Breaking out of the comfort zone.

Can you see how this diary has changed? I guess it will be this way for a little while as I still find a routine and some energy to keep this going. I find that any down time I get I just want to veg out and watch Deep Space 9 episodes. My biggest surprise so far has been the way your Mum has stepped up and really become the patient one of the both of us. Still for me I tend to get a little impatient if I know that I will be up until late and have to get up to work the next day. But your Mum shows such fortitude and unwavering enthusiasm. She has all this energy and going from someone who cherished sleep it has been amazing to me that she gets up after a couple of hours sleep with no complaints. Not that she necessarily wakes up straight away.

On Saturday morning around 2am I heard you begin your sequence of waking up which leads to crying if you are not on your toes. I heard you first and as it was Mum who was getting up I said her name to gently wake her up.

"Sweets"
"Mmmm"
"Little ones rousing"
"nnnnnwha?"
"Little ones waking up"
"nnnn its ok"
"What?"
"Its ok I have her"
"What do you mean?"
"(getting agitated) I have her, im holding her"
"What are you talking about?"
"Im holding her now its ok"
"Honey what are you on about, she’s waking up"
"What? Oh, ok".

I have had these kinds of conversations with her before. She gets confused with dream and the waking world. She finally wakes up and goes to prepare the milk for you. Apparently she was dreaming at that very moment about holding you. I actually got up myself a few minutes later to just check that she hadn’t remained confused and fed the bottle to Pippy and put you on the girls bed next to Carnie.

You will be very proud to know that you still drink more, poo more and fart louder than all the other babies at Mothers Group. When we burp you it’s the cutest thing to watch. You stretch out your arms and your legs and make a big groaning sound. We call it the 'Superman'. On Sunday night you were very thirsty indeed and downed about 150mls or more of milk. I had you over my shoulder (you can see what’s coming cant you, I wish I could have) and with no warning at all you threw up the whole lot right down my front. I was soaked. You had this satisfied look on your face after that, then proceeded to demand more milk! Argggghhhhhhhhh.

Mum joined in with me singing Frère Jacques while we were changing you. Your little face went into this state of concentration as you were listening to us. You really seemed to enjoy it. I think it must emit some good vibrations. Perhaps your relative calmness can be attributed to our approach to parenting. We are both very calm people and they do say babies just mirror back what they are surrounded by. I love giving both of you a hug. I’m not sure I have properly explained to you yet but I sing to you almost all the time. A lot more than I just speak. Speaking is singing in some way and so I think making it more pronounced can only help you understand language quicker later.

Your Mum loves our bath time together. She was telling me that one of the other new Dads from her Mums group loves to have shower time with his little one. That would be so funny seeing your face as the water hit you. Apparently they just moved the nozzle down so it didn’t get in their eyes. Have I told you that you have discovered my chest hair and grab it with those strong little fingers and refuse to let go? Now that smarts.

I’m very proud of the way we your Mum and I work together. I think our relationship is deepening in some really special ways. We both have made some changes regarding how we handle times of frustration and how to handle each other when this happens. At Mums Group some of the women were saying they have never argued so much with their husbands. For us it is quite different. We keep an eye out for each other and also talk about our approach to looking after you so we can make sure everything is consistent. This means small stuff as well like burping and wrapping and how to wipe your bum. We are a well oiled machine at the moment. I think I am doing a good job of keeping your Mum mentally on track as she tackles what to do with breastfeeding. Sometimes you have to just say “this is how it’s going to happen”, rather than make it a discussion. It is tiring stuff for her and it important to keep her looking at the big picture and counting your wins as well as your losses.

Listening to the John Safran Podcast last night and there was a man who spent time in jail and has since turned his life around. He read a lot of books and worked out what successful people had in common and tried to apply it to his life. Three things stood out to me. Firstly they all were brutally honest with themselves, secondly they denied themselves certain things to learn how to break out of their comfort zones and lastly that they all jealously guard their reputation and integrity. This third point is what is affecting my life at the moment. The way your Mums father and cousin have accused me of being the cause of their issues really annoys me as it goes against the very essence of what I am about. I must learn to ignore these sorts of people who really know nothing about me and not let it get to me. I guess I do think that everyone should like me and get shocked when someone doesn’t. Watch that ego boy.

The title 'Waking World' is a great title for a story. I should try it out.

