Children – Separation Anxiety, Me? Never!

Let me set the scene, I’m currently sitting on a flight to Singapore, four hours into the trip, eyes red and puffy after having to say good bye to my little man at the airport and then backing it up with two tear jerking inflight films. Talk about making great movie choices. I was already feeling incredibly emotional after leaving my sick son behind for a week, and then I picked the two biggest chick flicks to watch. Hi5 you idiot!

To put it in context, I’m not normally a very emotional person. I liken myself to the ice queen. I’m a harden the f**k up kinda person. If someone is having a cry for no good reason (boohoo, you broke your nail. Harden up!), I’m the first person to roll my eyes and walk away. I lack the ability to make someone having a sook feel better. No matter how hard I try, I tend to come across as being inconsiderate and insincere. Lets just say I’m not the person you want around when you’re having a cry for the sake of having a cry.

Based on this, it’s very rare that this girl busts out a real good cry and let me tell you, I feel like I’ve just made up for a years worth of crying in the past few hours. I have a splitting headache, which I’m assuming is a side effect of the crying. My makeup has run half way down my face (note to self, invest in some good waterproof mascara) and on two separate occasions the lovely cabin staff have come over with a concerned look on their faces to see if I was ok. No doubt, they walked behind the blinds and told the other staff that there is a crazy woman in business crying like a child, but despite how embarrassed I was, I couldn’t stop. Continue reading

Career – The dilemma, travelling for work when you have small children

Ticket
Image – http://thepointsguy.com

The very nature of my job is one that requires me to regularly travel both within Australia and internationally. To be honest, this was initially what really drew me to the role. I love love love travelling (well really, who doesn’t?) and I’ve been incredibly fortunate to travel all over the world. To say I have the travel bug is definitely an understatement, so the idea of being able to see more of the world and have someone else pay for it, is my kinda awesome.

Generally speaking, I’m required to travel to Asia (mostly to Singapore) a couple of times a year and interstate (to either Adelaide, Canberra or Brisbane) every second month. It was great in the beginning, but after a while travelling to the same old places all the time starts to wear a bit thin (and really I don’t have to travel that much). To make matter worse, I was getting called to Singapore at the drop of a hat for fly in fly out meetings. I would literally spend more time in transit than I did on the floor.

As annoying and exhausting as it was, for the most part I accepted it as just being part of my job, and really there are other people that would kill for the opportunity to travel, so who am I to complain? That was until I had a child. Before children, it was relatively easy to reorganise my schedule (although I didn’t think it was easy at the time), so if I had to travel at short notice, I’d be annoyed, but I’d change a few things around and a couple of days later I was off. It’s just not that easy anymore. I can’t just up an leave, I have a fully dependant little person to think about.

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Good Baby Turned Bad

It’s official, my beautiful, precious and content baby boy has turned feral. This little man is and will always be the apple in my eye, so I hate saying that about him, but at the end of the day I call it as I see it and if the kid has taken a turn for the worst I won’t hide from it.

Maybe feral is a bit harsh (I’m clearly having an attack on the guilts)  but according to my friend Google it can be defined as

1. existing in a natural state, as animals or plants; not domesticated or cultivated; wild.
2. having reverted to the wild state, as from domestication:
And that folks just about sums it up, my perfect child has reverted to a wild state.

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Lunch With The Psycho Child

For the last year I’ve dragged my young son all over town to lunch and brunch at some of the best cafes Melbourne has to offer. For the most part he’s been a great partner in crime. He goes where I want to go and eats what I want to eat, it’s my idea of the perfect partnership, but today was his chance to get even, today he was ‘that’ kid.

You know the kid I’m talking about, the one that cries, screams, carries on in the perfect way to drive everyone within a 500m radius insane. Yep, this week it was my kid. I looked at him in his psycho child state and desperately wanted him to stop. I did everything – toys, food and any other means of distraction, but the kid wouldn’t stop. I literally just wanted the ground to open and swallow me up.

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