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Shay • Perth Family Travel

@mypineapplelife

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Perth mum of 2 • Aussie-Iraqi Muslim home 🇦🇺🇮🇶☪️
Honest on marriage & mum life
Real family travel for tired parents
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Everything I love doing is haram. According to the shirt, anyway.

Haram means forbidden in Islam. The shirt is a joke. I'm telling you now to save us both some time.

Depending on who's typing, I love my husband's culture too much, not enough, or for the wrong reasons. I've tried explaining. I've tried ignoring. This time I got dressed.

Green "haram" pants. A long green cardigan with "peace" on the arms and a peace symbol on the back, because I know what's coming in the comments. Aviators. A straight face. A very large bump.

To be clear about where the joke lands: not on Islam, and not on Iraqis. It's on the idea that a burner account gets a vote on my marriage.

If you're new here, this is an Aussie-Iraqi household with two small kids, honest reviews and no interest in arguing with strangers. Follow for that.

Tee @chaladzdesign | Photos @rlaw_photography | Henna @mehsooq_henna | Shot at home @lavilladimaria taken in Perth, Western Australia by @mypineapplelife

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a day ago

It’s amazing how much you can love your child and still be quietly begging them to go the hell to sleep.

Truly, deeply, would-die-for-them love. Would put my whole body between them and anything on earth. And also, right now, would like nothing more than for them to close their eyes and stop fighting unconsciousness like it’s a personal insult.

Motherhood really is this strange whiplash between tenderness and desperation. One minute you’re stroking their little face thinking they’re the single most beautiful thing you’ve ever made. The next you’re whispering “please, for the love of God, just sleep” through gritted teeth while they roll around like a tiny possessed eel who’s decided horizontal is a war crime.

It’s not that you don’t adore them. It’s that you’re tired. Bone-deep, nervous-system-fried, touched-out, emotionally threadbare tired.

More mums need to hear that both of those things are true at once. You can be obsessed with your child and still desperately need them unconscious. You can be grateful and still be running on empty. You can love motherhood completely and still be finished, entirely finished, by bedtime.

If you’ve ever looked at your gorgeous little angel and silently thought please, unconsciousness, take them — solidarity, babe. taken in Perth, Western Australia by @mypineapplelife

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2 days ago

Six weeks postpartum (ok, nearly) and we made it back out into the world for Mums & Bubs Pilates in the park with @abctherapy_aus

They had everything sorted — mat, gear, even hands to watch the babies and toys to keep them busy. Little miss is still too little for the group mat, so she got her own patch of grass right next to me instead.

Shade, sunshine, a room full of mums doing the same quiet maths I was: is this a good idea or a terrible one. Turned out to be a good one. My body felt like mine again for forty minutes, and she seemed to genuinely enjoy watching it all happen.

If you’re local and in the newborn fog, this is worth getting out of the house for. 📍 @baillie.hill taken in Baillie Hill by @mypineapplelife

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2 days ago

Six weeks postpartum with a two-year-old, and I’ve decided nothing is bringing me down. Not the 3am outfit change. Not the shoe standoff. Not the coffee I’ve reheated so many times it’s legally soup.

Lipstick on. Pram out. Op shop bound.

Is it denial? Possibly. Is it working? Ask me at 4pm.

What nearly broke you this week, and did you win? taken in Perth, Western Australia by @mypineapplelife

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3 days ago

I hate white on babies. It’s impractical. It’s optimistic. It’s a hazard.

And now this @bondsbabyandkids @bondsaus suit is a victim of the poonami.

Ishtar, for the record, looks angelic and is completely unbothered. The suit did not make it.

Why do we dress newborns in white? Because we are fools, and we believe in fresh starts. Every single time.

Dark navy next time. Maybe black. A tiny funeral suit for a tiny assassin. taken in Perth, Western Australia by @mypineapplelife

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3 days ago

Me: Habibi, a neighbour complained about the music.

My husband: turns the Quran recitation up and connects it to the garden speaker.