House hunting with a baby

We took what, about 11 years to get married finall? I like to take my time. Can you imagine what I was like when Grandad Baker started telling your Mum to buy a unit? I got scared. Oh God no, this means that I am in this relationship for good. There is no 'out' once I take this plunge. This was before we got married obviously. We were living above a shop at the time. It was an awful place in a great spot. I doubt we even have photos of the place. Your Mum hated it. It was all mission brown and a breeze would blow up the stairs from outside and we had no heaters other than a small electric one. There was even a time during the last month or so of living there that we had no bed. Your Mum slept on a fold out bed and I slept on the floor. The floorboards creaked horribly and the shop owner would keep knocking on the door telling us to keep it down. But I just loved being so close to everything. I loved the adventure of it. One of the windows had a terrific view of the city as well. So you can imagine that the idea of moving out and buying something became very appealing for her. But for a guy this is a huge thing. There is something deep down in your subconscious that tells you to keep your options open. Guys do not settle down as naturally as girls do. It is definitely a genetic leftover from when we were nomads. So when she started talking buying I panicked. It was a big moment, it was a mind shift. For me it meant making the final commitment and having it sink in. There was finality to it that scared me for a bit. So I did actually say no for a while. Your Mum was great, she did exactly what she should have done and said that she would be doing it anyway without my help. Sometime we all need to be pushed into change, into action and it is your partners responsibility to aid in that, as well as being true to their own vision and needs. So eventually I made that switch in my brain and once I did, that was it. It was a great feeling, I felt free rather than trapped. It was like an evolutionary ascension that us humans must do to keep progressing and adapting. We cant be held back by genetic predisposition. That is no excuse. If only we could all move on from war mongering.

So we bought the unit and for your Mum it was a huge time of growth. We both knew very little about how to look after a house but it is during this time that we started to learn how to fix up a house. I did my first paving job out back and your Mum actually did the garden. We made the place look fantastic for what it was and it ended up selling for over double what we paid just a few years on. It was also during this time that your Mum and I quit smoking finally. I was only smoking beedies for a little while as I had quit cigarettes in London. It was a big thing to do for your Mum who had been a heavy smoker since she was a teenager. It was also the time that her relationship with her Dad changed dramatically. She finally started to think for herself and not take everything he said as gospel. To this day your Grandfather has stubbornly rejected these changes she has made and will not see us. He is not a man who believes in change so he has been unable to become the father of an adult as opposed to a child. It is very very sad for him. He blames me as well, thinks I am now controlling your Mum. I understand why he thinks that because in his own little world he rules his wife. He cannot fathom things can be different to that. Stubbornness and pride have prevented him and those around him from being happy. This means that your Mum has had to disconnect her feelings for him so she can get on with her life and be happy herself.

A cenotaph is a tomb or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of persons whose remains are elsewhere.

Elegy was originally used for a type of poetic metre (Elegiac metre), but is also used for a poem of mourning.

Muggles, a slang term for cannabis, mostly used in the 1920s and 1930s and associated with the American jazz scene. From the lyrics to 'Dope Fiend Blues' by Allen Ginsberg' -

Im a dopefiend sitting in my bedroom high
I did'nt even light up no muggles, don’t know why
I'm just naturally a dopefiend under a friendly sky

This issue with Grandpa Baker also reminds me of one of the big events that stopped him talking to us. I had just got the job at the call centre. This was a big change time for me. I was feeling a lot more confident about myself. After ten years of working in disabilities I was feeling down about my future. I was really good at the job and was given more and more responsibility. I decided I wanted a newer car because of how I felt and because I wanted something nice for a change. It was more symbolic than I realised at the time but this was a big step for me, to stop feeling down about myself and to feel like I should look after myself a bit more. Your Mum recognised this because she is smart and knows me more than me sometimes. So we got this great Suzuki 4WD and I loved it so much. Your Grandpa however kicked up a big stink because he wanted us to buy a brand new car and he wanted to be the one to make that decision as to what to buy (what he wanted was a piece of crap btw that subsequently proved to be a dog of a car that lost its value quickly, while my car retained its value). That was the start of it all. He had a hissy fit and decided to stop talking to your Mum. He also wanted your Mum to have the good car. Mum told him that she didn’t care about getting another car at that time and it was more important to me. As I mentioned above, this is not something he was able to understand. And because it was his way or the highway your Mum finally told him that she didn’t need his assistance or his advice and that was that. I wonder if you have rebelled yet and which of us it was aimed at. God I hope I can keep my head when or if this happens to me.

PS: As an addition to the above (again), my issue with deserving nice things stems back to my father, who to this day does not think he is good enough to deserve anything nice. He buys beautiful guitars and wont play them, instead he plays the cheap ones. He does his drawings on crap paper because his talent is not worthy of good materials. So I had to unlearn this learned habit and im happy to say that I was successful.

Gestational diabetes, a real prick

Your Mum has gestational diabetes, well just. She will have to prick her fingers during the day to check her blood sugar levels. I think she was a bit heavy on the sugar at the time she got this test done so if they did it again I wonder if she would be over the limit. So now she has to be really careful of her diet and keep checking the blood throughout the day, not fun.

