I do it myself...

So the day is here... My baby no longer needs me... She now goes down the big slide all by herself... And again...and again...

score 100!

So today I scored a goal..
Shhhh secretly quietly I have been working towards meeting little personal goals.   I haven't told anyone because frankly I am sick of egg on my face when life takes me in other directions...
But today is not one of those days.
A few weeks ago, frustrated by clutter of both the internal and external types, I set myself the goal of getting rid of 100 things by the end of the month. 
And here we are... the last day of the month... and my "out" pile has well over 100 things in it. 
Really I am only scratching the surface of the cleansing process that needs to continue...
So perhaps I will do this goal again...
But in the meantime - Yippee for me!  I'm off to the Salvos with the bags.

My little artist!

My angel has a new chalk board, and she loooooves it :-) recently she has been obsessively asking us to draw fish with her... But today she drew her own! My little artist! Her first non -squiggle! Although perhaps the regular scrawls are actually blue prints for her master plan and we regular humans are just too silly to notice. She is also learning to write A B C and today did an A and a B that any doctor would have been happy with. I am expecting her to be forging notes to day care any day now :-)

It's cliched, but so true... There is truly nothing more beautiful...

Taking steps...

So I am taking steps forward... For some time now I have felt an increasing frustration with not achieving goals... This is essentially interconnected with my deeper sense of confusion over feeling utterly disconnected from any sense of passion for anything. Apart from my angel, of course, nothing feels like it sets my heart on fire. I feel no real engagement with anything except the abiding sense of stuckness and dissatisfaction that has come to characterize my days... I find myself complaining more and more, and I sit listening to myself wondering who on earth this person is and how I can get far away from her... I am not who I am at the moment... I seem to have drifted aimlessly until suddenly I realize I have been in a rip and am way out at sea, far from the solid ground of me... So I am taking steps... I am setting out on that timeless quest... To rediscover me.

Garden goodies...

I love my garden... Earthy, rich, grounding, abundant, joyful... The primal pleasure of growing food goes beyond the logical and into a soft gentle place inside... It just feels good...

Perspective

My angel was a trial today... She projectile vomited half way through her morning nap, which was hardly deliberate but annoying just the same... Then if course there was no chance if going back to sleep... So all day she has been short tempered, easily frustrated and screechy... She does screechy very well indeed. It is ear splitting and makes me feel like my bones are rubbing together in a sort of nails on a board sort of a way... Exceedingly irritating! And since she was feeling out of sorts she wanted to be on top of me all the time, and to have everything I had... My tea, my diet coke, my phone, my keys... You get the picture... Grrrr.... I got grumpy. And then she dropped a heavy toy on
my toe and I snapped and yelled at her. She looked up at me with such sad little eyes and said "sorry"....and my heart broke audibly."crack!".
And then I got the news that a friends baby died last night... Sudden cot death at 14 months old. I simply cannot, nor want to, imagine the horror.
And suddenly my day is put starkly firmly into perspective... Good night kisses felt extra sweet tonight.

Sent from my iPhone

let them eat cake

I feel like a cake that everyone wants a piece of... I slice myself into little bits, but somehow there is never enough to go around... and the slices get smaller until they become crumby and then no-one is happy anyway.  And at the end of the day, the one who goes hungry is me.  Several people have suggested that I need to make difference choices, but perhaps they mean I should choose to give them more cake and let someone else miss out.  Or perhaps there is some secret understanding, a flash of insight that I am currently lacking that will somehow make sense of how stuck and choice-less I feel. 
All I really want is to keep everyone happy... Is that such a bad thing?  Perhaps not... but it seems impossible.

technology!

I have discovered the world of mobile blogging!  woohoo... prepare for the re-emergence of wanderlust-mamma :-)  I'm back baby!

My Christmas elf...

This $6 Christmas tree was the latest in a long line of devices to enable the child to remain happily in her stroller a little longer while mummy does shopping... Until she tired of it after 10 mins so we dumped it sneakily behind a plus women's rack... A metal one I mean :-)

moments of friendship

So recently I had the joyous opportunity to spend an evening with good friends... friends who are near and far came together for organic gluten free corn chips and some cheesy deliciousness, but the real treat was the simple delight of sitting in a room with people who I love and who love me... people with whom I share a history and a language.  We speak and know that the others will understand.... we refer to past moments and laugh without having to explain... we reflect on this time last year, and the year before... secure in the knowledge that we will reflect on this moment some time next year.  We don't see each other often enough anymore... but this had no impact in the moment, it was like we were always together only with a little added excitement.  These are people who have seen me at my ugliest (morphine swollen post cesarean), my most elated (morphine swollen post cesarean), my funkiest and my droopiest... I have revealed my secrets, held others hearts and hands, agonised and celebrated...
I listened, laughed, learned... but mostly luxuriated in the simple pleasure of friendship.

moments of gorgeousness...

So  my angel is growing and blossoming every day... She is learning new words, understanding new concepts, and frankly shocking, surprising and delighting her mum with her journey of becoming her own little person in the world...

There are so many moments which gleam as jewels in the treasure chest of this parenting experience... I keep forgetting them and so I want to record some here...

Like the day that she demanded the jug of water I was using to fill the iron.  When I refused she got her little fingers up onto the table and yanked the place mat that the jug was sitting on, bringing the lot crashing down.  I was cranky, and told her to go away while I cleaned up the spilled water.... She tottled off with a terribly serious face and plonked herself down in her princess tent.  After a new minutes I heard a little voice from the tent "Naughty, naughty, naughty"....

Or the day she tottled across the grass, picked a little tiny flower and brought it gleefully to her mummy!

Or the day she snuggled herself down in bed when I tucked her in... beamed up and me and said "Happy Baby, Night-night!"

and of course all of the other thousand times that she comes to me with arms extended asking "Mummy, cuddle?!"

So many glistening moments that make the sleepless nights seem insignificant.