I used to be (more) racist.

I used to be racist.

Oh, not the overt sort of racist. I didn't call people the n word or think black people were inferior or anything. In fact, I thought everyone was the same and we should all be treated equally. I was the good sort of racist! One that doesn't think they are racist at all.

 When the first season of Australian Idol aired in 2003, with several of the contestants being people of colour, I thought "why are there so many non-Australians on it?"

When Aboriginal boy TJ Hickey died in 2004 when he crashed into a fence whilst fleeing from police on his bike, I thought "well, that's very sad, but if he hadn't been running away he wouldn't have died."

When I heard of high rates of disadvantage among Aboriginal people, I thought "well, that's very sad, but there are so many programs to help them".

When I first heard of white privilege, I got very indignant. I thought "how dare you, my life has been anything but privileged". 

Yep, I was racist. I had a lot of learning to do.

Some of it came when I moved from Newcastle to inner Sydney. Newcastle is overwhelmingly white, and if you turned on the TV, all you saw was white faces. (This is slowly getting better - it's now far more common to see, for example, people of Asian heritage in commercials, where their being Asian isn't the point). In Sydney I could see the real face of Australia, one that isn't always white. Eventually it got to where, when folks back home spoke of playing "spot the Aussie" in Sydney, I could say "they're all Aussies, mate". And that it wasn't fair that people whose families had been here for generations had their Austrailianness questioned, when I - who wasn't even born here - did not. 

A huge bunch of learning came when I enrolled in a youth work course at TAFE, with classmates from backgrounds all over the world, and the most wonderful teacher. I learned, from her and others, and visits to community centres in Redfern, of the appalling police harassment of Aboriginal people, the false accusations, the beatings, the seizure of people's legally owned property. TJ Hickey was fleeing from that, and no wonder. I thought that was all in the past. And it's people's belief that it's all in the past that allows this shocking treatment to continue. 

I learned to listen to the voices of people affected by all this casual and institutional racism. That the lived reality for Aboriginal parents is pervaded by fear; fear their young children will be taken away, fear their older children will be targeted by police. 

I learned that white privilege does not mean I personally, am privileged. It means that, all else being equal, my white skin has made life easier for me than it would have been otherwise. I turn on the TV and see people who look like me (well, they're thinner, but we'll leave that be). I have never been turned down for a job or a rental property because of my race. I've never had a customer refuse to be served by me because of my race. (For a better explanation of this, check out this piece, "explaining white privilege to a broke person". 

I know I still have so far to go. I know I can't fully appreciate the lived experience of racism in this country. But it's still going on, appallingly. Aboriginal people are still incarcerated at astonishing rates, disadvantaged, their children removed, their life expectancy lower. And if you really believe that "we're all the same", then it's difficult to attribute this to anything other than entrenched racism. It was extremely difficult to watch the footage of Ms Du, who died in jail after the disgusting treatment by staff, who refused to believe her cries of pain; failing to seek treatment until she died from staphylococcal septicaemia and pneumonia.

And she was in jail for unpaid fines. Compare this, if you will, to Kristina Hampel, convicted of cocaine trafficking, who avoided any jail time because it would "embarrass her family", her father being a retired Supreme Court judge.

These are not isolated cases. See the brutal images that defined 2016 for Aboriginal Australians.

Let's stop pretending we're all equal. Some of us are a lot more equal than others. Yeah, I was annoyed and embarrassed when first challenged on my racism. I'm sure I still have a tonne of views that need changing. But we all have work to do here. We need to admit we have a problem, then we can fix it. 

A Plan To Save The Nation - A Plea For Lefties To Breed

Much derision in the media this week over Tony Abbott's claim that his paid parental leave scheme will encourage women of calibre to breed. Abbott's plan is to impose a levy on the biggest corporations in Australia - how's that for a great big tax on everything? - and use the money to pay parent's up to six months parental leave at the mother's wage rate. This, he hopes, will encourage high income earners - those he dubbed the "women of calibre" - to breed. You'd expect this would alienate his base of aspirationals - the low and middle income earners from outer suburbs - but they still adore the guy. Now, Tony Abbott is a fetid piece of distended monkey rectum on epic scale and should he be elected prime minister, we'll be an international laughing stock...more so, but he has pointed the way to an interesting solution to all society's problems (although Bill Murray got there first).

