this kid

A year ago I was in turmoil with this little person. And so I'm here now with the proof that 'this too shall pass' is the singular most valuable parenting phrase EVER COINED.

Sunday is nearly 4. She's grown like the proverbial weed (the latest spurt being 3 cm in 2 months!) - and not just physically.

There was a moment a few months back when I realised that every day there were moments of potential conflict (put on shoes, get out car, have a wee, eat your supper - all of these the very trenches of parenting warfare as you know), where I was holding my breath, braced for the inevitable mortar fire, and ... not getting it.

'Okay' she'd say, neatly stepping over my jaw (hanging on the floor in disbelief) and complying.

Steadily we've been able to untangle the complex knots of expectation, manipulation, exasperation and emotional damnation and just conduct our relationship like two normal family members. Or maybe it was just me who had to do that, she just ... grew up.

She's learned to laugh it off. She can handle some light teasing. She knows (quite expertly in fact) how to offer an alternative solution if the one at hand doesn't quite suit her. She strikes a mean bargain. She's irresistibly cute.

She is nearly 4. Life is sweet. I'm so glad she's growing, but could she stop growing? Because, ridiculously, as predicted by me, I miss my soft-cheeked babachoo too ...

gender bender

In keeping with the dichotomy which is this child, the two central tropes in Sunday's life at the moment are
a) how she CAN'T WAIT to have her babies and
b) how she's actually a boy, not a girl.

The boy thing has been around for some time. She loves a pretty frock, likes to think 'pink is her favourite colour' like her sister, but lest you be very careful of using the wrong gender pronouns or she'll rake you over hot coals.
She was having a vaccination shot last week and afterwards the nursing sister declared her to be 'such a brave girl'. Both Friday and I looked up in horror - nooooooo - but it was too late. 'I'm not a girl!' Sunday shrieked as the poor nurse floundered, eventually doling out lollipops to lighten the mood and commenting instead on their 'lovely blonde hair' until Friday told her 'my daddy's black' (what?) and I saw the woman's eyes glaze over with confusion as she ushered us out of her office declaring we'd been the 'most fun she'd had all day'.
In the car on the way home Friday muttered, 'I meant Daddy's hair is black', while Sunday rambled on about how she was a nice lady but 'a bit silly to not see that I'm a boy hey Mum?'

We indulge the phase, knowing from earnest conversations that she does really know what's what, but just chooses to live this fantasy for now. And as a child who really, really wanted a willy for my 5th birthday I'm okay with letting this one play itself out.

However the baby thing has been around for even longer. Friday had no interest in dolls as a smallie, but Sunday's maternal urge is strong. We all recall how when she'd just started crawling she'd collect dishtowels around the kitchen and clutch them to her chest, patting them hard and saying 's, s, s'.
She has a small but beloved collection of dolls, named Eyeball, Cucumber, Zebareba and Su'Lala (I couldn't make this shit up if I tried), and the subject of babies (growing them, birthing them and raising them) occupies a lot of her conversation.
For now she's happy playing with her dolls, but beware statements such as: 'You're such a good Mum.'
Oh no, if asked she's a big brother, a father or a granddad to this special bunch of weirdly-named kids.

So it was heart-breaking to watch, yesterday morning as her big eyes welled up with tears, the dawning comprehension that the two dreams had no clear intersect.
Chatting away about how she's a big boy, she suddenly had a moment of clarity and started sobbing, 'But if I'm a boy how will I have my babies Mum?'
My eyes teared up too. It's a sad thing watching the shattering of a dream, however nonsensical it may seem.

She tried to convince me that 'some boys can have babies' but I squashed that one pronto. There are limits to how much fantasy I consider it healthy to indulge. We chatted about adoption instead.
In conclusion she decided that when she was ready to have babies she might decide to be a girl again after all.
You go my boy.

My big boy, in a fairy frock, holding his her baby up to see out the bird hide.

TGIF

Hey, remember my other kid?

