CloudLoveBaby

The weekend

2012-02-26T20:13:00.001+10:00

Oh look. Same Mr. Same cafe. Two babies, same age, 2.5 years apart. Love them all. They make my heart pop.

PS - The Mr said, "Oh! I'll take a photo of you!", like he was a genius for remembering. Pity I was half naked trying to feed a hot sweaty mess of a baby who fought like she was an enraged squid that had just been zapped by a taser. He honestly didn't understand why I declined...

Mums & Photos

2012-02-22T20:18:00.002+10:00

Us mums just don't have enough pictures taken of ourselves with our kiddos. I have this fear that I will be hit by a bus tomorrow and my kids will grow up and create the knowledge that I just never existed. Because there is such little evidence of it!

So great is my fear, that I have resorted to taking pictures like this

daily just to remind my kids that I was part of those memories.

And there are eleventy hundred photos of me and Ruby and the ergo.

So I bitched at the Mr to take the camera and snap some snaps, damnit.

We got these gems.

So I went back to taking photos of the things we did and saw and hoped that I'll always be around to tell them where we were, what we did, who we saw, why we were there.

Are you like me? Have heaps of photos of your lap + kids but not much else? Or are you really good at documenting life with all of you? Do you have any tips to share?

Banana Bread!

2012-02-21T19:09:00.001+10:00

Within about a 100km radius of where we live is the majority of the banana plantations in Australia. So, provided there hasn't been a cyclone in the last 6-9 months (Larry, Yasi, I'm looking at you), we have bananas coming out our ears.

Add to that, my BFF gave me this when we moved into the caravan.

It may or may not have been meant in jest. Regardless, I love it. If this book doesn't have the recipe I think twice about whether I really want to make/bake/cook it.

It's banana bread recipe is the bomb. The. B.O.M.B. I usually bastardise some part of the recipe though, always less sugar, depending on the size of the bananas, less butter, more yoghurt, less milk… The other day I skipped sugar altogther and used honey instead. I'm pretty sure it was the best one I've ever made. I'm thinking I should email David and give him the heads up.

The Original!
Ingredients
1.5c plain flour
1ts baking powder
1ts bicarb
1/4ts salt (have never added this, ever ever ever)
125g butter, softened
1c sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 large very ripe bananas
1/2c buttermilk (or 1/4c milk + 1/4 yoghurt - I only ever do it this way, sometimes all yoghurt, no milk)

Method
Preheat oven to 170 degrees
Grease and line loaf tin
Sift together flour + baking powder + bicarb + salt
In seperate bowl, beat butter and sugar for 3-4 minutes or until pale and fluffy.
Gradually add beaten eggs, mixing well after each addition.
Mash bananas and add to butter mix. (Have never ever done this, just through those suckers in!)
Stir well to combine
Add combined dry ingredients alternately with the buttermilk, beating well after each addition.
Spoon into prepared loaf tin and bake 55-60 minutes.
Allow to cool, turn out onto wire rack.

Yum.Bo.

I replaced the sugar with 1/2 c of honey (or thereabouts!) and reduced the amount of butter to 100g as the moisture in the honey made up for it, win x 2! Basically your mix will be sloppy but not runny. It'll slop sluggishly off the spoon or out of the bowl but it won't rush out. If it rushes out, you got too much goop, add some more flour.

Go crazy! Best enjoyed with a cup of tea.

Be Less Vanilla!

2012-02-20T15:24:00.001+10:00

OH! On the weekend I was busy squirrelling myself away from the Mr and small peeps and busy working on my website. I'm building me one!! I am not so very good at it. I am also not very good at staying on task for long periods of time so somehow, through my travels, I ended up listening to an interview with Tara Gentile. I would link it for you but I have no idea where I found it, what site I listened to it on or even what it was about. It was just humming in the background.

And then I heard her say,

"Be less vanilla."

My heart skipped a beat and I wanted to do a big rock star air punch YES! thing, but I don't know how to do a big rock star air punch YES! thing so I wrote it on a post it and stuck it to the wall.

Everyone will eat vanilla ice cream. If you go to a friend's place for tea, or around to your folks on the weekend (Oh how I wish!), or have a spur of the moment BBQ, you could serve up a bowl of vanilla ice cream and everyone would (probably) eat it. It's a safe choice, fairly neutral. Bland even. But if you took that bunch of people out to Movenpick, do you think there would be tubs of vanilla ice cream sitting around the table?

NO! My Mr would choose some sort of berry sorbet ~~waste of a good ice cream~~ flavour. My dad would get some sort of rich overbearing chocolate flavour. My brother would go for the most obnoxiously fake strawberry flavour he could find. Myself, I'd have the maple walnut. **

Sometimes vanilla is ok. It's good to appease the masses. But sometimes you gotta pick a flavour. It might ruffle some folks' feathers. It might make some peeps mock you. It might make others feel uncomfortable. It might make you feel uncomfortable and vulnerable.

But bugger that.

Pick a flavour. Rock that flavour. Own that flavour and let everyone know. It's what makes you great. Maybe you are like me and have a teeny tiny business that you want to grow into a big fat business. Maybe you are super proud of your gay sister-in-laws for being super brave and getting married when there are peeps around them who didn't want it to happen. Maybe you want everyone to know that you think we can do better with Indigenous issues and telling them to get over it isn't the answer. Maybe you just want it to be known that you don't like tuna sandwiches.

Pick a flavour! Chances are your flavour won't be everyone's cup of tea. But that's what makes it good. That's what makes you different! There is a whole crew of Maple Syrup lovers out there! They are my cup of tea! I like collecting those ones! But you gotta tell me you are a Maple Syrup lover first!! I bet if you try it, you could even find your own little posse of Cognac VSOP lovers. You know, if that's your flavour.

The best bit is, even if you don't like someone else's flavour, you can still like them! You can still treat them with respect and kindness. And if you can't, you should practice that.

So, what's your flavour?

**I'd tell you my mum's flavour but she doesn't eat ice cream. I know, right? How has she not been voted off the island yet! (Jokes, mum, it's a joke.)

Silence and Noise

2012-02-17T07:00:00.000+10:00

Parenting is noisy work. Small peeps make lots of noise. Even when they're sleeping.

The noise really does my head in.

A few weeks back I heard myself say, "Careful, Ruby!"

She was hanging out on the top of the step - there's 2, I believe sunken lounges were all the rage in the early nineties - and it's like her favourite spot in the whole wide world to test out new skills, live life on the edge, literally and figuratively.

I said, "Careful, Ruby!", to a nine month old, like I expected her to act on that.

I take the kids grocery shopping and I say, "Don't go too far, Flynn!" I don't actually mean it, he won't go far, the worst he is going to do is steal a grape or put a packet of Maggi Beef 2 minute noodles in the trolley.

We went to the Museum last week and he nearly turned himself inside out with determination to climb that barrier and get in with the dinosaur. I said, "Stop, come back, don't", but I didn't mean it. I knew he was too teeny to get up and over and all he was really doing was putting sticky little hand marks on the brilliant shiny glass, which lets face it, would be covered in sticky hand marks by the end of the day anyway.

We make just as much noise as the small people sometimes. I find I do it most when there is a crowd, an audience, other people witnessing our parenting. I guiltily apologise for his 'bad' behaviour, when really I'm feeling as guilty as sin that I am totally selling him out to make myself feel better. It makes me feel like I'm doing something constructive as I comment on his 'bad' behaviour. Really, I don't care about the thing he is doing, it's just that those around me seem to so I make the accompanying noise to show my agreement.

He found a piano at the wedding. Once upon a time I would have yanked him off it and dragged him away. This time I figured if they didn't want people to touch it then they wouldn't leave it out...

Little secret, I don't care if he runs up and down the aisles at the supermarket, I don't care that he steals a grape or two, I don't care that he likes to put his face up against glass windows and watch them frost up when he breathes on them, I don't care that he likes to hear how his voice echos in some spaces, I don't care that he likes to pick stuff up and see what it feels like or what it sounds like. So I'm choosing to stop the noise that goes with it. Imagine how good and nice and happy our day would be with me only saying what I really wanted to say and not what I think everyone around us wants me to say. And Ruby? Well I think I just stick to telling her she's a super star and wonderful and gorgeous because she's so sweet and happy and that I love her so much I want to squish her. I'm not sure that telling her to get away from the step is productive for anyone…

So yeah, I am losing the noise and choosing silence. Do you have noise? Do you make noise? Do you feel more comfortable when others make noise?

Pop your bubble!

2012-02-16T07:00:00.000+10:00

We took the small peeps to Melbourne Museum! It was fun!

Except this bit was kind of stressful. It was peak hour traffic and my iPhone didn't tell me we needed to turn and then we found Pip! And then we turned 2 corners and then we found the museum. Hoorah!

I loved the newness and the oldness of the museum and the Royal Exhibition building.

Girlfriend was really wanting to get down and crawl around and I was really really wanting her not to.

Everyone should know how many wombats tall they are.

"And then she made me ride a wombat."

And then she was pooped.

We were hungry. We went hunting for food. Hungry tummies, tired little people and a need for pram space meant we sat down at the first suitable spot we could find. I was a bit sad to go to Lygon Street and go to the only restaurant I could have gone to here in Cairns, Villa Romana! I'll let you in on a little secret. I do not like Villa Romana here and I do not like it there.

Cairns is so very small in comparision to Melbourne, to any major city or capital, and it is also so very remote when you think about it. Before us is Townsville and really, the next stop after us is Darwin. I have this fear that my kids will grow up and move away. But then I have an even bigger fear that they will grow up and won't move away. This trip reminded me that it's good to be a small fish in a big pond, it's good to be a bit uncomfortable, it's great to see new things and it's vital to never ever forget that your little piece of the world is just that - your little piece. I think that close-mindedness starts when you forget that, when you think everything in your bubble is how it is for everyone else.

Challenge yourself every now and then. Step out of what is comfortable and pop your bubble!

Dear Melbourne,

2012-02-15T07:00:00.000+10:00

I think that after 9 long years you are finally growing on me. I think the difference might be that we spent a week together with our small peeps and treated it like a holiday instead of being dragged around and told where to go and told when we'll see who.

It was marvellous.

Well, it was really bloody shitty the first day, but after that, it was marvellous. All that needs to be said about the first day can be said in bullet points…

late to take off
3.5 hours on the plane with an overtired baby, a sick, temperature riddled toddler, and a mother who was so short of patience she picked a fight with a stewardess. (Don't feel sorry for her, it was like she was in a competition to see who could be the most unhelpful and least friendly stewardess in the whole entire universe ever ever ever ever.)
A toddler who freaked out, FREAKED OUT PEOPLE, about the toilets on the plane. It was like being clawed by an aggravated koala bear when I tried to wrestle him out of his pants to pee!
30 minutes on the tarmac in Melbourne while they found steps for us to use so we could get off. Apparently our arrival surprised them.
a drive in peak hour traffic to where we stayed, the whole time Flynn wailed in the background about how sick he felt and could we please go home now.
After arriving, Flynn promptly failed to see the steps and sailed down to the gravel below, grazing his face and lip. Or bonked his scone if you ask him.

It was like the day that wouldn't end.

But we rallied. The next morning we packed up the small peeps, crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. They fell asleep so we ended up in the Dandenongs. I think, sometimes, the stuff you don't mean to do or plan to do ends up being the best.

Girlfriend's got style. Or not. Whatevs, she's super dooper, regardless!

Babywearing in the cold. It's so freakin snuggly! So used to being a sweaty, drippy mess...

Gosh. He's just great.

Wanted to look some more, but there was a 3 year old in tow. The website will have to do.

Hello, possum.

T'was good. REALLY good.

Like most mums, there are heaps of photos of the kids or kids + Mr, but only about 5 with me…. I have this fear I'll get hit by a truck and they won't have a photo of me. This is obviously not going to fix that but at least they'll know I was on this holiday with them!!

Sometimes it's good to not plan, to just go, because the thing is, already, I don't remember the screeching and tears from the back seat for the last 40 minutes of the trip home (via a detour through King Lake, cause they're so close, you know?), I just remember the toy shop, the tea shop, the awesome coffee and brilliant baguettes and the just being, just the four of us.

The Wedding.

2012-02-14T12:15:00.000+10:00

On Saturday, I had the privilege of attending the most amazing, beautiful and loving wedding I have ever been to.

It was the wedding of these two, the Aunties.

They were beautiful! And happy! And teary! And happy!

But also, a little bit sad. Because it doesn't actually matter how compatible they are (they are perfect, literally puzzle pieces that fit together seamlessly); or how happy they are (extraordinarily happy - like, EXTRA ordinary); or how loving they are, or how much respect there is between them, or the fantastic life they have built for themselves….

None of that matters.

Because Saturday was a special day for them, a special day for us, their family and friends, but beyond that, it was pretty much an expensive party. If something happens to the gorgeous one in white, the beautiful one in black has zero say over what happens next. If something happens to the stunning one in black, the amazing one in white has to hope that she gets heard over the family. Nothing changed for them, legally, on Saturday.

I could go on and on, but I won't, I'll just get pissy and then will spend the rest of the day being pissy and stomping around the place and be a big fat grump. Point is, it's wrong, it's bullshit, and there is nothing you can say that will change my mind.

They deserve to be legally married.

The one thing I wish I could have captured a photo of (this is the only photo I managed without one of my small peeps screeching, running or being generally small peep-ish OR without the two brides with twisted, gnarled faces because they spent the entire time trying not to cry), is how normal it was. It was a normal wedding, with normal guests, and a normal procession of events, and normal toasts, and normal happiness, and normal first dances (it was pretty spectacular!), and two normal people being so very happy that they got tell everyone that this is it, I choose her.

I love them, we all love them, we are all so so very proud to call them family, our family.

Oh, here, here is the 32 seconds that Ruby Jane was not trying to claw our eyes out to get down and run riot. I don't know where Flynn is here, probably climbing the pole behind me…

Actually, while I'm being proud, I'd also like it to be known that my spectacular Mr walked his sister down the aisle - happily, proudly, pretending like he wasn't emotional - because their father chose not to. My heart burst. Love him.

Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T05:00:00.000+10:00

Whatevs!

I don't care for V day, never have, I just don't get what all the fuss is about!

How about, this year, instead of giving someone a card/chocolates/bunch of flowers/elaborate meal/movies/yada yada yada, you do something nice for YOU. Go look at yourself in the mirror and don't tell yourself the things you don't like, tell yourself the things you DO like. Or go buy yourself a box of chocolates. Or forget about that load of washing that needs hanging out and make a cup of tea instead. Or go for a run. Or or or or. Choose that thing that you never ever do for you, and do it!

Sure, it's nice to give to other people, but it's also true that when you are happy and well, it makes giving so much easier and meaningful and fulfilling for all.

So, my gift to you is a free pass! Forget the fuss, pick you this Valentine's day!

mwah xo

Weddings and shindigs.

2012-02-08T06:00:00.000+10:00

In October we went down south for a wedding, my brother's wedding to the girl I have called my sister for years now.

HAHAHAHAHA!!!! I just read that back! I'm totally leaving it even though it makes us sound like inbred hicks who are marrying their siblings!! I just meant, there was no need for a wedding for her to be included in our family, we all already considered her part of it! HAHAHAHA!!

Now we are in Melbourne for another wedding, my Mr's sister. It's cost us an arm and a leg, we have been told what we will wear, where we will sit, where the photos will be taken. There will be bad buffet food (I've never had good buffet food, have you?), and there are family dramas and noses put out of joint. We've been told in detail about every single thing we could possibly need to know about how awesome the flowers/hair/guests/music/venue/photographers are. It will start too late and be too cold and our small peeps will be spectacularly out of control by the time they get the ball rolling.

It sounds like a wedding, doesn't it!?