It's often been said that society is becoming more conservative, and there's definitely some truth to that. Michael Moore has called Richard Nixon the last Democratic president. Malcom Fraser has quit the Liberal party in disgust at it's shift to the right. Conservatives hark back to the days of the 1950s, leaving out the part where one of the reasons society was kept in smooth running order was a top income tax rate of over 90%. Australian history points to a more open and tolerant past. We had great nation building projects such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and and the Snowy River Hydro Electric scheme; we accepted with open arms boat people fleeing Vietnam after the war. Nowadays we can't even get a decent national telecommunications system without people wailing like stuck pigs about the cost of it all; we're an international laughing stock due to carrying on like a bunch of scared, spoiled, selfish children over a relative handful of asylum seekers. Why is this happening?

We can blame some of the shift to the right on the Howard years - the Howard government left this country with moral wounds from which it may take decades to recover, an culture of greed an entitlement which shames us as a nation. But it's not just that. Perhaps the nation is becoming more conservative because there are...more conservatives. Conservatives, as a sweeping generalisation, tend to marry younger and have more kids, who grow up listening to rants about illegal immigrants and dole bludgers, before marrying at 24 and having three kids of their own. Lefties aren't keeping up. We're breeding ourselves out of existence. In order to save society from the lurch to the right, lefties need to acknowledge the problem. And we need to have more kids.

It's a generalisation, sure. I know many lefty, feminist, kick butt families with 3, 4 or more kids. But in general, lefties marry late, or not at all (many because they're legally prevented from getting married to their partner of choice), and are far more likely to have no or only one child. It's completely understandable. We're busy, and we understand the costs to the planet of overpopulation. We ourselves were planning on leaving it at Baby G - babies are expensive, and a lot of work, and I'm the family breadwinner for the time being, and I don't do pregnancy well. When your first child nearly kills you, you're not rushing to go back for more. But perhaps I need to revise my view. Australia needs more kids growing up in lefty houses, going to marches and rallies, knowing that 90% of what's published by News Ltd is rubbish and the rest is the ads, that the belief "I work hard for my family, why should I pay for other people's welfare?"just makes you sound like an asshole. Now, I'm not rushing into anything yet - DH is yet to warm to the idea, and Baby G needs so much work right now I can't imagine adding to the load (and he's an easy kid) - but I feel I should add to the effort. If not for us, to have a baby for a same sex attracted friend. I'm still aware of the environmental concerns, but look - we're being outnumbered here. If we don't have the kids, they will. Lefties, you need to get breeding. Have just one more. Bear a child for a same sex couple. Fill the planet with concerned, responsible citizens now. I believe we are in danger of being swamped by racists. This mother's day, couldn't you go just one more?

Peter Costello famously exhorted us to have "one for Mum, one for Dad, and one for the country". I would ask you to have one to spite the IPA, one to stick it to Rupert Murdoch and a third to annoy Joe Hockey. Playgrounds full of little lefty kids wearing t shirts that read "WHITE AUSTRALIA HAS A BLACK HISTORY" and "THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE" whilst their two dads look on adoringly and sip chai lattes. What a great future for the country. Let's all have more babies.

Abbott Family Values

As we get ever closer to the federal election and still no sign of any substantial policies from the LNP, Abbott's flailing supporters have opened a new front on the campaign: family values. Of course Catholic father Abbott is a more upstanding candidate for Prime Minister than that shameful childless man stealer Gillard! The Abbott family will restore family values to The Lodge and the nation after the godless communism of the Gillard era. Roll on September 14.

Family values are the last refuge of a desperate (to be Prime Minister) man. Abbott is playing this card with everything he's got, his family giving constant media appearances. Abbott hiding behind his daughters as they refute many of the accusations of misogyny and thuggery against him may represent a new low in Australian politics. Seeing the young Abbott women spin what a splendid guy their dad is, many of us say "wait a minute, I'm glad he treats his daughters well but his public record tells a different story about his attitude to women." The right wing howls back "why do lefties hate the Abbott girls? Why do they hate families?" Abbott uses his daughters to talk himself up, forbids scrutiny of the praise. I guess it makes a change for him from his normal method of dealing with tough questions - running away. 