You know, the one I've not really mentioned for posts and posts because of all the erhmagerd-3-year-old-from-hell type stuff that's been going on here lately?

Well she's still around. And she is just ... adorable. Really truly, 5 has been so very wonderful that I must admit to being a little apprehensive about 6. Surely this high of chatty curious sweet-natured playful fun must precede a low of emo angst?

We're seeing glimpses ... There's been some crying for no particular reason. There was an inexplicable meltdown because I got water on her new strawberry legwarmers (while filling a water balloon for her) because 'Now they're all weeeeeeeeeet!' There are some requests for her sister to leave her alone, some calls for peace and quiet.

But for the most part Friday is my fun, my sanity, my darling. And, in the same way Sunday's delightful baby-ness helped me get through her older sister's Tyrannical Three's, Friday's Fabulous Five is helping me get through them this time round.

She is patient. She is kind. She loves her sister so much. She is always ready with a cuddle, a chat, a song. She says thank you. Her laugh has the power to crack my darkest mood.

We're reading Little House in the Big Woods - an enormously important and precious moment for me, sharing my childhood love with a child of my own.

We're talking about her teacher's gay relationship, Mr Mandela and brand assimilation (she rolls her eyes while I rant about people forcing little girls to think everything they own must be slathered in Barbie).
We listen to the radio and when she notes that 'this guy's not really singing hey Mum, more like talking', and I say it's called 'rap' music she asks, 'Is that because he's talking rapidly?
Wow, maybe it is?

There's some growing up happening, no doubt. Suddenly she knows who Taylor Swift is, and Justin 'Beaver'.  She got a brain worm the other day, saying HannahMontanaHannahMontanaHannahMontana - it does roll off the tongue quite nicely - and she dances gangnam style.

But she'll still romp in the sea in her knickers given half a chance. Collecting plough shells her lips will move as she tells herself some story.
Her eyes will still light up at the first whiff of an 'imagining'. She makes a game out of almost anything.
She'd give her life to David Attenborough if he'd have her.

Basically, in the words of Robert Smith:

I don't care if Monday's blue

Tuesday's gray and Wednesday too

Thursday I don't care about you

It's Friday, I'm in love

now I lay her down to 'leep

Sunday, aged two and a bit, decided to drop her afternoon nap. Her sister did the same thing at that age.
I was 7 weeks pregnant at the time - can you feel my pain?

I really thought Sunday would hang on longer. She loves(d) sleeping, and was still rocking a 2 hour nap the week before she quit.

But now baby don't nap no more and that, plus the sudden onset of TWO-ness, is making our evenings a little ... strained.

Tonight I lay on her bed in the dark, totally still, totally silent. While she thrashed around the bottom of it, emitting the guttural animal shrieks of frustration and utter over-wroughtness that I so clearly remember her sister making.
I lay on her bed in the dark, holding a fluffy turtle in position with my toe so she didn't bang her head too hard against the foot of the bed, waiting for her to calm.
I lay there and wondered how other parents deal with this, as we always perpetually wonder right?

I know there's no soothing her until she's ready. Strictly no touching her until she asks for it. I know there's nothing I can do but keep that turtle in position, silently apologise to the neighbours and lie there in the dark so she knows I'm there.

And when the shrieks turn to wails, when the thrashing becomes less violent, when the hand beating my leg starts caressing it instead, then at last will come the moment when she whimpers, ''leep wif Mummy', and I can bring her up to lie next to me, head on the pillow, hand on my face, and watch as she drifts off, still sobbing a little.
Then I lie there and let a big tear of my own slide down my cheek.

It was a long day for a little girl. And a long day for this big one too.

formerly unflappable

In my previous life (i.e. pre-sprogs) I was a freelance event coordinator with a formidable contacts list and an utterly cool demeanour.