Except it's not. It's a commitment ceremony. Because they're girls. And girls can't get married to each other. But Kim Kardashian can spend eleventy hundred million dollars on a fake, publicity seeking joke of a marriage and divorce 72 days later, and that's ok! Britney can get married in a drive thru (wasn't it? Celebrity details are not my strength) in jeans and drunk and get it annulled 2 days later. Straight peeps can get married for all sorts of whacked out reasons and if it doesn't work out they can just divorce, no biggy! But the gay peeps. Oh, Lordy. Don't you be letting them ruin the sanctity of marriage now, you hear me?! It doesn't matter that these 2 women have built a long and lasting relationship, have long term goals, have a house, things and dreams, that they support each other, are a family and want everyone to know that this is it, they pick each other to spend the rest of their life with. None of that matters cause you know, they're gay!

Ridiculous when you think about it, isn't it. They have a better relationship than some straight married couples that we know, but no one questions their right to marriage.

And just so we're clear, there is not a single thing you can say to convince me that they shouldn't be allowed to get married, so if you don't agree, let's just agree to disagree and still be friends, ok?

But you should know I'll still think you are wrong! LOLZ

Fabric, yo!

2012-02-07T06:00:00.000+10:00

I don't have a design-y bone in my body. I don't know any of the 'rules' or what should and shouldn't go together. I just know what I like to look at. Or maybe sometimes I just know what I don't like to look at. Add this to I don't like same sameness. So I got busy with Photoshop because I'm too poor to buy Illustrator and besides, I wouldn't know how to use it and even if I did know how to use it, chances are I wouldn't do anything great with it anyway.

These are being printed right now! Well maybe not right now, but nowish. They're not super dooper great but I have learnt that waiting for super dooper great is really just code for procrastination. If I waited for perfect, it'd never arrive. I've also learnt that I learn best from making mistakes. I know that cutting and sewing and making with these will teach me what is working and what is not.

I was never this brave before Ruby. Before Ruby I would never even thought of trying to create these, let alone actually doing it and getting them printed up. She is ultra fantastic and she doesn't even know it.

We're leavin' on a jet plane.

2012-02-06T06:00:00.000+10:00

We go to Melbourne tomorrow. I'd like to put !!! and be all excited but I'm not. It's going to be a long, tiring, stupidly expensive, stressful week. Like, I could fly to London, First Class, for how much it's costing us. I could bore you with all the reasons why I'm not looking forward to it, but you know what they say, don't put anything on the interwebs that you wouldn't want peeps to read, more specifically peeps you know to read.

Do you know, it's a 3.5 hour flight from here? And Flynn can sit still for exactly 26 seconds? Do you know how many seconds of hell there are in 3.5 hours? Well, lets add, say, 15 minutes either side to that 3.5 hours, cause, you know, that's how long it takes 2 adults to lug a baby and a toddler and all the accompanying shit on and off a plane, jam into teeny tiny spaces, step on toes, try not to swear at each other or the small peeps, all while avoiding those looks of, "I'm going to go postal if that f^cking family sits near me."

So now we have 4 hours. 4 hours multiplied by 60 minutes is 240 minutes. 240 minutes multiplied by 60 seconds is 14, 400 seconds. So, subtract those 26 seconds that Flynn can sit still for and you have 14, 374 seconds of hell. Basically, he's going to sit still long enough for us to do his seat belt up and then he is going fucking bananas all over that shit.

And Ruby, well Ruby's latest trick is to feign hunger, demand I get my boobs out and then show no interest in feeding at all. She just likes me to sit there with my norks out for all the world to see. Which, as anyone who knows me could attest to, I really enjoy. No, wait, that's right, I don't enjoy sitting half naked in public while my smallest peep decides whether she is hungry or not.

Our plane leaves at 11.45 am. So all of that takes us to about 11.47 am.

Can you see why I'm tired already?

The rain, a ramble, some photos.

2012-02-04T07:00:00.000+10:00

I'm not quite sure what the point of this post is. Mostly that last year it rained and rained and rained and this year it just hasn't.

Last week marked a year since Cyclone Yasi. We were lucky, like, stupidly super dooper lucky.

The Tuesday and Wednesday leading up to it crossing the coast was the most awful, stressful, sickening, sad, crazy two days. I was 28 weeks pregnant with Ruby and teaching full time. We had a staff debriefing on the Tuesday morning detailing just what was to come. The expected 12 hours of full force winds, not just the 1 or 2 while the cyclone passes; the expectation of houses to be lost; that power would most certainly be down; that the airport was closing in a matter of hours and no one was to leave to try and make a flight; that lines for fuel were already an hour or more long. I remember being so incredibly angry that we were asked to stay and look after our classes so their parents could have time to prepare but that I wasn't allowed to go and get my boy so I could have him near. I was happy to stay, I just wanted him with me while I did. I remember crying leaving school, saying goodbye to people and promising the message or call as soon as it was possible. I remember crying when one of my favourite office ladies said good bye and told me to drive safely home. I remember crying when Flynn's carer, who was new to the region, said she was terrified and that one of the other parents told her they'd flown 10, 000 body bags into the airport before it closed. They evacuated and closed the hospital. What if something happened to my boy, my husband, me? Where were we supposed to go?

That afternoon I got home to see our neighbour, our stoic, lived here her whole life, nothing could ever ruffle her feathers neighbour, flustered, stressed and packing her car with her two daughter-in-laws and grandkids and leaving. I told my Mr how scared I was, he tried to tell me it would be ok but he couldn't. He was trying too hard not to cry.

We woke up on Wednesday to see the Mr of our neighbours, a Vietnam Veteran, a man who really could not be ruffled, looking anxious and worried and telling us he thought we should all leave. It was too late by then, there was no fuel, and we risked being caught in the middle of the cyclone. He stayed. Our neighbour from across the court, an ex SAS soldier, came to see us and I cried again.

"Please tell me you are not leaving?!"

He was staying, he just wanted to make sure we didn't need anything. I asked where in their house they were planning on being so we could find them if we had to, so we could check on them the next morning.

I washed everything I could find.

We cleared out our (big!) walk in robe and put our king mattress in to sleep on and the double mattress in to pull over us if we needed to.

The Mr bolted plywood to the inside of the windows in there in case the glass went.

We put a suit case of clothes for all of us in the car in case we needed it.

I collected insurance papers, wedding and birth certificates.

I put a blanket in the toilet so we had something to cover Flynn if we needed to.

We talked about what would happen if the morning came and we had no roof, no house, no things.

Through it all we checked the tracking map every hour and swung between relief that it was moving south but sad for those who it would bare down on, and horror because it had swung north again. We fielded calls from well meaning friends and relatives who couldn't understand they were making our day harder, stopping us from finishing the preparations we needed to get done. We played with Flynn and pretended that it was just another lazy day at home.

The winds picked up, the predictions of doom got worse, we turned the TV off and the radio to a comforting static white noise. We moved to the walk in robe and waited. And waited. And waited. The Mr and Flynn went to sleep, I lay there listening to the winds roar down the hill behind us and buffet the house, the heliconias outside our window bashing against the screens. I lay in the dark with my boys beside me and watched the radar loop on my phone. Just before midnight I realised we were not going to be hit with the worst of it. By about 3am I realised we were probably going to be ok. By 5am the winds had eased, Flynn was awake and we waited for the sun. The only thing we'd lost was power and a few plants, palm fronds and a stack of leaves. By 7am, the Mr had the generator running and we had the TV on watching the images of rescue workers picking their way into communities just an hour or 2 south of us.

So so lucky, you know? It took 3 days for power to be restored and about 2 months for the last of the green waste to be collected. People talked about what an over reaction it had all been. But it wasn't. It was just dumb, stupid luck.

I still feel sick when I see images of the radar loop in the days leading up to it or when I see the green fleecy blanket I'd put in the toilet for Flynn.

Imagine what it must be like to be someone who endured the worst?!

Like I said, not sure what the point of this post is, just that on Friday it rained, real rain, play in the gutters rain, for the first time this wet season.

He was trying to convince me that he didn't need to come in for a bath, that playing in the gutters was a bath.

Buddy Jim in the rain, in the court, 1 year apart. Love him.

Roar. Sometimes you gotta.

2012-02-03T07:30:00.000+10:00

Before I was a mum, if you did or said something I didn't like or wasn't comfortable with, chances were I'd just bite my tongue and let you. Then I had Flynn and if you did or said something I didn't like I'd just remove you from my space. Maybe I wouldn't see you for coffee or answer your phone call. You know, denial.

But now Flynn is bigger and there are more people in his life than just us. I can't do that anymore, the ignoring thing. I had to speak up on his behalf on Wednesday and it was uncomfortable. Uncomfortable, but good. I spoke up in a situation I would have let slide if it affected just me, but it affected him so roar I did. Not a big growly one, just a quiet but firm I'm-the-Mumma kind of roar. I waited for the sky to cave in or a bolt of lightning to strike me down or the receiver's smile to slip just a little, but nothing. It was a teeny little blip of nothingness that took about 23 seconds out of the day but it left me feeling good and full of knowing and like I grew a little bit more. I know him and I know when to step up and when to step back and I love him for making me brave. I think that's what They mean when They say trust your instinct. The knowing when to step up, when to step back and and having the courage to do it.

---

In other news (but no more interesting) I got suckered into the #febphotoaday.

Your view

Words (I love these.)

And I'm going to join in this one, just for me:

via

I love my Nikon but it only really gets a work out to take pictures of the kids and stuff for the shops. It's kind of like getting a kelpie and keeping it as a house dog instead of out rounding up sheep. Oh wait, I have one of those too. I don't think I'll do one a day but I'd like to think I could take one representing each of these before the month is up. We'll see! If you join in either of these, let me know, I wanna see!!

Some more 3

2012-02-02T07:00:00.000+10:00

Totally borrowed this from pinterest. I'd link to the actual blog but it appears to be not working at the moment…

Don't know if she was the first to do it, but it's a super cute way of documenting what's going on in their life at the time. And chop chip biccies isn't a typo, it's what he calls them.

#janphotoaday

2012-02-01T07:00:00.000+10:00

This was fun! There is a February one too. I have photo a day fatigue. I think maybe I'll just use my actual camera on this one, just for me, to force me to use it. I love my actual camera but it gets neglected. It's big and bulky and heavy and my small peeps like to press buttons on it. Or you try and take a photo of Flynn on it and he won't stand still because he's trying to see himself on the screen already. Narcissistic much?

Anyway, here is the end of #janphotoaday. I know you'll sleep better now.

Someone(s) you love

reflection

your shoes

something old

guilty pleasure (contraband toys, yo)

something you made

colour

lunch

light

in your fridge

nature

you again

I say I won't join in, but I probably will, I hate being left out. I'm sure that says something about my personality.

Life. Live it.

2012-01-31T07:00:00.000+10:00

At my brother's wedding in October I saw old family friends, they were our neighbours actually. They were really great neighbours. The kind you say hello to while checking the mail at 3 in the afternoon and 6 hours later after many drinks and bad delivered pizza, you finally say good night to. They are hard workers, run their own business, work hard, haven't had holidays in 15 years, too busy working, you see.

He didn't look well. The week after his wedding we found out he had cancer.

Yesterday we found out that the treatment he had been having hasn't worked. It is to the point that he has refused all treatment now and has told he has anywhere from 1 - 3 years of his life left.

I can't think about it too much. It makes it hard to breath. He has kids and grand babies. He's not even 60. He's been working so he can enjoy his retirement. He won't have that now.

I don't care about Stuff, I don't want a new car, I really wish our house was in a different location - too close to the highway, I'll never feel ok with letting the kids go out and play and just be kids - but I don't want a big fancy McMansion. I don't want a life full of things. I just want a life full of Plenty. Plenty of time, laughs, love, memories.

I still feel tied to teaching. I feel like it is foolish to let go of a career, a well paying career. I still feel tied to the money that comes with teaching. It's safe, secure. And dull. If I go back to teaching, I know what my life will look like in 10 years, 20 years, 40 years time. It's a good life. A life of security. But it's not what I want. I want to fill my life with what I want, not what I should.

My heart is breaking for his family, my stomach is churning with sharing their sadness and grief. It has made me so much braver to say no to the things I don't want and yes to the things I do.

And now he's three.

2012-01-30T07:30:00.000+10:00

So much to say about his birthday, but instead, I'll save it for another time and keep it short and sweet. Like him.

His presents were a play house (that Mr built to my specs, we make a fine team); a kitchen set (which we unpacked, Ruby caught wind of, and was promptly packed back in it's box and put away indefinitely - Girlfriend is a swiper and a gnawer); and 2 books. He thought it was the bomb.

His party was a few friends, a barbecue in the crazy, hot, humid afternoon and a dodgy cake that he picked all the lollies off while we sang happy birthday.

It was perfect. There was no fuss, there was no elaborate setting up, no fancy invitations, just the stuff he'll remember: a play house, playing in the sprinkler and a train cake.

From super friends who are more like family.

It makes noise. He loves it.

Memories. Go make some today!

I'm going to put that on a shirt one day...

A birthday boy.

2012-01-27T07:00:00.000+10:00

The big Small Peep turns three tomorrow.

THREE.

I swear, I look at him sometimes and get a shock, like, how did that happen? How did I get to be a mum? A mother. I am a Mother. And then I freak out for a second at the responsibility that goes with that and then I remember I've been doing it a while now. 2 years and 364 days, actually.

I'd love to put a beautiful photo of him here.

This will have to do. He just doesn't sit still. Ever. He is a literal blur in nearly every photo I've taken of him in the last month or so. So actually, this photo suits him perfectly.

I love you, Flynn. Always and forever. Happy birthday you brilliant little person.

Happy Australia Day

2012-01-26T07:00:00.000+10:00

I guess.

I've spent the last 10 years working in or with Indigenous communities. It makes it hard to be all merry and proud of our 'National' day. I've spent 10 years making breakfast and lunches for kids because for so SO many different reasons, they just don't have any. I've dug through lost property bins looking for a pair of shorts or some socks or a shirt that doesn't have holes in it that will fit the small person standing beside me. I've been terrified of the biggest 11 year old boy you've ever seen, only to realise that all he wanted was some kind words, a gentle hug and for someone to teach him how to write his name - and to one day be a stockman. I've carried sick babes home to their mum. I've driven others home who missed the bus. I've stood in line at the shop, surrounded by bodies that are a different colour to mine and with mouths that speak a different language and wondered if they were saying things about me. And then heard the huge guffaws and not felt reassured at all. I've bitched and whinged about a house too old, too small, too big, too hot, too unsecure, too dusty, too dirty, only to look out the window and realise my time in these conditions was temporary and I could leave at any time. I've sat at the hospital and bitched and whinged about my time being wasted and about how frustrating it is to show up and sit and wait to be seen, only to realise it's because I know health care shouldn't be an all day event where you may or may not get answers and that ringing, making an appointment and then seeing a doctor would be considered a bizarre luxury. I've been called a Nigger (I cried - he meant it as a complement), I've been called a fucking white c^nt (I cried - I was just trying to help), and I've cried about more kids than I could even name now. I've walked home at night in utter darkness through the streets of an indigenous community and the only thing I was worried about was the crocodile in the creek coming up the banks and eating me. (For the record, there was never one and it would have had to walk - stealthily - for about 300m to get me… I may have been drunk at the time…)

I've been in the majority - stock standard, boring, even, white middle class - my whole life, except for the brief time (2 years) where I was very much in the minority. That whole time I knew it was only temporary. I got by knowing that my time in that life was limited and had an end point. Even now, I can come home to my space and forget that there are people who do not have this life, a life of plenty.

Can you imagine waking up in the minority every single day of your life and seeing no real improvements or no real way forward?

Australia day used to be my favourite holiday of the year, the day where everyone celebrated what made living here so great. Now I spend the day cringing, holding my breath, just waiting for it to be over, wishing I didn't know what I know and hadn't seen what I've seen.

Happiness is...

