put into the move has meant I didn’t get to develop my girls as much as I would have liked. Sure little L had great fun ‘packing’ as she threw various things into boxes for me. Sure S enjoyed quietly sitting by and tracing Chinese characters with a highlighter, but those achievements went quietly unnoticed in present time. So many times I had to say “Not now honey” to a request to play or read with my toddler and so many times I’ve discouraged an inquisitive baby by strapping her into the baby carrier. If only I had double the amount of time in my day so that I could go about running errands as well as being a dedicated mum. I spread myself too thin as did Mr HEA and I hope our girls forgive us.

Miss 1, you have finally understood that Mummy is not going to always be around and that you’ll be ok. Even if it means you don’t let go when you do find me, I know you’ll be alright. You have really begun to understand words and communication between us all. You do really well in Nursery, enjoying circle time most and the constant singing in your new environment. You clap and bounce and wave happily along with your new friends and I believe they are teaching you to walk as you spent your first weekend after Nursery cruising a lot and pushing around bar stools like walkers. You no longer need to feed to sleep though I am sneakily still giving you boob throughout the night. You have the cheekiest demeanour as you find splashing me with your bath water, eating my nose and putting food in your hair the funniest things to annoy me with. Suddenly you have gone from a child who abhors food to now adoring it. I feed you rice balls, bananas, veggie straws and apples which are suddenly your new found favourites. You started taking a dummy last week and cows milk out of a sippy cup last month. You never cease to prove me wrong, perhaps because you are always so easily bored and in want of a new distraction. I know that this means I don’t have to worry about you trying new things and that in your own time, you will accept them. My daring, sweet yet cheeky child thank you for the past year, validating that I can be a competent mum if I relax just a tad.

Miss 3, you can trace lines and try very hard to colour inside the lines now. You can do buttons and blow your own nose. You pronounce L and K better than before and you can read small words with phonics now. I know you can climb very high on climbing frames and you can slide down poles too. My fearless, clumsy, clever little monkey, you are so imaginative and so protective of your loved ones, I love your mother hen nature and hope in time to shield you from the pain that also comes with not being able to watch your loved ones fail for themselves. You are brave my little one, able to bear sadness and pain with your quiet strength, though you would sing our ears off with your made up or newly memorised songs. I was very sad the other day when I had to force you into a quiet corner because you couldn’t control your temper you were so tired and hungry. I couldn’t bear to see you so distraught but you were so mean and disagreeable before food arrived. I know that is a side of you that I need to teach you to manage even if I was never taught it myself. I know what it is like to feel sorry for yourself and to feel that the whole world has turned against you in those moments. You are a true reflection of me my child. Please trust me as I help you navigate your emotions and imagination in this big world.

I love you two more than I’d ever imagine I could and I have had to be tougher on you lately because I hope to shape you both to be kind and useful human beings. Please do not let us take in vain every laugh and every tear we share together as I hope to see you two become strong influential women who apply yourselves in your chosen vocation. For now, learn through play and enjoy childhood together with Mummy and Daddy by your sides. We are not ready to let go quite yet.




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Sydney in my twenties versus London in my thirties

The sun is out shining its rays onto the shimmering blue calm waves on Coogee. My girls are digging their heels into the soft white sand enjoying their first Aussie spring day at the beach. Our friend walks over to join our picnic from her home.

We see the delight in their eyes as they are getting spoiled silly with lollies and unlimited screen time. We see how amazed they are at the sheer size of outdoor space and family homes to explore. We almost regret our decision to not raise them closer to home where they can grow up with cousins and grandparents close by.

Life is comfortable here, when our friends and family get together it’s as though time hasn’t touched us, the banter is still there. Although there is occasionally interruption in the form of a kid’s scraped knee that needs to be kissed, then there are the pauses in conversations when the newly engaged couples exchange loving glances or sneak a reassuring arm squeeze.