I coordinated conferences of hundreds and intimate business meetings with international celebrities. I got people together from the furthermost flung places on earth - China, Sri Lanka, Lesotho. I once, with 30 minutes notice, convinced a hotel to convert what would've been a sit-down lunch for 750 delegates to take-away lunches for the same number, and made sure everyone got theirs while the meal was still warm.
In my time I dealt with a conference attendee miscarrying in her hotel room, and another with a case of meningitis, I got someone out of a sticky immigration scenario at OR Tambo Int Airport,  kept one conference afloat when it lost all it's funding mid-event and managed to contain rampant food-poisoning at another.
Good times.

I was known for my cool head. I once even had a client tell me I was 'too calm', that I should try and look more stressed - it seems too calm could be misconstrued as clueless, not so good in your Event Organiser apparently.

After we got over the initial 3 months of COLIC HELL I was a pretty calm mother to Friday too. People commented on my infinite patience with her, and I was pleased that my eventing skills had us fairly organised and able to leave the house in a timely and orderly fashion.

Now that's all gone for a ball of poo.

The Mother Formerly Known as Unflappable is now the person who leaves her home standing WIDE open for over 4 hours in the middle of the day.

I lose my shit, I throw toys (literally), I yell, I cry (never in front of them, not yet), I shout at one to stop whatever it is she's doing to make the other one make that unholy noise.
We've left the house in a tearing run every day this week, leaving mayhem (and occasionally the vital nappy bag or juice bottles) in our wake.
The first time I ever left my wallet at home was when I was pregnant with Friday, these days it's a regular event.
I miss birthdays and take 3 days to send a text message. I burn rice and discover myself out in public in my slippers (they're nice suede ones but still ... ).

Sometimes I think the former me would regard the current me with some disdain. She'd certainly wonder what all the fuss was about, she'd undoubtedly utter that disgusting phrase: 'How hard can it be?'.

It's not that it's that hard, it's just that it's that immediate and all-consuming. Packed lunch for 750? Sure, I can remain clam and make that happen and then go home for a large glass of wine and a debrief.
Two little girls who won't eat the supper I cooked for them? I'm a self-loathing mess with a large glass of wine and I can't 'go home' from this job.

But the former me can kiss my flappy (and flabbier) ass - these two delegates might make me work harder than all the hundreds of others before them, but their brand of chaos is far, far more appealing. They're cuter and they go to bed earlier. They love me more and they don't care if I'm calm or crazy or clueless.

This conference is called The Wee Years of Friday and Sunday - and I'm coordinating it better than anyone else on earth could.

Besides, calm is overrated.

the pink princess

Oh it was inevitable really. The first sign was her declaration, some weeks back, that she was going to buy a 'Barbie statue' with her birthday money from Ouma.
(A pretty astute comment as my sister-in-law pointed out, for is Barbie not much more statue looking than traditional dolly?).

The second sign was her asking me, seconds before opening her birthday presents, 'Is there a PRINCESS dress Mum?'
Oh.

As it turns out there wasn't. I'd really not picked up that she wanted one. But she did. And though she showed no disappointment with the gifts she did receive (sweet girl) there was a quiet determination that a pink princess dress would be procured.

So off we went to the Fairy Shop with purse stuffed with Ouma's birthday money (plus Christmas AND last birthday's money too ...), where she spotted The One right away.
And has hardly taken it off since.

 

It seems even the most tom-boyish girl will have a princess-phase. Five is probably the perfect time to indulge it I think.

Not being a particularly 'girly' girl myself I didn't see this one coming. I didn't encourage it and to be truthful, I didn't think I'd really enjoy it. 

But can you see the joy? Can you see it swirling and twirling around inside her and out? Can you see she's still choosing to pair the dress with high-top sneakers?

It's a thing of great beauty.

I think I'll dig out my old Peaches 'n Cream Barbie for her tomorrow ... Feels like it'll kinda suit the theme.

friday turns five

All of last week was about this monumental birthday in our household. Every birthday feels like a momentous one when you're raising small children but 5, 5 felt pretty damn phenomenal.

5 is all about ....

