To any kids, blokes, partners, grandads or anyone else who might be in the firing line if you forget…IT IS SUNDAY…! (and you’re welcome). Really, there is no way you could ever not notice…well not unless you don’t go anywhere near a shopping mall, a supermarket, a newsagent, listen to the radio, read facebook, watch tele or basically just breathe, there’s little to no chance of ‘oops, sorry I forgot’ followed by a mercy dash to the servo for the lonely wilting bunch of flowers in the bottom of the bucket that look as though they could’ve been run over by the back of your ute.

It’s my eleventh one this year, which I’m pretty sure is the equivalent of like a diamond anniversary or something…so I’ll be sure to expect something supa dupa…but equally as treasured have been the handmade cards, the clay photo frames, the jewelery box (at least that’s what I think it was) the hand drawn portrait of me – complete with dark regrowth. The carefully curated breakfasts-in-bed of vegemite salada crackers and fanta, and all the pretty smelling pink hand creams I’ve collected over this past decade-and-a-bit.

I’m clinging like shit to a blanket to the last year I have left before my baby is really not my baby anymore. He will be a teen. Holy smokes Batman where did that time go? Wasn’t he just eating vegemite soldiers with a spiderman glove on one hand…? Now he’s got his own instagram account filled with female followers and is bugging me for his own phone – despite me sounding like my own mother telling him we had to use public phone boxes when I was a kid. His dumbfounded expression followed by ‘what’s a phone box mum?’ didn’t much help matters…no it isn’t a cellphone inside your lunchbox! I rest my case. Soon he won’t want to give me those little boy hugs where he wraps his arms round my neck and squeezes the bejesus out of me. Shit I’ll probably be lucky to get a grunted hello.

It won’t be long before girls start catching his eye and I won’t be the number one love of his life. In just a few short years he’ll be exposed to alcohol, drugs and sex and each one will come with it a consequence – a broken heart, the wrong decision, a lifelong mistake. All I can hope, all any mum can hope, is that my years of constant nagging (and threats he’ll end up a rubbish collector) will one day pay off and there will be no mistakes, least no life-threatening ones.

Kamakaze off the couch…floor wins

Motherhood doesn’t end the day your kid-turned-adult-overnight walks out your front door for good. It never ends. Like finding the exit at Ikea, you keep being a mum forever and ever. The only thing that changes are the lines in your face getting deeper. The hairs on your head going greyer. You swap sleepless night feeds and constant shoving your hand in the bassinet to check his chest is still rising, to watching him take his first tumble and need his head stitching up – twice. You watch him wobble as he nervously masters the art of two wheels, next thing you’re waving goodbye on his first day of school and can hardly see him for the big schoolbag almost tipping him over. You cheer on as eleven tiny kids chase a soccer ball and each other in every direction, then suddenly he needs to wear something called ‘skins’ under his shorts and is coming home with a blood nose and a busted ankle.

The steps just seem to get steeper as the years wear on. With each passing phase of boyhood comes its own challenges, its own big fat pile of mumaphobes and any thoughts you might have entertained in your make-believe-land that your worries will get smaller as your kid gets bigger are about as real as Kylie Jenner’s pout. Suddenly your kid grows up so quickly you feel like the kid out of Poltergeist, it comes at you from nowhere.

The only sage advice is never wish away the years…once they’re gone you can’t get them back. Happy Mother’s Day to all the mums whose hair is going greyer-by-the-minute, who have just started their own journey, whose journey finished long ago, or whose journey is yet to begin… Love n’hugs, LadyMamaG xox