I haven’t had good girly cocktail sessions or drawn out brunches with the girls for a while. I brought my girl out one evening with my girlfriends and she was stoked about being a big girl allowed her own strawberry calpis mocktail. It’s like that scene in SATC when Lily is colouring at one of their weekend brunches and the ladies changed their chat to how the men in their lives ‘colour’.

I am surprised that I do not miss those days of dolling up. Even carrying my LV purse out to town that evening felt foreign to my trusty Kate Spade. I cannot fit into the conversations here as my friends speak of travel plans to Japan, Bali or Fiji. I know in my heart I cannot come this far out to join them in those escapades. And when we talk about children there is divide between those who have children versus those who don’t yet. The ideals versus the reality and the subtle judging that goes on. I almost feel like choosing Europe over Australasia has made me snootier, with anecdotes of my toddler singing French and Spanish songs not viewed as cute but rather pretentious. I no longer fit in.

Throughout my twenties I lived for my girlfriends. We sipped many a soy lattes and lychee martini’s whilst debating the pros and cons of our men and our budding careers. So much of our lives were unwritten as yet. We had the world at our feet and could walk any path we wanted. Love was always a possibility each night we went out.

Now I am a flat white and ballet flats kinda mum. My girls are my world still only, I refer to my Number 1 and Number 2, not my girlfriends of my twenties. There are the mums I met through my daughters and I long to make a stronger connection with them. I also know there are relationships I’d have to work harder at to build at work, to forge greater networks for my career which I realise I have put on hold for the past year without intent.

Life moved on. I had the whirlwind romance with my Mr. Big. We broke up, made up and then married before he left me to move to London. My life phase now is SATC the movie the sequel where I cheat on bags with furniture. Or even perhaps I am not actually Carrie, I have really always been Charlotte with my Prince Charming to be surrounded by pretty princesses with a bra less nanny on her way soon. The picture of our family is complete.

When I leave Sydney this time, we begin our lives in our forever home. A Victorian four bedroom terrace in South West London surburbia. The set wrapped up with the four women moving up and away from New York anyway. We were and are the same women who fiercely love and protect each other through heartbreak and through life’s failures and successes. But though we want to be there for each other, the sisterhood gives way to Motherhood. Life isn’t as difficult as it used to be, or rather we are presented with different battles in the form of opinionated mother in laws and wilful toddlers. I look forward to creating a home in our terrace that is similar to the Brownstone in the movie ‘The Intern’. One that I stand in front of each day I come home knowing that behind the shutters in the sash window is my happy family and where my friends and theirs are always welcome to share in the joy and warmth.




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Two more months

Blink and it’s been two months since the last post. One month of pure sightseeing Tuscany and London. Another of just crazy organising life admin. And in that time, my number two learnt how to clap, how to wave, how to flip pages in a book and how to kiss. She now also drinks from a straw and knows how to call for each of us in the family. She crawls around the flat very confidently looking for me. I will miss the pitter patter of tiny palms on the floor one day I know as she follows her daddy around the flat.

It’s hard to imagine that she is two months away from turning one. Two months away from me no longer obsessing over the salt content, honey or breast milk. Two more months before our lives change to me going back to work and they go into full time nursery. I will miss the play date mums. I will miss the playgrounds and the buggy pushing walks.

Miss Three has had a great time learning tennis, the world map and flags this summer. She climbs like a monkey and now is so much more confident in her physical abilities as well as speaking publicly. I love her confidence in life having worried incessantly about her shyness over her two year old stage. She didn’t even so much as flinch as she got her pre-school booster shot even though she confirms to me that it hurt afterwards.

I loved having been an integral part of my two daughters’ growth this past summer although I will admit that the last month I have lost the will to be a good mum and haven’t read as much or bothered to think up exciting new things for them to do. Lots of planning ahead as I research schools and think up life admin things that must imminently get sorted before I head back to full time work.

I will miss this. My last two months of being a SAHM forever. My babies have grown up and the grey clouds have lifted. All my worries are different now. My jigsaw puzzle on what my future would be like is complete. I am proud of my big clever and brave girl. I am also smitten with my cheeky little one who I think will always be a mummy’s girl.