... proving you can touch your ear over your head
... having (the first!) wobbly tooth
... proudly showing your age with a whole handful of fingers
... looking forward to starting 'Great R' (Grade R) and possibly wearing a 'unicorn'!
... learning to tie your own shoe laces
... feeling very grown-up but also,
... needing to be reassured that you're still small enough to be cuddled and babied
... being oh so very lovely and chatty and interested and insightful and thoughtful and considerate and ...

entrancing your parents more and more every day.

Happy birthday my first, my eldest, my extremely special big girl.

when you're 2 ...

When you're 2 it doesn't occur to you,
To try and hide when you're having a poo.
In the car, at the Spar, at school, by the pool,
When you're 2 any loo with a view will do.

When you're 2 you don't know how to behave in a queue,
'Big boobs!' 'Chubby man!' you shout for all to hear you.
Pick your nose, stand on toes, run up and down rows,
When you're 2 no queue can contain the very two-ness of you.

When you're 2 everyone wants a piece of you,
They smile and they wink and they coo-coo-katchoo.
You can frown, you can scowl, you can launch a blood-curdling howl,
When you're 2 they'll keep on coming at you,

Unless you happen to be having that poo.

cuteness 101

Not to stand in too stark a contrast to her sister's appalling behaviour on the weekend ... but my god is my 2 year old Sunday just killing me with the cute.

Girl's Gone Child said today that:

'One of the greatest gifts of parenthood is the act of routinely falling harder and even more in love with one's children.'

She also said:

'If this comes off as saccharine and totally annoying, I don't care.'

Me neither.

Sunday has suddenly started talking. Only a year or so after her sister did. But she's started and, as predicted, is straight into it in a big way. Sentences, thoughts, assertions, feelings - I'm in that golden age of wanting to write everything down, all the time. The thought of forgetting any of these adorable utterances is heart-breaking.

She cups my face, draws me close and beams, 'My Molly.'

She endlessly unpacks and repacks her Dad's toolbox while whispering, 'Spannah. Dwiver. Daddy.'

She's finally naming her big sister - just as we were wondering whether Sunday saw herself and her sister as one person, therefore not needing a separate indicator, 3 days ago she started calling her by name.

Cuteness 101 - how to win the whole family over in just a few weeks.

first look

Not sure what invited them, but I spent lots of time this weekend visited by memories of the first time I laid eyes on my children.
These are memories one imagines you'll always have, how on earth could I forget those first adrenalin-fueled, surreal, painful, magical, weird moments? But I've started feeling paranoid that I might.

The present version of my girls always takes up so much space in my world that I can't think they're not all branded onto my memory. But the mind is not as reliable as the heart in this case, and as life starts moving faster and faster (Sunday will be 2 next month!) I find myself folding over the corners of our days, desperately trying to bookmark moments, words, feelings before we finish this chapter.

So to go back to the beginning ...

Both my births were emergency C-sections, so both my first looks were over the green curtain of surgery, both were through the disembodied (literally) haze of spinal blocks. I met my girls in the company of a half dozen strangers, strange masked half-faces hovering in my periphery, voices in the background, machines and strange smells.
And of course their Dad, present for both, his face on my right an enduring memory, one which I have no fear I'll ever forget.

Friday's birth, being my first, was still all about me. The decision to Caesar was made so fast, the adrenalin from my water's breaking and labour starting (3 weeks early) still coursing within me, my brain still holding the complete unknown at bay, that when they held her up over the curtain - impossibly quickly - I couldn't process what I was looking at.
This tiny (3.2 kg) purpely thing - what was it? Had they removed an organ I wasn't aware of?

I stuck out one finger and touched her. So warm. And then she opened her mouth, impossibly wide, and shrieked - and became a person.
She was taken to be cleaned and weighed etc. Her Dad went with her and although I couldn't see her face from where I was lying, the enormity of her was written all over his.
I looked down at my finger, still goo-ey from touching her, and wiped it on the edge of the surgical blanket.

