This week it's a year since I left my job and packed up my old life and headed back to Perth. I can hardly believe a whole 12 months have ticked by, the Earth has made a complete journey around the sun, while my own existence has been swirling in a haze of compounded exhaustion and wonderment at my little rose, unfolding every day to reveal more and more indescribable beauty. I’ve been up to my elbows in pureed pumpkin -- meanwhile, the world economy has crashed, swine flu has taken hold, presidents have been sworn in, people’s children have grown a year older, weddings have been planned, babies have been born, houses have been bought and sold, jobs have been lost and found, and the seasons have changed again and again and again.


Baby A is now seven months old, with two little teeth and a mop of hair that turns worryingly wavy in the humidity. She still makes me more tired than I ever imagined I could be, and I still get frustrated when she’s resisting sleep like she’s Jack Bauer being tortured by the Chinese, but most of the time I can see clearly enough to know that I am witnessing precious, hilarious moments and glimpses of a sunny, fierce, determined personality.

Some mornings when she wakes for a 2/3/4am feed I bring her into bed with us and cuddle her back off to sleep, and she repays me by waking me up with a nice wet bite on the nose around 7am. I take her to morning tea with our mothers group friends and in a millisecond she swipes her little hand through the bowl of whipped cream and wipes it through my hair and down my face, and then when I’m madly scrambling through my bag for a cloth to wipe up the mess, she vomits all over me, and then laughs. I take her to playgroup and try to feed her carroty chicken mush and she spatters it across the room so it lands on the other mothers. She taps her foot expectantly while I heat up her dinner. At the sight of the five o’clock news team on Channel 10 (particularly Narelda Jacobs for some inexplicable reason) her face breaks out into a big gummy smile.


In Sydney two weeks ago she had her first taste of city life, saw the bright lights of Oxford Street, heard the cacophonous merry go round of traffic and sirens and drunks and crazy people, and her eyes widened, madly processing all of the latest information about her world. We took her to the butterfly enclosure and she watched intently as the Very Hungry Caterpillar’s alter ego sprang to life around her. She sat like a joey in her special pouch and watched all the new things, legs dangling over the edge while people cooed at her.

If she sees a new face hovering near her she does everything in her power to direct the stranger's attention towards her, and if they pretend not to notice her, she just tries harder, winning over teenaged boys and businessmen and stern old ladies with her larrikiny smile and her waggling eyebrows (you must understand, this child could have tried out for the Cadbury ad). She pokes her tongue out indiscriminately and laughs at news stories that aren’t funny. She adores Upsy Daisy and she adores our cat and she adores being tickled and cuddled and Eskimo-kissed.

Forgive the sentimentality, but what a year it has been. I think if I had to sum it up, what’s happened in the year since I moved home, it’s that I learned the meaning of life.