COVER STORY

Brick Walls and Jellyfish

A guide for pooped parents
Keepers of the Vine

IT'S FUNNY HOW THIS PARENT-THING HAPPENS. One minute you’re a couple ‘getting it together’ … and the next, you’re driving home from the hospital with a milk-guzzling, nappy-filling, sleep-wrecking wonder – cute as they come, and wrapped to the eyeballs in a fluffy new blanket.

Through the years that follow, you give-give-give until it nearly kills you. Too many 1am feeds. Too many ‘sniffle-trips’ to the doctor. Too many new pairs of junior shoes. Too many rained-on rugby games. Too many “no-TV-till-you-finish-your-homework” threats. Too many gloomy school reports.
You open your home to an assortment of stray dogs and frogs, kittens and guinea-pigs. You buy enough McDonalds ‘happy-meals’ to gag an army. You do your best to train them up to be mature, productive adults.

But, well, somewhere down the tracks you start to run out of steam …

Issue 2 2016

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