Everyone has that one neighbour. Ours has managed to fall out with basically the entire street over the years, and I, as the diplomat of this household, make a genuine effort to be extra pleasant to her specifically. Always wave. Always smile. Very much auditioning for Neighbourhood Peacekeeper of the Year.

My husband takes a different approach. Where I go soft diplomacy, that man goes calm, unbothered, spiritually accompanied chaos. And I shouldn't find it as funny as I do, but there's something genuinely impressive about the sheer commitment to pettiness delivered at that volume, at that tempo, completely serene the entire time.

To be clear, we are considerate neighbours generally. But there's something very funny about living with a man who, faced with pointless hostility, doesn't de-escalate so much as get creatively, calmly immovable about it.

Marriage really is just discovering that while you're out here trying to keep the peace, your husband has quietly declared war. Or in this case, volume.

Are you the diplomat in your relationship, or the one who'd absolutely reach for the garden speaker? taken in Perth, Western Australia by @mypineapplelife

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5 days ago

We stood outside the Louvre and decided not to go in. No regrets, and I'll explain why.

The Cour Napoléon is free and open, and it's where the photograph you actually want lives anyway. Pei's glass pyramid, 1989, dropped into the middle of a palace that had been growing since the twelfth century — the argument between those two things is the entire experience, and it's happening outside, for free, while several thousand people file past you to look at one small painting of one woman.

Here's the part I didn't know at the time and am now quietly furious about. The Louvre began as a fortress. Philippe Auguste, late 1100s, built it to defend Paris from the west. It outlived the job, became a royal residence under François I in 1546, then kept expanding for four hundred years. And when they excavated for the pyramid in the 1980s, they found the original medieval castle still sitting down there.

So the oldest Louvre is inside. Underneath. You can walk around the base of a twelfth-century keep in the museum basement, and hardly anyone bothers.

I skipped a museum to admire the outside of a building whose best part was buried under my feet. Cool. Great. Very normal.

One tip with a caveat: the Louvre–Rivoli station on Line 1 was turned into a sort of antechamber to the museum in 1968 — Burgundy stone, no advertising, replica sculptures in lit niches. Worth getting off for. But the casts were removed for restoration in early 2026, and I don't know whether they're back, so check before you make a detour of it.

Next time, straight down to the fortress. taken in Louvre Museum Paris by @mypineapplelife

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6 days ago

Nobody warns you that newborns wreck your hands.

Change, wash, sanitise, change, wash, sanitise, feed, wash again. After Arthur my hands got so dry they actually hurt.

Cracked knuckles, cuticles like sandpaper, wincing every time I used the sanitiser.
With Ishtar they were going the same way by week two. So this time I started putting @aveeno_anz Skin Relief Repairing Balm on after every few washes. It soaks in fast, it isn’t greasy (crucial when you’re about to pick up a baby), and it’s the first thing that’s kept my hands from turning back into a cheese grater.

One lives in the nappy bag, one lives in the pram. It also does my lips at 3am and my heels in sandals, so it has earned its spot.
What’s the newborn side effect nobody warned you about?

@hello_ernie #AveenoRescue #AveenoPartner #gifted taken in Perth, Western Australia by @mypineapplelife

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6 days ago

Mum Diary – Year 2, Week 7 / Year 0, Week 5

Arthur’s alphabet now goes “a b c d e f g h i j k Emma Memma p”. I’ve stopped correcting it. He’s also reading letters, I’m almost sure of it, and he can spell “dog”.

He’s discovered “mine”. He’s discovered “no”. Baba said “you need to listen to Mama” and got a flat “no” back, and I’m now being told no roughly forty times a day by a person in a Buzz Lightyear top.

Apparently we skipped straight to fifteen.
It’s been an extra terrible-twos week, which meant more holding the line from us, a bit more snapping than either of us is proud of, and more tears all round. Nobody came out of it looking like the parenting books.

A growth spurt arrived without notice. He went from walking cleanly under something to clocking his head on it in the space of a day, which we discovered because he clocked his head on it. Big week for injuries generally: off the playground, off the swing, into a door, bit his tongue several times, kept tripping over his own feet. New legs, no manual.

