Oh yes, and a couple of nights ago, when I thought I’d seen my fill of barfpukevomitchunksrunnypoo… last night daughter child kept me awake after having spewed her supper down my front as we ran for the loo.  Somehow the stuff managed to not only seep through my pj top, but drain down my pants- I was picking bits out of my pubes if you get my drift- it was freaking EVERYWHERE!!

And in the meanwhile, husband, upstairs so as to monopolize his own loo, had bodily fluid, in all of its various forms, projectiley erupting from every possible orifice.

Lovely.

We did have a modified American Thanksgiving planned in honour of dear Filipes today:  two beer can chickens on the barbey, mashed potatoes, corn niblets, and my virgin foray into the world of StoveTop….

Ummmmmmmmm. Not so much.  Four down, just me and the dog to go….

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Miss Fidge gave me a rush of joy, happiness and best of all peace, when I needed it last night.  It was a pleasure just to watch her… and shoot, of course.

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kirtsy-fifi, originally uploaded by tlcpix.

I loved Tracey’s post this morning… And while it may not be Oprah and it certainly isn’t the Kirtsy contest I wasn’t able to make the deadline for, this little moment came from trying to canoodle a Kirtsy out of a four year old who previously had no clue what a curtsy even was… but it’s a precious stop on this journey that is my life as photographer and more importantly mother.
Like I said, the deadline came and went but we had a ball practicing what was once a regular part of girlhood…

She’d sleep in this tutu if I let her…

More best shots over at Mother May I!

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It’s common for my friends, as well as myself, to say about our boys, regardless the age, “They’re so uncomplicated… boys are simple.  Really.”

Those of us with girls, regardless the age, “OMG… what the hell was I thinking… this child is possessed… or at the very least right out of her cotton pickin’ mind!” or, ” OMG… what the hell?!??!  Was it something I said?!  Did I happen to look at her sideways?!?!?!  While I was completely occupied in my own thoughts, chopping the GD vegetables?!?”

Look, I know right now is relatively easy.  She’s only four… not fourteen, exerting her independence, convincing the world she was, in fact, conceived, gestated and birthed under a rock on some imagined shore of a remote oasis in the middle of the Sahara.  “Parents?!?  Hell, no… not me…  Parents are, like, sooo-oooo not cool…”

But, here’s the deal… I asked her if she might chop with her butterknife, the mushrooms, just a teensy bit larger… rather than the flecks she was reducing my pizza fixin’s to.  I’d be dressing my ‘za at breakfast the rate things were moving.  Hey!  You, there, thinking I should have just sucked it up and let her continue competely masticating my precious fungii…. Uh huh.  Yes.  That was made abundantly clear the moment my constructive criticism left my lips!!!!!!!

And despite my immediate revelation and my subsequent inadequate attempts to apologize/make amends/back-pedal, the drama… it did ensue:

A look of complete, utter dejection.  As though I’d literally sucked all of the air out of her.  Slamming knife onto cutting board, leaping from kiddie chair upon which she stood, “I quit this job!”

And falling to her knees, “You hate the way I cut mushrooms…. aaaaaa-nnnnndddd you hate the way I ballet….  aaaaaa-aaannnnnnnd you hate my ballet girl dre-eeeeessssssss….!!!!!!!!!

What the….

And, wailing, “This is not my reeeeee-eeaaaalllll family!!!  They just… they just…  DROPPED me off here!”

“You don’t love me….  You!  Are!  The!  Worst!  Mummy!  EVERRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!

Ahem… OK.  Lesson learned.

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Understand that I did, in fact, have hair growing up. I’m fortunate enough to say that I still have it. I say fortunate because given the torture and trauma I made my pre-pubescent and adolescent hair endure, it’s a freakin’ bloody miracle.

Interestingly, I have waves in my hair now. Perhaps a bi-product of having kids. I dunno, but I actually don’t mind my hair most days. Not to gross anybody out, but as my hair gets dirtier… greasier… the better it gets. I kid you not. Certainly, it reaches a point where it starts heading in the other direction. From full and wavy to dull, drab and limp. It’s not thick and it’s fine. So it can only take so much dirtiness… greasiness… before it just looks bad. There is a fine balance after all. I know, I’ve grossed you out.

In the early years, my fine, delicate strands and tendrils endured repeated assaults: home perm after home perm, striving for the perfect ringlets shown on the front of the box. So easily duped. Of course the model with the perfectly formed spirals had been primped, preened, rolled, curled, blown… only God, Allah and Oprah really know what else… deceiving young, desperate pre-teens into begging their well-meaning mothers into buying this toxic crap and voluntarily infusing it deep into their scalps. Scalding… burning… and by and large, frying their young heads. Oh yes… and my mother?!? Oh right, due to her own never-ending struggle with fine, staight hair she was indulging the desperate quest for TeenBeat beauty of misguided pre-teen, and actually rolling fine, delicate tendrils onto narrow plastic rollers! Infusing young scalp. Just as her own well-meaning mother, with her own beauty baggage, had done for her. Ack!

