KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY

I took Baby Pham to visit the work crew and one of my colleagues asked when I'd gotten engaged. I forgot I'd started wearing a ring on my ring finger because it no longer fit on my middle finger. I told him my fingers got fat after pregnancy and they haven't deflated to the size they used to be. I have no plans to marry.

Boyfriend Pham isn't a huge romantic by any stretch of the imagination. He compliments me by comparing me to food. He's really into carbs: pizza, pita, roti, milk buns, tortillas - if it has any type of flour, he's down. So when he tells me I'm a "fancy loaf" that's about as close to sweet-talk as we get.

Keep this in mind when I tell you that one day when we were in the car, I think he was driving and I was the passenger. He looked over and told me, "You can marry me if you want." Then looked back at the road. What? The audacity! He said it as a joke, but he also would marry me if that's what I wanted. Luckily for both of us, I'm too frugal to get married so that flop of a proposal isn't our proposal story. 

If I want more legal rights then I'd opt for power of attorney over marriage since commitment isn't an issue for us. We've bought a home together, share all our finances, adopted a cowardly little lion (Rei Pham) and we now share our genes with Baby Pham so we're linked for life even if we break up. That's commitment enough for me. It's now an ongoing joke whenever he does something to annoy me, I say I want a divorce and he says I have to marry him first.

If Mum Pham were around I'd marry Boyfriend Pham so Mum could have a big-ass wedding, invite every person who has ever crossed her path, and months of bragging rights. Mum Pham only had a small wedding being a refugee in Germany. I'd have spent tens of thousands of dollars to make her happy. But Mum isn't around now I've found someone worth marrying, and Dad Pham does not give a crap about matrimony so I'll use my money to pay down our mortgage.

So Baby Pham is a bastard. My bastard. If he wants his parents to marry when he's older, then I would consider it. But for now, it's not a priority. 

One thing I wasn't prepared for being a primary carer for Baby Pham was sun-damaged hands. I suppose there are many more important things to talk about when it comes to raising a baby, which is why I was never warned that new mums (and dads) have an equivalent to a Trucker's Arm. This, my friend, is what I call Pram Hands.

Pushing the pram around every day in the sun led my previously healthy, office worker hands to become a dry and crusty dark brown. I learned to pile on the sunscreen pre-walk and then moisturise post-walk to keep my hands from shrivelling up due to prolonged sun exposure. Not a problem I had when I walked with my hands swinging by my sides without a care in the world, before my hands started keeping another being safe and well.

This was a short-lived first world problem for new parent life, because around 8 months old, Baby Pham got over being in the pram so we stopped going for daily walks. These days I only walk to local activities and shops a couple of times a week. Most of the time when I try to take him out in a pram, I end up wearing him in a carrier and the pram is used to push around his nappy bag. I kinda miss my Pram Hands days - the passive exercise of walking was good for my mental and physical health.