What are the values that Abbott stands for anyway? Abandoning the woman he believed to be pregnant with his child? The indecent assault charges?  Violence?  Tony Abbott, well into his fifties, has never had a real job and comes from a background of privilege, yet is seen to be more in touch with average Australians than his opponent from the western suburbs of Melbourne, simply by virtue of being married and having daughters. Like Fred West, or Osama bin Laden, or any other man whose X chromosome got in first.

Now I'm not defending Gillard's moral character here - not saying she did or didn't start a relationship with  a married man, is  or isn't shacked up unmarried. What I'm saying is it doesn't matter. Of course, I want to know her record on shady deals and broken promises. But what she gets up to in her private life with other consenting adults? I don't care. It doesn't matter. This sudden obsession with family values is a bizarre backwards step for Australia. Even the United States has largely abandoned "family values" as a federal election issue in the last two decades, but here, we're not talking about infrastructure, education, the economy (apart from the ill-informed obsession with debt). Family values, whatever the hell that means, have been made an issue in a country that never much cared about such things before. In 2013, the LNP is trying to win an election by slut shaming the Prime Minister.

But maybe we want a Prime Minister who is a national version of a father in a 1950s sitcom. Gruff, demanding respect, often absent but ever present, knows what's good for us. He'll sit at the national breakfast table, reading his paper, dispensing favours. "Please, can we have the Gonski reforms? We've been real good, including private schools in funding." 
"Humph. I don't care about these silly things. Ask the treasury. But no NDIS until you get that budget back into surplus like you promised!"
"But Dad..."
"No! And that's my final word. I'm off on a taxpayer-funded charity bike ride. You be good or I'll hear about it when I get back."

And if he does come home from the pub on a Friday night in a bad mood,  and shouts and swears and punches the wall, we won't tell anyone. You keep such things within the family and anyway, Abbott tells us bad bosses are like bad fathers, doing more good than harm. We're about to find out if either is true.

So, You're Cutting Benefits For Nurses

An Open Letter to NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell

So, yesterday I read that you're cutting penalty rates for aged care nurses, including holiday loading and penalties for shift work (which would make nurses the only permanent workers in Australia not entitled to holiday leave loading). Budget cuts have to be made somewhere, I understand, and why not nurses? The rationale behind keeping unemployment benefits well below the poverty line is that if they were higher; people would be comfortable staying on them and have no incentive to look for work. Maybe you have a similar rationale here; that by keeping nurse pay rates low, you weed out all those greedy nurses only in it for the money and are left with the caring ones who really want to be there. They should be glad to lose their benefits for the good of the state, glad they don't have a job like yours so difficult it was deserving of a salary of $333, 860 in the last financial year.

What a lovely, rewarding job being an aged care nurse must be anyway - draping crocheted rugs over the shoulders of sweet little old ladies, making them cups of tea, providing our senior citizens with care and respect as their lives draw to a close. Well, I can assure you that the care and respect are there, in spades. But you can have no idea what being an aged care nurse is really like. I do, because my husband is one. His reality is, many of the patients he deals with have dementia. It must be terrifying for them. They are not placid and compliant. Not knowing what is going on, they lash out. Imagine trying to clean up after a 70kg woman who has soiled herself and believes, in her mental confusion, that you are trying to rape her. So she kicks and screams and tries to bite. My husband has come home over the years with bruises (grip marks on his arms are particularly common) and scratches and even bite marks - with the disease risks that entails. Imagine walking into a room full of elderly people watching TV - and having one of them fling faeces at you. Pretty horrible, isn't it? This is the reality of aged care workers. It's a tough, tough job, and it's only going to get worse as the population ages and funding is unlikely to keep pace.

In Western society, due to our lifestyles and housing designs, we are largely unable to care for our elderly within our own families. So we outsource the work to the aged care sector. These people are absolutely vital to our society. They care for our elders when we can't, they face the reality of ageing so we don't have to. They deserve all the support we can give them, and you want to cut their meagre benefits. I'm speechless at the pettiness of it all. I really don't know what else to say. No doubt you'll rationalise this decision by saying you're helping to create jobs, by reducing the expenses of the owners of aged care facilities. I'm sure you'll argue that the state budget is stressed, and I guess it is. But please, Mr O'Farrell, don't cut the benefits of the people doing one of the hardest jobs there can be. Please pick on someone else.

