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?

Signs of Spring in the Bluebell Woods

The blackthorn is in flower and the bluebell leaves are showing through. Leaves are budding, slowly and softly the green is creeping back. Catkins swing in the breeze. One drop of rain, two drops, then stillness again. The banks are slick with thick dark mud, and the ponds are without a single ripple to disturb the murky grey-green.

Rowan tells me that there are no unicorns in these woods, only fairies and pixies. She tells me that when she slept over at grandma's house, she looked out in the middle of the night and saw a fairy flying by her window. She said it looked at her and then flew off back to the woods. She skips and dances as she tells her stories, one memory or event merging into the next, like a robin's song of lilting enthusiasm at the world and everything in it.

Talia holds Ashleigh's hand for a while, before flinging herself at my knees and barring my way with raised arms. Muddy shoe prints on my grey dress. Sleepy weight of her in my arms as she rubs her eyes and dangles her dusty leaf-embellished mittens against my cheek. I kiss the curl at the nape of her neck, and a little further on try to distract her with drawing in the mud with a stick so that my arms can recover.

Rowan pokes a big branch into a swampy puddle and informs me laughingly that there are no alligators in there. Jenna and Morgan are up a tree, escaping from a minotaur. I gather handfuls of discarded hats and mittens. I holler back to them to remember to bring their coats and cardigans when they come to catch up, since all of their outerwear is now hanging in the bushes.

We meet up with my mum, and Talia flings her arms out in greeting to the dog. "Come me, come me Loo-shee!" The dampness in the air, and the brief glimpses of blue in the white-grey sky, foretell the coming blossoming of Spring.

This Toddler

This toddler...

...flings herself head first off furniture and anything else she can climb.

...shouts "two, two THREE!" in warning that she is about to try something dangerous.

...is instantly totally devoted to any animal she meets. Especially my mum's scaredy rescue dog Lucy, and our obnoxious guard-cat Izzy.





...brings life to a halt by climbing in to my lap and shouting BOOOOB when she is tired.

...likes snippy scissors, which we have a hell of a time keeping out of her way. This week she snipped the back cover out of one of our Horrible History books.

...says, "oh sheet" when she breaks something. (Oops.)





...climbs in to my bed at an unmentionable time of the morning and stays there snuggled up until she hears her preferred entertainment downstairs (sisters). Sometimes she even climbs on to their bunks and shouts at them to WAKE UP until they pay her attention.

...cries for Jenna any time Jenna goes out, or any time she doesn't hear her calling. Big sisters are better than mummy for hand holding on long walks, especially.

...eats more macaroni cheese than any of the adults in the family.

...has favourite favourite toys including: Jenna's doll, Rowan's rainbow dash pony, Jenna's miniature Daleks, and my knitting needles.

...is still babied and adored by all of us (of course). :)

Getting in to town

More often than not these days we get a taxi in to town. I love the walk, but often find the thought of needing to keep all four of them safe walking along the main road rather terrifying. It's suddenly possible again though, as Talia has reached an age and stage where she will most often freeze when I ask her to, and the others very nearly always do. Marginally less terrifying, then.

Mine are the eclectically rainbow babies in hand knits and mittens on strings. :) They mostly choose their own outfits these days, and still my bright and cheerful weirdness predominates!

I read an article a while back that kind of stuck in my head and left me feeling quite guilty for hurrying them along. Well, now I'm happy to confidently assert: with four children pretty close in age, you are ALWAYS either trying to get someone to hurry up or trying to get someone to slow down - or both. In fact, once you get past two children walking confidently, unless you have highly compliant little ones (or maybe even then) you will be herding cats trying to get them to stay together. Well, that's how we walk in to town. It's like a concertina, as we spread out and draw back together again.



We dawdle at walls and other interesting things to climb. We spend time poking at moss and examining all the different kinds.



We debate stopping at the Arboretum on the way (but decide that we're all hungry, so we'd better keep going). We stop to look at some chipped paint on a wall for a good long while, because the four year old wants to. We run sticks along the railings. We also have to stop (still with our sticks) and poke something that looks like a giant orange poo for about twenty minutes (I think it was some kind of sand/cement stuff from the building works). We watch over the railway bridge for trains, and Rowan holds up a branch and pretends to be a tree.

