It's official: I'm jumping on the bandwagon

The title of this post cracks me up, because it's so ironic. I'm talking about homeschooling. I've decided I'm going to do it. And it cracks me up to think I'm jumping on the homeschooling bandwagon, because the majority of people in my social circle are homeschoolers but it's seen as a totally crazy fringe practice by the mainstream.

Homeschooling has been an idea I've rolled around in the back of my mind for a long time, but have never been willing to commit to because it seems like an awful lot of hard work. And let's face it, being able to palm the kids off to someone else for six hours a day for free seems pretty appealing sometimes! However, knowing what I know about the school system from my experience as a teacher, and seeing the effects of it first hand, I see that it's really not much chop at all and I'm confident I could do a better job at home. Then there's the element of wanting to "protect my kids from the world", which I freely admit exists too. It also occurred to me recently that there's no point at which I can't change my mind. So what's there to lose?

At this point I'm leaning towards an unschooling philosophy, but that's as much for practical reasons as anything else. I haven't got the inclination right now to research set homeschool curricula, and it doesn't matter anyway given that Cassia's only 20 months old. Besides, she's already learning heaps of stuff, as does any child before they begin any official education program, so there's a good case for saying I'm already "unschooling" her (and I realise that the term itself is open to debate). But the idea of following her natural talents and interests appeals, as does the freedom to do whatever we want, whenever and however seems best to me. I am also quite opposed to external grading and assessment. I would much prefer that my kids develop a strong and healthy confidence in their own abilities, and not constantly feel like they have to go to an outside source to determine the worthiness of anything they attempt to achieve.

I'm open to suggestions and ideas from others, however, and will probably end up subscribing to a whole host of homeschooling blogs and transferring my addiction to birth blogs and Facebook to them instead over the next couple of years.

And apropos of birth blogs and Facebook, I am on a new mission to get my life in order and that involves severely limiting the amount of time I spend trawling the internet. From now on (after I have posted this), Wednesday is it. That means I'll only be updating Bustin' Out Baby once a week, as well as checking in on all the other blogs, forums and websites I frequent. But for those of you who may be feeling a wave of panic right now as you contemplate the withdrawal symptoms you'll inevitably suffer as a result of this decision (I know there are dozens of you), fear not! I'm likely to often put up more than one post at a time, so you can get a big fix all at once.

Who's counting?

We visited L and A yesterday. (L is my Laotian friend, A is her two-and-a-half year old boy.) It was the first time we'd seen them for a couple of months, and although both kids have grown a little, Cassia has made the more substantial progress. As you would expect, given how much younger she is. And not just physically either -- she's talking heaps and interacting a lot more than she used to. So she was playing with A's toys and saying the names of all the animals on one of them, repeating everything we said, asking for things, etc. L was really impressed and said something almost apologetic about A still not saying very much, although he had learned "No, don't touch".

I was quick to assure L that it really didn't matter. For one thing, A is a boy and it's pretty well-known that girls generally learn verbal skills faster than boys (he was able to swing a toy baseball bat and occasionally make contact with a ball; I thought that was pretty cool). For another, A is growing up tri-lingual. No wonder the poor kid's a bit "behind". Eventually he'll be streaks ahead of most people! And finally, what does "behind" mean, anyway? Mastering fewer words than average for any given age? Well, there's a reason it's an average.

This morning I was feeling a sudden urge to count how many words Cassia knows now, just for curiosity's sake. And then I dug a little deeper into my thoughts and realised I was only wanting to count them for a sense of smug self-satisfaction. I'm already pretty certain she knows a lot more words than the average for her age. And if by some chance I'm totally off track and she actually knows less words than the average, what's that going to do for me? Only cause me stress.

So forget it. Who cares how many words she knows? The point is she can make herself understood and I'm just gonna sit back and revel in the joy she brings me by asking for "cullwd" (cuddles).

Something I love about Japan

Is the proliferation of 100-yen stores. They are everywhere. Recently E did us the service of discovering another huge one called Seria while she was out with Cassia on a walk. It's got rows and rows and rows of household products, food items, toys, stationery, trinkets and miscellaneous goodies, each of which costs 100 yen. You'll find virtually anything you can imagine that could conceivably be sold at that price.