Hours later, alone in my hospital bed, her asleep in the nursery across the hall, I rubbed my feet together and felt like her. It's not really possible to describe, I refuse to bow to the corny 'my heart walked outside my body' sentiment, but I felt like her. A part of me was, I guess, apart from me.
The next morning my husband told me that in our bed at home he'd felt the same.

For Sunday's birth I knew to expect an actual person at the end of it. The process, although also being my first real experience of labour, was so much more about her - namely getting her out safely. As we were attempting VBAC we knew there was the possibility of complications and ten hours in, when her heart rate started dipping and we were heading into theatre, I was overwhelmed with excitement at meeting her.

It was a difficult Caesar and it felt like forever before she appeared over the curtain, much paler, much bigger (3.8 kg) than her sister, one eyeball rolling wildly.
Although she'd been in distress I was allowed to hold her briefly and apparently, as she was handed to me, I said, 'Aw, let's have another one' to my husband - the anesthetist reckoning that was the soonest he'd ever heard the sentiment expressed, and not one I've ever repeated since!

Sunday was born in the morning (Friday late at night), and I think that's part of the reason those first 24 hours have so much more clarity. She hardly left my side, she latched well, we co-slept, I handled the pain meds better.

Friday's birth was a massive experience, on every level. It rocked me physically, emotionally, it rearranged the foundation of my life.
Sunday's entry (while my doctor would disagree) was somehow so much more peaceful. She slipped out of my body and onto the crook of my left arm. She slotted into an anticipated space in our lives, and that life went on, fuller and richer.

I need to remember this. I write it to remember it.

she's leaving home

Sunday's starting at a small playgroup this week.

In another classic example of what people have been known to call 'Molly's Luck', the place just fell in my lap via a much more jacked friend whose little girl (same age as Sunday) will be starting there too.
(Actually it's a new little school opening up a few doors down from my friend's house so maybe it kind of fell into her lap too.)
Anyhoo, I've been very excited about it - loving the idea of Sunday playing with other little kidlets 2 or 3 times a week and blissfully anticipating an extra free morning for writing - happily telling people that she'll be starting school 'next year'.

But, now it is next year, now in fact she's starting this week and I am, naturally, now riddled with guilt and emotion and feeling more than a little weepy.

Friday was two and half when she started preschool. She'd been talking for 18 months and we'd been chatting about school for many weeks before she started.
She totally got the concept, was very excited about it, knew I'd be back to collect her in a couple of hours. When I dropped her off that first morning she happily scrambled into the sandpit without a backward glance while I wept pathetically behind my dark glasses and sat outside in the hot car for a completely unnecessary 15 minutes just in case she noticed I was gone and cried for me (ha!) and fought the urge to phone my mother and blubber incoherently.
Obviously I blame all this emotion on the fact that I was 8 months pregnant at the time.

With Sunday. Mah baby.
She'll only be two in March, she's still prattling away in mostly incoherent baby talk. We understand her but will anyone else? Her bottom lip quivers when I leave her with her beloved nanny, she still cries as she drives away with my Mum, whom she loves. She's a clinger, this youngest daughter of mine.
How on earth will she take to being left with virtual strangers?

The thought of her navigating snack, peer interaction, adult guidance from someone other than the 4 or 5 key grown-ups in her life, hurried mornings getting ready and mostly, my leaving her there and driving away, suddenly has me feeling very wobbly.

I know that so many parents have weathered this experience with much younger children than Sunday, and I know there's a whole bunch of reasons she'll be fine - not least of all that she's watched her sister happily go off to, and come home from, school for ages now - but still ...
She doesn't have to go to school. This is not a necessity born from my work situation or a lack of other child care options, and that's why I'm feeling conflicted about it.

Sunday's starting playschool 'cos it suits me, because I've decided it'll be a good idea. Are my motives selfish? Am I potentially putting her through premature separation anxiety for all the wrong reasons?

No. She'll love it, even if it does take a few traumatic goodbyes. And I've no doubt the trauma will be more mine than hers.
She'll love it and she'll thrive and in a few short weeks I'll look back at this post and laugh at myself and my indulgent parental angst.

