A Year

This one was so new, at the start of my year.


We were still figuring each other out.  We still are.


It has been a year of newness and colour, of finding our feet and also dancing together.  It has been harder and easier than I could have predicted.  We have all done so much growing.  Especially me.






Indoors and out, in every season.  This is one of the things I want to carry from this year - although our rhythms have been so altered and confused, we have deeply lived need for, and love of, fresh air.














Lovely lovely daughters, brave and loving and funny and smart.  There have been so many more times of friction and the growing pains of a new sibling in the mix.  If I could do without those bits of our year, oh I think I would!










This is my overall picture of my daughters and who they are right now: lively curiosity itself.  A bundle of whats and whys and running and jumping and reading - and reading.  Reading for pleasure, another new thing this year for my Jenna-girl.  Mama's heart is warmed.


A little one has weaned from breastfeeding, and adjusted to not being so very much the baby.  Snuggly toddler, so very sensitive to touch still.  When I catch her looking outwards, it takes my breath a little.
















We two fire types are collaborating more and jostling for the victory less.








I keep thinking that this year has just gone *nowhere*, so much of the same and so much work poured in to loving and raising and feeding and making ends meet, and where has it all gone?  All of it has gone into the growing of a family.  Growing up, and growing together, and honouring all of the spaces between us for breathing.

I am fine with having another year that is just as hard, so long as it is just as filled with these precious people, this awesome family of mine.

Seven Days - Christmas

1.  Sparkly rainbow sock yarn
2.  Christmas pyjamas on Christmas eve
3.  Mess and chaos (see the rainbow tutu Ash got us from Washed Up Family?!)
4.  Jenna in her MamaPixie cloak, which has barely been taken off
5.  Sunshine baby, even with a cold
6.  Moss
7.  Cables

Christmassing

Our Christmas was truly beautiful and special.  My darling little people are having an exciting week, and somehow it never seems to matter that things don't go entirely to plan.



A half hour of the toddler screaming for no reason that anyone can fathom is a well-known tradition, and when the tired frustration passed she fell asleep in my arms.  We are all about the traditions here on Christmas day.  ;)



All of my babies are happy and well today.  Which means I, in turn, am feeling a whole lot better.  A couple of nights of no sleep have caught up with me, and I have no intention of getting out of my pjs today - or in fact doing anything more taxing than making soup from leftovers and reading a bit more.  Oh for a bit more sleep now that the teeny ones are their usual cheery selves...

Yarn Along - Boxing Day blues

This tiny toddler who so frequently is just too busy to let me love her, she is having a miserable sleepy Christmas.  They all had the cold and sick bug combination a week or two ago.  Then a week of first one then another being so tired and sad all day.  With the lingering cough, just for good measure.  Talia has had three days now of just wanting to sleep in arms.  Today, we can raise a smile, and she wants to toddle around a bit again.  Still, this is where Talia and I spent most of our day:

In bed, with a stack of fabulous Christmas gifts to read.

We ventured out for a walk in the rain with my mum, which really ended up not being much of a walk at all as the paths were all flooded and the rain was still coming down.  A cuppa, and some different adult arms to cradle little miss sadness for a while.  And this one feeling too miserable to even bother fighting to remove her hood!


Attempt to get out of the house, not much of a success, but at least I saw something other than my house today.




I'm finally past halfway on the cable and lace of Jenna's foraging hoodie.  I know she was forewarned that it would be finished after Christmas, but yesterday I started feeling a mite guilty for spending so much more time on commissions than on the gift she asked for.  I reckon it'll be done in the next few days, just to assuage what maternal guilt can be soothed at this late stage.  I'm feeling a heck of a lot less zen now that Christmas day itself is actually past and life on the other side has to resume its normal course...

And mothering this little ill one, not an experience which is exactly guilt-free for me.

A lot of breastfeeding, at least two warm baths a day, and lots of cuddles...  I'm starting to worry about her temperature rarely coming down for long; it isn't panic-inducingly high, just high enough for her forehead to feel constantly slightly too warm.  Maybe tomorrow this thing will finally break.  If not, it will be time to resort to paracetamol.  My trust in self-healing lasts just up to a certain point and no further, and it's sufficiently sad to see such a baby feeling so rotten that I start to doubt my instincts.  Well, we'll see what the morning brings.

The evening before...

And tomorrow will bring Christmas day, more celebrations; a day of gratitude and joy and those family customs which inculcate each.  Finally these squirmy excited ones have settled to sleep, full of grandma's scones and dressed in new pyjamas.


Just time enough for a last minute sweep round to set everything in readiness.  The giddy delight of preparing surprises and the child-like wonder as we sit and giggle together over the ritual of wrapping things in silks, filling stockings, and preparing breakfast for the morning.



Divine Storyteller, not for you pious platitudes, but love beyond imagining for the stories of each and all. Daily, busy, ordinariness. Tell all who need to hear this day, of the old old story of your love for us in every detail of our lives. As the gift is given secretly in quiet of night, bless us all with the surprise of your nearness.
[From The Celtic Wheel of the Year]

Week in Pictures - photographic play - light

1.  Dark cinema interior
2.  Bright white sparkly undyed sock yarn
3.  Poor little lamby
4.  Jenna and her tree
5.  Rowan making a little biscuit house
6.  Morning prayer time