2012-01-25T07:00:00.000+10:00

We love Pamela Allen. Well, her books. I'm sure we'd love her too if we got to meet her. The first book Flynn would sit down and listen to was Mr McGee and the Perfect Nest. He had barely 6 words but he'd 'read' the sounds with us and predict what was coming next and would turn to his favourite page and make you read it over and over again. He was the same with Where is the Green Sheep (Mem Fox), too. He used to turn the pages to, "Here is the near sheep and here is the far sheep", and kiss the near sheep on the nose. Cutie Patootie!

Have you read Where is the Gold? We bought it for Ruby for Christmas and it is, um, well, it's incredible! There are kids books take a big issue and dilute it down for Small Peep consumption, to plant the seed for conversations and understanding. This is one of those. It's a story - a really simple story - about 3 pirates who go looking for gold. The gold they find isn't quite the gold they set out looking for. Simply put, (by her!), Happiness isn't about getting what you want, but wanting what you have. I love that. Love it. When I'm feeling a bit glum and cranky pants, I dig it out and read it to whichever small peep is closest.

Do you have a favourite author in your house?

Happy Wednesday!!

(Mon)Days like these.

2012-01-24T07:00:00.000+10:00

I am bone achingly exhausted, in a good way. I have been a domestic machine in the last 24 hours. In the beginning of our family of four, I was really aware and conscious of being present* and turned the TV off, put the phone away, left the computer alone. Then as time went by, it became easier to sneak in the odd job here or there and a few, "Hang on, nearly there!", or "I'm coming, just a sec!", or "Yep, in a minute!", until it got to the point I'd tell Flynn his lunch was ready and he'd repeat one or all of those back at me.

Most days I wake up with the intention of being present. Most of those days, I fail. Sometimes though, sometimes I nail it. In the past 24 hours I have achieved more than I usually get done in a week AND we've all had fun doing it and the only time I said, "Yep, in a minute", was when I had to wash up the bowl from making bread so we could make choc chip biccies.

I'm not sure how sustainable those days are though…. Sometimes the day is just a shit fight from start to finish and no amount of being present is going to help. Actually, on days like that, the less present you are, the more bearable the day… Seriously. Go to your happy place.

Anyways, in the 2 seconds that Ruby and I had to ourselves while Flynn was resting, we had a picnic. I have no reason to show you these other than it's my blog and I'll spam if I want to. You would spam too if this cute exploded on you.**

*Let's just get it out there, lay it on the table, 'being present' is so naff and touchy feely and latest catch phrase/key word, but I really get what it means these days, you know? After being not present - absent - I get what it means and it feels really bloody good, so I'm going to keep using it, just know I feel like a tosser when I do. As you were.

** I am not completely demented. I know that I think my kid is outrageously awesome because I have to. It's sheer genetics. I acknowledge that you may not have the same opinion. I think you are crazy loco, but nonetheless acknowledge the notion.

ps - Are you watching the tennis? Good, isn't it!

Small hurts, big hurts and stingy hurts.

2012-01-23T07:00:00.000+10:00

There is some not so pretty stuff going on in our extended family. We are removed from it but there is sickness and sadness and anger and fear. It makes me want to put up a big fat wall around my kids, around us, around our family, just to keep it all out.

And then, like a gigantic, stingy punch in the face I realised I can't do that. Well, I can try, but I'll fail.

And now I feel like I've been punched in the stomach and am all heart hurty that things are going to happen to my kids that will hurt them. It's almost like I've only just realised it - like I thought I could be the perfect parent and raise a non tantrum throwing child.

And the hurt can start small. Like being told by your swimming teacher that you don't get a sticker after your lesson this week because you ~~behaved like a fucking octopus jacked up on speed~~ didn't listen very well and that is unsafe. And you've always gotten a sticker after swimming. I could see the confusion and hurt in his little face and it stung a bit, but inside I wanted to high five his teacher across the other side of the pool because that was EXACTLY what he needed to hear. That hurt, the little hurt, stung a bit but mostly left me feeling good. I felt good that he learnt something about the stingy hurt. I worry about the big hurts though, the ones that don't feel good for any of us.

There are some big hurts hanging over our heads right now, they won't really have anything to do with us but we are going to have to deal with the fall out. I'm kinda hunkered down and steadying us all, bracing for when they fall.

Geez

2012-01-19T07:00:00.001+10:00

Ruby Jane has her first swimming lesson today, my swimmers are eleventy hundred years old and see through and I can't find the bottoms.

Happy Friday.

#janphotoaday

in your bag

something you're reading

happiness

morning

water

something you bought

sweet (A mumma time out!)

If you are playing along, let me know so I can find your #janphotoaday pics too!

Girls. Boys. Roles.

2012-01-19T07:00:00.000+10:00

So Flynn was born and I was all, Oh, a boy!, and my extent of concerns for him revolved around cars, drinking, peer pressure, stupid choices. In about 16 years time.

Easy. I'd work it out when it got here.

Then I had Ruby. I can't even begin to list the things that worry me about raising a girl, a daughter.

Really, I can't. There are too many. I feel overwhelmed by it actually.

One day not long after Ruby was born, I brought home a toy stroller for Flynn for his baby. The Mr had never bat an eyelid at Flynn having a baby or a doll, had even helped Flynn dress his baby, wrap his baby, cuddle his baby, make a bed for his baby, but apparently the stroller was too much. Mr just couldn't get with the program. "Boys don't play with strollers!"

I cried.

I couldn't care less about whether Flynn could or should have a stroller to play with or what the Mr thought of it. I cried for what he was saying to Ruby. She was only weeks old and will never know, but I was angry, sad, disappointed. Let down. He didn't have a problem with there being a toy stroller in the house, just that it was Flynn's. If I had brought it home and announced it was Ruby's, there wouldn't have been a word said about it.

She was weeks old and already she was being told there was one set of rules for her and another for her brother based purely on their gender.

Maybe I'm overreacting. No, maybe you might think I'm overreacting. That's ok. I don't mind. I take it back. I don't think I overreacted at all.

I'm thankful that it happened because it lead to some really great conversation between us. I'm still surprised it came from him though.

Am I alone? Do you feel like this too? Do you worry about your daughters and what is waiting for them? I feel like it's a longer, more treacherous path for them.

Unicorns

2012-01-18T07:00:00.000+10:00

Unicorns. Just to balance out yesterday.

via

Remember

2012-01-17T07:00:00.000+10:00

I found a stack of photos I had printed for Flynn from when he was little. Er. Littler. He was about 8 months through to nearly 2. I couldn't get over how much he looked like Ruby, or how much she looked like him. So I went hunting through old discs and files and folders looking for more. Instead, I found photos of when he was first born. I'm not sure I've ever looked at them. Or if I did, I don't remember. There are more than a few photos with him looking very very blue and limp and with an oxygen mask over his face. I don't remember that. At all. I don't remember that his hair wasn't brown, it was nearly gingery red. I don't remember that he slept with his hands up around his face. There are about 10 photos of me and him up until his first birthday. And of those few, I look so sick and unwell. I was sick and unwell, but I really look it. How did no one know? Or if they did, why did no one say anything? I still struggle with accepting I had PND. It never felt like that is what was wrong. Post Traumatic Stress was kicked around too, and when people said that, and described the symptoms that went with that, I wanted to shake them senseless and scream, "YES!!!", because it felt right. When people tried to talk PND at me I wanted to slap them stupid. A doctor once said to me it probably started with PTSD and became PND and in the end it's all the same.

Whatever. Call it whatever you want. Point is, I don't remember his birth, I don't remember anything of the first 4 or 5 months other than it was really fucking hard, he didn't sleep, I didn't sleep and I hated my husband and I don't remember a whole lot of his first year. I don't look at photos of when he was a baby and gush and smile and have happy thoughts. I remember the nightmares and the being too afraid to sleep.

So I talk good here. I talk nice on twitter. I share pretty things and sales and other makers I like on facebook. I spend my days trying to be the person, the mother, the woman I wish I could have been for him from the start. The one that Ruby got from the start. I don't feel guilty anymore that I wasn't, that I haven't been. I don't feel guilt at all. I just try and love on him in happy clouds.

I love him just as much as I love Ruby. Of course I do. Sometimes loving him hurts a little though. He'll never remember how absent I was. I will though. That's the bit that hurts.

Jealous

2012-01-16T07:00:00.000+10:00

Is there a nice word that can be used to describe these emotions? Because sometimes I feel them but not in a stabby, nasty way, in a, gee that would be nice way. Is one nicer than the other? I'd like to know how to label this emotion. Jealous and envy kind of imply a nasty undertone. Sometimes I am jealous of people who have family around them but only because I'd like mine around us, not because I don't want them to have theirs. Or sometimes I get jealous of people who don't have kids. But it's not the being kid free I'm jealous of, it's the time they have and the freedom of choice they have. Or I get jealous of people who don't have a day job they're stuck to. (I still really feel stuck to teaching, no matter how hard I pull away).

But, as John (Butler, yo) said, the grass is greener on the other side but it's just as hard to mow, I wouldn't actually trade what I have to have what they have. With me?

So what do I say to that, do you think? "Hi, I'm jealous of you, but not in a stabby way?"

Or is jealous just jealous, full stop?

Lemons and Lemonade

2012-01-13T07:00:00.000+10:00

Yesterday I whinged. So I did that thing about lemons and lemonade.

Stuck at home thanks to painful sleeping habits, we took the little bit of time we DO have when everyone is awake and had a tea party. With pancakes that were more like crepes and cold tea for me and water for Flynn.

I love how painfully staged this is!

He can not keep his head out of the way of the camera.

Sharing with Ruby.

Girlfriend's a fan.

Like...

a lot.

When he doesn't want a photo, he doesn't want a photo, ok?

Happy Friday to you!

#janphotoaday

Makes you smile

Favourite

Your Sky

Daily Routine

Childhood

Where you sleep

Close Up

It's just a phase. Right?

2012-01-12T07:00:00.000+10:00

I love these two, they are fabulous. But I'm going a little loopy crazy right now. I am feeling astoundingly housebound. One of them is sleeping ALL day long. Ruby goes to sleep, then Flynn goes to sleep, then Ruby wakes up and then Ruby goes to sleep and then Flynn wakes up and then Ruby wakes up and then it's 5pm and I'm ready to move out, leave home, run away. The few times I've braved it and ignored that one of them needs sleep and just gone out anyway, it's ended disastrously. And in tears. So for now, it's easier and calmer and more pleasant to just stay home. I know it's just a phase and it will pass as soon as it arrived, but just quietly I am so not looking forward to today. Bring on 5pm!

happy Wednesday

2012-01-11T07:00:00.000+10:00

I have a nice, clean, organised office, I've reopened my Etsy and MadeIt shops and the Mr is back at work too. I celebrated by finally cutting into this gorgeous Pocket Carnival fabric and making cutie patootie shorts. I made them too big for Ruby and too small for Flynn, otherwise they'd never get listed, they'd get absorbed into our wardrobes. And by wardrobes I mean that communal pile of clothes that is an ever changing heap on the spare bed.

Happy Wednesday.

Trust

2012-01-10T07:00:00.000+10:00

She's worked out how to stand. She tries to find things she can pull herself up on and cruise along. The cot is her favourite. It's easy and the perfect height and has lots of bars for grabbing and pulling.

I love that, unlike her brother who used to wake up, open his eyes and scream bloody murder for someone to come and get him, she can be awake and happily talking to her hands or the fan or the window before she starts singing for you.

Walking into this makes your heart melt a little.

She has been getting so independent so quickly - she feeds herself and gets herself to where she wants to go and she's not afraid to rough up her big brother if she sees fit - that this walking caper has reminded me of just how much she trusts me and needs me, needs us. She sees me coming, sees me move to pick her up and my hands are barely on her warm little body before she's letting go of the side, so certain that I will be there to catch her that she doesn't even dream that she could possibly fall.

I hope I can be that parent for my children for the rest of their lives. Not just when they are learning to walk, swim, ride a bike, kick a ball, but always and forever in everything. I hope I can always remember that blind, pure faith they have in me and live up to that, to catch them every time. They will fail at things, they will be hurt, they will be let down, they might not agree with all of our decisions as their parents and they might even hate us every now and then, and that's ok. I just so hope that they know no matter how far or hard they fall, they'll never hit the bottom without me cushioning their landing.

This picture has nothing to do with anything, it just sums up their relationship perfectly; he does pretty much whatever he wants to her and she obligingly accepts.

Run.

2012-01-09T07:00:00.000+10:00

For months now, I've been thinking about running again. I used to run forever ago, badly, and only for the purpose of trying to look good. Before, the goal for running was always the same; to lose weight. Which is kinda funny, cause I never did. I weighed the same for about 10 years regardless. And every time I would start it again I'd plan on losing 2 kilos, 5 kilos, whatever. It never worked, I never did and I hated running or any form of exercise and it was always a chore. What's even funnier is looking back now, man I wish I'd been able to appreciate what I had when I had it. Oh to have that body again!

We went to the beach on Saturday for a walk and fish and chips, (all of which was great), and there were so many people running. Skinny people, not skinny people, old people, young people, other mums, men, all running. I was jealous of them. I wanted to ditch the Mr and small people and chase after them. But Saturday night when we came home, I dug out my shoes and running stuff and threw them in a pile. At least now all of the things I needed were in 1 place so if the chance arose that I could escape the house, I didn't have to waste what little free time I had looking for the things I needed. To be honest, I think I thought those things would just sit in a pile by the door for a month or more before I begrudgingly put them on and, under extreme duress, potted off to say, "Oh well, at least I tried".

But yesterday, Flynn was hungry and screaming, almost literally, for his tea, Ruby was hysterical and tired, the Mr was grumpy because he was trying to organise himself for his first day back at work, and I bailed on the lot of them. Threw on my clothes, tugged on some socks and in my rush to get out the door before anyone could stop me, I already had a stitch. I'd like to say I am kidding, but I'm not. So close to bailing on the whole thing, I put my first shoe on, then the second, only to feel something down the end (I assumed it was the socks I'd shoved in the day we were preparing to lose our house to Yasi - at least my feet would have been cosy!), but wait!! Not socks! Two $100 notes!

$200!!!

The gods were telling me to put on those damn shoes and GO. So I did. I ran. Not even a kilometer, just the little block around our house, but I ran by the highway, in daylight, where people could see me and I did not care. I chanted, "I am a rock star", in my head because I felt like one. I was a huffy puffy, red faced wanna be runner who was only gone from home maybe 8 minutes in total.

But I did it. I left the house. I got out the door. I ran and did not stop. And I did it for me. Not because I want to lose weight/be skinny/look good, but because I want to be fit. F.I.T.

Today, it's going to be so much easier to get out the door because I've already proven to myself that I can.

I. Can. Do. It.

via

#janphotoaday

2012-01-06T07:00:00.000+10:00

Are you doing this? It's from the gorgeous Chantelle over at Fat Mum Slim. Read more about it here. It's super fun and I'm not sure if she meant for it to be so crazy big, but last time I checked, there were over 26000 photos on Instagram alone with people playing along. And it's only the 5th day!

1. You

2. Breakfast

3. Something you adore

4. Letter box

5. Something you wore

I have met some really interesting peeps already just from joining in! You should too! (Thanks so much to those of you who have stopped by to say hi after finding me on Instagram, I really appreciate it! xo)

BFF

2012-01-05T07:00:00.000+10:00

I got these the other day, Christmas presents from my best friend. She always gives the best presents & I'm pleased to report she hasn't lost her touch.

The cutters are Ninjabread men. H.I.Larious.

I have known my bestie since we were 14. We lived in the same street, 5 house apart, but almost right across the cul-de-sac. We live very different lives now, but I still call her my BFF. She is wonderful and strong and independent and successful and brave. We gave Ruby the same middle name as her because when I am teaching Ruby how to be all of those things I want her to know that there is someone out there that knew me when I was learning how to be all of those things. And she can never forget that when her middle name is Jane, too, when she gets told where it comes from, when she asks about why we chose her name. It's just a name, but it means billions to me. I say that name everyday, so I think of her everyday and I hope that one day, Ruby finds a friend just like her. Someone who writes on a Christmas card how old we'll be this year.

