Simply Doing

Well, what have we been up to the last couple of days? Hmm, well yesterday afternoon was pretty much a disaster. Tali cried solidly for two hours again, and I cried too at one point, and eventually shouted at her to stop it (!) and she peed on me, laughed, and finally fell asleep in my arms. Right. 

There are times now when the crying is just overwhelming, and it physically hurts to hear her so unhappy and be able to do nothing but be there for her.  It's hard to let myself off that emotional hook; that if she is crying I must be failing to meet her needs somehow.  All that, "AP babies don't cry" nonsense.  I sit there and stroke her head and repeat over and over to myself "love is enough, love is enough".  That was one hell of an afternoon, anyway, but at least she went to sleep happy!

The Season Table got a Spring update yesterday.  This makes me smile.
I did a bit of knitting too, on Tali's Pebble.

Jenna played reading eggs, wrote her own "spy language", translated a page of pig pen code after I showed her how that one works, and made a necklace for a friend.  And here was me having a panic last month that she wasn't often interested in reading or writing activites and resisted anything I suggested like I was offering her poison...

Babywearing mini so mama could make tea a bit more easily...
Then today we headed out to the museum.

I sorted my kitchen shelves out. :)  I refuse to show you a picture of how badly they needed cleaning.

We also finally had some tax credits for Talia, which meant treats this week! New shoes, rainbow tights, cusinaire rods, mini tea set, and Waldorf alphabet cards. You wouldn't believe how long we've been waiting to get some of those things!

We did try to get Jenna shoes recently, but she vetoed every sensible option and we ended up with a cheap too-big pair of gold suede boots that she fell in love with.  It's such a relief to have nice practical shoes for her now!  And they were on sale too, Mountain Warehouse, £7.50.  Seriously happy.

I think we're going to end up having a sofa day tomorrow though - by the time we got home from town today Jenna was complaining of a headache and feeling tired and hot, and since then the three little ones have all developed runny noses.  Looks like another cold, and another couple of quiet days for us while they recover.  At least it's now warm enough for us to still get some fresh air while they're ill.  And who knows, maybe this will just be a day or so...

Knitting and Reading

I haven't been making a huge amount recently, but I have finished these. Garland that *still* needs blocking -

And a nice light springy swing cardi.

I'm going to make a simple little granny square bonnet and a nice spring-coloured pebble next. I've chosen yarn! It's a beautiful soft pastel rainbow, acrylic-y but nice James C Brett Passion. :)

As for reading... I finished Fire (Kristin Cashore) and didn't like it quite so much as Graceling, the main character was a bit too nice... And I've read the rest of the Michelle Paver series too, which *did* live up to the promise of the first book - more for my must-get-for-Jenna list! Then:

Thankyou so much for recommending these! A Song of Ice and Fire series, and this is book, um, four? In a week. Honestly. They're really good. Not *nice* at all, but very very good. Oh and I borrowed a book of knitting patterns from the library that might help me use up some of that basket of colourful woolyness. :)

Busy Days

Yesterday we went to Story Time at the library, then straight on to Sling Meet where we had dinner, before picking up some shopping on our way to Emma's house. Martin literally dropped us off at the door before going to work, so the girls and I took a taxi home just in time to make tea. Yes, so, a busy day. Martin found it very stressful, whereas I really enjoyed it and found myself not getting nearly so stressed with the children as I often do in town! I got this picture of the children just before our taxi came, all around Em's dining table using up her lovely oil pastels. :)
How happy Connor was to see them! It was so gratifying to arrive to his cheeky little smiles. :) Today we spent the day at Wollaton Hall. Ah, I'll stop wittering on and let the pictures tell the story.
 Tali always sleeps so peacefully in the sling on her Daddy. *jealous*
Morgan's drawing of a grass snake. :) They all took their journals again and drew some of the interesting random natural history exhibits in the big glass cases.
 Then outside to walk... This may be my favourite picture in a while...
That's how *I* have to carry the baby. She will NOT go in a sling for me, and only stops howling when I face her outwards and bounce her. I feel like a right idiot, carrying my tiny newborn baby around town like this, wearing a sling she will not tolerate for anything.
 By the lake we stop for little boo to have her own little picnic...
 As you can see, Rowan was very tired by then! It felt like a long long trek back to the car.
Then pancakes and toffee apple cheesecake for tea - not so healthy but very nice! :)

 OK, so *limited* wittering... ;)

 Tomorrow is going to be pretty mad as well, Wednesday usually is as it's swim day and the children are even hungrier than usual. We tend to feed them their first lunch at 11am, then a picnic when we get out of the swimming baths at about 2pm, and their normal (large) snack at 4pm! I make a whole loaf of sandwiches and pack a flask of smoothie and some fruit and biscuits and things for our picnic. And they're only very little now, I can just imagine how much food they will eat in ten years time!