Fair's Fair In School Funding

Conservatives claim to believe in equality. I'm sure they honestly think they do; it's just that they seem a little confused about what "equality" actually means. To them, it means literally providing the same opportunities to everyone. Take the issue of school funding.

Conservatives see nothing wrong with the government giving money to already wealthy private schools (not all private schools are wealthy, but the wealthy schools get their share of the booty). To them, the government providing annual funding of, say, $20,000 per student - whether that student attends The Kings School or Walgett Primary - is completely fair and equitable, because everyone's getting the same. It's so far from the truth.

The idea of equity is to redress the balance. Within reason, all kids should have the same opportunities to do well at school. The problem with funding every school child at the same level is that some kids start life at a huge disadvantage; they need more - more funding, more time, more support - to even begin to reach the same level. Where parents can't provide this, we as a society have to step in.

In most cases, a child who attends a private school - or even a primary school in a higher socio-economic area, where parental fundraising and involvement are valued - is at a huge advantage. They have parents who care enough about their education to pay for it, or at least help with homework, read books to their child, take them on outings, role model positive behaviours in going to work. For many disadvantaged children, they have none of those things. They might be growing up in a house where no one works; a house without books; a house without enough to eat. Think this only happens in a few rare circumstances?

The point is often made that parents who send their kids to private school are often not rich and shouldn't be penalised for spending their own money on a better education. But it's not penalising anyone to give a bit more to those who started out with less. No one has to send their children to private school. Some make the choice to do so because of religion, but most do so because private schools are better resourced. DH and I aren't rich and if we continue with our current careers, never will be. But BabyG has begun his life with a lot of privilege; the privilege of a white skin, the advantage of university educated parents, a house full of books, museum trips, outings. And we are planning on sending him to a private school. I believe the public education system needs to be far better resourced; but until it is, I'm not making my child a martyr to my ideals. He'll have wonderful opportunities; language immersion, science labs, medieval sword fighting is offered as a school sport.

Five minutes walk away from our intended school is a youth centre which does wonderful work with the area's children (inner city Sydney has areas of wealth and disadvantage in sometimes uneasy proximity). There are kids who attend who come from families where no one has worked in three generations; kids told at six years old if they don't shoplift the food, they'll get no tea tonight; kids told to stop wasting time at that bloody school anyway.

So. If the government is handing out this hypothetical $20,000 per head, who needs it more - their school or ours? Our school fees already cover the teachers and buildings. Our kids arrive at school usually already able to read and with homework help at home so they need less intensive classroom support. What should we spend our increased funding on - new grand piano for the orchestra perhaps? More swords?

Or perhaps they should take our share of the money and give it to the disadvantaged school. Hire an extra teacher's aide to help kids from families where no one can read. Extra books for the library cause they don't have any at home. Hiring the best teachers who can inspire a passion for education that will change these kids' lives. Hiring youth workers to work at schools to identify potential behavioural problems before they escalate, and put families in touch with support services. I think I want them to have our $20,000 instead.

We often bemoan families with generational unemployment, but the conservative approach is to remove benefits from the long term unemployed. By then it's often too late. We need to do more, start earlier, by redressing inequality from early childhood. Giving the same to every child fails to acknowledge that there are some kids who start life with a hell of a lot less, and they need to be given more, to even approach a sense of fair. It's much cheaper to provide services when a child is in primary school than to lock them up as an adult. Wouldn't we all prefer that the kid from the disadvantaged home was given the opportunity to grow up to repair cars rather than breaking in to them?

What's equal is not always what's fair. Failure to acknowledge this is letting us down as a nation, and it's a failure of social justice.

Levelling Up On Motherhood

The new, first time mother is the subject of much mirth. She is expected to be oversensitive, paranoid, laying down the rules of what she will and will not do with her child, worried about everything. It was certainly true for me with BabyG. I obsessed about germs and sniffles. Dummies which fell on a freshly mopped floor were boiled for five minutes before going back in his mouth. I changed his clothes three times a day. The first time he fell off the bed (all babies do this at least once), I was ready to call 000, until DH the paediatric nurse talked me out of it.

That was then. Fast forward to today, when I bought BabyG a raisin cookie to keep him entertained whilst I did the shopping. He enjoyed the cookie greatly. He enjoyed it all over his clothes and hair and face, in fact. And as we passed a woman wheeling her newborn in a Bugaboo, delicately wrapped beneath a beautifully embroidered bunny rug, I heard her mutter about never letting her baby get that messy. I had a small chuckle, and realised I have levelled up; I am no longer a "new" mother. For I vowed I'd never let my baby get that messy, either. How else could I tell?