We don't know the tiny little details of each others lives anymore (but I do know she'll choose coke over tea or coffee any day, some things never change), I saw her in October for the first time in 3 years, almost to the day, and I still miss her as much as when I first moved away. Yeah, she sends killer presents, but the thing I love most about them is that every time I open one I am always left feeling like she still knows me.

I'd tell you her name but then I'd have to kill you. She's also an international woman of mystery.

You can't go home again.

2012-01-04T07:00:00.000+10:00

It's been nearly 10 years since I left my home and town and in the beginning I would be there so much anyway, it didn't feel any different. At first, I didn't move far, just an hour or two away. Then I moved what felt like a world away to very tip of Cape York. I still went home on holidays and for weeks at a time and it still didn't feel like I'd left, I still felt like I belonged. Then the Mr and I went around Australia and it was a long time between visits, over a year. I went back and I started to realise I'd been gone a while now and that just like I was building a life away from the people who'd known me forever, so were they. The last time I visited I was pregnant with Flynn and even though we'd bought a house, gotten married and were about to have a baby, I still felt like the kid who didn't live there anymore but still belonged.

We went back home in October, almost 3 years to the day since I last visited. This time I came with not one, but two babies, a husband, 5 extra kilos, maybe 10 if I'm honest, a few lines and wrinkles and more me than I've ever been. I didn't belong anymore. I don't belong anymore. Just like I have grown and changed, the city I grew up in, the people I grew up with, have all grown and changed too. I didn't know my way around anymore, couldn't remember street names and didn't recognise places.

It hasn't been my home for almost 10 years, my parents haven't lived there in almost that long either, but my brother and his family still does and it is attached to my identity, to who I was and influenced how I grew up and it was like a bitey cold slap of realisation - and that slap hurt.

I accepted years ago that Mr -and the small peeps that followed - is and are my family now, the people I am with every day and who shape me into the person I am, but I have finally accepted this is my home now. You can't go home again when you are already there.

The one where I put my degree to good use.

2012-01-03T07:00:00.000+10:00

In my career as I teacher I was crazy super organised and a list maker extraordinaire. I had lists to keep track of my lists and folders dedicated to guarding them. I don't know how much they actually achieved in helping me get stuff done and I suspect that maybe the act of writing a list was sometimes mistaken for doing when really it was procrastinating and just fooled me into thinking I was in control. One of the hardest lessons I learnt from motherhood was that I had to let go of control on just about everything. The more I let go, the easier things got. I think I've let go of some stuff too well though. The spare bed has become our communal wardrobe, (which frustrates my Mr most because it's not too comfy sleeping on a pile of clothes when you bail on the Baby Who Won't Sleep and your Very Tired Wife in the middle of the night because you are ~~a princess and need your beauty sleep~~ tired); the couch usually only has 2 spots free for sitting, the rest is where clean clothes go before they get moved to the spare bed; every single day at about 3pm I freak out and remember I have to cook dinner and still haven't done any grocery shopping; I look at the calendar and realise I don't remember the sound of my mother's voice because I haven't spoken to her in so long; and the floors and bathroom only seem to get cleaned when I screech like a crazy lady at the Mr about how filthy the house is and it's all his fault.

So I sat down and made a list today. The most basic list you ever did see. And I even wrote days those things would happen because I was think about how I used to have reminders written in my planning for the most basic things because it worked. I was a good teacher and I enjoyed my job because I was organised and no matter how freaking flustered I was, I could keep on keeping on because my trusty lists and planning would remind me to take the roll, to send the kids out for morning tea, to change readers. Simple things that every teacher does and that you learn on your first day at University, but the visual kept me on track.

I think my house is begging me to write a god damn list and to do the basics like clean it's floors and use it's cupboards.

So I'm going to go and wash stuff and see what happens.

How's that for putting a 4 year University degree to good use! How to Make Lists of Housework. Mum, Dad, be proud.

Yesterday

2012-01-02T07:00:00.000+10:00

Yesterday was the first day of 2012 and I gotta say, it wasn't great. I'd had about zero sleep the night before - fireworks, hungry baby, baby intent on playing (from 2am until 5am, completely necessary I'm sure) - and I was still a bit grumpy that 2011 was over. Everything bugged me and I was restless and unmotivated to do anything. In 2011, everything was easy and wonderful and already, 2012 was being a bitch.

So before the day was over, we got out, determined to get something good out of the day. Not far, just around the teeny tiny block.

And then we got home and I realised that 2011 totally had crap bits but the difference is I don't remember those, I only remember the good, I only want to remember the good. It will always be the year that was incredible, but it doesn't have to be the only year that was incredible. 2012, I will make you incredible, too.

Hello, 2012

2012-01-01T07:00:00.000+10:00

I really loved 2011, like REALLY loved it, so you have big shoes to fill. Huge ones in fact. Everything that goes up, must come down and I worry that it is not the natural order of things for such a spectacular year to be followed up with another spectacular year. I'll settle for just a good one, though, so you know, no pressure or anything.

I don't think I have resolutions so much, as things I'd like to do this year. Some of them are new, others are not, yet others have been brewing for a while.

Print my own fabric.
Work out how one prints their own fabric.
Find the bucks somewhere so that Illustrator appears on my iBoyfriend.
STOP being so obsessed with my iBoyfriend's younger brother, iToyboy. If I am not at my computer to check emails, then they don't need checking because you KNOW that even though you read them you are not going to use that painful bloody touch screen to reply to them and then important things get lost. Like invites to parties and wholesale orders and custom requests.
Say no to custom requests.
Say yes to wholesale orders.
Stop trying to get an insane amount of stuff done in 1 day.
Be more productive. Do less, do it better.
When the small peeps want to play, play!
Build more, paint more, cook more, bake more.
Take a TAFE course in pattern drafting or photoshop or illustrating or graphic something.
Work out if I really want to go back to uni.
Stop daydreaming about not being a teacher anymore but actually start planning the escape route.
Do markets! More markets! I love markets.
Stop being a snippy grouchy pants by the time Mr comes home. Everyday I promise I'll just smile and be nice and happy and not stressed out of my tiny mind, but everyday he gets home in the middle of witching hour and I want to poke his eyes out just because he is not the one dealing with it. There's nothing he could actually do to make it more pleasant.
Say yes to catching up with friends more.
Have date nights with the Mr! Even stay at home ones would be ok.
Eat well, exercise more, be fit. Nothing to do with appearance and everything to do with I want to be here for a really really really long time. I think til I'm maybe 96.

Good stuff, achievable stuff. My kind of resolutions.

2011 - My love letter to Ruby.

2011-12-31T17:30:00.001+10:00

2011 has been fabulous. Fantastic. Amazing. Brilliant. The Best Year of My Life.

It started great, I loved being back at work and on class full time and enjoying the last few months of being a family of 3, of trying to spend as much time together as we could.

And then she arrived.

And everything went from being awesome to unbelievable. There are not the words to say how this little person fixed things that I thought could never be fixed and things that I didn't even know needed fixing. Flynn taught me patience and resilience and how to love through pain and grief, but Ruby taught me how to love myself. After that, everything is easy. She taught me what it is like to live a life where I can look in the mirror and see the extra 5 kilos, the stretch marks she left (her little tattoos, sweet and small, like her), the boobs too big and the empty but still present baby house of a tummy, the hair too fine, too much regrowth, the skin too oily and with lines that don't go when I stop smiling these days, all of that and still just see it for what it is; The Packaging. Everything inside is wonderful, loving, intelligent, knowledgable, caring, skilled, talented, warm, and good. The packaging is flawed, but it's 31 years old now and is bound to have some wear and tear.

The day she arrived the self loathing fell away, seen for what it was - unnecessary and shallow and selfish. It held me back from my husband, held me back from Flynn. It achieved nothing. The love she showed me I should give to myself has changed me forever, changed our family forever. I have grace and confidence and self worth that I didn't know existed and didn't think I deserved or could achieve.

I love you, Ruby Jane and while I know there is a time to come where you will disappoint me, make me sad, let me down, hurt my feelings, nothing you can ever do will ever take away what you gave to me the day you arrived.

2011, you have been amazing.

NYE

2011-12-31T07:00:00.000+10:00

It's also our fourth wedding anniversary. I love that the closing of another year is also another year notched up of marriage. The wedding was the easy bit, you know? The marriage part is work. Sometimes hard work, sometimes it just flows. I am not an easy person to live with, but that's ok, because despite being the most placid, calm and easy person I know, neither is he. People talk a lot about the good in their marriage, and I think that is because that stuff is easy. People don't often talk about the bad. I think a good marriage is one that makes it through the shitty stuff. Good times are easy to talk about, easy to live through, but it's not so easy to say "I'm not happy" and it's even harder to live through it.

Gosh, all of that sounds like I'm miserable and ready to walk! Just the opposite though. I have felt like that, I have said that, but PTSD that probably turned into PND and a baby that didn't sleep for a year makes it really fucking hard to love anything, you know? So when I'm all sunshine and bubbles and unicorns raining rainbows, it's ok, because I know what the complete opposite of that looks like. And not only am I still standing at the end of it, so is my marriage, so is my family.

We are forgetful of each other and can go days where the only communication we have is about the kids, not because of anything other than that is all we have time for. My nagging drives him crazy, his forgetfulness makes me want to stab him in the foot with a plastic fork and see if he still forgets. We argue a lot, I like to win, he likes to have the last word. We have opposing opinions on just about everything you could ever have an opinion on.

But.

I love him. He loves me. He supports me unquestionably, and I've got his back too. He says, "I want to…." and I say, "ok". I say, "I've been thinking about doing …" and he says, "do it". The big stuff, the stuff that matters, we agree on that.

So yeah, it's New Year's Eve, but it's also our wedding anniversary and I love the feeling of achievement that comes with another year done.

I love stacking up the years with him.

Christmas

2011-12-28T16:04:00.000+10:00

This year, we were meant to be at my parents place in central Queensland with my brother and his wife, but one thing after another conspired against us until I just admitted defeat and we pulled the pin on those plans about 6 weeks ago. I was sad but realistic. As Christmas day got closer and closer I worried that I'd feel lousy, left out, alone, missing my family that weren't with us.

Turns out, I had nothing to worry about. I was disappointed that we didn't get to spend time with them but we had the loveliest Christmas with just our little fab 4 and I feel fairly certain that I can label Christmas 2011 the Best Christmas Ever. There was nothing fancy about it, simple, verging on terrible, food - I made coleslaw. It was not my finest culinary achievement. There weren't bucket loads of presents, but still enough that I cringed at home many THINGS were under the tree. We didn't go anywhere - unless you count stealing a swim in our neighbours pool - and we didn't see anyone. It was perfect.

I kept waiting for that feeling of,
"Oh. That's it?"
that inevitably comes with the ending of Christmases and Birthdays but it never came. It was just a sweet, sweet day with 3 of my favourite peeps.

I don't even have any decent photos to show, because we just didn't take any. We were present and mindful of each other all day and I sound like a crazy loco lady parroting current catch phrases, but honestly, I don't think we've spent an entire day engaged with everyone all together for a very long time. I decided that we should have Christmas day once a month. Shut everyone and everything out and just be.

Christmas Eve (or maybe it was Eve Eve, I don't remember anymore.)

Making Reindeer food, all by himself.

Spilling the Reindeer food, all by himself.

Making a trail up the driveway.

Reading The Night Before Christmas.

The Wrapping Paper Thief

A family snap via Skype, missing an Aunty though.

A big baby pavlova.

I tried to eat it in one go, but failed.

Girlfriend's first swim. Can you believe it? We live in the tropics and it's the first time she's been in a pool!

Saved the best present til last - the play mat.

It was a hit.

How was yours?

The Next Fight in Feminism?

2011-12-13T13:37:00.001+10:00

Ok, first, my historical knowledge of Feminism is limited, to say the least. All I know is some super awesome brave women back in the day said, "Stuff this!", and fought for the right to do the stuff they wanted. I am thankful for what they did because I have a tremendously cruisy life thanks to their hard fought battles. In my career as a teacher, I can get married and not have to quit working - I have worked with a woman who had to do this! I can have kids and take leave - I have worked with MORE than a few who had to resign once they had kids. I can have kids, take leave AND get paid for it!

This morning, I was listening to Alison Lee's CraftCast podcast with Nikki Harden, and they were talking (briefly) about whether feminism had faded into the background because we have won all the rights we wanted as women or if our/mine/the younger generation just didn't have the role models to look up to and the fight was dying through lack of leadership. That in itself is a whole other blogpost, but a lightbulb so huge went off in my brain that I was momentarily blind, swear to god.

I am not a mumrepreneur, I am not a SAHM or a WAHM. I really really dislike all of those terms. If you identify as one of those, that's ok, I'm ok with that, I don't think any more or any less of you for it. I say more power to you for knowing who you are and who you want to be, Sister! But I am not. I don't see myself as that. I know that's really hard to justify when I am a mum and I stay at home at the moment and I work while I'm here and I make stuff for babies and kids.

I am a woman. I am a wife. I am a mother.

I am also a small business owner.

I find the terms mumrepreneur , SAHM, WAHM to be really insulting. Just like when people say "Oh, well it's nice for you to have some pocket money!", and think they are being supportive of me and my business. Kids get given pocket money and when it is implied it is *my* pocket money it feels as insulting as if they said, "Oh, well it's nice for your husband to let you have $50 to spend on yourself each month!" Again, if you identify as any of those terms, that's cool, if you do it so you have 'pocket money', that's cool. I think Good On YOU! I really really do! I think it is awesome that women are stepping up and taking control of their financial freedom in whatever way they choose.

But I am not doing that. I am contributing to our household income just like I did in my career as a teacher. It's a hell of a lot less, but I am contributing none the less. I don't save up and go spend it on me, just like I didn't take my wages from being a teacher and go spend it on me. If you save up what you make out of your business and go spend it on you, Good On YOU! Honest! I think it is brilliant that you take that freedom and do with it what you will! I really truly do! In our family, it's just the way our finances work. We have a ~~big~~ pool that we both put into and we both take from. We discuss how and where we want to spend our money, because that is just the way we are.

My husband builds stuff. He's a carpenter, soon to be builder (they're different, you know?). He has always been a small business owner and after nearly 15 years of hard slog he has seen some major, MAJOR goals met this year. I am so proud of him and how hard he has worked. I love his ethics and his fair attitude. The last few years have not been so fantastic, the building industry where we live all but imploded as one company after another went bust, and it has been a really lean couple of years for him, work wise. We've both been thankful we had my career as a teacher to fall back on as it was really comforting to know there would be a set amount of bucks showing up in the account each fortnight while he held on hoping to ride it out.

That was a given. It was a given that as the male of the household and the 'main provider' that we would both work together and ride it out until things turned around. And they have. None of our family questioned it, none of our friends questioned it, it was just a given that it was ok for him to just hang in there and ride it out.

I am a woman. I am a wife. I am a mother.

I am also a small business owner.

He is a man. He is a husband. He is a father.

He is a small business owner.

People are struggling to have faith in me as I try to grow my business and no one would question it if my husband asked me to go back to my well paying career. (Not that he would.) But I wonder if it would have been as acceptable for me to ask my husband to go and work the desk at the local hardware store and give up his business when things got tight?

And while I'm at it, I'd like to see my husband run his business while keeping a house standing, a family fed and clothed (albeit questionably some days), and all with 2 small peeps under his feet.

And for the sake of disclosure, washing gets folded because he gets sick of sitting on it on the couch and floors get mopped because ~~he notices they are filthy and need doing~~ I flip my lid and screech like a crazy lady every now and then and he most certainly does his fair share of the work around here. He just doesn't have to do that while caring for 2 needy small people.