I have found normal-sized bottles of sweet chilli sauce there!
I have found normal-sized cans of red kidney beans!
I have found packets of pasta there which, while also too small, are still cheaper than anything I've found in the supermarkets!
I have found anti-static spray!
There are bits and pieces galore at Seria and I will find myself going there on a regular basis as Cassia gets older. I can't wait to start making fun stuff with her. Costumes, toys, games, etc. And all for a few hundred yen! Ah, life is good. All I need to do now is find a huge op shop and I'll be set (not that anything would fit me anyway, but that's not the point).

***** ***** *****
Seria is directly opposite the Numazu general post office on the main road through Numazu. (Sorry, I don't know the names of any of the roads around here.) But you can't miss it. The carpark is underneath, and the building has a huge dark green sign painted across the top.

Standard care vs kangaroo care for premmie babies

It's all said over at Midwife Mutiny, but the summary is: kangaroo care is better. (Lisa recently attended the birth of a 33-weeker at home. She rocks, I tell you.)

Did I ever say I love cloth nappies?

I take it back. I hate 'em. My beautiful gorgeous awesome Waggle Wees appear to have bitten the dust. I don't know for sure, but the ProCare inside them (the waterproof layer) is stiff and crunchy and seems to be leaking wee through to the outer. Either that or Cassia is doing GINORMOUS wees every time now. That's despite the fact that I recently switched to fresh new bamboo pocket stuffers. Eight layers of bamboo should hold the average toddler wee, right? (I realise bamboo increases absorbency after the first few times you use it, but I've already been using it for at least a month.)

My usual pattern is to do nappy laundry every three days, which means that the nappies sit in the bucket for as much as 75 hours. I know that isn't really good for them, but at the same time, they're NAPPIES. They're supposed to be able to handle that, aren't they? It's not like every single one of them sits there for three days every single time. Hmmm. Maybe it's the laundry liquid I'm using. I have always wondered if it's actually bleach, in which case of course I've destroyed my nappies. Stupid Japanese household products with no English writing on them. What are they thinking? But it doesn't smell like bleach. D'oh. Maybe I should have experimented with a few different brands before now. D'oh, d'oh, d'oh.

The trouble is, I hate disposable nappies too. Sigh. Maybe this is yet another area in which Mum was right all along. I shoulda just used plain old terry towel like they did in her day... d'oh.

This is the difference between me and Japan

Cultural note to explain this anecdote: In Japan, if you need to see a GP you go to a hospital, because that's where they have their clinics. So "going to hospital" is not as big a deal here as it is back home. Nevertheless, during last week's lesson...

Teacher (in Japanese): Is there a hospital near your house?
Me (in English): Oh, I don't know.
Teacher: You don't know?
Me (shrugging): I have a list of all the local hospitals somewhere. But I haven't needed to go to one, so I haven't really noticed where they are.
Teacher: But what about Cassia-chan?
Me: She hasn't needed to go to one either.
Teacher: But hasn't she ever... (demonstrates coughing and blowing nose)?
Me: Oh yeah, she's had a cold but I haven't bothered taking her to the doctor. There wasn't really any need to.
Teacher: (Laughs in amazement)
Me: It's cultural, I guess. In Australia, we don't go to doctors if we just have a cold...

I didn't bother to explain the cultural phenomenon of the sickie and that adults go to doctors for trivial things just to get a medical certificate. Anyway, it was just one of those amusing little exchanges.

Hajimemashite, Natarii des

Which, as we all know, means Nice to meet you, I'm Nat.

I'm making slow and steady progress learning some elementary Japanese. It is a hard language! Just because it bears no resemblance to English at all. Anyway, Japanese lessons involve a lot of me staring blankly at my teacher and laughing self-consciously. Talk about being out of my comfort zone. Theoretically I can tell you where the supermarket is, what time my lesson starts and ends, and when I came to Japan. I can say how much something costs, what's in the lounge room and where I went last week. In practice each sentence takes me about fifteen minutes to say and I think I end up more often saying things like "The train station is inside the elevator". But oh well. It's almost fun, in a tortuous so-painful-it's-good kind of way.

Travelling the birth trauma road

It has been a long time since I blogged about any of this. I got to a point where I finally accepted I wasn't achieving anything by ranting about birth in the medical system. Anything? Well that's not entirely true since I did and still do occasionally get a comment from a random stranger thanking me for my posts, and one of my readers told me she had a good birth experience thanks at least in part to my willingness to share my own story. But I do know there are/were other readers dismissing me as extreme and just trying to scare women off hospitals. What I was trying to achieve (i.e. challenging women to stop and really consider why they're choosing to birth in the system that has been proven to work against them), and what I was actually achieving (offending them because the challenge by its very nature is confronting and arouses anger) were not the same thing. My challenge of the system was taken as a personal attack on them for being in it even though I meant no such thing. The information I was offering - and the raw nerves I was touching in the process - made it self-evident that birthing in the system is a suboptimal choice, and it felt like I was making personal attacks because I was so angry about it. But I acknowledge that my anger was doing very little to help my cause. And I'm still angry, so in general I've stopped talking.

