Hello World

Hello, I’ve taken over my Dad’s blog this week to introduce myself to the world. I made my grand entrance at 12.22pm on Friday 16th December. I was a bit late, my parents were expecting me to turn up on December 5th but I figured that my future birthday parties would be more fun if they were closer to Christmas. But don’t even dream about getting me one present in the future and telling me it covers both Christmas and my birthday. I’ll be expecting to be treated like a princess on both occasions.

I think my Daddy was secretly hoping for a boy and I played a little trick on him when I popped out by placing my umbilical cord between my legs. The expression on my Dad’s face was a mixture of pride and astonishment that his offspring had an extremely long willy that happened to be green with yellow stripes.

Anyway, it didn’t take my giddy parents long to realise that I’m actually a girl, a result that would have been obvious had anyone studied my Mother’s gene pool.

I arrived into the world weighing 3.226 kg and was 42 centimetres long, which gives me a better BMI index than my Father, a statistic I intend maintaining for the rest of my life. I was born in the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, a fine establishment that welcomes several thousand babies into the world each year, but still found time to make me feel special. Mammy and Daddy bought some chocolates for the nurses, but I think they would have been better off joining the campaign to have those nurses paid a decent salary. I’m only a couple of weeks old but already I find it strange that nurses get paid less than bankers. I’ll change that when I take over the world (more of that later).

My Dad is Irish and my Mother is a Kiwi and it turns out that I now have both these nationalities plus that of my birthplace. As the only Australian in the house, I expect to be awarded special privileges, such as pavlova on demand or vegemite on my toast.

I am assured that my parents are in the process of obtaining three passports for me which will be allow me to commence my inaugural world tour. I can’t be bothered with queues and having lots of passports will allow me to get into Dublin, Auckland and Melbourne quickly.

I guess over time I’ll develop a favourite among my three nationalities. At the moment I’m happy to be a citizen of the world but Australia will have a head start as the place of my birth. Mind you, I was under the impression that this was a modern country that had fully embraced the metric system. However, when you’re born, people want to know what you weigh in pounds and ounces. Are we living in medieval England, people? Anyway, for the benefit of all those old fashioned fuddy duddies out there, I was born weighing 7 pounds and 2 ounces, which in the immortal lines of Roddy Doyle in the Snapper, is a decent size for a baby but would be small for a turkey.

I know I’m a girl and all that but it seems that I have arrived into a weight-obsessed world. I intend stacking it on for here on.

While I was still inside Mammy, I heard Daddy talking about his anxieties. He gets a bit weak at the sight of blood and was nervous about taking the wrong route on the way to the hospital. In the end I decided to help him out. I waited long enough so that Mammy was booked in for an induction and then decided to make my grand entrance three hours before this was due. As a result, Daddy already had the bags packed (why do people take more stuff to hospital when a baby is due than they would take on a two week holiday?) and had the car filled with petrol.

The dash to the hospital was much more straightforward than anticipated, although it did include three forks in the road in quick succession. Left, left and right is how I remember it, although I was swinging around in amniotic fluid at the time. Dad thinks all these forks in the road are a metaphor for something but he hasn’t had much sleep lately and can’t think what it is.

I’m two weeks old now and starting to find my feet. At least I think they are feet. They are two odd shaped things that seem to wave uncontrollably in front of me when I lie down. I’m getting eight meals a day, sometimes from grumpy parents at 3am (they’ll just have to suck it up, I’m the new boss around here) and I’m getting lots of cuddles and sleep. Oh, and isn’t it nice to have someone change your nappies? I’m getting through around twelve a day at the moment, about the same as my Dad does when he goes for beer and curry. Except I can do mine without the need for a newspaper or other reading material.

I went for my first spin in my pram yesterday. That was fun, but there are a lot of shadows out there in the big wild world and I found it all a bit too fascinating at first. But gradually the motion got me to sleep. I think Mammy and Daddy have discovered a quick way of settling me down and something tells me that I’ll be spending a lot of time in that pram in the wee small hours of the morning.

That’s my story for the time being. I wish I had more to report but it’s true what they say about Bubbas. Pretty much all we do is eat, sleep and pooh. But I’ve got a lifetime ahead of me for everything else. Time for a snooze folks. I’ll talk to you in 2012.