I'm not a WAHM or a mumpreneur, I am just a woman who is really REALLY busy. (I wanted to say really fucking busy, but I know there are nice people who read this blog and I try to limit the eff bombs. Jus' sayin'.)

The women of the world are stepping up all over the place to try and create an economy that is fair and ethical, that pays people their worth and is bringing back value to the goods and services and products that we use.

Trying to be taken seriously is my battle. Is it yours? Am I alone in feeling pissed at this? Am I being dramatic? (I have a flair for it, it's biological, I can't help it.)

Would LOVE to know what you think.

PS - In case I wasn't clear enough, I am NOT having a dig at ANYONE who considers themselves to be a mumpreneur, SAHM, WAHM. Own those labels, rock those labels, many Sisters before you worked hard for you to own those labels. I'm just saying, know what you are and love the guts out of it.

Made In China

2011-12-09T16:42:00.001+10:00

When I was a kid, I remember going to the Big Pineapple on holidays for a parfait and ride on the pineapple train. One year, I was probably 7 or 8, I used my hard saved pocket money to buy something in the Down Under Shop. Or it was called something like that. The premise was it was a shop of Australian made and centric things. I bought a rock, more of an oversized pebble, with more little pebbles glued to it. They had faces painted on them and underneath it said rock concert and I thought it was hilarious. When we got home, I pulled the price tag off and there was a little gold sticker underneath that said:

Made in China.

I was gutted. I was furious. I was hellishly pissed off. I remember asking mum why they were allowed to do that? Why were they allowed to lie to me?

Back then, my rage was limited to Australia = Good, Everything else = Bad, in the way that all kids are egocentric.

As I got older I understood that Made in China meant cheap, inferior products that probably wouldn't last, but it was ok, cause they were, you know, cheap.

For a while now, years actually, Made in China has still left me feeling icky but I hadn't been able to pin what about it made me feel icky. I thought maybe it was because China was trashing the planet in their efforts to supply the world with Cheap Shit, or that you can't go into any chain store and buy things that are NOT made in China or that Made in China still just meant cheap inferior products.

But I've finally put my finger on it. It's the people behind the Made in China stickers and tags and labels that I have the most issue with. Real actual living human beings with goals and dreams for their lives (if they're lucky enough to still have those) are paid next to nothing to work in dreadful conditions for 14 or more hours a day to craft items that we pay next to nothing for. These things aren't coming from huge automated factories where machines are behind the making and doing, it's people. An actual human life is behind the making of this STUFF. And these people have SKILLS, you know? They can DO stuff! They can sew or solder or fold or cut or stitch or weld or ink or draw or mould or pour or or or. Their skills and time and talent - maybe it was born like some of us are born to create and make, or maybe it was forced because it was what they had to do to feed their families - deserve to be worth something. Something more than the couple of dollars (maybe even as low as cents?) they get each day for the work they do.

Now that I have had that realisation, have been able to verbalise what it is that bothered me, I check the origin of EVERYTHING I buy. I am trying to not buy anything made in China, not because it's inferior, or the plastic fumes are overwhelming, I am doing in support of all of those people who deserve better. It's like my own personal boycott. You could argue me not buying will ultimately lead to these people losing what little money they can earn and I don't have an answer to that. All I know is that I needed a new iron last week and the fact that I couldn't find a single one that originated from somewhere other than China upset me to the point I was blinking back tears in Target. Target, you know?! I was trying not to cry in Target! Because all I could think about was the person/people who made the iron I was holding in my hands. And I can't deal with that following me around all day! Crazy, I know. Not entirely rational, I know that too.

But here's the good bit! It means I find myself able to support local and independent businesses a whole lot more, I'm not frivolously spending money I don't have on shit I don't need, and the purchases I do make feel good!

There is so many holes in my idea/theory that you could drive a Mack truck through it, but just do me a favour. Next time you buy something, just think about where it came from (and the answer is not "A shelf at Kmart"), or better yet, buy handmade from a local Indi Biz and give yourself a squishy hug.

It's been a long week, a long month, a long year. This is as rambly as all get out, but you get it, yes? Do you agree, do you disagree, do you just not care, do you think I should find something else to cry about in the aisle at Target? Go on, share!

Handmade Love!

Missing. Kinda. Not really.

2011-12-01T13:48:00.001+10:00

You know how you don't mean to disappear or not blog or keep all the stuff inside your head instead of out? Yeah. That happened. I have been spending heaps of time getting ready to make Christmas awesome for the small peeps, sewing madly for markets, orders, gifts, trying to be present with Flynn and Ruby when they are awake and around, and our house and it's nothing feeling like it has a home is really bothering me so I've been decluttering too.

I feel like I have so much wanting to get out or get done that I am drowning in the tide of things trying to make it out first. So I'm letting go of everything and instead of to do lists miles long, I'm choosing the 1 thing I want to get done each day and concentrating on getting that done. Right now, it's just lots of this:

Busy!

2011-11-18T20:18:00.001+10:00

Gosh, are you busy?! Everyone's busy at this time of the year, huh! In lieu of anything of worth, here, see my week in instagram pics. Although if you already follow me on instagram, this is old news. Do you use instagram? Let me know who you are, I love seeing what everyone's up to!
xo

Happy weekend!

Play Mat!

2011-11-08T12:28:00.000+10:00

Oh gosh! It's done! Flynn's Christmas present! I started this play mat months ago. I think Ruby was a teeny tiny baby when I went to the local quilt shop to buy a stack of (not very me) fabric. I wanted it to be big. I wanted it to be nice to look at and touch. I wanted it to be as unstructured as it could be.
When you buy one of these mats, the police station is always the police station, there are servos (what do you call them?) called gas stations, stop signs in funny places or the wrong side of the road, basically, just lots of things small people can't engage in and not much that they can. I want this mat to be a place we can all hang out on and interact with. It's big enough for all of us. There is so much scope for what one small person can do with it or what the whole family can do with it.

Ok, yes, the thought of playing with this is far more thrilling than the thought of watching Flynn and Ruby use it.

The roads are big enough for lots of little cars or big dump trucks. Maybe you could put train tracks on them too, for public transport, for a truly environmentally friendly landscape.

We can build boats or make fish and seaweed for the ocean or the sea or the lake, whatever it happens to be that day.

Maybe these can be fields to grow the crops. Or they could be a house block with a veggie patch. Or a market garden growing flowers.

Maybe we could make some animals for our own zoo. And trees and plants and shelters.

A farm perhaps, a way to talk about food production, where it comes from, how we get it, what tastes good and what doesn't, what we can grow at home and what we have to buy.

Castles, homes, units, places people live or work or congregate.

A park needs slides and swings built, we'll need some trees and some gardens.

It's tiny, only about 2 inches x 4 inches, but there is one!

What else can we make a boat out of?

It is just a play mat. But to me, it speaks volumes about why I love handmade. It's something I put mountains of thought it, it suits a need I saw in our family, it's inclusive, it's open ended, it's unique and it is filled with love. It's a place my children can be creative, a space that will encourage their creative thinking and problem solving. It has endless amounts of choices for conversation. Conversation with small people is so important. They understand more than we know, they build their vocab, their awareness of the world around them and an understanding of who they are through the conversations we have with them. They learn best through imaginative play and role play. I can't wait for Christmas morning so we can break this out!

Are you making any gifts for Christmas this year? I'd love you to share if you are!

xo

Twitter - A Cautionary Tale.

2011-10-31T11:13:00.000+10:00

Because I'm being lazy, here, read this. I tweeted a narky tweet on Friday about my shitful Canon printer and then felt bad about 26 seconds later (it's why I don't like saying negative nasty things in the interwebs because once it's out there you can't take it back!) and then have had someone both tweet me back and email me. Which is nice. Cause it's an actual person! (Unless they have some very savvy and communicable robots working there now). But the universe has paid me in kind. I tweeted narkily and now I have to swallow my words. Add to that, I'm now the girl that cried wolf, because tomorrow, when my printer is being all bitchy bitchy again, do you think they'll take me seriously when I ask for help? I think not. So, play nice, 'k?

Hi,

Thanks!!

It's an MG6150 and I'm using a mac with OS10.6.8. I've spent 40 minutes on the phone previously with your help desk and she was lovely and great and it resolved the issue momentarily, but now every time I want to print (forget scanning, that worked once and not again!) I spend an hour or more turning the computer off, the printer off, checking the connection, re entering passwords to the LAN connection, and all in countless combinations trying to find which one will work today! I can never just turn it on and have it print. I've downloaded drivers from both the canon website and the apple website and each time it seems a temporary fix. It'll print at best 3 pages before it stops halfway through and tells me there is a communication error. It's really frustrating and a bit silly! We bought another Canon because our last one lasted 8 years before the rollers died and kept jamming paper.

The most common error is #306 and it's latest trick is to tell me another user is using it. Naturally, now that I've sent a narky tweet and had you so kindly email me, I turned it on to print to see what it would tell me today and it decided to just print. So now, not only has it spent the last 2 months mocking and taunting me, now it's making a liar of me.

Hmm, so if you can troubleshoot that, much appreciated!

Kathryn

Judgment

2011-10-25T20:25:00.000+10:00

Do you ever find yourself judging others? Even though you know it makes you feel icky? Even though what you are judging them for probably doesn't impact on your life?

I do sometimes. It's almost always internal and it's usually only my Mr who hears it if it comes out of my mouth and I always feel guilty for saying it out loud. As I've gotten older, I make a point of acknowledging the thought and try to process why I feel like I had a right to have a judgement to pass in the first place. It almost always boils down to a nagging insecurity I have about something and nothing to do with the person in question. I'd really love to be someone who doesn't judge in the first place though - even if it is usually just between me and myself. I'm pretty sure what you put out in the universe is what you get back, so me putting out negative or nasty thoughts about someone else surely only means I'm going to get that nasty back in my day somewhere, so it'd be nice to avoid that…

Kinda like this…

How people treat you is their karma.

How you react is yours.

-Wayne Dyer

You know what bothers me most though? It's always women, ya know? I'm never judging another father/man/male. Is it because it's ingrained in us from such a young age? Girls are bitchy, we get taught that, we have it modelled to us, so we replicate that? Without even realising?

Because that's not what I want for Ruby. For this sweet girl, to think that's an acceptable way to behave or be treated.

I'm not sure what that looks like yet, how I deal with it as a parent, but I'm thankful that I have time on my side to work that out. In the mean time, I'm going to keep practising not judging in the first place, regardless that it's only internal. Internal, external, it's still foul.

...

Ho Ho Ho, Granny

2011-10-23T19:46:00.001+10:00

I'm getting excited. It's almost time! I can almost talk about Christmas and not have people roll their eyes at me! Two weeks until the Christmas cake can be cooked and wrapped up to sit in it's own goodliness for the next month! When I was a kid, the Christmas tree went up the weekend after Melbourne Cup. I think it might have started as a kind of time sign post to give us kids an answer to the nagging we'd harass mum with about Christmas and Santa and wrapping paper. She still puts it up that weekend now even though we've both been out of home for years. Years and years, in fact. The Mr won't stand for it in our house, (yes, I know, and yes I do call him the Grinch), so the best I can do is start the cake instead!

I got excited when I realised JUST how close it is, today, so, with nothing else to do, I started this.

Because living in the tropics, where last Christmas saw us blessed with a cyclone Christmas morning, everyone needs a granny ripple blanket to snuggle.

Indeed.

xo

ps - am I the only person who could happily instagr.am their entire life?

Amnesia. Or, Love it's Guts.

2011-10-19T10:37:00.000+10:00

Sometimes, like yesterday afternoon, scenes like this slap me across the face like an icy cold blast. I was folding washing, Ruby was having a quick nap, and Flynn was watching Bananas in Pyjamas. Or Play School. Something. The Mr was due home any second and I was thinking about starting tea.

When did I grow up?

I don't remember it happening! I feel like one day I was at university, and therefore, knew everything, and then I blinked and *poof*! I have small people to care for, a house to look after, a husband to love. Most days I still feel like I'm barely equipped to look after myself, let alone anyone else. Did my mum feel like this? I keep waiting for mum and dad to come home from a trip away and being all pissed off because the floors need mopping, the shower could do with a scrub, there is still dirty dishes from breakfast and there are so many different piles of washing all over the house we almost don't bother even attempting to put anything away anymore.

Then I get all nerve-y and anxious for a bit and start to freak out a little because I don't know what I am doing, until I remember I haven't lived at home for 10 years, have had another person in the form of Mr to factor into my decisions for 8 years and have been looking after our very own small people for 2.5 years (and most of the time, I'd like to think, doing it well!).

Did my mum ever feel like this?!

I don't mean this to sound negative, I don't mean it in an alarming way, it's just sometimes, I get a fright, you know?

My mum was just a few months shy of being 22 when she had me. When you compare that to the timeline of my life, I was finishing uni, very self centred (or immature, call it whatever you want) and getting drunk was still something that happened all too often.

I guess the thing that keeps jumping out and slapping me across the face is that time goes so very quickly, even if there are days that feel like a lifetime when you are living them, I don't want to ever get stuck doing something with that time and with my life that I just don't love the guts out of.

I love the guts out of what I am doing with my life, do you? It's ok to say yes, it's ok to say no. If you ask me that today, I'll say yes. If you asked me yesterday, I would have said no. A big fat NO. And then all the small people were fed and sleeping and I had 5 seconds to myself and I realised that yeah, I really did.

Tell me, do you love it's guts?! Or, when did you grow up? Do you remember it? Or are you like me and get a bit of a fright every now and then…?

xo

PS - Do you know, our TV is so old it's only a few years off me being able to flog it on Etsy as vintage!

Sugar. Less.

2011-10-17T20:22:00.000+10:00

Something happened when I gave birth to Ruby. For the first time ever I truly understood what it was to love yourself and accept yourself for who you are. Suddenly, things that had been battles or war zones for years, decades even, just clicked and made sense. Things like eating well were no longer a conscious decision that I had to talk myself into, (No, you really don't feel like that piece of baked cheesecake. Or that chocolate chip biccie. And you don't even like lollies.), they just happened. I heard my body speaking and it was saying, "Give me the damn broccolini!" I was no longer just wanting to live mindfully, I was actually doing it. Not just about food, but everything - who I chose to spend time with, who I gave my energies to, what I chose to spend my precious time doing, how I dealt with annoying/painful/upsetting/frustrating situations and people.

But then I started to find myself making apple crumble for my Mr or baking choc chip biccies with Flynn or saying yes to cheesecake with my coffee at my favourite cafe. And it was all just habit and reflex. I didn't actually want any of those things! But I ignored that knowingness of not wanting and just kept saying yes to all of it.

Then Cath shared that she had been sugarfree for 3 weeks. WHAT?! Sugarfree? Who does that? Why would you do that?! And as I sat on it for a day or so thinking she was absolutely bonkers, it started to make sense. My body had been trying to tell me so for such a long time. So I gave it a go. The first few days were accompanied by hellishly foul headaches and cravings (? I guess? I feel like it is mostly habit though? Are they the same thing, do you think?) but I could not believe how good I felt and how fast! I was shocked at how much energy I had but the most amazing change? Taste. I felt like I could actually taste food again without even realising that I'd lost that sense. The passionfruit yoghurt I'd been eating for years was suddenly too sweet but the plain natural yoghurt is just right. Banana bread has bananas in it and is sweet enough without the sugar. I remember Cath saying if she felt like something sweet she'd have a glass of milk and I gotta say I thought she was clutching at straws with that one, but she's totally on to something! Milk, cheese, yoghurt, all of it really does have it's own sweet flavour. Fruit tastes better and my body no longer craves choc chip cookies (from Smitten Kitchen's recipe) and instead I find myself wishing there was another bunch of broccolini or silver beet in the fridge.