Meanwhile I have been working on my own personal issues of birth trauma - which are separate from but closely related to the issues of systematic medicalised birth - and made a lot of headway. I knew I wasn't healed, and I know I never will be totally healed in this lifetime, but a scab was finally forming over the gaping wound in my heart. It's been an uneasy sort of peace and silence, though, and in the last few days the scab has been ripped off unexpectedly. So I'm raw and bleeding again and have decided to talk about it on my blog for the sake of those random strangers and perhaps others who might actually be gaining something useful from what I have to say. To let them know that it's normal and OK to be unhappy about a bad birth experience, that it's normal for the hurt to keep popping up for months and years afterwards, even if they think they've dealt with it. And to let them know there is a better choice, as long as they're prepared to work through their deep-rooted fears and beliefs about birth which are based on a culture of misinformation the system feeds itself and us.

What I'm trying very hard to do differently this time is keep a lid on my anger even though I think the systematic abuse of women giving birth in hospitals is something worth getting angry about. It's also worth getting angry about pornography, and child slavery, and the amount of pesticides and antibiotics pumped into the meat and produce we buy at the supermarket, but I'm only one person and there's only so many worldly causes I can choose to focus my energy on.

So anyway, a recent conversation triggered a whole host of really intense emotions and painful memories and I've spent the last few days alternating between brooding, crying, taking Rescue Remedy and praying. I've fallen into another valley after having enjoyed a long spell of sitting on a plateau. The difference between this time and others, however, is that I now know I'll climb back out, but in the meantime it's OK to acknowledge that I'm in it, and it's no fun. And I'm not wallowing in self-pity or placing blame on the individuals who put me in the valley, or trying to drag other people into it, but I'm sharing the fact that I'm in it because I believe it's important for us to be real that a) valleys exist for everyone and b) just because we've climbed out of a valley doesn't mean we'll never fall back in it.

Now if you've got to the end of this post and are upset with me, I'm sorry. Please bear with me, because there is no topic on the face of this earth dearer to my heart and I have tried really hard to speak my mind without either compromising the depth of my feelings or treading on your toes. If you are suffering from a bad experience during birth (which can be anything from an emergency caesarean to a nurse who spoke rudely to you) and are finding it difficult to accept that, please do yourself a favour and explore your feelings a little deeper. There are support networks available to you if you reach out to them. There is truthful information about pregnancy and birth out there if you are willing to accept it. Place your anger with the system that caused your pain, and not with the woman who points it out to you. I wish you love and healing, and thank God and the women and man who have helped me on my own healing journey. xo

Bwa. Ha. HA!!!

Notice of the Health Check-up for Children 1 Year and 6 Months

(addressed to Craig)

Date and time of appointment: 2009, 01, 15, 1:15 p.m. - 2:15 p.m.
Place: Numazu City Health Center
Things to bring: Health Handbook for Mothers and Children, Questionnaire for the Health Check-up, Toothbrush (hopeful)
Remarks: If you are not available on that day, you can take the exam in the next month. If you can't come for the exam, please fill out the questionnaire and sent it to the Numazu City Health Center. Since there is no parking space, please do not come by car.

Questionnaire
(I won't put all the questions in because we'll be here all day if I do. But ooohhhhhhh, there are so many I want to share with you! Here's a sample.)

* Does your baby go through the motions on TV or adults?
* Do you and your child look at each other?
* Does your child hound and cling to his/her mother when he/she is scared?
* Is your child pleased to play with you?
* Please circle what your child drinks well, and write the quantity in a day (the options are milk, formula milk, lactic acid bacteria beverage, isotonic beverage, juice and others).
* Have you started to potty train your child?
* Raising children is not easy. Please circle the number below which expresses your feelings best. Raising children is (and the sliding scale from 1-7 uses the following as guidepoints: very annoying, makes you tired sometimes, makes you tired but it is bearable, a lot of fun).

