Not wise, but beautiful.

On Saturday, I was rushed in to hospital in a lot of pain, feeling like I was miscarrying and saying shakily "but I'm REALLY SURE I'm not pregnant". I wasn't pregnant. I did have a kidney infection.

What you're supposed to do, when you have a kidney infection, is take the antibiotics you're given, take painkillers, and rest. The first point was easy enough. I'm not so "natural living" that I don't take medication for a good reason. However, Sunday was my thirtieth birthday and I had plans, so I sort of thought, "we'll just walk a *little* way, and I'll be fine!" I was fine, and the kids were SO enthusiastic, so we walked a bit further. By the time I realised I'd missed a dose of pain killers we'd walked past the half way point and were at least an hour and a half away from the car.

Oh but it was SUCH a beautiful day, and such beautiful surroundings, and such great company. And I don't regret it, not one little bit. I set back my recovery a bit, though, and I wouldn't say it's particularly wise to walk six miles when you're supposed to be on bed rest for a couple of days.









So, I had a memorable and wonderful birthday. I also feel slightly like I've been beaten up, even though I'm pretty sure the antibiotics have done their job and I'm no longer in pain (just sort of low level all over ache and extreme tiredness). Isn't life just full of curve balls?

Just a Week

The laptop broke, again. Talia kicked it off the armchair. This coincided with me wanting to spend the week pretty much knitting and watching Stargate, so you don't get a Seven Days post out of me this week. We spent one day at a Tesco home ed trip, followed by buying donuts from the bakery and finding a cool card game and some hippy kids clothes in a charity shop. The next day was mostly about the scooters and running up and down the hill at the park.

Then the weather turned damp and grey and cool, the air started to smell like Autumn, and we pretty much did painting, hot chocolate, lots of stories, and one entire day of the kids alternating between being sick and sleeping on the sofa (you would not believe how much tidying up I can get done when there is nowhere to sit down and knit).

Without Jenna in the house it is surprisingly quiet.

OK, not so surprising.

Morgan and Rowan get on much better when Jenna is here, so I thought they would be louder in compensation. We actually had a nice, sedate, week. My tidying of the bookshelves led to the rediscovery of form drawing and handwriting practice books. I set up Kerplunk at least thirty times (which then takes them about a tenth of the time to play that it took me to put up!) and read Elmer at least twenty times (Talia now recites large chunks of it by heart).

My Life In: the contents of my handbag

Here's my current bag - smaller and lighter than the giant mustard yellow one (which, much as I love it, is a little larger than necessary now that I'm rarely carrying cloth nappies around day to day).


I didn't pre-tidy the contents or sift out the junk, this is actually what was in my bag this morning when I came to grab my project bag out of the top.


Contents:
- One emergency nappy and a complete change of clothes for the newly-out-of-nappies Talia.
- Another pair of toddler socks, slightly too small for her.
- Three pairs of toddler pants.
- Two sets of babylegs (rainbow branded babylegs and a pair of cheap long socks with the foot cut out after Jenna wore them into holes).
- Half a packet of non-eco supermarket wipes, bought on holiday.
- A cloth shopping bag, my keys, wallet, and camera.
- Knitting project bag.
- Pacifica vanilla perfume.

- Rescue remedy.

- A large chunk of rose agate.

- Turquoise felted brooch for pinning up shawls.
- Cinnalou's glass bead bracelet.
- A few bits of general paper rubbish, gathered nature, some loose change.
- Plasters.
- Hair bobbles (three).
- Jenna's copy of "Wreck This Journal".
- Two of my large selection of notebooks; one journal I have not written in for at least three weeks and one scruffy general notebook with most of the pages missing and toddler scribbles on the front.
- A small yellow plastic Octonaut (Tunip) which Talia grabbed as soon as she saw it (hence, not pictured).