Realising BabyG's pants are on backwards and merely being grateful that, after ten minutes of wrangling, I managed to get them on him at all (that old line about dressing a toddler being like trying to get an unhappy octopus into a string shopping bag without any of the tentacles sticking out? A breeze compared to BabyG). 

Hearing a thump and a cry as BabyG bangs into something and yelling "be there in a minute!" then (quickly) finishing folding the laundry or mashing the potatoes.

Seeing him eat grass and figuring it's all good for his immune system. Actually, when we lived in Sydney, he would sometimes suck on the handrails on the train before we could stop him, and CityRail will surely provide him with all the immunity he could ever need, ever; there's germs on those trains that not even the CSIRO can identify.

There's slightly sad moments, too. I've already had to shop for BabyG in the boyswear departments in those insane stores that have decided size 1 does not qualify as a "baby". We have survived the first teeth. Oh, I know I have a long way to go. Toilet training is still not on the horizon, the first day of school too distant to contemplate, the first teenage sleepover - well, BabyG will never be that old, surely. I've got a lot to learn, I'm a long way off being a master. But I've levelled up from motherhood "beginner" to "novice", and I get to roll my eyes and smile knowingly at the mother who really just hopes her newborn will always be so untouched and pristine.

Father Knows Best

According to a new study (well, it was out last week - I've been busy) fathers are averse to attending parenting courses because they're seen to be stuck in the 1950s. This comes as no surprise. Having recently passed through the public maternity system, it was depressing the extent to which all the literature reinforced an archaic view of parenthood - that fathers are distant, uncomfortable with children, unsure what to do. Returning from an early midwife appointment, I without reading it first handed DH an info booklet I'd been given of information for new fathers. I soon heard him laughing tersely. The booklet actually advised fathers to spend time with their children, make eye contact with them, and talk to them. "Don't they think fathers know that?" DH asked as he tore the brochure up, just a little hurt, I could tell. Why this assumption that men know nothing about kids until they have them, and are dragged reluctantly to parenthood by their partners? DH was even more eager to have a baby than I was; it's the same with several of my friends, with the male partner excited to become a dad as soon as possible and the female wanting to wait a few more years.

You wouldn't know it from a visit to a bookstore. I tried to find DH a good book about becoming a new father, but all I could find were "hilarious" accounts from comedians who unexpectedly became fathers in their late 30s and had apparently never held a child before then. Much asking of "what's a placenta?" and putting on of nappies back-to-front ensues. The alternative were pastel-covered books written by the people who'd produced the brochures, treating potential fathers like reluctant idiots. I could not find a conversational book to give DH some support through the challenges he was about to face, whilst acknowledging that men might already be aware that babies go through lots of nappies.

There are tonnes of active, involved, aware fathers these days. But you wouldn't know it from the media; there still seems to be a perception that at heart, children are the primary responsibility of the mother (witness the practice of telling women how lucky they are that their male partner is spending time with the kids - let alone telling said male how wonderful it is they take responsibility for the care of their own children). There's a lot of deep-seated assumptions to overcome, it's true. But we have to start somewhere, and surely it makes sense to start at the beginning?

The Truth About Babies

The opportunity to raise and nurture a child, to be alongside them and gently guide them as they introduce themselves to the world, develop, and grow, is a magical and sacred experience that reminds us all what life is really about.

I'm still bored off my tits being home every day with Baby G, though.

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An Old Man Wins Me Over On Same Sex Marriage

A sort-of historic day! (Partial) victory! A great moment for trying to have a bet each way...well it is the Labor party we're talking about here, who have today agreed at their national conference to change their official party policy to support of same sex marriage, and to allow a conscience vote in Parliament on the issue. The ALP doesn't normally allow independent voting - MPs must stick to the party line even, as John Faulkner pointed out, on votes to go to war - so for them to not require a vote on party lines here is very disappointing. In order for the issue to pass, it will require the Liberal party to allow a conscience vote, and then for enough Coalition MPs to vote in favour of the amendment to the Marriage Act. It could go either way. It's sobering to remember that due to John Howard's mean-spirited amendments to the Marriage Act, same sex marriage is not just not legal in Australia, it is expressly outlawed. Icky, isn't it? Some are calling for a referendum on same sex marriage. I don't agree. I just don't see why it should be up to anyone else to decide whom an adult acting of free will can marry. We cannot possibly claim we have equality of the sexes in Australia as long as your sex determines your choice of marriage partner. This is a fundamental human rights issue. Just get on with it.
Well, so I thought. But then I saw this letter, from Norm of Forestville, in today's Sydney Morning Herald:

Marriage has been convened over the centuries of civilisation to legally formalise the union between male and female, and provide protection of the rights of any off-spring that result from the union. I don't have a problem with gay people that want some legal recognition of their relationship. I would have thought a civil union contract would suffice, and I cannot see why they are insisting on the right to marry. Maybe I'm just getting old.

And I got to thinking. Norm is right. Marriage is designed to set out the roles and relationships between the sexes. It is designed to elevate the children of the marriage relationship. It is traditional. It's time we abolished it immediately.

If marriage hasn't evolved past the traditional roles of men and women, if we haven't evolved past the notion of legitimate and illegitimate children, then it hasn't evolved fast enough to keep up with society; it's a useless pretence we must be rid of. Traditional marriage - a man and a woman who is his legal property? The abhorrent notion that children are somehow more worthy dependent on the marital status of their parents? We don't need that. I'm going to ask DH for a divorce. Yes I still love him and hope and believe we will be together for the rest of our lives. But we should have followed the lead of some friends who are refusing to get married as long as same sex marriage remains illegal. Which - now that we are abolishing the outdated institution of marriage - means neither they, nor anyone else, can ever get married at all.

You've completely won me over, Norm. Cheers.

Reflections on the First Month of Parenthood

So BabyG is now one month old. It's been the longest and the quickest month of my life, quite startlingly unlike anything I could have imagined.

I thought I knew crazy hanging around engineering students, but I'd never had someone throw up on my breasts before. I thought I knew frustrating dealing with advertising clients who insisted on using seven different fonts in one ad, but I hadn't yet had to change nappies three times in ten minutes - or seven times in two hours. I coped well as a youth worker with several teenagers, but discovered it's different with a newborn - your shift doesn't end. And there are the days when you realise it's 1pm, I'm still in my pajamas, and I've just eaten a cornetto, because it is full of sugar and can be eaten with one hand. How did it come to this?

For all that though, it's really not as bad as I was expecting. At the end of the book Up The Duff, the character whose imaginary pregnancy diary we've been following reflects on early parenthood. She makes it seem a horror show of epic proportions - not knowing if it's day or night, no sleep whatsoever, being unable to shower or eat or do anything much at all except sob and wait for your kid to start school. It hasn't been like that for me. The first few weeks were bloody tough it's true, but that was more about my physical state after the c-section and broken rib, rather than the baby. When other mothers speak of how little sleep they're getting, I only smile and remain silent, knowing that if I confessed how much sleep BabyG gets, they'd beat me to death with bottles of frozen EBM. The house hasn't gotten particularly messy. There are no piles of laundry. I fear we're doing it wrong.

I've learned not to turn to books for guidance. Parenting books are, well, rather bossy. There's two opposing schools of thought - the first that you must have your baby adhering to a strict routine or the manipulative little mite will have you getting up at night to them in high school; the other that you must not let your baby cry unattended at any time or they will grow up to suffer major depression, always get picked last for sports teams and never find true love. The verbal sparring between the adherents of each philosophy will, I fear, form the storyline for a series of Underbelly in years to come.

We've decided to go with a see-what-happens-and-go-with-the-flow approach. The days have formed their own sort of routine. We do get out a bit, but it's easier just to stay home a lot of the time when you have a baby who still breastfeeds for hours on end (that said, my first public breastfeed was in the pub - go hard or go home I say). I've had my run ins with Foxtel, but they've been a lifesaver in recent weeks. I've read a lot of forums but haven't touched most of the parenting books. Maybe I should write one of my own, but I don't know how I ended up with a newborn who sleeps through at night. Pure bloody luck. I couldn't write a book any time soon. Sleep aside, I still have pretty shocking baby brain and it's taken ages to write this post. Parenting always changes though, I've learned that already, so maybe in a year or two, I'll be ready to scribe all this. Just one problem - DH is already saying he wants another one.