Finding home

We're bringing up our children the way we want to. We're growing, catching, making and trying to do it all slowly and calmly away from all the madness.

It's not always easy. But it feels right.

I can't imagine living anywhere else now. And to think that over a year ago it was a stormy mess. It hasn't all fitted into place yet, but those clicks are happening all the time. We're living purposefully.

We're in the right place now.

And if it wasn't for Graeme suggesting we move here, I probably wouldn't be writing these words. So I'm very grateful to my husband for moving us here at a time when I'd almost given up.

I'm happy. 

(I wonder if this has anything to do with Graeme and I going away for three nights next week. On. Our. Own! What do you think? Or maybe it's because mum's coming for Christmas and spending all of January with us.)

Linking up with one of my favourite bloggers Maxabella loves...




If we hadn't come to Australia...

My sister and brother have left. It's just the four of us again. And Sydney, of course.

That's the downside of anyone coming to visit. It's the goodbyes. They're crushing. Here one minute, gone the next. With no idea when the next time will be.

Usually the next few days are slow and rather joyless.

But I prepared myself for this one beforehand. I'm reframing it (a word my brother taught me this week).

Instead of mourning a time when my family lived down the road, I'm focusing on what we would have missed out on had we not moved to this beautiful land.

In no particular order then:

Play School. Many a meal wouldn't have made it to the table if the clever ABC4 people hadn't scheduled this for 4.30pm. The likes of Justine and Jay singing Let's play together on the guitar and harmonica with Peter on piano has us all dancing around the sofa. If it's the right mix of presenters, I'll rush the cooking so I can join in with the catchy tunes. Many months on and we still sing If all the world were paper. They hardly watch any TV, but we do love this. Play School, you have made afternoons at home much sweeter.

Catching our own fish. Graeme is in his element freediving in these oceans. The fact he comes home with red morwong, luderick, trevally (and sometimes bream) is the icing on the cake. Lots of tender abalone lately and Australian salmon for the first time.

A proper food garden. Wanting desperately to grow leafy greens and herbs led me to Nicola Chatham. Not only am I actually doing it, but I enjoy it. I never thought gardening would have the effect it does on me. I retreat there and just while away whatever time I have.

The chance to make school wait. This is a big one. I'm so glad we can put school off for another year.

Swimming with dolphins. Last week, Graeme got off his friend's boat to play chase with a pod of dolphins. He said it was magic. I'm hoping I can go next time.

Garage sales. Oh, I do love them.

Family daycare. A life-saver for us without any family to fall back on. Not sure what I would have done without that time to myself each week.

Glorious winters. Especially down the beach. No need for icky sunscreen. Just warm, long sleeves and a hat to shield our eyes. Even better if we've got music in the background.

A local food co-op. This week I bought something else other than fruit and veg. A jar of pure, unheated, pesticide-and-chemical-free bush honey. The best bit is it comes from less than two hours away.

There's more I'm sure, but there's washing to hang out and dinner to make.

What do you love about where you live? Do you love Play School too? 





Grateful for little surprises

I woke up with a spring in my step today. The strawberries are turning red. I've got enough kale to have juice every day and I'm excited about getting one of my beds ready for tomatoes and basil.

It's Friday and Graeme's working from home. To give him a little peace and quiet, the three of us spent a very blustery morning on the sand, driving first to buy some chicken poo and poke little hands at a rabbit for sale. (Yes, Luca, I know Mummy bought a fabulous rabbit hutch for next to nothing in a garage sale, but this rabbit's not coming home with us. Not today.)

Usually, when we go out, the cat-and-dog antics come with us. But not today. There was no fighting over the biggest bucket or the spade with the better handle. Kian filled and Luca picked clusters of weeds and gave them a new home. Look at my collection, he said.

They walked along walls and jumped, and said hello to passing strangers. Sydney scavenged like she does. When it was time to come home, I prepared myself for all the fuss. There was none. Was it because Daddy was home?

Then I took delivery of some mushroom compost and chatted with the mushroom grower on my driveway. We talked about my broccoli and he told me how to give the mandarin tree a bit of love and attention. 

It wasn't just the fact I've now got everything I need to layer my no-dig garden bed, but it was how the compost had mushrooms sprouting all over it. I rushed upstairs to show the boys what came with the compost. The reaction I got was great, but they're still mushrooms.  

Oh well. Luca picked thyme for me and I made mushrooms on toast for my lunch and sat down properly with a knife and fork. (Another little surprise given I usually wolf something down as I ferry food and drink to the table and mop drinks off the floor.) 

