I was away for work for a couple of days last week and Mr. Waffle carried out crowd control in Dublin. When I got back, I had a look through the photos taken while I was away so that I wouldn’t miss even a moment of my children’s lives.
Me: What’s the Princess wearing?
Him: It’s a new jumper I bought her.
Me: You needed to buy her a new jumper?
Him: Hey, while you was gone, I was raisin’ this family.
Mother of two, mistress of the hilarious one liner. She once said (more pithily) that when giving out attention, the child who can throw things at her tends to have an advantage. This was a reasonable observation and stopped me worrying about ignoring my sons, thus allowing me additional time to fend off missiles from my daughter. She also observed, oh so truthfully, that when you have a small child, when you’re out, you’re out, which is how she ended up in the post office in dressing gown and slippers. Consider also this post on breast feeding a nine month old. Such an insight into the true nature of parenting and such excellent writing – from one so young too. She is only about 25. I try not to hold it against her.
This is an odd one, for me, at least. Kateri is the mother of two little girls, who live with her; she also has another little girl whom she gave up for adoption to her lasting regret. It was an “open adoption” but it doesn’t seem to have worked out very well for Kateri who is gutted. I’d never really given much thought to adoption and its implications for everyone concerned before reading this blog and she has made me think a lot about that. She is a very different person from me. She definitely falls in the earth mother end of the spectrum (she doesn’t use disposable nappies, and this is only the beginning, people) whereas I am more at the “what’s your name again child who I only see briefly every day, oh good Lord how many of you are there?” end of the spectrum. I think she’s wrong about a lot of things and I’m sure she would think the same about me but it is interesting to read the (very definite) opinions of someone you don’t agree with most of the time. And also I do admire her coping skills as she separates from her husband and brings up her daughters and tries to do what’s best.