Kids Unite

No way never would she have crossed that invisible dag line to come and chat to me at high school. Yet now we find ourselves having a chin wag over the celery in Coles. Motherhood makes us ignore that dag line - ignoring daginess is something most mothers learn the second they spot a pair of maternity knickers during their first pregnancy.
Talk of snot, diahorrea, hospitals and sleep bring women to common ground. And you know what - she's nice. And I'm nice. And how silly that we both never knew this at school. But we were just kids then ourselves.
Fortune Cookie No 348 for Mummy-Ducks: "Never judge a student by the length of her uniform; the shorter the dress, the closer the potential for donning those maternity knickers."

Baby News

There is nothing like a bit of baby news.
Chocolate is good, but I don't think the high lasts as long as the excitement of a big pink or blue announcement. Champagne bubbles might emulate the high, but there is never a hangover, just more of a high the next day.
We've just had some of the Got 2 Boys, Just Had a Girl variety in our mummy circle. Oh what a feeling! We were one of those, our text read: "WE HAVE PINK! blahblahdetailsblah STILL IN SHOCK!" (assumed we only did boys).
The other fantastic variety is the old Given Up Trying After A Million Years And Back On The Booze pregnancy news. Now this is something to really celebrate - first you get to be excited about the pregnancy, then after waaaaaaiiiiting, waiting, waiting for 9 months, you get to BURST when you hear the miracle baby has joined his equally miraculous parents. Oh the joy!
And I guess that's the point. Is there anything more miraculous and joyful and MAGIC than a new baby? No way. Even if you didn't birth it, you still get to gather a little piece of that joy bouncing around in your heart when you hear the news.
GO MUMMY'S!!!

Attached at the heart

It struck me today how a mother (father, grandparent, carer) is not only attached at the heart to their own child, but to all children of a similar age, give or take 18 years.
A discussion about volunteering prompted a little personal memory journey (which, I have to add, in a car with three children was an accomplishment I'm proud of). This journey took me back to Romania and to some volunteer work in the children's hospital in Bucuresti. At the time it took weeks for me to summon courage, mettle and the sheer stomach strength not to vomit at the thought of going. Eventually I went to the cold, raw, concrete building to play with terminally ill children. I saw, obviously, very sick children - equally heartbreaking anywhere in the world. I watched their parents struggle with the idea that these western women were trying to cheer their children up with ratty broken toys, when really they would have preferred money for a kidney to stop the inevitable.
I also remember in Bucuresti a street dedicated to prostitution. I used to ask the taxi drivers to go the long way to avoid that street because I lurched with vomit at the sight of ten year old girls standing on the street dressed in clothes that they didn't even know the meaning of.
I was catching a taxi for crying out loud. I couldn't sit by and do nothing for a people who I respected foremost, but also who needed anything I could give.
I now have three children of my own. Could I go to that children's hospital and look at those hope-drained faces? I can't even stomach the image of the prostitution street from my perch in this warm house made of wood with my MPV parked outside. All I see is the faces of my own children in those places.
But that is what would make me go.