And Another Thing About Dieting

Has anyone else noticed that the weight goes on bottom to top but comes off top to bottom?

July 3, 2006.  Good thing about two babies in front of you is that it makes the rest of you look really really tiny in comparison!

I mean, how unfair is that?

I'd lost 3 kgs (about 6 1/2 lbs) last week when a friend at school asked me if I'd lost weight.

Yes, I admitted shyly, I have been working on it for a couple of weeks now, thank you for noticing. 

"Yeah, your face looks really thin again." she added.

Uh huh.  Three pounds per cheek.

And not the cheeks that needed it either.

Some Thoughts on Boobies (With NO pictures of Boobies, Promise!)

Am I the only nursing mother in the world whose milk actually dries up when she hears her baby cry?

I remember going to English Group in Boeblingen with the twins during that first year.  You girls remember, the year AFTER the twins when EVERYONE in the group had a baby.

July 2006,  Making it look easy!

One baby would cry and everyone would groan as their milk letdown.

Me?  I could feed an army after 8PM when the baby has gone to sleep and I'm sitting downstairs relaxing with a cuppa - or something else I SHOULDN'T REALLY be having, like the leftover Margaritas from Christmas.  Feet up, legs curled up under me on the sofa... and a good book.  That's what works for me.

Some other interesting notes on boobies I have rediscovered over the past four (has it really been FOUR?) months


1.  Men really don't look further down past the boobies to your ass if your boobs are big enough.  Yay boobies.  Great camouflage for post-partum fat-ass.  (Although I still don't know why I get this since I have been reassured by many pregnancy books that I don't actually carry the babies in my rear end!)

2.  If your husband has told you he WASN'T really a boob man anyway, because you were a size A after two years in the Peace Corps, you will never actually know the truth until you turn into a DD after breastfeeding twins.  "Boobies."  No dear.  Those AREN'T for you.  Remember, you aren't really a boob man anyway, right?!  And the time to show an interest is NOT at the end of the day when another man (or two) has been attached to them for the majority of the day.  To be sure, it's a bittersweet breast enhancement all-around.  After nursing five children, they aren't the boobies he fell in love with all those years ago anyway. 

August 2006 at Europa Park.  Yup, that's two at once under there!

(A corollary here, for those of you worrying that you are too fat.  When I came back from two years in the Peace Corps in Haiti, so proud of myself that I was FINALLY a size 6, and around 130 pounds/60 kgs, none of my male friends who hadn't seen me in two years were all that impressed with the weight loss.  I'll never forget the disappointment on Dan's face when I met him at the bar in Stamford.  "But, but, but, where are the boobies?"  Spoken a BIT more discretely.  Note: you aren't as fat as you think you are.  And noone else wants to see you as skinny as you want to see yourself!)

3.  Men stop looking at your face and focus on your boobs when they are babes at the breast.  HELLO IAN!  Mommy's face it UP HERE!  North of the where the milk comes from. 

Ian, January 2012.  Working out the logistics.

On the other hand.  Not everyone IS looking at your boobs as much as you think they are.  News alert Christine:  you are not as central to everyone else's lives as you think you are!  I have managed to walk through Horseland, buying Ryan's Christmas presents, with one boob entirely exposed before the sales lady at the counter discretely pointed out to me that I MIGHT like to close up my nursing bra BEFORE heading out into the real world again!

This explains the numerous ladies I have spotted at the shops with their boobs hanging out trying to make it through Woolies before the baby wakes up. 

And kudos to Lawnton's LOTE (Language Other Than English, in this case German and Mandarin) teacher, MALE LOTE teacher, who actually WAS speaking to my face a few months ago when I noticed that my front was undone.

Nothing sexier than a man who actually IS focusing on what you are saying!  (I was trying to rope him into a Lawnton School Writers' Group I have floating around in my mind.) 

It's a short time though, the time when your world revolves around your boobs as food source.

January 2012,  Movie World, Gold Coast, Australia

After all, a mother DOES have other roles.

There's the cleaning, the shopping and the prepping for school.  (Which starts tomorrow, YAY school!)

So that rather than focusing on the boobs, I've decided to nickname Ian and myself after ANOTHER role vital during that first year of infancy - carrying.

On the days that I don't feel like a permanent food dispenser, I feel like the robotic sidekick that MegaMind has designed to carry his pet fish around. 

Minion and Dad at Dicky Beach, Caloundra, Australia

Minion.  That's us.  With Ian propped up in front of me, face out, commanding me with flailing arms and shrieks of joy to show him the world he can't quite reach on his own yet.  (Although he's trying.  Giving Andrew a run for his money on first to crawl.  ALMOST has it, working eerily methodically on mastering the coordination required.)