And then we flew south for my brother's wedding, were away for a week and came back loving sugar all over again. Not really. I still can't decide whether it's habit or addiction but it just slips right back in there and next thing you know instead of yoghurt and tea you're back to scotch finger biscuits and tea. And you don't even like scotch finger biscuits.

I have wrangled that skinny, high on life, sugar free horse and jumped back on. She's buckling a bit under the weight, but this time, rather than going hell for leather, I'm treading softly and gently and rather than berating myself for failures or slip ups, I'm focusing only on being mindful of what I do and what I eat. When I am mindful, it is easy. When I listen to my body, it is screaming that it doesn't even want the cake/chocolate/biccie/crumble and could it please just have a glass of water or perhaps even a cup of tea? I like my honey too much to say goodbye to it and I am still learning just how much sugar there is in different foods that are a staple in our diet (hello, peanut butter, what would I do without you?) so for now, sugar less is my goal.

I'm not a writer, I have stuff in my head and it sometimes doesn't quite make it out and maybe this post is more about living mindfully than it is about living sugar less/free. Point is, I'm giving sugar the boot. Nasty piece of work that she is!

FOMO

2011-10-17T08:09:00.002+10:00

A beautiful friend who I don't see enough told me when Flynn was quite young that he was a FOMO kid. A Fear Of Missing Out kid. He just never shut his eyes, never slept, I just had to think about sneezing half a mile away and he'd wake up. When he was teeny tiny I was convinced it was something I'd done wrong. All of those prophetic books, midwives, doctors, child health nurses and well meaning (or not...) friends told me that you just put babies down to sleep and they slept and that they slept for hours at a time and that you didn't need to rock them, cuddle them, hold them, feed them. If all of that failed then you just popped them into the pram for a leisurely stroll around the block or you could try putting them in the car for a little zoom here and there and *poof* sleeping baby.

HA! None of it worked. Ever. And I knew from the start that it wouldn't work, because despite my confidence being absolutely shattered after his (traumatic and awful) birth and even though I didn't realise it soon enough, I knew my son. I knew what was best for him and it was none of those things. Every day was the same. So was every night, actually. He never slept. At all. The best we could do was cuddle him, rock him, hold him.

I could tell you how hard it was but honestly, I don't remember a whole lot of his first year. You need sleep to lay down pathways in your mind to create memories and I didn't have sleep so I don't have a whole lot of memories. One of the few clear memories I do have is my friend describing Flynn as a FOMO in such a gentle, kind, humorous, appreciative way. While she wasn't the first to say it, she was the first person I heard when they said, "He's ok, he is fine."

He never did turn into the baby I kept hoping he would, the cruisy easy one who just slept, who was relaxed, who just did the things everyone said babies did. But that's ok. Because having a child who is a FOMO, turns out, really isn't that bad.

source

Life with Flynn as a baby was a very hard, long, lonely path but one that I am grateful for. He taught me acceptance, patience and how to be a mother.

Free Range

2011-10-10T21:43:00.002+10:00

Are you a free range parent? Do you let your kids roam, free range? I really struggle with the balance of letting my kids be kids and do what kids need to do and doing what my overly anxious and imaginative mind wants me to do. What I really want to do is lock them up in a spotless, germ free house, never let them be exposed to undesirable behaviours, never put them in harm's way, you know, your garden variety bubble wrap clad children.

I believe that it is our role as parents to hold our children's hands and prepare them for the times when we can't be there. For the times when they have to deal with the bully in the playground, when they have to choose between defending a friend or being victimised themselves, when they have to choose to say yes or no to that cigarette/drink/drug they have just been offered, when to speak up because they don't feel safe in the car with their friend driving. If I don't teach Flynn and Ruby how to deal with problems now, how can I expect them to deal with them when they are 8, 12, 17? But if I don't let them go and leave them free to make mistakes, how can I teach them how to deal with problems? BUT. If I let them go, they might get hurt.

Source

I worry that I'm getting it wrong. My husband is much better at letting Flynn go. I hold on much tighter. I have to remind myself that if he doesn't learn the small stuff now, he won't be able to put those lessons into practice when he really needs to. Because he hasn't learnt them.

We scored a hand me down trampoline from our neighbours on the weekend. It's great, and free, but is sans nets! Oh my! The nets were trashed and had to be thrown out and I don't think we'll bother getting new ones. It's not very high, not as high as the trampoline I got for my 3rd Christmas and it never had nets or mats and it lasted me and my brother and countless friends before being passed on to our neighbours when we grew out of it and it never injured or maimed anyone beyond a pinched thigh. But it makes me nervous! I am more reluctant to let Flynn roam outside while I keep an eye on him from inside than I was last week. I've said "Stay in the middle!!" more times than I can count, and that's just today.

I wish I knew the answer. I wish I knew how far to let him roam before reeling him back in. What are your boundaries? How far do you let your kids roam?

Maybe by next week I'll have a new thing to stress about and the trampoline will be just another part of the backyard that I don't even notice anymore. In the meantime, I'll just hold my breath and try not to squeal too loud.

10 Things

2011-10-09T21:07:00.004+10:00

Erin over at Eat Play Bond tagged me in a 10 things you don't know about me Thing. I'm not sure what you call them... She did it about a week and a half ago and this is the first time I've had more than 5 seconds to do something about honouring her request!

So here goes.

I lived in an Indigenous community in Cape York for 2 years and LOVED it. It was really really hard and I only remember the good bits and I think I cried more often then I remember now, but it was the single greatest thing I have done with my being outside of my family.
I was a really REALLY shy kid.
I love making stuff. STUFF. Anything. I always have. On the school holidays when I was in about Grade 3 or 4 I spent 2 weeks filling a scrapbook on information about different countries. It was like a school project but for my own enjoyment. I think about that a lot and how the love of learning is something I think I've always had.
I cried giving a speech at my brother's wedding last weekend. Actually, I just cried at the wedding full stop. I am so proud of him.
I think bright yellow and hot pink are an awesome colour combination and one that everyone should embrace.
When I was 13 I was convinced Keanu Reeves would want to marry me if he just met me.
Ever since I read The Stand, I wait for the end of the world to come and leave me having to ride a motorbike across the USA in search of life and learning how to rejig a power station. I hate Stephen King for that book. (I've lost count how many times I've read it.)
Sometimes I fantasise about what life would be like if I married someone other than my husband. And then I realise that no one else would have me, seriously, and that he is a really really good egg.
I was a bitch of teenager and I've never said sorry to my mum for it.
I share the good stuff here because I am so grateful for having it. One day I will share the worst day I have ever had. It is ugly, really ugly, and not many people know about it.

I was going to mention some people who *I'd* love to hear from, but you know what? If you read this blog, I want to hear from you! All of you! Because you all matter and you all have stuff I want to know about! So if want to join in, please please do, just promise to drop me a link in the comments so I can go read!

xoxo

Happy Sunday!

I'm leaving you with my favourite picture of my brother's wedding. I know they're not in it, but I love this because you know what? You can't fake that happy. That's me on the left and Lauren on the right. Lauren is my new Sister in Law's sister. We were both so happy that day and I'm pretty sure we cried more than anyone else. You just can not bullshit that.

Opportunity Cost

2011-10-07T22:24:00.001+10:00

Source

Mr Eiser, my Year 11 and 12 Economics teacher scared the shit out of me. He was, I can reflect now, a really really nice man who I am pretty sure liked his job and probably enjoyed what he did, but gosh he was scary and gruff and unpredictable and loud and he seemed really angry and pissed all the time. Among other things that I no longer remember, he taught me the meaning of opportunity cost, that is, when you choose to do something, you are also choosing to forgo another opportunity. When you spend your money, you are choosing to put it to use and forgo other objects or services that you could have used that money for. It's why I believe so firmly in the power of your money.

Sometimes, like today, I fantasise about what life would be like if I could do what I do now, just minus the little people depending on me and needing me every second of the day. I dream about having my time all to myself and doing just what I want to do, always put me first. I dream about the opportunities I have have had to let go, always and forever, in place of being a mother. And then she does this:

or Flynn says, while dragging a 6 foot palm frond around the yard behind him: "Don't stop me, this is a good idea", and then I remember that I'd only enjoy doing that other stuff, having that time to myself for a day at the most before I'd be feeling lost and empty.

For the most part, I am sure that the opportunities I choose far outweigh the opportunities I let pass me by. There are times when it is only looking back and reflecting that I know I have made the right choice. Then there are days like today where I swear I've totally stuffed up and surely this can't be my life! And then she grabs my hair and pulls her little face into mine, or he asks, "Are you happy, mummy?" and I realise that no, everything is just as it should be and I just needed to look back.

Happy days.

xo

Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda

2011-09-24T16:08:00.000+10:00

So what I should have done this week was the mountain of sewing I have for the markets I'm attending between now and Christmas, made Ruby's dress for my brother's wedding, pack for the trip down south (wedding, you see), find the couch buried under the washing that I don't even bother folding up and putting away anymore, the floors probably could have done with at least a vague sweep... and on and on it goes.

What I did do this week instead;

Spent 2 hours stealing Buddy Jim's paint so I could paint the back of some scrap paper and then cutting hundreds of little discs out to sew up some bunting to decorate the stall for the markets. With help from Buddy Jim. So really it should have taken about 30 minutes but it was done at a 2 year old's demanding pace.

When the phone rang requesting our company at a beach a 2.5 hour round trip away, I knew I should have said no, but I didn't. I grabbed a baby out of the cot, threw a toddler and handful of nappies, towel and drinks in the car and squealed out of the driveway. I still can't decide if the getting caught in roadworks 4 times, stopped by a cane train once, and the missing of Buddy Jim's sleep was worth the 2 hours I spent chasing him out of the creek & tree, away from the hose he managed to find, away from the car park and not managing to eat at all that day, but I think these prove that yeah, it probably was;

The lovely gent is our beautiful, wonderful friend, Marty. We think of him and his gorgeous family as part of our family.

And yeah, that is totally a Cassowary just cruisin' the beach!

Now I need to go and do a swoop and run (you know, swoop in, grab the sleeping baby and bolt to the car before she realises what's going on and just how close she is to her food source before she can register) and head off to friends for dinner. And ignore all of that other stuff some more!

What should, coulda, woulda did you get up to this week?

xo

Weekend

2011-09-19T19:40:00.000+10:00

Busy weekends are good, but so are the weekends where you plan nothing.

They leave room for running in the water.

Finishing blankets.

Washing much neglected cars. Which leads to stealing the hose.

Which leads to running away from home, such is one's disappointment in having the hose confiscated.

How was yours?

Present & Two

2011-09-12T21:44:00.001+10:00

It's cliche and everyone says it, but I need more hours in the day. I go to bed at night and can't sleep because I have a twitch and tic about all of the billions of things I need to get done and the 1 million times eleventy billion things I want to get done.

I would like to see our couch again, or at least have all the washing off it just one day a week. I'd like to do groceries once and have it last 6 months. I'd like to have a self cleaning shower. I mean all we do in it is fill it up with soapy stuff, repeat. Surely it doesn't need cleaning? Ever? I'd like to either have a floor that is perpetually clean or feet that didn't feel the grit. I'd like to have a kitchen table that wasn't a magnet for all the homeless crap in our house. I'd like to finish the blanket I'm crocheting for Ruby before she turns 43. I'd like to blog more often. I'd like to sew more often. I'm already not sure how I'm going to get everything made that I have in my head for Christmas.

Mostly, all of these issues come down to the same thing; I have trouble being present. I really have to remind myself to pay attention to what is happening right now. Spending time thinking about what else has to be done, or how I can hurry something, or some little person, along, all in the name of efficiency usually means I do a lot badly instead of a little well (I really wanted to type goodly; I stopped myself.)

Add to this, Buddy Jim is being very 2 and it's getting a little tiring to tell the truth. I'm not paying attention to the little stuff I should be and the next thing you know, Buddy Jim has found my embroidery scissors and snipped at Ruby's blanket (because it wasn't taking me long enough, you see!) or in my rush to move onto the next thing I don't bother emptying the mop bucket only to find Buddy Jim helpfully re-mopping the floor with a filthy soggy mop or cleverly sending Buddy Jim off to wash his hands by himself means 5 minutes later there is no soap left in the dispenser but the vanity is helpfully very very clean. And sudsy.

So paying attention is my mantra this week.

Today, we went out.

Buddy Jim found the water and made a beeline for it.

Even though the water was freezing, off he went.

Although with a day that looks like this, it can be forgiven for being so cold up here even though it's Spring. (You get that, Weather? It's Spring. Spring.)

Buddy Jim and I chatted, Ruby slept, everyone went home happy. It was great.

And then he woke up after his nap and was 2 again. I stopped being so hard on myself then and realised that no matter how present I was, how much attention I paid, a 2 year old is a 2 year old and despite my most valiant efforts, there are days when he is going to be two. He kinda has to be. He does the things he does because he's learning and his brain is exploding off and laying down more little pathways in these few short years than it will for the rest of his life. It's good to remember that when you answer, "Why?", for the 347th time in 27 minutes.

If you are a parent, was two bad for you? Or do you think he's just reminding me that he's his own little person and I am here to guide and not rule...?

The perils of being Ruby's mother.

2011-09-07T08:00:00.000+10:00

I was meant to sew yesterday. But then this happened;

Followed by a bit of this;

And then she kept doing this;

So I put her here for her to go to sleep;

It didn't work.

I gave up on sewing.

{almost} Wordless Wednesday

2011-08-31T13:28:00.002+10:00

This is what Ruby sees. When she's on the floor, on her brother's bed, on our bed, this is what she sees. It's no wonder she doesn't like lying by herself for very long. I think it's important to just check the scenery from your Little Peoples' point of view every now and then.

Fail

2011-08-29T11:30:00.003+10:00

Not sure if this is a parenting fail, a sewing fail, or both.

Last night (there is the first fatal error, I can achieve nothing of worth beyond 7pm, it's clinically proven), I made Ruby a dress. I looked at it and thought, "It looks a bit big, but I'll be able to take it in/up once I try it on her."

So this morning, she wakes up, I grab the dress and straight away I can see the dress is going to be a snug fit verging on too small.

Determined, I pushed and shoved and poked and got the dress on her. The pushing and shoving should have been a clue that it was too small.

I then spent 5 minutes very carefully quick unpicking her out of it...

Meet my new boyfriend

2011-08-27T19:33:00.002+10:00

Clearly, this isn't my actual boyfriend, this is his cousin, but they look exactly the same and are just as marvellous as each other. My very kind Mr bought me my boyfriend. He's threatened to beat him up and tell the cops he tripped should I start paying too much attention to him.

Bye Bertha

2011-08-23T13:58:00.003+10:00

We sold Bertha last week and she got towed away this morning. I was sad, but in a nostalgic I miss that kind of way, not so much about Bertha. We have been ready for her to find a new home for a while now.

When the Mr wasn't looking (he is stupidly sentimental about stuff & I don't have the energy to reminisce with him for hours on end!) , Buddy Jim and I tip toed out for one last look, one last goodbye.

The fridge stopped working 2 days after we left Perth and this fridge became a storage cupboard. It still smells like wholemeal flour.

Hello plastic doors! I was pissed at the Mr for about 3 months that he couldn't work out a way to replace them with something not ugly, mostly because I thought he was bullshitting me and just didn't want to replace them. I'm so glad he didn't! How many caravans have you seen with yellow plastic doors?!

The bed end! The Mr recovered the bed head and sewing the original buttons back on. This end leaked, and we ended up having to seal the back windows shut. Which leads me to that cord hanging down...

The Mr installed ceiling fans into the hatches! Do you have any idea how freaking hot a (then) 24 year old caravan with sealed windows is?

This is a bonus picture. I love that Buddy Jim will grow up seeing photos of our trip and that there is photos of him in the caravan. (I'm ignoring the bit about there not being photos of Ruby in the caravan.) And in case you are curious, Buddy Jim is in the middle of saying "I'm very cranky with you!". I have no idea why he was cranky with me, he just was.