I’m not placing blame. I know I was desperately… frantically obnoxious in my insistence for curly hair. Despite each. And every. Fucking time. Ending up with a head full of crispy frizz! But, surely the next time would be different. Some how. And for a period of about seven years, there was always a next time. Thankfully, though, at some point, once I could afford it, I employed the (relatively) knowledgeable assistance of local salon. Marginally less destructive. Equally ineffectual.

The odyssey that was my perpetual search for the perfect curl for my so-very-imperfect hair did finally come to an end. Overlapping with my need to reclaim my inner blond. A saga commonly referred to as: My Journey Into Sun-In. Painful fodder for another post. One hair trauma at a time….

Well, I am now a mother. Of a daughter. Who, without a doubt, and despite my best efforts, will likely be dissatisfied with her own hair. But, honestly, and not because I am this girl’s mother, the child has beautiful hair. It’s fine, yes. But she has more of it. She also has delicious, wonderful waves. Even when it’s messy, unbrushed, tatty and tangly- much of the time- it’s lovely. And I love it. Each and every delicate, little ringlet.

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I’m always reminded, when I find myself with only one child, how friggin’ easy it would be with only one.

The boys are doing golf camp all week. Filipes was out golfing. So it was just the Fidgey and I. The girls.

We’ve had a lovely, oh so easy, girlie-day. This perfect day began with Fidge sleeping in, waking a whole two hours after the boys left this morning. Wild! What on earth did I do with myself, you ask? Oh, plenty! I caught up on The Daily Show/Colbert Report as I blogged, edited photographs from last couple of gigs… just some relaxed piddling. Which, surprisingly, actually amounted to something.

Anyhoo… on with our day. A little crunchy yogurt- yogurt, flax seed and granola (one of her breakfast faves)- for the girl and on to choosing our girlie-day wardrobe. Apparently, this day called for….

Fuschia!

It was the only colour for which we had dresses in common. And she was insistent that we wear matching dresses. On this girlie-day. Regardless of the fact that my particular dress is cut down to two and a half inches BELOW my sternum.

I felt like I was about to drop sadly deflated hooter at every turn.

And too damn hot for another layer…. No wonder that dude in the grocery was hovering beside us over the vegetables. I gave new meaning to “a little nipply”! Hel-lo!

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BC Cherries! And cherry stained faces! Perfect, plump, absolute edible joy and bliss….

There’s more joy in Best Shots at Mother May I….

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It was actually raining and snowing the day you were born.  And after all my rants over the past many weeks about Mother Nature’s wrath, it really wasn’t so different four years ago.

I just didn’t care.  I was too busy just anticipating the safe, healthy birth of a healthy third child.

Beyond any expectations, you were a girl.  Born with big round eyes wide open.  Already watching, knowing… feeling what was going on around you.

My baby girl.  You were perfect.  Fat.  Beautiful.  With a thatch of fine, fair hair.  Upon seeing you, plopped wet and screaming upon my stomach, I wept.  My baby girl.  An immediate bond of solidarity amongst our boys.
Now you tell me- alot- that you “are a different kind of girl”.  And I know to you that means, you don’t have to do things the way others do them… or, more specifically, the way you’re told.  But to me that means, you are a wickedly beautiful, whip smart, funny, snuggly, sensitive, nurturing, generous, dancing, singing, girly-y, rough and tumble, tough as nails, purple-loving kind of girl unlike any other.

Don’t get me wrong.  You present, daily, a range of new and different challenges.  Daddy jokes that you’re smarter than Mummy… not quite yet, but getting there fast!  Despite our rantings and screamings, our little daily conflicts, you have me completely wrapped around that perfect little finger.  I am yours.
So very special to me, it’s hard to find words.  But what I can manage is, that, as with your brothers, I never imagined I could love so completely.  With your arrival, I grew a new heart… and you filled it up to overflowing.

Fidge, my life is so much bigger with you in it.

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“Sshhhh… mummy.” Fidge whispers and giggles.

“Don’t tell Daddy. I have his mowawning kiss.”

“Oh, you sneaky girl. Where?”

“I’m gonna yet you have it.”

Fidge lifts her little arm and with her other hand appears to pick something from her armpit.

“Heeahw. I’m giving it to you. Don’t tehawh Daddy.” She presses her empty hand, fresh from armpit, to my lips.

My lone girl child and I share a secretive giggle. I try not to feel guilty that today dad will not find his morning kiss. Cuz I have it…

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Pretty much sums up how I am approaching this coming week….

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