At least carrying him around like that covers the booby I've probably forgotten to tuck away again!

Speaking of Reincarnation

The other debate at our house is whether the punishment is being reincarnated as a big, old, hairy, smelly man.

Aw!  But they start off so cute and cuddly!

Or being the woman who has to put up with living with a big, old, hairy, smelly man.

Wolfy? Is that you?!

We've got this reincarnation theme going on at the moment in our house, ever since Ian was born and we knew he had done this before.

Then Ryan realised Ian had the same hair colour as Wolfy, our old dog and.....

Wolfy wondering what he's done to deserve this!

Now it's between Wolfy having found a way to be allowed up onto the couch and a little old Asian man in saffron robes from Tibet wondering what the heck he did to end up as a funny looking white boy in Australia.

Om.

Swimming Lessons

You've probably heard about the flooding we've been having here in New South Wales and Queensland. No? Well, it's one of the advantages of life down under. We escape the public eye. You have no idea what true freedom really is, America, until you disappear from the news.


After two years of drought, where it got so bad that the koalas were coming down out of their trees and begging for water from garden hoses, this past October was the beginning of the rainiest spring ever recorded in this area, since they started recording over one hundred years ago. (114 years, I believe, and that's a LONG time for this young country!) The creek down the road – the one they assured us hadn't flooded in over ten years – has flooded three times in December.

At one point, after a particularly rainy week, the kids looked at me and said, ''with all this rain, we might as well be back in Germany.'' I had to remind them that they were saying this dressed in shorts and T-shirts.

We've made it to the pool quite often though. The temperature has never dropped below 25C – the water temperature – which, although the Australians think we're crazy, is warmer than the pool in Hildrizhausen EVER was....HEATED! Plus, someone's gotta keep the water level down.

So that the twins have gone from being able to swim a few strokes from the side of the pool into my waiting arms to leaping and diving and dancing like porpoises upon the waves. Porpoises on crack cocaine, perhaps, but porpoises none-the-less.

We can't afford the swim lessons that every self-respecting Australian child takes every summer. Kids here swim earlier than German kids learn to ride two wheelers without training wheels. And let me tell you, that's pretty darn early. (Four, okay, the answer is four.) If they can't swim by prep school, they learn it there. With refresher courses every year. Swimming is big here. Yay me. How did I manage NOT to grow up in the country that so far encompasses every single one of the values I hold dear?!

Swimming. We swim almost daily and the boys jump and dive and twist and wriggle around the pool while Ryan gracefully guides her lithe figure between them doing her laps.

It ain't pretty. Aidan swims like Andrew did a few years ago. The lifeguard in Boeblingen almost went into early retirement. They both like to sink to the bottom, blowing bubbles on the way down, thrash about a bit under the water, and then surface after about thirty seconds to gasp and gulp for air. The trick to getting them to swim is to ignore the drama.   (Matthew meanwhile, cuts through the surface of the water like a shark; he is showing signs of being every bit as graceful as Ryan.)

Underwater they are all as graceful as porpoises. It is so much fun to see them twirl and dance. Underwater, they are birds in flight.

And, I think, what are swimming lessons this summer going to teach them that they aren't already learning on their own? Proper strokes would be nice. Staying above water a bit more will be helpful in the long run. But, the rest of it, the joy and the basic skills, they are learning as they dance and play.

They need to breathe. They need to stay afloat.  Eventually, they need to get to shore.

Which, it suddenly hits me, is what it's all about.

Random Thought: Puzzling with Twins

Nothing like a pair of twins to turn a jigsaw puzzle into an extreme speed-sport.

I'm exhausted. (Go ahead. You try to do TWO 48 piece puzzles side-by-side with two impatient little men screaming at you with puzzle pieces in their hands. See how relaxing you find the whole thing.)

Random Thought: Spring Cleaning

What a joy to finally be able to leave the doors and windows open today and watch the spring breeze chase all those winter dust bunnies out of hiding!

Random Thought: Guns

I am very pleased to see that the toy pistols the boys bought with their Christmas money from Grandpa (I took 'em to the store; I claim full responsibility) are lying forgotten in the playroom corner.

I am not as pleased that they've chewed their toast into the shape of a gun and are now shooting at eachother with it!

Random Thought: Star Wars

You haven't lived until you've had two Wookies slugging it out in your living room.

Random Thought: Marijuana

Just a quick thought for the future:

"If I take away a joint from my children and smoke it, is that confiscating something for their own good or is it stealing?"

I'm going to do it either way. Just want to know where I stand!