This is enough. My cup runneth over. Two more months of this, and I will fill it with kisses and cuddles I promise.



















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One month full time SAHM with two

This June I set myself a challenge to see if I could have the two children with me full time. No childcare. No holidays. Just us three for five days a week and then with Daddy on the weekends.

It was hard I won’t lie. I worried about the toddler. She challenges me more and more each day with her defiance, her sass and her acting out due to her need for attention. I can not contain her and often this month I have felt like a failure of a Mum. I sometimes do wonder if I have a good grasp at all on what to do with her. Twice this month I have gotten so frustrated with her that I have tried to make her feel bad over what little selfish thing she had done to upset me. Petty of me, because of course she doesn’t understand how when I am tired or sick I can’t play with her anymore. She just demands it regardless of any circumstance. I need to accept that I am to be her everything when she is on my watch. Other days I teeter between using kind language to persuade her to concede versus using threats of cancelling treats or activities and I feel like a crazy lady when her antics escalate to all sorts of cray to drive me up the wall.

Last week alone on Monday, she defied me and opened a gate at a pub which had a sign to say Do not Enter which I had read to her and then lied to say Peter Rabbit was responsible. On Tuesday, she got bored in Mandarin class and decided to walk out to play and when I dragged her back into class she hit her baby sister on her rage. Wednesday she was lovely until I tried to explain to her it may be nice to lend some toys to a visiting friend whose little boy had lost all his toys in Hurricane Irma and she kept shouting he could have none. Thursday she insisted on jumping into her sister’s cot after I had out her down for the night resulting in of course her waking her sister up. Is this all just attention seeking behaviour? Is it normal Three year old behaviour can anyone confirm to me? I miss my sweet little two year old now. She may have tantrumed then but she was never as naughty or mean as she is now.

It wasn’t all hard though. It has been a lovely hot June and so the girls have enjoyed playgrounds, play dates, wetlands, picnics galore, even caught the changing of the guards and visited two museums.

Picnics make it so much easier as eating al fresco means very little cleaning up. It also means easy to little cooking. I’ve been boiling some easy finger veg and find boiled eggs make very easy BLW picnic food. Otherwise, a bit of sliced cheese or poached chicken is always welcome protein. Fruit is also at their best this season making easy and healthy puddings for these picnics.




Eating at home required lots of easy meals. I find myself buying pre-prepped veg quite a lot so that often I only need to blanch them in boiling water and serve up with easy oven or slow cooked protein options.



These were Asian meals, premade and frozen dumplings, batch made stock, one pot rice cooker steamed miso cod and sous vide bulgogi beef with Korean rice cakes, udon or fried rice have been easy crowd pleasers.




On the western meals front, if it isn’t pasta with leftover roast, then I’ve opted to buy ready meals or premarinated meats such as tortillas, pies, lamb kebabs, chicken goujons or breaded fish are also generally easy toddler meals.

That’s all done and dusted now. June’s taster of being a full time SAHM. The flat isn’t as clean as I’d like. The children weren’t always as well turned out as i would have liked. But the important thing is that we are all loving and growing together. I just need to mother on and keep my eye on the prize.




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Summer of Love 2018

I love you two so much
My heart overflows
It’s hard to capture all memories
As time beyond me goes.

This year I spend each day with thee
Our weeks so fulfillingly intertwine
With song, dance, hugs and glee
At picnics, park play in the sunshine.

Together we grow and learn more each day
As Baby becomes more mobile
Preschooler practices numbers, phonics, independent play
It makes giving up my sleep worthwhile.

It’s been climbing, twirling and cuddles galore
But cheeky grins, witty sass and tantrums too
We read stories, non-fiction and rhyme till I can last no more
We share countless meals and sneak snacks with my beloved two.

Time cheats us my dears
Seven months has in a blink passed us by
I believe the laughter has outlast the tears
And it’s time well spent I don’t deny.

One day you shall each have your little ones
I hope then I will still hold you close.
And remember the days in our flat when I held you two once
Hoping for the best I can give you, your futures, only God knows.







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