Also, he woke up one morning crying and demanding broccoli. “Broccoli please, I want broccoli.” He did not want broccoli.
Ishtar’s doing power feeds in the evening and then spending hours gassy about it, which I feel defeats the purpose.

She’s about to grow out of 0000 after lasting a week in 00000, so she may well end up bigger than her brother. This has created a small logistics problem: all my 000 is winter, because Arthur hit that size in autumn, and she’ll hit it in the middle of summer. Unless she skips straight to 00, which is all summer, because of course it is.

As for me. Every time I’m overstimulated I start looking around the house for things to throw out. And I’ve caught a respiratory bug, so most of the week has been coughing, exhausted, and quietly decluttering out of spite. taken in Perth, Western Australia by @mypineapplelife

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7 days ago

Baba means dad. The shirt means exactly what you think it means.

I get a lot of commentary about being married to an Iraqi man and loving his culture. So for the second half of my maternity shoot, I stopped typing replies and wore one instead.

“I heart hot babas”, worn completely deadpan with a blue duster cardigan, aviators, and turquoise and silver jewellery. Heavily pregnant. Entirely unbothered.

Then there’s the tea. Chai in Iraqi glasses next to Royal Albert fine china, a red copper teapot and a plate of Turkish delight. That tray is our marriage explained in crockery.
For the record, there is exactly one hot baba I heart, and I married him.

One t-shirt to go, and it’s the one people will have feelings about. Follow so you’re here for it.

Tee @chaladzdesign | Photos @rlaw_photography | Henna @mehsooq_henna | Shot at home @lavilladimaria taken in Perth, Western Australia by @mypineapplelife

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8 days ago

When you put your cuppa down and immediately get nap-trapped by a newborn.

No. Please. Don’t make me attempt the dangerous little side stretch, the desperate T-Rex reach toward the coffee table like my whole life depends on four more centimetres of range.

Because now I’m pinned under a sleeping baby, one arm’s gone completely numb, my back has filed a complaint, and my tea just sits there getting colder by the minute while I stare at it like a woman stranded at sea, watching land drift further away.

And the worst part is I can’t even be properly annoyed, because a tiny warm baby asleep on your chest is genuinely elite. Gorgeous. Devastating, in the good way.

But also, babe. Mummy would very much like the hot drink she made twelve minutes ago and has not been allowed to touch since.

Motherhood really is just an endless run of impossible choices: disturb the sleeping baby, or accept your beverage now belongs to the past.

If you’ve ever been held hostage by a tiny sleeping potato while your tea quietly dies within arm’s reach, I see you. taken in Perth, Western Australia by @mypineapplelife

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10 days ago

Honest review: my lap baby rejected the Sky Bunk on the plane. Then the train happened.

Gifted by @kooshykids

China, six months pregnant, travelling with my sister @gapyearsandgrowth, her two boys and our parents. Arthur flew as a lap baby. I scored a spare seat twice, set the Sky Bunk up both times, and he still chose me, because lap babies are contractually obligated to sleep on your one remaining functional arm.

So in the air, for him, it was a very comfortable seat that nobody sat on.

The bullet trains are where it earned its keep. Self-inflated in moments, gave him somewhere to play, stretch out and nap that wasn’t my lap or a train floor, and he was genuinely happy on it for hours. Then it packed down small enough to disappear back into the luggage.

The other two products did better at altitude. Jackson, ten, had the Kooshion as a footrest and was unbearably smug about it. Roman, eleven months, had the Kooshy Kloud as a bed, and when turbulence meant the bassinet was off limits, my sister fed him on it instead of her lap. That’s the moment I’d pay for.

My actual verdict, not the shiny one. If your child has their own seat, this solves a real problem. If you’ve still got a lap baby, save it for trains and long transits, where ours quietly became the MVP of the whole leg.

Lap baby or own seat: what’s the longest trip you’ve survived, and what actually got you through it? taken in China中国 by @mypineapplelife

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11 days ago