And inside the knitting project bag:

- The shawl I'm working on.
- Plastic pouch with interchangeable knitting needles, a crochet hook, needle gauge, and a couple of stitch holders.
- Small metal tin containing tape measure, scissors, sewing needles, thread, a couple of buttons, and a selection of stitch markers.

What do you always carry? :) (And, am I the only one who is totally incapable of clearing out the random paper bags, receipts, and occasional clothing tags? My wallet contained several money off coupons which were over three months out of date!)

(snippets of our normal)

Outside my window the grey sky is a blank slate, fresh from pouring heavy warm rain down upon us only moments ago. The hedge glistens with water droplets. Discarded clothes from the children's games lie damply on the muddy grass - more laundry for me! The contorted willow is finally (and blessedly) coming back into leaf after being heavily eaten by tiny green caterpillars this Summer.

I am thankful for the lightness creeping back, for surviving periods of depression, for that returning feeling that I *will* be OK at some point in the future.

In the kitchen there are stacks of soup bowls from lunch, and baking trays dusty from the scones we made and devoured this afternoon. We haven't had tea yet; rice and mushroom curry from the takeaway is the ultimate comfort-food plan when Martin gets home from helping a friend to shift a new armchair across town.

I am wearing a hippy top that doesn't really fit me all that well any more, dark red with a tiny yellow and magenta floral print. And the orange patchwork skirt. Amber beads. Hair pulled back, as it so often is. I'm thinking about cutting it again, or dyeing it bright red, or *something*.

I am creating gradient dyes, mainly, right now. Some for the shop, and some for the shawl I'll be working on this week. I have averaged almost one small project a day this week.

I am going to an Attachment Parenting family picnic tomorrow. And a birthday party on Sunday. I so want to return to the commune in Liverpool one weekend soon, and keep discovering that somehow I have forgotten other things which I agreed to months ago. (More apologies to the play dates we apparently forgot about this month. My mind is so scattered lately.)

I am reading The Cuckoo's Calling. (Or I will be, when I get chance to do more than pick it up and move it from room to room with me.)

I am hoping... well I would say I am hoping for an early night, but as we still haven't had anything to eat this evening and the children are making elaborate paper collages all over the floor...

One of my favourite things is the smell of rain in Summer. Rich and fresh at the same time.

Around the house:
I actually put away some clean laundry today. It has only been sitting lying around on chairs and dressers for about two weeks. I have strange nightmares about the laundry pile chasing me; I can't pretend that I'm not fully aware what these mean.

There is a doll crib in the living room, tied with large looping bands of thin elastic from my sewing box. A doll appears to have her leg suspended in this cat's cradle of white bows. Earlier this was part of a game of hospitals.

Two playstation controllers trail across the floor - between the game of hospitals and the cutting-of-paper, Jenna and a friend were playing Sonic. Jenna gives characters in video games voices, and keeps up a constant stream of their imagined conversations.

A peek into my day:

   Another Simple Woman's Daybook.
(New Tshirt from Teefury. New Gallifreyan artwork from Chronix Gallery.)

House moving fun (No, not us)!

We helped Ash move to her new place over the weekend. Lots of carrying of boxes and visiting of furniture shops. It was so fun for me to be able to interfere be nosey help out. :)



Yes, um, this is Talia's new thing in the car - falling asleep holding on to her foot. She only does it when she's forward facing (so that we can fit people in all the seats, as her usual rear-facing seat is much wider). Toddlers are weird.



This is the pre-unpacking study. OK, craft room.

While Martin and Ash shifted the new book case from the shop to the flat, I walked the children around a pet shop.



Talia: "What dat frog?"
Me: "It's a bearded dragon."
Talia: "'Kay... Dat baby dwagon."

Jenna: "Look Tali, crickets!"
Talia: "Oh no, 'pider cryin!"