Hearing Test
When your child is playing, go behind him/her and whisper "shh" or his/her name. Repeat that hearing test more than 3 times on different days. Please answer the following questions. Does you child turn his/her face when you whisper? When you call your child's name? When you whisper "shh"?
How to talk in a whisper: First, see the right chart and try to say "ah..." with your hands on your throat. You can feel vibrations. Next, let the air out of your lungs and say "Ha" in a whisper. Now, you didn't feel any vibrations on the throat, did you? As I mentioned above, whispering is just like talking while breathing. That's the usual way people talk confidentially.
Please try to do this hearing test several times because children don't hear or turn their face when they are excited and playing.

I don't think anything else needs to be said, does it?

Eight and a half hours

I discovered yesterday that that's about how long I can go without feeding Cassia before my boobs start to protest. Craig and I left her with E for the day while we went off to celebrate our 10th anniversary. Don't you love how I title and preface a post describing how we spent our 10th anniversary with a reference to motherhood? Anyway...

We had a GREAT day! Our aim was to visit an onsen (hot spring) to indulge in the quintessential Japanese experience, and then, if there was time left over, go check out what there was to do in a historic town near the onsen.

So we jumped on a train from Numazu to Atami, which is "the gateway to the Izu Peninsula". Izu is famous for onsen, and there are hundreds of them all over the place. The east coast of Izu is to Japan something like the Gold Coast is to Australia -- a holiday destination with lots of resorts, a good climate, transplanted palm trees to give you the illusion you're in Hawaii, and beautiful views out to the ocean. That's where the similarity ends though, because Izu is nowhere near as built up as the Gold Coast and it's full of steep hills and rocky outcrops which make it far more tasteful and pleasant on the eye. Anyway, there's a train line running all the way down the east coast to a town called Shimoda. It's a private line and a lot of the trains are specially designed with panoramic windows and seats that face outwards so that you can sit and enjoy the view.

The idea was to get off at Kawazu, from where we would catch a bus that would drop us off right outside the onsen. Craig had studied the train and bus timetables very carefully the night before and worked out exactly which train we'd need to catch in order to get on the connecting bus which would maximise our time at the onsen. (One of the catches with using public transport around Izu is that it's infrequent and relatively slow.) He hadn't factored in the possibility that we would be lulled into a trance on the train and find ourselves staring at the sign on the platform saying "Kawazu" and thinking, Hmmm, Kawazu, now why is that name familiar? and only just realising we were meant to be getting off there as the train pulled out of the station again.

After a bit of panic and feeling like the world's stupidest gaijin being hurtled helplessly away from our comfort zone like those poor suckers who find themselves the victims of Japanese practical jokes you see if you put "bizarre Japanese TV" into youtube's search function, we wondered if we'd be able to walk back to Kawazu from the next station in enough time to still make the bus (our hopes of which faded very quickly as the train raced through tunnels for a solid five minutes before getting to the next station). We figured there was nothing else to do but jump on the first train going back in the other direction and just hope we might make the next bus to the onsen. So we hopped sheepishly off the train, knowing that one day we'd think this was funny. After all, it wouldn't be Craig and Nat if we didn't get ourselves into scrapes like this, would it? Much to our relief and amusement the next train came into view within a minute. As the line is only one track wide, this meant that the train we'd just been on had to wait on its side of the platform until the other one had pulled up at the station. We can only wonder what the passengers on the carriage we'd been on were thinking as they saw us jump straight back on the train headed in the direction we'd just come from.

Anyway, the rest of the trip was straightforward, which we were happy about. The expectation for most onsen is that you'll strip right down to the nuddy, but we were far too inhibited for that kind of thing, and chose Amagiso because it was advertised as one where you actually do wear bathers. They also reckoned it had great views, and wasn't too crowded or expensive, so we felt like we were onto a winner. And we weren't disappointed. Amagiso was beautiful!!

You know how the first time you do something new, you feel really self conscious? We felt a bit like that as we were instructed to take off our shoes, step into the change rooms, change into our suimin-gia (that's a hard "g" sound - work it out for yourself), come back out, don some sandaru (sandals) provided by the establishment, and then make the trek down the side of the gorge to the pools. But it was worth it. Nothing like a bit of soaking in a hot spring to help you relax! There were several different pools there of temperatures varying from 38 to 49 degrees. We jumped into the 49 degree one first -- well, eased ourselves in gently -- although I'm not sure if that was the smartest way to do it. Anyway, the contrast between it and the 38 degree one was amazing. I usually think 38 degrees is very warm, but it felt almost cool in comparison. (It was also in a cave, which was the other kind of cool.)


