Article: Susan Newham from women24
Image: Tammy Gardner

Our life is a mess. And I don't just mean that it's become impossible to make our way from the front door through the living room without staggering over play gyms, prams, bouncer chairs and terry cloths.

The good old days
It was not so long ago that we'd go away for weekends to pristine mountain retreats with our professional but carefree friends, and drink champagne until two in the morning. Now we go to small children's birthday parties. A lot. He's only four months old and we've already been to six. Birthday parties are not like pristine mountain retreats. They are not as clean nor as quiet. Although they do offer parents a bit of a breather. While your small child ricochets off the furniture and its friends, parents are afforded the brief opportunity to flop on the nearest couch and snort cake, while some other responsible adult watches over the safety of the children for a few minutes.

Roxi used to be one of these adults. She has always had bountiful energy and huge eyes, which seem to make children adore her. But, since Finn Bug, she's been reduced to slumping wide-eyed on the couch with the rest of the adult population. She's just no fun anymore!

Baby and the beach
Last weekend in an attempt to revisit some semblance of our former happy-go-lucky life, we decided to go to the beach. I'd been successfully resisting Roxi's beach urging by using Finn as an excuse. 'He's too small, he'll hate the sand, he'll get sun damaged.' But now as summer draws to an end and Finn is two squirms short of a crawl, I admit that perhaps it's not Finn I'm worried about. The truth is that I am not mad on the beach. I hate the sand. And, well, I don’t like getting sun damaged. And so, last Sunday because it was so very hot and Roxi was getting increasingly more agitated by being forced to remain indoors playing scrabble, I gave in and agreed to a family beach outing.

It took us until 4pm before we were ready to leave the house. Which is a good time of day to head outdoors for small babies and their sun-fearing mommies. The beach of choice required that we descend 80 steep steps before arriving at our destination. One of us was to carry Finn, who presently weighs close to eight kilograms, and the other was to carry the beach umbrella, baby bag with nappies, bottles, change of clothing, baby suntan lotion and hat, as well as our own bag with wallets, phones, water, fruit and beach towels. And, of course, the chardonnay and two glasses. I opted to carry Finn.

All beached out
By the time we arrived on the beach and set up camp at around 5pm we were exhausted, and that was before we had to clamber back up the 80 steps to our car an hour later to get home in time to put Finn to bed. I admit, though, that Finn loved it. Who wouldn't enjoy lying naked under a large umbrella having your two parents grinning madly at you every time you did anything? (On second thoughts, only babies and young children would enjoy something like that.) The Bug even enjoyed being dipped in the icy Atlantic ocean, bless him. And so it seems that I do not have an ally in Finn when it comes to the beach. Instead, I foresee myself forced into many an ocean outing by my family while I cling to the scrabble board.

Yip, our life has been turned upside down. Where once it was streamlined and predictable we now wing it through the day in a muddle of baby vomit, naps, feeds and baby baggage. We are basket cases. We are baba bevok. And, in a strange kind of way, I've never had so much fun.