 I think the crazy-busy thing is me attempting to compensate for the usual slump at this time of year... I will drag us into Spring by hook or by crook! I'm still surprised how much energy I have right now, but I'm not going to complain. It's unusual for me, but very good. I just hope I don't burnt out, or burn any of the family out, on the manic busy-ness...

Spring in the air

The snowdrops in the churchyard are in full flower, as we take the narrow alley to the park on a Sunday afternoon.

Tali is pretty tired after Church, and would prefer to go home, but she puts up with nursing outside in the cold so the others can play.

The skies are so BLUE.




Yep, I really feel like Spring is here!

Seven Days

Aha! I have pictures of this week! Though as usual I'm more or less *un*successful at choosing one a day... Still, I'll make up the rules as I go along eh? ;)

Last Sunday on the park after church...

We sometimes get some very funny looks (and even outright panic) from strangers seeing a newborn carried around by siblings... I am so confident that they are trustworthy and that babies are pretty robust little creatures, and I know it's an unusual sight in our culture, but I wish people would panic quietly and not startle the children with it...

Jenna and friends back at the same park on Wednesday before swimming...

Tali on her tummy, trying to propel herself, then pushing up to look at me...

A first meeting with a great-grandma...

Coming back from the last day of the holiday club Jenna went to...

Tali is totally covered in that picture by a teddy bear her great grandma gave us - Jenna just *keeps on* putting it on her, but she just pushes it off with the normal small baby disinterest in anything that isn't a person. (She does love mirrors though; watching her trying to out-beam her own reflection gives me hours of amusement!)

And four sweet girlies late on Saturday night after a trip to see Jenna's friend Jeremy in the pantomime. :)

Another week gone in the blink of an eye!

Now

How often I sit down to write and just don't know where to start. Which stories to include, which days to list off here as typical of my life right now, which pictures. So much is missed out. I could talk about yesterday and how very long it felt - how Morgan and Jenna bickered over every little thing, how they all kept waking Talia just as she got off to sleep, how I shouted and longed for Martin to get home from work.

I could tell about all of the fun days out in the past two weeks. Bowling (Ashleigh treated us) and Cinema (we treated Ashleigh)... The Muppet Movie was AWESOME and Tali actually sat up looking at the screen and at us, grinning and chatting quietly, instead of feeding through it like I expected her to. We've been swimming twice, to the museum again and *still* not got pictures of the new exhibition, and we've taken some lovely walks in the increasingly warm weather. And through all of this, the camera has been a nuisance and stopped communicating with the laptop.

Talia is less and less colicky, which is so soon and I am SO grateful. She is so very sociable, a baby who doesn't like being in the sling unless she's asleep, and actively asks to be passed to people. She beams constantly at everyone, charming checkout assistants and librarians, cooing and grinning and flapping her arms at everyone we meet. She made an elderly gentleman at Derby City Mission cry, incredulous that she could like him "old and broken" as he described himself.

She loves water. She stayed in the pool for almost an hour when we went for a swim two days ago. Little blue hands, yet still beaming away and pulling funny raised-eyebrows faces at the shimmering surface of the water. She was in the bath for an hour this morning, too, nursing a little then letting go to beam at me. I love it when they do that.

And now my observations are cut short, haha. I am needed again. But life is good. :)

Love

Tidy

This is the room I love to be in, love to spend much of my at-home time in. The room some of the most important events of my life have taken place in, even the births of three of my children. It is so bright, so light-filled and busy. It's never going to be the perfect Waldorf home, but it's perfect for us.

But it just *does not* stay like this. (And this is as tidy as it EVER gets. EVER.)

Hoovered twice a day or twice a week, it doesn't seem to make much of a difference. Likewise with tidying up toys, papers, etc. And I am horrendously bad at putting things away (not as bad as the children, but they have the excuse of being relatively inexperienced with the consequences). I just don't learn.

I put things to one side "to deal with when I have a minute" and before I realise time is passing it's six months later and I'm astounded to realise that YET AGAIN I have a stack of *undated* mixed papers (scrapbooking supplies, blank worksheets, finished schooly stuff, pictures by the children, correspondance) and I have to set about filing it all and have no idea where to begin.