Outside the pet shop, Talia decided she needed to be naked. It's the first time in a while that she has tried to take off all her clothes in public - it used to be a really regular occurance and meant we rarely ventured out of the house unless I had an extra adult. Whilst people tend to be amusedly tolerant of a toddler wearing nothing but a nappy in hot weather, in Winter it's frowned upon (as well as plain inadvisable), and she was fully capable of unpoppering nappies too if the mood took her. Months and months of battling over clothes any time I was brave enough to take them all out on my own. Yeah.



Anyhow as you can see, sympathetic as always, I took a picture as evidence that life with toddlers is sometimes just like this. (I had just told her, "Dress stays on!" hence the cross face! I then distracted her from stripping by showing her the picture, which amused her for long enough to get her back in the car. "Look, pic-cha mee!")

I think I forgot any possible point I was making, so I'll leave it at that! Talia is sitting on my lap as I type, and is admiring the pictures again most sweetly. She just told me, "Taya dress ON." So she obviously remembers that brief afternoon disagreement!

changing your mind is a sign of growth - or something

I took some time reading some of my archive recently (no no please don't, come back here one minute!) and, yeah. Eight years is a long time, huh? I recently heard something that totally applies: "If you don't believe something now which ten years ago you would have considered heresy, you're not growing." I rather agree. (Exceptions made for those of you who were perfect to start with, obviously. ;) ) One thing in particular made me feel a little sad. It really brought back to me how stressful I found life with Jenna when she was around three or four years old - how much conflict there was and how much pressure I felt to Get it All Right All the Time. How much I wanted to parent perfectly (and demonstrate it by perfecting this daughter of mine).

How long it took me to really truly accept that children are PEOPLE, not products.

I'm not going to share any "before pictures" but they're all still there, publicly accessible and transparent. The tag "discipline" yields a mess of thorns, and the odd rose. But here is the year I started to feel confident, and make choices that honoured my children as fully human. It makes almost a progression - rules to principles. Even as I wrote this post explaining how to "do" gentle discipline, I was starting to leave behind thoughts about how to get kids to do what I wanted in favour of thoughts about how to simply live together. Later, I actually started to let go as I recognised coercion for what it was doing to our relationships.

And now? Well, I expend more energy in trying to find ways to cooperate and connect. I work more on me and less on other people. I change the circumstances where I can rather than the person, and see my children actually more easily accepting when the world simply will not accomodate their wishes anyway. I hold my own ideas more loosely, and recognise that my children are not me (nor are they mine to shape and control - only to advise, support, help, and protect).

I reckon I still have unpicking and unlearning to do. I still struggle with feeling like I'm not enough (or like it would be so much easier to not take into account the feelings and needs of all these other people I live with). Oh there are days that are just too hard - but lots of days when it flows easily, too. Leaving behind control in favour of love feels good. I've had two more four year olds since then, and few of the same power struggles.

Here's to the next six years of learning and growing, then!

A list of things I have barely started:

I have a shiny new book which I have not made time to start. I enjoyed the previous two in the series, and still it sits here waiting for me to pick it up.

And I am blatantly still *not* working on Jenna's Low Tide (though I have finally made more than a passing attempt at starting: look! One Whole Pattern Repeat!)...

I am utterly failing to plan meals or fun activities. If we are still having adventures, it is largely because I don't prevent them rather than because I'm doing well at facilitating. And I am also not really making a start on tidying up (um, ever).

If there is a prize for PMT related crying, not complaining about listening to Christmas carols on repeat in May, wondering when a difficult-feeling month becomes depression (again) and what to do about it, general complaints about being tired (whilst not doing anything about it at all), and answering bizarre questions, often at length (about Minecraft, politics, Literature, Star Trek, how to spell "incredible", where diamonds come from, and why Pluto isn't a planet)... I should probably win something. Is it acceptable to make our own parenting medals, do you think?

Right, that's it, I'm awarding myself the Survived This Month With Humour badge AND the Children Thriving Anyway badge.

Spontaneous

Spontaneous adventures are, um, tricky with four small children. It isn't exactly easy to get us all out of the door, let alone carrying everything we need to spend long out of the house. When I think of our freedom of movement, I remember the days of one (or two) children with slight wistfulness!

