Thursday, February 01, 2007

Llamas and Limos

The writers challenge: Write a post in the voice/style of a famous person (actor, singer, author, whatever). It can be a hot topic, current issue, or just a regular old post.

The readers challenge: To guess the identity of the famous person, plus an extra gold star on your sticky chart if you can correctly identify all 12 words and/or phrases that are directly linked to this star.

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We passed the 6 month mark a few weeks ago and I feel like I am getting into the groove of this parenting malarkey now, and actually feel like a proper mum not just someone pretending to be one. I spent the first few months convinced that someone would out me as an impostor or child abductor as they stood outside the baby changing room in the supermarket listening to the string of expletives coming from under the door as I fumbled with nappy fastenings and knocked the contents of the diaper bag flying everywhere.

Don’t get me wrong, this is still a fairly common occurrence, I just know now that these things happen to everyone not just me and I’m fairly confident that we will get through the next 6 months and live to tell the story.

Looking back over the last 6 months is really heart warming as the mind plays its old trick and edits out the horrible bits just leaving you with the memories to cherish. I do vaguely remember being curled up in the corner sobbing silently, not daring to move a muscle in case the god damn infernal thing started crying again, wishing for someone to come along and rescue me; but those memories are very hazy and have a not-quite-believable quality to them now.

Looking forwards over the next 6 months is still quite frightening when thoughts turn to the bumps and bruises and running around after her that learning to crawl properly and then walk is going to entail and travelling to England with her alone to visit my family is a terrify prospect. Although the frightening parts about the holiday centre more around the fact that I am taking actual time out of my life in this beautiful place to go to grotty old England – not quite the beach holiday on La Isla Bonita I have been dreaming about but you can’t have everything I guess, and she would only eat the bleeding sand and then spend the rest of the day crying with a tummy bug, so England is probably a better option.

Also coming up in about 5.5 months will be the first birthday party! Like a virgin children’s party planner that I am, I have been day dreaming (yes even at this early stage) pleasant things about who will be there and what we will do and have had my mind blown by the idea that Little Moo will be big enough to eat a piece of her own birthday cake, however, after reading a bit about children’s parties, I thank my lucky star that we don’t live in America, Hawaii in particular, as it has been flagged by www.birthdayswithoutpressure.com as the highest ranking community of extreme pressure when it comes to planning and throwing birthday parties for your children.

The website tell of horror stories of a $250,000 birthday party in Florida for a 7-year old girl, with limos, an adult party with alcohol, the grand ballroom for the kids, helicopter rides, horses, and wild animals; a one year olds party in a Minnesota community with 60 guests where the gift opening took two hours and the party infant slept through most of it and a mother who worked hard to plan a nice at-home party for her eight year old daughter, who announced at the end, “It just wasn’t magic enough.”

No way is Little Moo going to become such a material girl; I’d have spanked her little ass from here to the end of the road and back again for a comment like that. When I was a kid (how to make yourself feel old with just 4 little words) we didn’t have much money and a birthday party meant inviting a handful of your friends over to play games like musical bumps and pass the parcel, the goody bag had a slice of home made cake and a couple of penny sweets in it and the only animal entertainment we had was watching the cat chase the dog around the garden not cougars, llamas and such. Christ, my father would turn in his grave (if he was actually dead that is, which he isn’t) at the thought of so much money going to waste on a bunch of spoilt kids that wouldn’t remember it in a few weeks. Well its OK papa, don’t preach, I have no intention of joining the people that throw these in-vogue parties, I might be borderline crazy, but even I’m not that insane.

Although I do like the idea of the separate adult party with alcohol…and a few llamas couldn’t hurt I suppose.

Yes, I am joking.

About the llamas that is.

If you think I’m going to spend a couple of hours in the company of 6 or 7 small people and a bucket full of E numbers and stay sober, you’ve got another thing coming.
- Guest posted for the Blog Exchange by Heather
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When not chasing reindeer out of my garden, being chased over our farm by cows or servicing the needs of our 6 month old tyrant, Little Moo, I can usually be found at my blog, Surviving Motherhood, which is where you will find Binky, your usual hostess with the most-ess, today as we partake in this months Blog Exchange.

For more info on The Blog Exchange and to read this month's other blog exchange posts, click here.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Madonna! Great post. I like this BlogExchange thing.

Kara said...

cool!

Amanda said...

Girl, you can preach...sorry, totally lame. Fun post.

soccer mom in denial said...

You got into the groove... of this exchange challenge. Blame Ms. Amanda for starting the song references.

Anonymous said...

Glad you guys liked it, I really enjoyed writing this one.

I was going to try and get the whole album in but had to make do with just 12 of them.

Good old Madonna, got to love her.

Jen said...

Madonna very cool!