Maybe everyone's in good form because my brother arrives on Sunday. We see parents, brothers and sisters once a year usually, but I haven't seen my brother in two years. So he's never actually met Kian. I can't wait.

I'm joining other lovely grateful people at Maxabella loves.

Did you know I'm giving away a cookery book?




Why isn't parenting more obvious?

There's plenty about being a parent that comes naturally to me.

I instinctively know what to feed them. I know that good food has a big part to play in their childhood, just as it did mine.

I know to love them, to give them plenty of cuddles and to listen.

I know to read to them every day and nurture their love of books.

I know that less will always reward them with more.

As they've grown, I instinctively know that a slower, longer childhood is right for them. And that they should spend time in the garden watching food grow.

I'm very grateful to have instincts like these. No matter what anyone says or what I see, I am never swayed. It's so comforting to have that instinctive backing. To know what is right.

What doesn't come naturally to me, though, is huge and fills me with guilt. Every. Single. Day.

I don't know how to deal with the fighting, the mood swings, the episodes of rage. Instead of waiting for calm to creep back in, for them to find their centre, then talking about it sensibly, I get sucked in and swept along.

I've been reading how sibling conflict is an opportunity for communication. But I'm failing miserably. (Unless raising my voice counts as communication?)

If it was a four-year-old Kian clashing with Kian as he is now, I imagine I wouldn't get so caught up. Kian is more resilient and he moves on quite quickly. I imagine I might even let them sort it out for themselves. But it always feels so much deeper with Luca. Uncontrollable. Intense. The distress lingers and it affects everything. It's the highly sensitive thing that I still know very little about.

This morning, as I baked cheese and chive muffins to fill their lunch boxes, I realised that instead of feeling proud and grateful that it's easy for me to wake up and rustle up something delicious for their lunch, I felt niggled that I'm only really doing part of my job.

Filling their tummies and reading to them and loving them is only really part of the job. It's the easy part. It's easy to bake and cook from scratch (for me, anyway). It's easy to read. It's easy to cuddle and be close. Because it's calm and enjoyable. It's easy to parent when you've got calm and enjoyable.

It's hard when everyone is overwhelmed and angry, in a struggle. I wish I could better tune in and know exactly what their needs are and how to talk and nurture them back. That's the hard part and I wish it were more obvious.

 

I wish it were more obvious: tuning into my child and being able to connect and work out what they really need on an emotional level and being able to think 'you're acting this way because..., so all I need to do is this', and know in my heart of hearts that I'm doing a great job.

I know, as parents, we're human too, carrying all sorts of issues that still need resolving. I accept that, and I know nothing is ever perfect, but I'd like to feel – just once – like I can pat myself on the back.

I find myself wondering if it'll all turn out OK. In spite of all this stuff that isn't obvious to me.

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What was obvious to me today, though, was I needed music and I needed to make banoffee pie. So I danced in the kitchen to Michael Bublé, and when the boys came home, we danced some more.... (before several moments like the kind I describe above).

And now, I have a bowl of buttery, biscuity, sticky and creamy. Where it's going to end up is very very obvious.*

Do you struggle with the emotional stuff too as a parent? Do you have one child you always worry about? Do you wish more of parenting was instinctive so that we didn't have to spend our spare time reading advice?**





* I'll post the banoffee recipe tomorrow.

** Speaking of which, I have a copy of Simplicity Parenting here from the library thanks to a mention from Greer. But it's been sitting on the coffee table for a week. Next to Tessa Kiros' Apples for Jam. Guess which one seems to fall into my lap first. 

Grateful for contrasts

This word is on my mind. The more I've thought, the more I realise I'm a bundle of contrasts. My life is a life of contrasts.

It started when I thought it funny how Luca was a textbook routine baby and Kian was carried in a sling and we co-slept.

Then I thought about my views on medicine and natural living. I've always sought alternative therapies and treatments to anything. And yet I had an epidural with both the boys.

There are little things like how I hate noise. (OK, who likes noise?) I mean, I'm so sensitive that I'd prefer a tea towel dangling permanently over each and every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen to avoid that sound of wood on wood. I like quiet. Silence. But I'll have you know the drums are my instrument of choice. A drumming friend at school taught me the basics and I've been hooked ever since. (A pie-in-the-sky dream of mine has been to do what I do by day, and be a drummer in a cool little band by night.)

I crave solitude. I love parties.