So. Bye Bertha. Thanks for the memories.

xo

Reading

2011-08-22T21:40:00.004+10:00

One day I'll be one of those grown up bloggers who blogs with some sort of regularity.

...

I am reading this:

It's good. It's hard work, but it's good. I am pretty sure if you were reading it with eyes that were not required to open every few hours during the night it would be much easier... I find I get to the end of the page and then realise I've read it but not read it so I go back and try again. It's taking some time. But it's so good. It says everything I wish I could say but I fail to find the words. I love that he believes that human satisfaction should be worth more. More than it is. I agree. I feel guilty because I want a happy life. I shouldn't want a happy life, I don't deserve a happy life, I've done nothing great to earn it. Growing up (and I'm still growing!) I always thought you didn't get to be happy until you'd earned a career, had a family, raised that family, worked some more and then retired. Retired, yay! Retired means you had earned your being happy! But the older I got the more I realised that particular 'truth' sucked. Totally. Going by that theory, my parents have a good decade or more before they deserve to be happy and that's not true! That's a whole lot of life spent just waiting! Waiting for your life to start! That's not what I want, that's not what my family wants. I want to live my happy now! I don't struggle with what we need to give up for that to happen, the stuff - the perfect car, the perfect house, the perfect clothes, the bigger, better, best show - but sometimes I think the people around us struggle with that. Sometimes I find myself justifying myself, my choices, our choices, to people who will never get it. I am trying to do that less, I'm trying to care what they think less. It bothers me that I care what they think.

My happy is being a mother, a wife, making and crafting a life for us all.

What is your happy?

PS - to be clear, the book is not about people being happy, that was just one phrase in one sentence in the introduction that just hit me like a punch in the face and made me tingle with "YES!"-ness.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-08-17T08:00:00.002+10:00

We needed somewhere to wait while the car got new tyres. It was the first time he'd ever seen the golden arches and hopefully the last for a very long time!

Qualities

2011-08-16T08:00:00.000+10:00

I think all the time about how my children might view my actions and words and what I am teaching them. I don't mean the stuff I consciously teach; "We always wash our hands before we have something to eat", or, "You have to rinse the paintbrush in the cup of water before you dip it in a new colour", or, "If you throw your sultanas across the table, I'm going to take them away". I mean the stuff I don't think about. The Big Stuff; how do they see and hear me and my husband resolve our disagreements; how do they hear and see me treat other people. The Small Stuff; how do they see me deal with stubbing my toe; what do I do when I drop the bag of rice all over the floor?

There is a small person in Buddy Jim's room at daycare I think all the kids struggle with. I don't think this small person is bad or naughty or a product of 'bad parenting', the teacher in me can acknowledge that there is probably more to it than all of that. For about 6 months it made me really really bloody angry and sad to know that Buddy Jim was scared of this person and being hurt by this person a lot and it wasn't just him, it was all the kids. It still makes me sad now. But then a while ago I realised, instead of trying to devise ways of protecting Buddy Jim (which was pointless, I wasn't there, that is the point of daycare!), I could use it as a way to start to teach Buddy Jim empathy and understanding and seeing things from someone else's point of view. It would be so easy to say negative things about this little person and their behaviour when Buddy Jim brings it up, "Yes, they're naughty aren't they?!", but I believe it is really important to teach him how to deal with it, for both of their sakes. Buddy Jim needs to know how to respond when he's hit, kicked or hurt, but that is the simple lesson to learn. I think maybe the most important lesson for Buddy Jim to learn is one of empathy. Not to pity the other little person and the things they do, but to understand maybe there are things in that little person's life that makes things a little bit trickier for them. Patience, kindness and empathy. They are the traits I want to instil in him, and Ruby, and I don't think my 2 and a half year old will understand it now, but that's the whole point I guess, I hope I'm laying the foundations so those qualities come easily as he becomes old enough to really understand. Research tells us that kids don't develop an awareness of other people and their feelings until the age of about 5, obviously it's a while off, so for now I will keep talking to Buddy Jim and stay mindful of how I deal with problems, disagreements and frustrations, knowing that my little sponges are soaking up every little nuance.

So with all of that in mind, we braved my idea of parenting hell today. The playground. I hate playgrounds, I hate that it is a communal space with no set standards and the control freak in me really struggles with the notion that there may be people that just don't care what goes on. Turns out, it wasn't that bad...

Before I forget, one of the reasons I love Flynn's daycare as much as I do is because of how they deal with this small person. This little person must be exhausting for the carers and I bet their days are long, but I have never seen this little person in time out, I've never seen this little person treated harshly, I have only ever seen this little person treated fairly and kindly and I it makes me feel good. If I was the mother of this little person, I'd really like to think my child would be treated just as fairly.

How do you deal with situations like this? The challenging ones you wish would just disappear.

Happy Monday!

2011-08-15T08:00:00.000+10:00

I love Mondays! It is me, Buddy Jim and Ruby and we get to make Mondays awesome!

Buddy Jim is so so so great. I love how much fun he can have in our backyard with the same stuff over and over again.

This little ride on car came over the fence from our neighbour (remember my cheerleader?) via her 5 grandkids. It sings some really irritating song in an even more irritating American accent. He was riding madly around the backyard until he pulled up "at the servo" to "get some fuel".

His dad has left him a message on the blackboard in the cubby.

He loves the slide on his cubby but it's a bit big, a bit high and a bit too fast for him still.

He clings to the side for ages working up the courage to slide down, and even then, only if you promise to catch him. "Catch me, Mummy?".

He loves pretending to be a tiger...

...before stopping to smell the flowers. A pointless task in a tropical garden, we really don't have many flowers and the ones we do have aren't worth smelling! (They look so great though! These little ones are only about a cm across each little set of 4 petals!)

He would be happy to play in this sandpit all day, every day.

Yep, Buddy Jim is just great. I love Mondays. Have a happy Monday!

Present

2011-08-11T19:59:00.006+10:00

It's been a long few weeks in our house. Short fuses, not enough sleep, a winter that just won't stop and a house that is only standing because there is so much stuff just lying around it's propping up the walls. I was dreading Monday before Sunday was even over.

You know what though? I kicked Monday's arse. There was painting, playdough, drawing, cooking, grocery shopping and a trip to the baker, butcher and Spotlight and I had dinner cooked, bread and butter pudding in the oven to use up all the random pieces of stale bread, both kids and myself bathed by the time my Mr arrived home an hour late.

The only difference between this Monday and the one before was my attitude. I took deep breaths when Buddy Jim 'helped' me fold the towels (they were already folded, about to be put away before he dumped them on the floor to have his turn of fold
ing them); I gave in and left the piles washing where they were; we did the shopping Buddy Jim's way (it involves towers and being buried by fresh produce); but the most important part - I was present all day long. I listened to what Buddy Jim was saying, both with his words and his actions. I reminded myself that Ruby was not a newborn any more and that I could probably put her down and she would be ok - turns out she has been dying to go nuts on a play mat. I remembered that my husband is an adult who can look after himself, but coming home to happy house couldn't hurt things.

Monday was great, but it's made the rest of so much easier, pleasant and just plain great. With a capital awesome.

In other news though, I'm fairly certain Buddy Jim thinks 'the Dummy Fairy' is a bitch. With a capital give me my freakin dummies back. (Long story, it was about bloody time.)

Another Lesson

2011-08-02T12:55:00.003+10:00

This poor child's mother forgot to check the day care bag before he left on Friday, and after a run in with the blahblah (Buddy Jim speak for bubbler/drink trough), he was left with no dry shorts. Luckily, his wonderful, beautiful carers found these for him to wear, lest he be left shortless.

I love them. And their sense of humour.

ps-for the record, Buddy Jim loved these overalls.

pps-he came home today wearing a pair of girls shorts. Clearly I have not learnt my lesson.

Make sure your child has clean clothes in case of emergency.

Lessons

2011-08-02T11:48:00.005+10:00

Did you know, Ruby Jane is 12 weeks old already? NO? Of course you don't. That's a trivial, insignificant detail that is only of importance to me, and occasionally her dad if I get him at the right time and he can feign interest in such statistics. (His ears are really just waiting for me to utter those magic words.. "Why don't you take her to Bunnings?". It's like Spotlight for men folk.)

I remember my dad telling me once that I had always been independent and with a mix of sadness and pride he finished with, "...even when you were a baby". I never got it until Ruby joined our family, the sadness bit I mean. Buddy Jim was, and sometimes still is, my velcro baby. He had to be stuck to one of us, usually me, until he was about 18 months. He slept with us, I wore him everywhere and starting day care, necessitated by me having to return to work, was traumatic for everyone; me, him, his father, the carers. Ruby though, Ruby is Miss Independent. She is often more happy to be left alone to go to sleep than have one of us help her, she doesn't really feed for comfort, she gets mighty pissed in the car seat - she hates being restrained! - and if she is awake, you can put her down somewhere and leave her to her own devices (these include, but are not limited to, staring at the ceiling, looking out the window at the leaves, finding shadows or watching a slow, lazy, twirling silver fan.)

I get what my dad meant that day now. It makes me sad sometimes that Ruby is much happier to do things her own way without me interfering. You know your babies are only yours for a short time and your time with them is to guide them as best as you can because in a short few years their decisions and actions will be beyond your control and influence. I think my baby girl, with her independent nature, is the universe's way of gently nudging me again to remind me that my time with them as mine is short, so enjoy it.

Confession, a follow up.

2011-07-26T14:24:00.005+10:00

I was SO determined to do something just with Buddy Jim on Saturday, just the 2 of us. He really loves the song Three Little Speckled Frogs so I decided we'd go into town to the craft shop to buy some felt and sequins to make our 3 frogs, a log and pool. I was so excited and really looking forward to making them with him and showing him how to use them to sing the song.

It was a total bust.

He cried the whole time I was getting organised to go, he cried while I loaded him into the car and he screamed "I want my daddy!" as we waved goodbye and backed down the driveway. I figured, him being 2 and all, that once we were around the corner, he'd be fine, so I kept talking it up, "We're going to the craft shop! We'll make our own speckled frogs!" and started singing the song to him. It's a 20 minute drive into town and 10 minutes in, he was still miserable and asking to go to sleep and I figured I'd best turn around and go home. The whole point was to do something fun, just the 2 of us, but if he was miserable, was it still for him or was I just trying to make myself feel better?

We still haven't made it to the craft shop, but it turns out, he doesn't need a big deal, he's been just as happy to help me do the dishes, hang out washing, change the sheets. I truly believe that kids don't need lots of stuff from you, they just want you, but I've just realised the same goes for the time you give them. It doesn't have to be a big deal, it just has to be real, it just has to be you.

He's 2. I always thought it would be my job to teach him, I never realised just how much he'd teach me in return.

Crafting a life.

2011-07-25T08:00:00.001+10:00

I'm really struggling to achieve anything at the moment. I feel like I am running in circles and going nowhere fast. At the end of each day, I am grateful if I remembered to feed my child before he passed out from starvation and high five-ing myself if I had a shower without someone screaming for me. I feel like I have a to-do list about 86 pages long and I can't seem to prioritise what needs to happen first.

One of the things I've been working on this last week is designing a new logo for myself. I have ZERO design skills, the last time I took an art class was Year 8 and I was terrible, I can make a mean title using WordArt in Word and that is about the extent of my skills. But I've been listening to so many podcasts from Sister Diane at CraftyPod of late and they have really clarified and cemented my idea of art/craft/making. Basically it can be put as simply as crafting a life. For me, it's everything. How I choose to live my life, how we choose to parent, how our family functions, is craft. It's the act of making. With this, I came to realise that I could make myself a new logo. It might not be great, it will probably look like what it is - a logo that someone armed with a 30 day trial copy of Photoshop and some wicked googling skills could put together - but it will be mine, that I made and I think I'm going to love it a whole lot more than the one I paid someone a little bit of money for, the one that I've never really loved and only ever seen as adequate.

So. This week's goal; Mindful parenting and Logo Design for Amateurs.

Confession

2011-07-22T20:33:00.003+10:00

Today was just an ordinary day. Just me, the kids and a big empty day ahead of us. Groceries needed to be done and we had friends to visit. Ruby was being a newborn and Buddy Jim was being a toddler. Or so I thought.

Cars would be zooming around the floor one minute and flying through the air the next as he threw them. Blocks would be built into towers and then scattered with dissatisfaction. That's normal for a toddler, right?

We went grocery shopping and he was wonderful and helpful.

We went to visit friends and he was not so wonderful or helpful. Everything was "mine"; toys were thrown and ride on cars were rammed into everyone and everything. There was jumping on the couch and general bossiness. None of these things are what I am used to with my son! The final straw was the snatching of a toy off the little boy we were visiting and the throwing of said toy out the back door. It was so deliberate and determined and I was mortified. It had been an hour and a half of not stop unpleasantness so I packed us up and we left. The unpleasantness and general naughtiness continued until bedtime.

For the first time in a long time, I got to read him his stories before bed and I realised, I didn't have a naughty toddler today, I had a little boy who has been so so good for so long and so patient with all of us and now he's had enough. When Ruby first came home, I was so aware of making time for him, but somehow, over the last 11 weeks, things have morphed so that when Ruby is sleeping washing gets done, dishes get done, things get packed up and put away and I honestly can't remember the last time I made an effort to do something with him, just for him. A conversation with him (I was so amazed at how much he could articulate!) confirmed that he really was just sad and he could tell me all the things that had happened today that made him sad, and they were all things that the adults in his life that he loves, had said or done to him. A stern word here, a toy removed there. All of those things were necessary, just because he didn't like them doesn't mean those things should not have happened, but to see them from his point of view made me realise I need to see more from his point of view. I feel I've always been good at doing that for Buddy Jim, but I've let him down over the last few weeks and I don't feel good about that. Once upon a time, I'd have beaten myself up over that, but these days, I can see those feelings of guilt for what they are; A nudge to remind me that yeah, I have gotten a bit off track with how I want to parent - with love, attention and mindfulness - so I need to choose to steer back to where I want to be.

I've felt the guilt, acknowledged the guilt and now I'm letting go of the guilt. Tomorrow, and every day, I will find something to do with Buddy Jim, just for Buddy Jim. He is so awesome, so great, so loving, and I never want him to lose that.

{almost} Wordless Wednesday

2011-07-20T07:16:00.003+10:00

Yes please, this again.

Not to go on about it...

2011-07-19T08:00:00.002+10:00

... but just in case you're thinking about Christmas now, check out this blog post. It's by Pam Harris, Sister Diane from CraftyPod's, mum. It's all about organising yourself for Christmas to make the most of it. You might be a Christmas hater, that's ok, my Mr is a total Scrooge because for him, Christmas always revolved around money and presents and buy buy buy and he hates it. After 8 years, I still can't rid him of that Pavlovian response to the word Christmas, but he's getting better.

Anyway, as I was saying, you might be a Christmas hater, but if, like me, you want to squeeze every last drop of fun, food, joy, happiness, creativeness and love out of Christmas, go read this post. It'll take you 5 minutes and I promise it'll be worth it.

I don't want my kids to think Christmas is all about the stuff. I want my kids to grow up looking forward to the traditions Christmas brings, the celebrating with family, the making, creating, eating, sharing and joy that comes with those traditions. Planning and making time to create those traditions and to nurture them is important to me, because like I said yesterday, the end of the year is so crazy nuts for me that I blink and it's all over and all the things I wanted to do never happened.

One last thing, pretend this calendar says December, not May, take away the buttons, add pockets and *poof* Advent calendar. It's been added to my list of things to make. I don't know what will go in the pockets yet but I have about 4 and a half months to work it out.

Image Source

Christmas

2011-07-18T08:00:00.005+10:00

Image Source

I know. I totally just swore. I know it's only July, but I'm planning, ok?