As usual this is my shit, which I'm trying to disguise as concern for my child. This is my baggage and my baggage is this:
I've realised this last week, that 2011 was our last year of having a baby in the house. I am 100% confident and sure that I don't want another one, but I'm shocked at the finality of the thing - no. more. babies.
By the end of this year Sunday will be nearly three, she'll be losing those baby curves, her face will be that of a little girl, she'll be talking and doing and growing so very much more independently of me. Mah baby.

My baby's taking her first steps off into the world. Come Thursday expect to find me weeping in a hot car.

luck. guilt. joy.

Last week I left my front door and security gate standing open for 4 hours.
I think I need to say that again. In italics.  
Last week I left my front door and security gate standing open for 4 hours.

I left the house with the girls, Friday decided at the front door that she and her sister needed dolls in the car and went back to get them, I went to the car to strap Sunday in, Friday came out to the car, I got her in and drove away.
If you're not from here you might not get the enormity of how stupid that is. If you are you'll know that's plenty stupid, as well as reckless, and well, just plain blonde.
If you're not from here you might not get how incredibly lucky I am that not a thing was disturbed when I returned.
If you are you'll know that's a bloody miracle.

4 hours and not a thing was taken, not one single sign that anyone had even sniffed around.

That's luck.

On Saturday night I was awoken at 1am by Sunday very quietly and calmly calling me. She does this sometimes and I only half-roused, waiting to see if she really needed me. I must've dozed off again.
Then I heard her calling once more, still very quietly and politely.
Once again I lay still, listening for a bit until I decided she was probably not going back to sleep.
I got up slowly, resignedly, went to the loo first and then finally to her room, where I found my poor baby in a puddle of her own congealing and rapidly cooling vomit.

That's guilt.

Friday's been on holiday since the end of last month. By now we're well into the swing of all being home together - I've made peace with getting much less (read: none) writing done, Sunday is loving having her playmate around all the time, Friday's watched Despicable Me a trillion times (in amongst lots of other stimulating and/or outdoor activities obviously).

Yesterday she told me that she was having the most fun ever. That I was a lovely Mum and she 'loved living with me'.

That's joy.

Luck. Guilt. Joy. Three such Christmassy feelings don't you think?

#blacktuesday

I had another post scheduled for Wednesday (now that I'm doing more regular non-blog writing I'll only be posting here 3 times a week for a while), but I couldn't let today go by unmarked.

Was I the only person who spent this historic day at home with a sick and very cranky toddler, my all black protest garb steadily getting covered in snail-trail stains of snot and tears?
It really felt like it.
Thank goodness for social media. By 12:40 it was clear I wasn't going to make it to Parliament but I got Sunday to sleep just in time to watch the disturbing outcome of the vote on the Protection of State Information Bill 'live' on Twitter.

I know I wasn't the only person who put my kids to bed this evening with a distracted and heavy heart, a bit too much snappiness and impatience, and a real concern for their future.

I spent some time yesterday evening writing an email to a friend who has been really struggling with the 'should we stay or should we go' dilemma lately. I wasn't trying to influence her decision, but I have (as all of us have I imagine) been in that space myself at times so I shared with her some of thoughts I keep in the 'dossier' in my head filed under Open When Despondent About the Future of SA.
This afternoon I almost wanted to mail her again to say 'I take it all back! Flee! Flee!'

But I didn't. Because I don't yet believe that's the only option. Times are bleak but this is our home.

Here's something from my dossier:
My parents brought my brothers and I up as one of few liberal families in a small and very conservative community. My mother tells of having moments of thinking they were insane to be raising kids in the uncertainty and (albeit invisible to our small white village) horror of 1970's South Africa. My father, an intellectual and extremely optimistic man, really didn't think he'd see a peaceful end to apartheid in his life time.
40 bizarre and miraculous years later we're doing more than okay.

There's something else I take from this today - we grew up feeling happy and secure. Whatever my parents doubts and fears, we didn't know about them until we were old enough to understand and process them.
I won't, as I fear I may have done this evening, let my girls suffer from my stress about this again.