When we first moved to Australia, we lived amongst barefoot hippies. I ran a cake stall at the organic markets and Graeme sweated it out in people's gardens. Then we moved to a place where Graeme worked in the city and we made friends with big-time corporate families.

We didn't really fit in either camp to tell you the truth.

Too mainstream to be radical and too radical to be mainstream.

I've lived a life where talking to boys was forbidden. A life in a strict private girls' school in Cairo where you are pulled up and punished if your hair tie isn't brown or black. I've lived another in a mixed public school in Kent amongst girls who did a lot more than kissing.

Straight-A student and maths graduate becomes a food writer working from home.

Used to loathe getting dirty in the garden and doing any kind of work out there. Now I've designed and built my beds, planted pots and am growing lots of green goodness. And I quite like getting my hands dirty.

None of this is surprising. I am, after all, a product of another contrast: a harsh Egyptian father and a soft, warm English mother.

I love contrasts. I love all the irony. Life is very real with contrasts. Don't you think?

And I get to see a much much bigger world (literally and figuratively).

Hence why I'm grateful.

Linking with Bron at Maxabella Loves who makes me laugh.


Have you noticed the button? Yes the big button up there on the right. The one with the cool changing text. I'm so excited about it. Go on, see where it takes you... 

P.S. Don't forget to enter my giveaway.




Time to celebrate

We've been saving this bottle of bubbly for over a year now. Waiting for something to celebrate. We're normally rubbish at celebrating.

I'd like us to celebrate the little things more often. I guess it's another way of being grateful.

Anyway.

Graeme's just negotiated a four-day week and we're over the moon. A long weekend every week. Four days, not five, of doing the boys' breakfast, lunch and dinner on my own. Bedtime hour shared over three nights, not two....

OK, I'm sure you've definitely got it now. (Sure?)

Seriously though, I can hardly believe it. So we reckoned it was time to pop that cork.

Especially as there was something else to celebrate. Except I can't tell you about it.

The first time I wrote about it, I jinxed it and it didn't happen again.

Then when I mentioned it again, it stopped.

So I'm not even going to write the words. In fact, Graeme and I have learnt not to talk about it all. I have a  funny way of changing the course of events when I talk about them. And write about them, it seems.

So, we're just celebrating more time together at home, and something else.

To do with a little boy.

There I go again.

Stormy nights and bright days

Luca and I were reading Duck in the Truck last night. At the end of it, he asked 'can I go and play in the mud?'. I promised that next time we had some rain, we'd go out looking for some mud.

Later in the night, the heavens opened. A big thunderstorm.

But you wouldn't know it this morning. We woke up to stillness, lots of pale blue and chirpy birds.

So I knew what we were doing. No point Luca getting out of his breakfast-stained t-shirt. He was going to get very dirty.

Luca wanted Kian to join him, but I couldn't face two muddy children. 'But why not? He's walking now, Mummy!'. Yes, he's walking. But he's not up to jumping just yet. He would have ended up with his face planted in the squelchy mud. 

A stormy night and a bright day. A great combination. And I'm very grateful for their timing.

On the subject of walking, I anticipated it being less exciting the second time around. But Graeme and I reacted just the same. Plus this time, there was an extra pair of hands clapping and cheering on. 

Here's one of my favourite shots of Kian a few days after he started walking. I was trying to get a picture of him walking towards me. But this was so much better. One of my best Point + Shoot.

Wordless Wednesday

Always grateful my boys get on... when they do...

Chance encounters

This was supposed to be last week's grateful post, but it looks like I've missed a week.

I've been meaning to write this for a while, but it just hasn't happened. I won't be a slave to my blog, I keep reminding myself. I won't let it become a chore, or something on my to-do list, because then it won't be a creative outlet anymore.

Anyway, chance encounters... That's what's been on my mind.

Image from here

It's funny how life can change, or take on an entirely different quality because of a chance encounter.

I've always been grateful for meeting the friend of a friend years ago who insisted I come out to Australia on a working holiday visa and stay with him in Sydney. I did, and it led me to my husband.

And more recently, I bumped into another mum at the library whom I'd only met once before. Fast forward a few months and out of the blue, she emailed me to ask if I'd like to join a group of mums for an exercise class with a personal trainer. It just so happened to be organised on the day that I have to myself, so I jumped at the chance. How else am I going to shift 10kg??

And what a difference it's made to my week. Not only am I training with other mums, doing things I've never done before like boxing, but we're exercising outdoors – and the setting is pretty spectacular. It's a house on several acres with amazing views, so it's unlike any other fitness class I've done.