See that black hole towards the bottom right of the photo? That's the entrance to the cave pool.


This is the 49 degree pool. They've built a little enclosure around it, but the side the photo has been taken from is totally open to a view of the waterfall and river.


Some more outdoor pools. Niiiiiiiiiiiiice.

After we'd had our fill of soaking in hot tubs we headed back to Kawazu for lunch. There wasn't much open -- it was already after 2 p.m. and a lot of places close up for the first week of January anyway -- but we found a sushi restuarant nearby which featured extremely fresh and potent locally produced wasabi, so we were able to continue our very Japanese experience. We scored eight pairs of chopsticks as we were leaving, although whether that was a standard parting gift to all customers or just something the guy thought we deserved after Craig's stellar efforts at speaking Japanese and admiring the local wasabi, we're still not sure.

There were still a few hours in the day, so we jumped back on the train and headed to Shimoda, which is famous for being the place that was first used as a trading port by America when Japan opened up to the West in the 1850s. It's got some interesting little things to see and do, and we killed a bit of time there by walking around the headland which has a view with, according to our guidebook, "refreshingly little concrete in sight, although not entirely unspoiled by a large resort hotel". It lived up to its description. More amusing to us was the sight of the utterly delapidated "Shimoda Grand Hotel" with its rusted outer staircase, boarded up front gate and puzzlingly new-looking sign with shrubbery growing over it.





We got home a bit after 7:00 p.m., by which time I was about to explode with milky goodness, to a very cheerful Cassia and E, who had been nice enough to even cook dinner in our absence. Cassia didn't miss us at all! I felt a bit torn about that. Pleased that she's confident enough to go a whole day without me, but miffed that she didn't want to sit in my lap and cuddle the rest of the evening. (And also wondering why it is she's so clingy to me when I am home, since she can obviously go without boobies for much longer than I can go without feeding her!)

Ten years ago today...

With substantial jubilation

We send this invitation
Please come to our wedding
And join the celebration

Janu'ry third, 'ninety-nine
2 p.m. will be the time
Number Eight St George's Road
In Elsternwick - it's very fine

We'd love for you to share
In our grand affair
A cocktail party will ensue -
Hope to see you there!

Wow. It's been ten whole years. Where did all that time go? What happened? What's changed? What hasn't changed? I'd just like to spend a little time reflecting on our journey through married life, so bear with me. This post is gonna be loooooooong.

Sadly, 1999 was pre digital camera days (at least for the average Joe), so we have no photos on our computer that I can upload here. We also didn't bring our scanner to Japan, or our wedding albums, which I'm suddenly realising was another one of those unfortunate decisions made in the mad last-minute rush of moving. Right now I would love to pull out our main album, snuggle up on the couch with Craig and look through the photos again. And then put the album prominently on display next to the bunch of ten roses given to us today by means of a conspiracy between E and my mum (Thank you! Mwah!). But they're in storage somewhere in Melbourne. Oh well.

So I was the tender age of 19 and Craig wasn't really much older at 23. I can hardly believe how young we were, now. I mean, I look at other 19-year-olds and think "I was married at your age!??" And yet I remember at the time thinking it was a perfectly natural, sensible, logical thing to do. We had found each other, we knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, we understood the importance and permanence of the commitment we were making in God's eyes and were prepared to make it - so why wait any longer?

"They" say the first year of marriage is the hardest (well, some say the first twenty years are the hardest, but those people are obviously bitter and twisted), but I don't remember it being hard at all. There were minor things I had to deal with, such as living with a man who was so well-trained that he actually put the toilet lid down, rather than leaving the seat up. And he was a computer geek. And he used measuring spoons and cups when cooking. And he cooked rice via the absorption method. We lived in a cute little unit in Glen Waverley. I was adamant about not having children any time soon, and maybe even ever. Children? Ugh! Those little people that keep you up all night and poo and vomit and dribble and cry and make a mess everywhere? No thanks! We were both working, although I was bored and miserable in my job and decided it was finally time to get serious about going to uni and getting my teaching degree. Craig wasn't really happy at his job either and ended up getting a new and better one right about the time I quit my own.