So when our shelf of art supplies and current projects looks like this, it's a big achievement. Next week it won't be recognisable. I'm resigned to the fact that I am neither naturally organised OR tidy. Ah well. I can write a poem, field a billion questions without flagging (much), just about keep up with the laundry, find time for fun stuff, know most of the spells from the Harry Potter books, tell amazing stories, AND I bake fantastic cake. I reckon my kids will survive. ;)

Catch up: Climbing

How can we have not discovered AlterRock before? We only live a couple of streets away! And it's AWESOME! :)

My whole family went, for my mum's birthday, though of all the children only Jenna could climb without a parent first doing a training course. The others didn't mind (and got a little turn at the end anyway, because the instructors made time for them especially).

The disused church building is gorgeous.

As I saw Jenna do this, through my lens, I rushed out a "FEET DOWN NOW!" and thankfully she did. This is NOT what a traversing wall is for...

She is like a little spider, I swear.

We took a list of prices home, and can go again pretty cheaply, so we are really excited to go again. It was a wonderful day.

(And yesterday's whine? Well, I'm not feeling much better to be honest - about colic, toddler night-waking, or my abilities as a mother - but I did clean the heck out of my living room last night before bed and that provided its usual odd kind of solace. I really do believe that it will get better. In fact, I'm clinging on to that like it was the life belt and I a drowning woman.)

She hates me

Or at least, that's what goes through my head in those long evening crying sessions. There are days when it just feels personal. When I think this precious beautiful baby is actually deliberately torturing me. When I feel down to my bones that I am a failure as a mother and am specifically failing to meet those very real very present very pressing needs.

I am tired. Right now. Exhausted. Just two or three really broken nights will do that. Tali wakes up a few times a night and requires me to hold the breast for her to latch on easily (sigh), but that doesn't wake me fully - far far worse is Rowan's night waking.

All week Roo has been waking up in the middle of the night, taken her nappy off, peed in her bed, and screamed hysterically because the urine stings her skin. I have prodded Martin out of bed to put a towel down for her and wash her skin with a wet cloth. Then she cries in his arms for an hour. That length of full-on toddler crying from the next room has me lying there in bed nursing Tali and literally feeling like my brain is going to crawl out of my ears.

Then at about 5am, it starts again. Rowan wakes up, takes herself to the toilet, goes back to bed, realises she is wide awake on her own, and starts howling again. I prod Martin awake.

The disturbance with Roo, every single night, has turned me into a zombie. Martin would sleep through it if allowed by me and Tali ;) but the crying from the next room *always* wakes the baby, and then she feeds, and I lie there hearing crying I can't do a thing for.

The horrible thing is, the more tired I get, the more I find it's Tali who gets the blame. Colic by itself, when I'm getting actual lengths of sleep, well, it's no fun but I can deal with it. When I'm tired it's just the worst torture. I walk up and down, with the baby in my arms, thinking that she's crying on purpose.

Remind me, colic does get better at some point? Doesn't it?

I am so tired. And so tired of feeling helpless, of being powerless to help - the one who is tiny and windy and wildly in pain, the other who is wetting the bed and clingy and red-raw itchy. This, this hard stuff, this is one of the lessons of motherhood. I can work hard to do everything, be so loving, work as a team with so many loving present people (we are blessed to have you all in our lives - my tribe), I can react "perfectly"... and sometimes still nothing will fix it.

(This too shall pass, this too shall pass, this too shall pass...)

Art

Ashleigh and I gave the girls a canvas each and a selection of acrylics and just stood back and watched the chaos ensue. I *love* how different their approaches were. Jenna started with a clear idea of what she wanted, got bored of that, and started just throwing paint at the canvas and making big bold sweeps of colour and texture. Her painting is called An Explosion of Colour. She keeps asking us if we think it's "good" and if we like the name she gave it.

Morgan was slow, meticulous, wanted every bit of canvas coloured. She worked on a small scale, carefully mixing colours and placing a shape here, a shape there. About halfway she saw the "big picture" in what she was doing, and started being more definite about what her picture was "of". Her painting is called Girl and Butterflies. (The girl, in gold, has a red bindhi on her forehead.)

Rowan wanted to mix colours on the canvas, and was very specific about which colours she wanted to use. She got terribly cross with me when I started being motherly and making "helpful" suggestions. She painted energetically and finished quickly. It was then more than tricky to keep her off her sisters' canvasses! Her picture is called Swirls. (She just told me, "Is called Swirls, because I maked swirls, all over, all purple. Lots of swirls.")