After booking our train tickets, I set a very early alarm, packed the change bag with spare clothes, sunglasses, hats, snacks, drinks, and phone. A bag of swim gear - and waterproof coats just in case. Then persuaded the children to bed with promises of a surprise in the morning. So it began, at six in the morning, with me as nervous as can be!

These guys *love* surprises, so when we were dropped at the station they had no idea where we were going - or even that we were getting on a train. *so much squeeing*

For over an hour I had excited children saying, "Train! Horse! Tree!" at everything we went past. Eventually, the train pulled in at Boston, and the children all shouted, "ASHLEIGH!" They had just, moments before, guessed that we were going to the sea and that Ash would be joining us ("are you *sure* you want me to tell you if your guess is right?" haha).



The day itself was beautiful - warm, peaceful, fun, interesting. Rowan did some stomping when Talia was asleep on the towel she wanted. The sound of the sea and snuggles with my sweet baby, sand in her hair, time to read a book. Tiny blackbirds hopped almost onto Morgan's foot, and squabbled over any chips we dropped. Ash found a crab shell for us to examine. Morgan got a bit invested in walking the route she had planned, when everyone else wanted to go a different way. I got annoyed with them all bickering and threatened no ice-cream if they wouldn't just come to a bloody agreement (fail) but I did get a sweet apology later after I had calmed down and said that of course we would still get ice cream.









Transferring sand from one spade to another was Talia's favourite game of the day!



Talia crawled around some sculptures and got completely filthy (I had to wash her in the station toilets). Our train home was cancelled and we ended up buying cheap bread rolls and sausages for our tea.

By the time we finally got on a train, the children were exhausted, and decided to sit under the table. Lucky us, we had the most crotchetty rude conductor ever, who got aggressive when asked to back up his assertion that my children would die if they didn't sit upright in their seats (and threatened to put us off the train if I let them leave their seats for any reason when I again calmly asked him for statistics): I'd like to think the other passengers might have also complained about him, because they then had to put up with Rowan screaming for an hour when I wouldn't let her get down rather than risk him actually putting us off). Pony-distraction to the rescue (ish).



When we got in I had a good cry on hubby, and then cuddled Roo to sleep (who had totally forgiven me, and chatted all evening about jumping in the sea and the little birds who ate Tali's dinner).

I'd do it all again in a heartbeat though. Well, maybe in a couple of months...

(Some) Days (a not very sparkly post)

When I want to take pictures, sometimes it's because I see something overwhelmingly lovely in our ordinary moments or in our adventures. More often, the habit of picking up the camera regularly pushes me to go and FIND something sparkly. It's a way of documenting gratitudes. My creative self saying, look around you - on each and every average and extraordinary day - THERE IS MAGIC HERE.

This week hasn't felt particularly anything-much. It has had its ordinary ups and downs. I just haven't picked up the camera and gone looking for the beautiful and the magical. I hadn't even realised until I came to write this post. Resolving to take more pictures this week (I don't think that will be too difficult, as we have *lots* of adventures planned)! Anyhow. Not seven days, but some pictures from my week.













1. I do love how these two snuggle up together, each doing their own thing!
2. Soft play
3. A stray bluebell
4. I am NOT sleepy, really I'm not. (I am.)
5. Mrs Chickens
6. Snuggly

Bluebell Woods (and unrelated words)

The year is really flying. The words are coming slowly, mind like treacle, the tiredness constant. So much *everything*. I want to write about the changing seasons and the garden, projects and ideas, the children and how they are growing, everything. Perhaps I'm just too busy living it - or perhaps more that the wakeful toddler is getting past the point of "just a phase" and on to a new level of maternal sleep deprivation. Breathe. Follow the joy. Love. Repeat.

