I need to cover a few introductory things:
1. Thank you LOADS for coming and reading. My first ever blog post has been read over 1100 times which is immense and I am very humbled.
2. I have received all the necessary apologies from "the incident" so now am resting assured that I'm not a total arse, I really am just misunderstood.
3. You'll need to know some things about me to follow what goes on in my life/brain: I have ejected two small people from my rude bits. I don't want to use their real names so I will be referring to them as Mr. Gubbles, who is 2 and a half and Fusty who is 4 months. Also we have a shared set of best friends, mine is the mum, I will call her Angry Bird, she has two small girl-people; though only one was ejected from her rude bits the other came out of the emperor's exit. The older I call Moo and the younger is Baby Woo.
Innies and Outies
Old wives, rude words and other people's junk.
Once you've had a baby, you expect a certain amount of nappy talk, but I'm not sure anyone really expects about 50% of their waking thoughts to be overtaken by the excretions of their offspring. It's all we talk about apart from food, we parents. But all this begs certain other questions about the names that we call things. Yes, we can say 'poo' and 'wee' without cringing, but can anyone really ever refer to a tiny baby girl's bits and bobs as her 'vagina' or 'vulva'...you shuddered just reading that didn't you? So instead, parents sign up to a plethora of ridiculous names and noises to describe their children's private parts and we leave it for teachers in the future to correct their terminology.
Since me and Angry Bird potty trained our eldest spawn at the same time this became a major issue because the gender difference not only means they have to have a word for their own junk, but they needed to understand the other kind of equipment and have a vague understanding of the mechanics involved in having it. Some things need pointing in certain directions, some do not. Also, since Angry Bird has two girls and I have two boys I wasn't given any opportunity to form my own preferences about what to call the girl bits and just had to adopt her family terminology. Unfortunately this means I now regularly have to affirm to children in my care, sometimes in public that yes, I do indeed have a nunnie. *shudder*. And the boy junk? Well we call it a schmekel. (Wikipedia says that "Schmekel is an all-transgender, Jewish folk punk band from Brooklyn, NY, known for their humor". Thank goodness for blogging because I only just found that out. I'm not sure how Angry Bird will take this information, but I think she will enjoy it perhaps a little more now when Moo publicly announces that "Daddy has a schmekel" I so wish he did.)
Once you've figured out what you're calling everything you have certainly overcome one hurdle of new-parenting. But you have more to cope with. Nappies.
Yes you have to make choices about brands and cloth, about where you think changing a baby is socially acceptable and occasionally about why the ratio between how much your child can evacuate and how much a nappy can absorb is so drastically drastically unfair. But my problem is actually changing nappies. Wiping poo off nunnies in particular. In my own view, boy nappies are far far easier, everything's there just flopping about, if they try and do a sneaky extra wee you can see it coming (with some practice) you clean all the gubbins off and you're done. But girl nappies? Now that's confusing. There's innie bits, poo shouldn't be in innie bits, I know that at least, given my own innie bits. But you shouldn't be wiping it further in, and you certainly shouldn't be leaving it there. I have literally no clue how to cope with a girl nappy. Angry Bird says it's easier but it's like a crap-covered Rubik's cube to me. Plus where a boy will at least just pee in your face a girl can do a stealth wee, you don't know it's there...soaking into the back of their vest...until you think you've finished and pick them up. Oh nunnie.
My other issue with girl nappies has been one with Baby Woo's nappies (well obviously, Moo is potty trained weren't you listening?) (I say "potty trained", she has been "can wee at will" trained, which often manifests itself in a spite wee, just for the laughs, but she's out of nappies anyway) and having to look at her umbilical hernia. It's not disgusting, but it looks like it should be painful. Angry Bird pokes it, that is a bit gross. The standard medical advice says to leave it alone and it'll either go away on its own or they'll do some surgery in a year or two. An umbilical hernia is a bit of bowel sticking out of the belly button, it looks like an outie belly button, and essentially it is, but Baby Woo's was golf-ball sized. An old wives tale circulated (they do around babies, I could spend forever telling you the mad things people say you should do to your child but I'll save that for another time) so we all dismissed pretty fast the advice that it could be cured by taping a penny over it. However, for lack of anything else to try and on the advice of some old wives that do actually have some medical training, she tried it. After a short 8 weeks of the 2p strap-on technique, Woo's outie is down to a normal size. Amazing. Sometimes it seems old wives do know what they're talking about.
On which note I'm going to head off so I can stick Fusty outside on the balcony, that'll toughen him up a bit.
Schmekel, let's give those people some hits!