I always intend on having a handmade Christmas. Mostly though, I just have to settle for the fact that I cooked a meal on Christmas day because suddenly my good intentions somehow drifted into being the week before Christmas and I'm lucky to plan grocery shopping let alone a slew of handmade gifts. Last year I was like, so totally organised, and I made a Christmas Cake (and it was so effing good, it hurts to think about it) in November and managed to keep it stowed away for a whole month before cracking it out when my parents arrived to celebrate with us.

This year though, I will do it! I will have a handmade Christmas!

I've already ordered fabric for some things I have in mind for my mum and many (ok, 3) sisters in law. I have ideas for my bro and dad - it involves food, get excited you two! - but absolutely no idea what to do for my Mr. He likes plants. I can't make those. Him I am still working on.

Buddy Jim and Ruby Jane have the most awesome of ideas brewing for them, though! Ones that I had best start on sooner rather than later or else they won't be done in time. Buddy Jim has just developed an intense love of cars and brooming them places. He also needs a better and bigger mat on his floor ( I made him one using this pattern in red and navy and whales but it was the first thing I made with my new machine and sewed the ENTIRE thing before I realised that my 1/4" foot was only 1/4" if I adjusted the setting of the needle off the default centre setting. It's about a third of the size it should be!). So for him, the list starts with a new quilt/floor mat that has roads and paths for brooming.

He also loves cooking, real and pretend. I'd love to make him a little wooden stove with knobs that turn and doors that open. My husband is a carpenter so whenever it comes to building things I don't get a look in and when I first mentioned making an oven he went out and found some scraps to bring home to start building one. There were words. Perhaps hysterical and over the top but the general gist was, Hold your horses on this one, Sunshine, it's all mine! I will pick your brain, steal your tools and maybe (begrudgingly) ask for help, but this is mine to do!

Then I figured if I was going to build a stove, then hell, I could build a dolls house while I was at it. I LOVED mine as a kid - my brother and I used to build things out of lego and put lego people in it - and although I first thought of it as something to make for Ruby, I know Buddy Jim will get stacks of use out of it while she grows into it (for the next 2 years!).

I can't say I'm entirely confident of pulling any of these things off but I guess that's where a quick unpick and a carpenter husband will come in handy!

The gifts aren't the only thing I'm planning, but I love Christmas, and they give me an excuse to make for the sake of making and plan for the sake of Christmas. And that makes me happy.

Mess

2011-07-14T08:00:00.000+10:00

You can always tell how productive I've been by the mess. Mess means I've been making. Tidy means I've been procrastinating.

It's a cycle though, because now the mess is no longer productive, it's stifling and it needs tidying. The trick is to do it quickly and not get distracted otherwise the day is gone, I have a lovely neat stack of fabric, the buttons are organised, the reels of cotton look like a rainbow and not a single thing has been done!

Messy or tidy, which one are you?
xo

Wordless Wednesday

2011-07-13T08:00:00.001+10:00

I love this.

2011-07-11T21:53:00.003+10:00

And while I am boring you with dull, uninteresting info, I love this skirt. Don't buy it for me though, it'd never fit. ;)

From here

A teeny tiny quilt Part 2

2011-07-11T21:41:00.004+10:00

The top is finished and I have spent a teeny tiny amount of time hand quilting it. I have photographic proof but my day - which alternated between being awesome with visits to and from friends and the mundaneness of grocery shopping and folding of washing - has prevented even looking at it today!

Off subject, when I went grocery shopping today, I had the choice of two punnets of strawberries for $6 or three packets of chocolate biscuits for $5. Go figure. Do you know what I bought? I'll give you a hint. There are no strawberries in my house.

And so we're clear, I know no one cares about my groceries, or the progress of the quilt, I'm just keepin' myself honest, Ruby will get to use this bitty quilt before it gets too hot again!

A teeny tiny quilt

2011-07-09T08:00:00.001+10:00

This quilt has a story. Well, don't they all? But this one is a long story.

Last year, I don't quite remember how, I ended up making bibs. It was just a few, six I think, to take with me to the markets. They sold. I made some more. They sold. I made even more. They kept selling and selling, there was a wholesale order for a stack of them in January. I made some more.

You get the idea.

One problem, I really really really dislike making them. They are fiddly and annoying to trace, cut, sew, trim, clip, turn, press, top stitch, add press studs. I like looking at a big stack of bibs, but I'm so not a fan of making them. And then I am left with all these little odd sized scraps that I don't know what to do with and throwing them is just so hideously wasteful.

This quilt fixes one half of the problem, and I've fixed the other. After I sell the stack of bibs I already have made, that's it, no more. There is more to all of this than just making a few dollars here and there. I have no attachment to the bibs, there was no intention to them, they just happened. The wet bags and wipe sets, while not glamorous, make me feel good. They are useful, they are practical, they are almost beyond a want and headed towards being a need.

I have so much to say about that idea but this post is about a quilt, a teeny tiny quilt for 1 (cute!) Ruby. Using some of the left over scraps, I trimmed the sides until I had a (teeny tiny) stack of pieces to quilt with.

I got this far

and have promised myself to finish it this weekend. I have a few more pieces that can be trimmed and some bamboo fleece to back it with. Mostly I am just hanging out to hand quilt it with some pink perle cotton I found at a craft shop today!

So there you go. A teeny tiny quilt for Ruby's lap in the pram and no more making of bibs. Hooray to Saturdays!

Birthday

2011-07-05T08:00:00.000+10:00

From Here

It's my birthday! Yay! Yay birthdays! I am really looking forward to today, there is nothing special going on, (well that's not true, some great friends are coming for both morning tea and afternoon tea), but I am looking forward to spending my birthday doing the exact same thing I do every other day. I feel really grateful that I get to wake up to 2 really really great kidlets and a supportive husband who is a brilliant father, every single morning. I think I just feel really lucky that I can spend my birthday doing the exact same thing that I do every day of the year and be just as happy as if I'd been given a truck load of gifts and waited on hand and foot.

No wait, I've got it. This is it:

I am just really freakin happy and content and glad that I get to feel like that on my birthday, just because, not because there is extra 'stuff' making me feel it.

Rusty's

2011-07-01T15:56:00.006+10:00

Rusty's. It's an awesome farmer's market in town. I've bored you with details about it before.

I met friends in town this morning for coffee and stopped by Rusty's for a quick look while waiting for them. If ~~you~~ I don't go armed with a list it gets dangerous and I come home with 6 kilos of purple sweet potato, a kilo tub of ricotta and a dozen bunches of herbs and am always confused about how come I can never manage to buy anything I can make an actual meal with. Hence the list.

So because I didn't have a list today, I stuck to the safe corner where I knew I could buy safe in the knowledge that it was both needed and would be used. I came home with coffee from here, soap from here (Miss Ruby even got her very own special sweet baby soap) and chai tea from here.

My house smells awesome.

PS - I forgot to add, all producers/makers within 50ks of home! Nice!

2011-06-29T09:49:00.005+10:00

This is an old post. There has been talk in the twitterverse about caravans. I knew I'd blogged something, however brief, about our Bertha, but didn't realise it was photo-less! I am not a writer. I have a lot to say but I'm not a writer and I always feel like I'll cringe when I read back what I wrote a week ago or a month ago, but I couldn't say this any better than I did in December. So I am being a lazy blogger and totally copying it word for word, this time, with pictures.

Our first night in the van! The Grampians. That orange masking tape on the door? To keep the dust out. It was soon replaced by a really classy red check tea towel. It's still there now.

It must be the Christmas rush. Every morning I get up and over breakfast I find where it is I am sending out CloudLoveBaby's wipes or wallets or wet bags today. I like seeing where in the world they are going, but the thing I love most is when I send them out to Australia customers. My husband and I spent 14 months travelling around Australia in a hot, dusty, leaky, squeaky, old, old, old (she's now 28 years old!) caravan, way back when, when our biggest concern was whether we had enough money to buy a Farmer's Union iced coffee to share or how many times I would have to try and back in the caravan before I cracked it and, humiliated, hand the steering wheel over.

Streaky Bay, SA. We walked to the pub in town and took 3 hours to have 1 drink each and watched everyone else with a feeling of jealousy that they could afford more than 1!

These days, with grown up things to worry about, like careers, jobs, income, mortgages, bills, a toddler to care for and another to plan for, I love packing up a parcel to send somewhere we have been, somewhere we loved and every evening remembering things to share, things like "Remember that caravan park that was like being in an old man's garden gnome collection?" or "Rembember how hot it was in Kakadu? How hot and how AMAZING?" or "Remember how freaked out I got that night we slept on the side of the road between Port Headland and Broome?" and lately (it comes up every now and then) "When can we go again?!". Even back then, 5 years before our first son arrived, we spoke about all the places we were going to take our children, the caravan, with a bathroom, we'd buy (Me) or the 4WD and camper trailer (Him) that would let us go anywhere.

I have no idea where we were... Somewhere in SA approaching the Nullarbor.

Sitting at my sewing machine and making or staring at fabric and wondering or taking photos and listing, all of that stuff is great. But the parcels? Packing up the parcels and seeing where they are headed, I think that is my favourite part of all.

About to head off across! We travelled for 14 months and the Nullarbor is in my top 3 things/places we saw. It was amazing.

If a parcel has gone your way, thanks for being that little spark in my morning. xo

Kimba, SA, the sign says it all.

{almost} Wordless Wednesday

2011-06-29T08:00:00.000+10:00

Thursdays are library days.

tip-toe tip-toe...

2011-06-28T14:35:00.005+10:00

... is Buddy Jim's favourite mode of transport lately (and he announces, "Mum, I'm tipping", as he does it *swoon*).

But also what I do a lot to avoid upsetting people. Because of the nature of the online world, I know anyone can read anything I put out at any time, be it here, Facebook, my Etsy shop, my MadeIt shop, forums or other blogs I comment on, so I am always really guarded about what I say and how I say it, not because I am afraid to back myself in my beliefs but because I don't want to offend anyone or tread on anyone's toes. So I end up monitoring myself to such an extent that I am just don't sound like me any more.

This realisation has come as I've sat back in the last week or 2 and just taken some time to think. See, I really don't want to go back to work as a teacher next year and in my effort to avoid that, I have been pushing myself to make CloudLoveBaby not just successful but successful enough that it'll replace what I would earn as a teacher. It may or may not be possible by the time that deadline rolls around next year, but it was almost as though as soon as I started needing it to replace my income, everything just stopped. The emails, the sales, all of it! After 2 weeks of stressing on this, reflecting on this and just sitting with this, I realised;

I love to make. When I force it, it sucks and I don't love it.

I'd love to be able to just hide and do CloudLoveBaby from home but if I really want to avoid going back to work, I might need to get dressed and leave the house and head back to doing markets (which I really enjoy, so it's just the getting dressed part that is hard ;) ).

If I have to go back to work as a teacher, the sky will not cave in.

If I am going to make this work, I just have to be me. If you like it, you'll stay, if you don't, you'll move on, and that's ok!

That last one is a biggie.

So, no more tipping, mind your toes.

{almost} Wordless Wednesday

2011-06-22T08:26:00.002+10:00

I sew, Ruby sleeps, Buddy Jim builds.

I have a head!

2011-06-20T17:20:00.001+10:00

Hey look!

Over there -->

I have a head!

It's not a bib writing this blog.

Hooray!

Cheerleader

2011-06-16T08:00:00.002+10:00

Everyone needs one. Sometimes they're obvious, like your partner, your best friend, your mum. But sometimes they are not so obvious. It's taken me a while to realise, but I've just worked out I have a secret cheerleader. It's in the form of my 65 year old next door neighbour.

I load both kids into a borrowed pram of doom with flat tyres and limited steering and lug them into town and back. She says, "Good on you!".

I wrestle a load of laundry out the door while Buddy Jim screams "Go 'way, Lucy!" at the dog and the dog proceeds to put her sheep dog skills to use and rounds the child up, much to Buddy Jim's disgust. He's screaming, the dog is mental, the baby wakes up and still the laundry doesn't get hung out. She says, "Good on you!".

I load up a disgruntled Buddy Jim to send him to daycare, feeling as guilty as sin, and she says, "Good on you!".

I put Miss Ruby in the sling so I can dig with Buddy Jim in the sandpit and she says, "Good on you!".

We pick basil from the veggie patch to make pesto for a quick easy dinner and she says, "Good on you!".

None of these things are special or fantastic or need cheering. That's what makes it so great. It makes me want to be more of a cheerleader.

So whatever you do today,

Good on you!

Wordless Wednesday

2011-06-15T08:00:00.001+10:00

MadeIt Love + Power of Money

2011-06-11T11:48:00.009+10:00

I heart you card by Misiu on MadeIt

I love MadeIt.

It's handmade. Handmade is going to storm the world. Wanna know why? Because more and more, people are looking for quality, for uniqueness, to spend their money thoughtfully and consciously, to connect with the artist or maker. We are learning that our money has power that can be harnessed, no matter how much or how little you have. I vaguely touched on this notion here, but the idea was still forming in my head. I couldn't quite put it into words. I'm still not sure I can.

My husband is self employed in an industry that has been flailing and dying for 2 and a half years and isn't showing any signs of improving any time soon. I'm on maternity leave. There isn't a whole lot of cash to go round right now. So when we *do* spend money, we do it thoughtfully, we plan in advance and we buy quality over quantity. We have a few friends with babies due soon. A couple of years ago I would have left it til I was on my way to meet the new baby for the first time to swing past the shops and grab something cheapish, plasticky, impersonal and made in China, probably on a machine operated by an underpaid and undervalued worker. Another human. But now, when our disposable income has shrunk considerably, I tell you, I think a hell of a lot harder about how I use my money and the power it has. Would you rather spend your money and have it go to some nameless, faceless company, where your $5, $20, $60, $100 has no impact, or, would you rather spend your money by choosing an artist, a crafter, a maker where you know that $5, $20, $60, $100 is going to have a big impact?

Whether you have a little or a lot, think about the power you have and the choices you can make.

{almost} Wordless Wednesday

2011-06-08T09:18:00.003+10:00

Ruby has new shoes.

They are from here.

Adventures in baby wearing

2011-06-05T20:51:00.005+10:00

This is where Miss Ruby hangs out a lot of the day. She helps around the studio. She tells me what to do and when to do it.

Yeah, alright, I'm totally lying. She does nothing but sleep here all day. So far the only thing I've discovered that I can't do with Ruby sleeping here is drink a cup of tea. And I probably should stop eating tuna sandwiches while she's all tucked up because I keep having to pick it out of her hair...

Miss Ruby + Quilt

2011-05-27T21:19:00.004+10:00

This is Miss Ruby helping me out in the office the other day. She hung out on her quilt (the quilt I spent hours hand quilting while in labour, it was the most relaxing and comforting thing!) on the bench - she's not afraid of heights! - while I attempted to sew, but I couldn't sew, she was too cute with her elephant knees and grunty-crawling-yet-stationary-and-not-moving moves.

Brace yourself, I'm about to spam you with baby.

Did ya see the elephant knees?

PS - Here's a bonus one. Sleepy wrinkly feet! *swoon*

Busy.

2011-05-17T13:12:00.002+10:00

With these little people. Miss Ruby is 11 days old now, is beautiful, devine, fantastic, amazing. I'm excited to get back into sewing, making and CloudLoveBaby, but right now I am enjoying doing nothing but sitting on the couch cuddling Ruby. All.Day.Long. Reality strikes next week when my helpers (parents!) go home and Mr Cloud is back at work, so then I will worry about what to do when it is just me with Ruby and Buddy Jim, but right now, I don't have to put her down, so I'm not going to.

On the bench

2011-04-29T12:46:00.002+10:00

Lots has been going on this week thanks to some quiet time at home, hopefully this gorgeous Tiny Tip Top fabric will manage to turn itself into some bibs, wet bags and wipe cases before the end of the weekend/baby arrives.