This nine months (ten really) is going quite slow and your Mum is also quite ready for you to enter soon hopefully via centre stage. For some people it may go really fast im not sure. Its part anticipation I guess. In practical terms it is very good that it takes this long. I have spent weekends doing lots of jobs that I wont want to do later. The side path has been completed to allow us to keep you in the pram if you are asleep. I have also set up the shed space because we are converting downstairs as a room. Then there’s always the mulch to place everywhere in preparation of summer and no rain. It’s a big block but all this work I am doing is to make it easier for me but still have the garden I want. I think you will really love our garden, it will be a great place for you to play in. I think Anne Shirley would love it as well. "So much scope for the imagination don’t you think?" I was doing an Anne myself this morning and imagining myself at work after you are born.

I picture myself crying all the time at work because I just want to be with you. I am not looking forward to that. I will just want to hold you all the time. At least you will be tall when you get older because your mother and I will both be pulling you from both ends screaming "I want a cuddle" and "no I want a cuddle shes mine" like a tug of war.

At the moment every time I think of you there is that awful voice in my head that starts saying what if this and what if that. Every parent wants everything to go all right and I am no different. The unknown is the greatest fear to overcome. In my head, I guess I then try to suppress some of the predicted experiences I will have with you, like if I realise them too much they may not come true. But I don’t think this is good. It is like I am protecting myself from getting hurt by removing not feeling too much. That’s a good one for a shrink. It would definitely hark back to my past, not wanting to tell anyone my hopes for fear of them laughing at them. I remember Mum and my aunties etc doing a lot of that, laughing at things I said. In my head I knew I was mature enough to understand what I was saying so it was extremely demeaning to put me down like they did. In fact I don’t think they have that maturity even now. For them I think it was not about me, just to lash back on men in general, preferably ones that don’t have the power. I still cannot work out how the three sisters ended up with such relationship issues. I can tell you that your great grandfather was a bit of a drunk in the early years. I remember him being really rough with me when he was tickling or wrestling me. It was well meaning but I don’t think he realised he actually hurt. Your great grandmother was like most other women of that time, the men were kings and she had limited scope for asserting herself. Women of these times would simply suffer through it and hope the men snapped out of it. Well he did eventually, went off the booze for good. Its important for you to realise that those sorts of relationships can actually work well as long as both people are able to take ownership of their failings. I think my grandparents have had a wonderful marriage that I can tell, they certainly love each other to bits and they have been the most influential people in my life as far as understanding relationships. The contradiction in how these old marriages worked was that often the women actually ruled the roost, and your great grandmother is no exception. This side of the family is a matriarchy so you are on the winning side. Us men have always been lower down in the rung. As for me, I have been a bit of a renegade because from a young age I was able to recognise where real power lay and I have always been able to manipulate women to great effect. I am like a small independent country sitting smack in the middle of a much larger one. Read some Asterix and you will get my gist. My relationship with the family is a little strange and quite distant. I tend to be a little guarded around them all, even my Grandma at times. Your Mum says that no matter how much Nan loves us her girls always take precedence. Like I said, I know where I am on the rung and that’s quite fine by me (remember this is just my take on things, not gospel). There are many reasons why this has happened. I mention again the way they used to laugh at me early on. Then another significant thing has been their relationship with my Mum, who was bigger than life and very much the centre of the family. She held the Christmas dinners, she kept the family together and I think her sisters have always had difficulty with that. Your grandmother essentially brought the youngest one up because your great grandparents ran milk bars and health shops, so she being the oldest became their mother. What has disturbed me has been since Mum passed away. They have had very little input into Sadies life and I know that this would have upset Mum very much. I think everyone used the excuse that they don’t like her Dad, but frankly if I can suppress my own distaste for him then what excuse have they got? I lived with the fellow.

As for me, I was never really family oriented. I much preferred my own company. So to this day I really never call the aunties, your Mum does that. If you want to know what your grandma was like just look at the way your Mum tries to keep the family together and look at Sadie and of course me. She really was a remarkable woman. We are connected still in a very deep way. I have not felt separated from her presence in all this time. I often receive little messages from her, most of them make me laugh. But she is not physically here now so she cannot force me to stay close to family. Your mum and I talk about this a bit. For me, and this is quite harsh, I would be quite happy to move away and not see any of them again, apart from my grandma and Sadie. I do dream of moving to Christchurch or somewhere and not having to feel forced to maintain a relationship. I think my Mum would understand that of me. If she were still here I can tell you that she would be playing a HUGE role in your life. Part of the reason why we didn’t have kids earlier is because it breaks my heart to think of what you are missing. She would definitely have divorced Sadies Dad and we were talking about getting a house together. I don’t doubt you’re Mum and I would have lived with her for a few years so we could save up. Oh well, perhaps in an alternative reality that’s happened. I know that your Grandma Baker will be great with you and as for the rest, well, maybe your experience will be like mine with my Grandparents. A good one. I hope so.