Call me naive, no really do - because I'm choosing to be. At the end of Black Tuesday I'm choosing to be naively optimistic, with a healthy sprinkling of bitch-fight angry.
At the end of a day where I was too concerned about the future to be truly present in the now, I'm pledging to try and not make that mistake again.

I'm doing it for my girls.

in ancient times

As any parent will warn you, it's not recommended to spend too much time post-kids reminiscing about life pre-kids.
If for no other reason than after all the hormones and emotions and sleep-deprivation you can't really rely on your memory any more, even once your kids are a manageable age.

I had a series of scary anxiety attacks while pregnant with Friday. My doctor very wisely took them quite seriously and urged me to get treatment while I still had time to make it all about me. One of the issues which came up in my 2 and a half therapy sessions (yes folks, it seems I'm so shallow and my psyche so rose-tinted that not even a paid therapist could eke more material from me. Halfway through my 3rd session she basically told me we were done and showed me the door. I still think given a bit more time I could have dredged up some more dirt to talk about ...), was a genuine concern that having a baby would be like having a permanent house-guest.
Like having someone to stay who you liked very much and got on well with, but around whom you still felt you needed to get dressed at a decent time and serve 3 balanced meals a day and not belch too loudly.
My therapist (can I call her 'mine' after so few sessions?) kind of guffawed (are they allowed to do that?) and asked me what my husband thought of this theory. I confessed I'd not discussed it with him and she sent me home to do just that.
He laughed long and loud.
'Hell no,' he said, 'this is our kid. She will fit into our lifestyle, she will do/dress/eat/live how we choose.'

Okay so he was wrong in a lot of ways. But right in that becoming a parent doesn't feel like one day you were living one life and then the next another. It's all part of the same life, your life, it just gets more interesting ...

But naturally sometimes you can't help but hanker back to those ancient times. And never is this more tempting then on weekend mornings.
What did we do with our long Saturday mornings we asked ourselves at 7.00 am?

We used to lie in 'til shamefully late. Now we lie in between two little girls 'til latest 9 am and then someone needs to wee, or be fed or get changed into dry pants.
We used to read books, novels. Now we read Mog goes to the V-E-T, Winnie the Witch and, if we're lucky, How the Elephant Got His Trunk.
We used to doze off again. Now we only close our eyes to play peek-a-boo.
We used to cuddle. Now we tickle and roll and squish-like-a-bug and try to shield our tender parts from various flailing limbs.
We used to finally drag ourselves up and into the quiet house and bumble around filling our day.

I guess we still bumble, but now at rapid speed. And although our days are that much longer the hours seem to fly by and there's certainly very little time to wonder how we're going to fill them.

But we're still very likely to be in our pajamas 'til shamefully late in the day, we're still the same people after all.

nostalgia: 2 babies, 1 shirt

What does one do with those baby clothes you just can't bear to get rid of? I'm trying to be really strict with myself as a I pass on and clear out items as Sunday outgrows them.
But when it comes to favourites, especially things both my girls have worn, I just can't do it.
Not yet.

Friday, August 2008, 14 months old

There's all kinds of tutorials on the web about framing baby clothes. Even framing them with favourite photos of your kids wearing them. I can't really imagine myself doing that, and then I really can't imagine where one would hang such a thing.

The nostalgia is all mine, not theirs, and while husband will share a fond smile I don't think he's emotionally invested enough to welcome a framed item of small clothing into our living room!

Perhaps if I had a sewing room?

Sunday, April 2011, 13 months old

I guess for now I'll keep this little shirt, and the other couple of things I can't bear to part with, safely tucked away. Taking them out every now and then to sniff, and stroke, and remember the divinity of those chubby little limbs.

We mothers are a soppy bunch aren't we? 

For some tips and ideas on keeping mementos, have a look at Martha Stewart's Memory Keeping Crafts and these two ideas from Ohdeedoh. Love that curio shelf!