Good Enough

When I'm succeeding with my small business, I know about it. I get feedback from customers, and people want to stop by and tell me that my new uploads are gorgeous, or that the rainbows on my line made them smile. I have sales, I can point at the numbers and say, "See, I'm doing well!" I have a big stack of orders and assorted hand dyed yarn, and I can see where I am up to, and where all the hours went, and there is a provable amount of work "done".

Mothering isn't like that. Unschooling isn't like that. Being a stay at home parent isn't like that.

There's no set of easy-to-measure standards. Nothing I can point to as evidence that any work actually got done. Nothing is ever completed. Getting it right is an exactingly high hurdle which even on my best day I catch with a foot on the way over; if there *is* such a thing as a perfect parent I've never met one. I've met a lot of brilliant parents. A lot of people I would call my role models. A lot of people better than me in some areas, and worse in others (if it were a competition, which it isn't).

If I could only say for sure, at the end of each day, that I did enough. Something always gives. Is it better to shout and apologise once or twice, and yet make cupcakes and help with a science experiment and breastfeed on cue and patiently wait out an hour long screaming fit? Or is it better to sink into disengaged, get on with my own thing and not facilitate well but also not yell even once? Or is it better to have a "great day" then melt down the moment another adult comes into view, and potentially have a little one overhear me wail that I can't do it - am not good enough - not cut out for this?

Is there a scale, a degree of "good enough"?

This is where the rubber hits the road, in a life with ideals. When you are faced with choosing - which ideal is more important, what internal resources do you have left at eleven o'clock at night when someone isn't sleeping and someone else comes in to say they had a scary dream? When you want to know, am I done yet? Did I do enough today?

It isn't always like this. It isn't always an uphill climb.

Even when it's beautiful, and gloriously fun, and interesting, (and the light and the love and the peace are always there to be found, somehow) - there is still no end in sight, no way to say, "I KNOW I'm getting it right." Just, on those days, I don't usually ask the question. I can feel it, palpably, in the air, there is a flow - a sense of contentment.

If I take the happiness of my children as my ultimate goal, and my measuring stick, what kind of a mother am I when they are not happy - when life throws them things they would rather not deal with, when they have difficulty coming to an agreement, when they are ill or tired? Am I a failure if they are not happy? What kind of ratio is still within the limits of acceptable mothering? Every other measurement comes with its own drawbacks, and many are even more ephemeral and inconsistent and indefineable than simple happiness.

I would love to finish this rambling with an answer; easy, comforting, maybe a little over-simplified. I would like to comfort myself. My children are bright and busy, curious and usually healthy, mostly happy, learning all the time. I like them. I love them. And some days leave me empty, poured out, spent. The more tired I am, the more low, the more I try to wrap words around this experience - the more I long to understand it, and be understood. The harder I try the more words fall short.

I want to be enough. I want to be enough.

Is that enough?

Two weeks-ish: darker days at home

1. Reading
2. Super baby
3. LOOK MUMMA!
4. Sensory play
5. Poorly baby
6. Sorting shells (I can explain neither why she looks so miffed about it nor the sticky state of the table top she is sitting on!)













7. Emergency chocolate raspberry cake
8. Toddley sweetness
9. Mandala puzzle by Morgan
10. New dyeing challenges
11. Random acts of kindness - presents for me!
12. Pirate ship Rowan

We have all been ill and grumpy and tired and blah. The days are long and grey, and we have been mostly house bound for weeks at a time. There is always some light, something worth documenting, even if some weeks that's colourful yarn more often than picklesome mess-making children (yesterday they accidentally ruined three hours' work, and I did full-blown screaming). I want to share all that, all the little ups and downs and the normality and the striving and the failing and the trying again. I just haven't much felt like documenting anything at all, I have not felt the urge to write.

I'm back. I'm leaving a bit of a gap, and just starting from today. Today there are friends over to play, and wrapping presents, and popcorn all over the floor (again), and stripy rainbow tights, and shortbread, and dressing up, and Smurfs, and washi tape, and leaf poems. It is what it is. We're looking forwards. Spring is just around the corner.