So I enrolled in Arts/Education at Monash Uni and proceeded to live off Craig for three years. This arrangement worked pretty well but the housing boom took off in a big way and left us behind as a result, so as much as we loved Glen Waverley, its affordability slipped through our fingers. For all of those three years I remained categorically opposed to having children, although I freely admitted that one day eventually I'd change my tune. And I began to have this vague awareness that Craig actually did want kids, and was just waiting for me to be ready.

We took our big holiday to Italy and the USA in early 2002, which was a lot of fun. The Italian leg of the trip was the real adventure since we were backpacking and youth hostelling for most of it, and I was getting lots of real-life practice at speaking Italian after studying it for two years at uni. One of my favourite memories of that trip was negotiating with a street vendor how much change we should have got from five euros for two bottles of water. They'd only just introduced the euro, and I actually helped the guy out, since he gave me about 7 euros to begin with. Anyway, we had a really good trip and oh! I've just realised that by then we did have a digital camera (ner ner, we had one before anyone else!!) so I should go searching through all our old photos and post a few here.

I love this one! How young and perky and fresh-faced we look! This was the beginning of our trip.

These little cars popped up surprisingly often in Florence.

Showing off.

I'm positive the sculptor had this exact scenario in mind when the artwork was commissioned.

You can't tell in this photo, but those trousers I'm wearing? One leg is purple and the other is green. I still have them in storage somewhere.

And this one, taken at the end of the trip, I just love for the hilarity of the contrast. But what really amazes me is that even though we were totally wrecked with jet lag and five weeks of constant travel, we still look young and perky in this photo compared to how we look on an everyday basis now.

2003 was the year we attended ABC, so we lived in Cincinnati for nearly nine months. Wow, that was an interesting year. We went from being a young married couple with NO kids (thank you very much) living on our own in a small apartment, to a young married couple boarding with an elderly couple and their adult son in a huge share house with four other single guys who were also ABC students. And one of them was LOUD. Woah. And ABC itself was just so full-on. We thought we were going to spend so much time together. The reality was that we spent a lot of space together, but not so much time. It was the most stressful year of our marriage and yet such a rich experience that we look back on it now with lots of fond memories and gratitude for the opportunity to go. And we made friends from that year that we're still in contact with!

So we came back to Australia towards the end of 2003 and lived in another small apartment in Oakleigh East. I finished uni in 2004, still fairly well anti-parenthood although softening in my approach after realising I didn't want to be a teacher forever, and that Craig was getting really keen on the idea of having children. I started teaching in 2005 with the intention of keeping at it for three years before popping out a kid. The very huge boost in our income that year also made it possible for us to buy a house out in Carrum Downs, which we moved into early 2006.

Teaching sucked beyond anything I can adequately convey in words here (and right now I sort of wish I could post a link to the blog I was keeping back then, just for your reading pleasure, but alas, it has long since bitten the cyberdust) but it had the beneficial effect of speeding up my childbearing plans. We spent most of 2006 trying to conceive, although that was interrupted by Craig's one-month business trip to Japan in June. We were apart for a whole month!! That was the longest by far we'd ever been away from each other, the previous record being nine days when I went to Canberra for a uni-related trip. We missed each other a lot, but coped. Actually, I was given a new appreciation of how hard it is to save money when you're single while Craig was away. How else was I meant to entertain myself? Anyway, Cassia began her journey with us in September that year and we were both over the moon about it.

(I'm going to diverge here for a moment just to reflect on that aspect of life. For a long time I bemoaned the six years I wasted going to uni and teaching. On reflection now, however, I see that they served the purpose of making me realise just how much I did want to have children after all those years of being determined not to have them. And the fact that I really really really wanted to have a baby, and genuinely was thrilled to discover I was pregnant, had a huge impact on my approach to parenthood. I've only just started to realise that recently, but it's been a wonderful penny-drop.)

And Cassia was born June 2007. And that sentence still makes my heart leap and my stomach churn for reasons I'd rather it didn't.

But parenthood has been SUCH a blessing. The amount of support we've had to give each other, the importance of being on the same page in our parenting philosophy, the emotional distances we've travelled together, have brought us closer than anything before it. Ten years on, we're going stronger than ever and it's wonderful. Thank you Craigie, for being such a great, supportive, loving and devoted husband. I love you! Mwah! I look forward to another ten years (and another, and another...), with hopefully a few more babies thrown into the mix. :D

(Oh by the way, he still leaves the toilet lid down. And he's still a computer geek and still uses measuring cups and spoons when cooking. But now I cook rice via the absorption method too.)