All from a chance meeting...

And this week, in particular, I'm grateful for having come across family daycare. If it wasn't for a colleague of Graeme's, we wouldn't have found someone I completely trust with my children.

For the first time, I decided that Luca and I could do with some time together on our own, without the koala.

Normally I might have felt sad that, unlike other families we know, I don't have my mum nearby to help out, or my sister, or anyone else in the family.

Instead, I just felt grateful. Grateful that I had someone whom I was happy to leave Kian with for a few hours where he could play and paint, be sung to and read to.

Grateful that I didn't need to feel any guilt (hell knows there's plenty of that!). Because he was happy, and Luca..., well, he was a very smiley little boy that day.

We went for a walk, baked jammy biscuits, made a bongo/shaker, pottered in the garden and we talked. No rushing off to change nappies, no 'I'm listening Luca but I need to sort Kian out'. My attention was all his.

All thanks to that encounter.

Blues, greens and summer breezes - week two of grateful

Everyone who knows me knows that I can't stand the heat. Sultry, humid, scorching heat is oppressive for me and it puts me in a bad place. I haven't enjoyed the past two summers we've spent here, and after a beautiful winter I was dreading the summer.

But I've coped. Actually, it's been pretty good. Maybe my outlook's changed and I'm putting more of a positive spin on an Aussie summer than I did a year ago (you should have heard me!), or maybe it's because of where we live. There's always a breeze living right by the beach. It can make all the difference.

What I'm really grateful for are the amazing summer colours. Vivid greens and the bluest of blues cheer me up no end. And I've needed it almost on a daily basis.

I'm still as sleep deprived as when I started this blog. In fact, it's probably worse now. I'm in and out of bed. All night. Every night.

Last night, I had to settle Kian four or five times. And then he wakes at 6am.

It takes its toll after a year.

Carrying the big weight that he is in and out of the cot like I do has also been a strain on my body. My back went over Christmas and I couldn't move for two days. Then I sprained my hand. My legs are always aching and I've put on far too much weight.

I know it's not forever, but at times I'm so tired I just want to curl myself into a ball and cry.

And sometimes I do cry a little, especially when I'm feeling sorry for myself with Graeme working so far away in Sydney and there isn't anyone I can call for help.

But I get over it. I take Sydney for a walk and I stare at the ocean, at the sky and the green hills.

And then it's OK.

52 weeks of Grateful - week one

I'm joining in all the community fun with the 52 weeks of Grateful over at Maxabella loves. How nice is it to remind ourselves to be more grateful, more often?

This week I'm grateful for my garden and the little moments of joy it brings.

I have so much to learn and I've already made quite a few mistakes (mainly through being so damn impatient), but it's been a very good start.

It's not easy finding the time to plant seedlings with a little one whose idea of fun is to pull, yank and grab anything in sight. So I've done things in a hurry when he's gone to bed – feeling heavy on my feet with daylight fading fast at the end of a day (and the mozzies out to play) have meant that I've shoved seedlings in rather than take the time to thin them out.

Hardier herbs, like the rosemary and thyme, should have gone into pots in hindsight to make room for more lettuces and carrots.

But really, none of that matters, because what is important is that I am growing something and teaching the boys at the same time. It's wonderful to see Luca rush out there three times a day to check for ripe fruit, and then scream and shout at the tiniest red strawberry. Simple fun.

No wonder all his white tees are a mess

Our knobbly, gnarled beauties

I'm grateful for knobbly carrots, rare strawberries that Graeme and I have never tasted, speckled leaves and peculiar courgettes.

I'm also very very grateful for our tomatoes that have started ripening beautifully over the last week. Fortunately I do get to try one or two.

What I'm truly grateful for, though, is finding something else that Luca and I enjoy doing together. Pottering in the garden with him is as rewarding and pleasurable as reading and talking to him. Because I'll be honest, I'm not very good at playing on the floor. I get bored and it feels quite forced on my part. I'm no good at pretending to be T-Rex, and my heart sinks when I hear the words hide-and-seek. 

Of course, then I just feel guilty, because everyone says you must play play play with your child. On the floor. At least 20 minutes per day.

Rather, I take comfort from knowing that I love to read to him. We do singing, silly dancing and craft, and we talk lots. Anyway, Daddy does floor play and muck-about play best. 

So there's my first grateful for the year.

How do you feel about floor play?