babies | With Grace

I am going to study full-time next year. (Finishing a course I started over 10 years ago). I am a mother of two small children. My husband is a musician. How am I going to manage? I have no f-ing clue. All I know is that I ~~really~~ REALLY want to do this. My brain has been craving stimulation on an academic level since I knew that I was pregnant first time round. I realised then that I would soon be a mum and not a uni student who worked in a bar in Fitzroy, Melbourne. I was soon to be trading in intellectual thought-provoking debates for delighted squeals about poo and getting a good attachment on my right side using the “football hold”. I was now a watcher of day time TV. The only other time in my life when I watched daytime TV was in high school when I chucked a sickie and sat all day on the couch glued to the box. (We weren’t allowed much TV time as children so when the chance came I took it, firmly, and milked it).

I am a young mum by today’s standards. I was 25 when Lalita was born. I was still searching for what I REALLY wanted to do with the rest of my life. Sure I’d traveled – but by no means enough. Sure I’d partied – but I wasn’t completely sick of it yet. We found out about our bun in the oven 2 days after we were married. Jeez Louise! So any plans I had seemed to change in an instant. Not bad, just different to the timeline I had arranged in my head. We adapted. Steepest learning curve I’ve ever been dealt. Also the most rewarding. Like a good uphill climb, you’re puffed and your legs ache but you feel AMAZING!

After traveling around Australia in a van for close to a year (we left Melbourne when Lalita was 8 months old) we settled out of the city and away from all of our friends not yet having kids or even remotely thinking about it, and discussed number 2. (No, not in the toilet sense). Kioni was born when Lalita was 2.5 years old. My sister-in-law worded me up about the first year of 2 children being close to a living hell…… and despite lots of great times and little snippets of bliss it pretty much was. Sleep deprivation is a form of torture. I tried hard to remind myself of this often. Like when the dishes and the state of house in general would make me break down in tears from the sheer thought of having to try to do something about it. My other mantra was that this too shall pass…. this had less of a calming effect generally. I think because when you’re in it, it never feels like you’re going to be anywhere else. EVER. It’s amazing that as soon as you have no time for anything you get this drive to follow through with every idea (creative mostly in my case) you have ever had since kindergarten. Problem being that you can’t. You have 2 children who are wholly and solely dependent on you for their survival. AAAARRRGGGHHHHHH. I did my own head in so many times over that year, that when my 2 beautiful daughters started actually playing together I was too distracted to notice the 10 minutes of silence before it was all over. Lalita hitting Kioni over the head with a (paperback) copy of “When I’m Feeling Jealous”. Apt much?!

But those periods of silence started to increase, both in length and frequency. There was a small pin prick of light and the end of that very dark tunnel. And almost with every day that passed after Kioni turned 1 that light source got bigger and bigger. Kioni is almost 3. I have been harbouring this need to finish my course for close to 5 years now. I am ready. Even if I don’t know how to be. Said in the loud American accent of my sister-in-law Steph ” I’m getting it done!” Wish me luck. Or offer to babysit should the need arise. : )