And the entire time, I am head-counting and trying to keep everyone together, saying first one name then another, and playing the stop/go game. Hurry up, slow down, hurry up, slow down. It's not always pretty, or perfect. Sometimes I yell, have to grab a little one's hand before they step into the road, get stressed or whiny under the pressure of keeping everyone safe, or sing in the loudest and most undignified way to keep flagging spirits up as they get tired. It's not always pretty or perfect, but it's pretty much a good analogy for much of my parenting at the moment. We just about hang together, somehow. And that's pretty wonderful. :)

This baby...

...is not really a baby any more (shh, I'm trying to come to terms with it)!


Gosh what a year we've had! About the time you started walking, baby mine, you got really really determined. Stripping all your clothes off in public became your new favourite pastime - that and sitting down refusing to go anywhere for long periods of time, and crying when I picked you up and then crying again when I put you down again. Oh little toddler, how very hard it is to not be able to just tell us all what it is that is bothering you. I have wished so many times that I could magic away whatever those moments of stress and anxiety and total frustrated anger have been.

And yet, and yet, you are the sunniest little person. So ready to laugh, to beam, to chat happily to us. You completely love to be around people, and hero-worship your sisters.



Your list of words is getting longer and longer. I'm enjoying the gift of understanding between us. It's amazing! The ease this has brought you, and your pure joy at being more capable, more able to explore the world and share your discoveries with us. I adore how you exclaim to me over your finds. How you repeat words over and over.







Sweet funny bright baby, awesome stubborn intense lively creature! Every second I have spent just snuggling you, just being here with you, has blessed me. I wouldn't trade a moment of it. Happy Birthday, precious. Talia, I love you so.

Sibling Games

The children have "trained" Talia. She loves being allowed to join in their games, and willingly plays the parts assigned to her. Before she could walk, someone only needed to say "sit" and she would transform into puppy-mode, barking, fetching things thrown for her (in her mouth) and pretending to wag her tail. Now she has added baby to the list of roles she is well versed in.

She fake-cries for them to pick her up (which is either disturbing or hilarious, I can't quite decide which). When I voiced that thought, Jenna said, "Mum, it's a great thing. She knows that when babies cry, they get picked up and loved, no matter what."


(Off topic, in the babywearing picture of Jenna and Tali, look at the lovely Waldorf-y toy shelves in the background and you can play a game of spot-the-GUP!)

Another Walk in to Town

Yesterday we took an accidental walk in to town. Accidental as in, we didn't want to walk in to town, but the bus cost more change than I had in my pocket, so we had to walk a few stops on, and even then found ourselves ten pence short of the fare and surrendered to the necessity of walking the entire way.


This is the first time all four children have walked the whole way. Talia likes to walk, but she just does not *ever* walk in the same direction as everyone else for more than a few steps. It's exhausting getting anywhere with her, determined not to be carried, determined not to walk the way we want her to go.


In my head, I'm saying, "hurry up, slow down, hurry up, stop TOUCHING EVERYTHING, can't we just WALK??!" Outwardly I rely on playing the stop and go game, and trying not to let the whine creep into my voice because I so badly just want to BE somewhere, and they are so happy being right where they are. I don't know if I will ever learn this hard lesson.


"Mumma, where did the bee go? I want it to come back!"

These small children, they fully live in this gorgeous world of insects and flowers and sycamore spinners and interesting smells - a brick wall is a magical floating roadway to walk along, the concrete area in front of the flooring warehouse is a playground, a giant chain link fence is a swinging skipping rope. The world, through their eyes, is such an incredible place to play. I really am so very lucky to get to see it through their eyes.





The camera slows me down a bit, lets me capture the beautiful things, and helps me to halt the hurry in my head. I try, I really do try, because they need me to be HERE with them, to stop and smell the flowers with them and not rush them through their too-brief childhoods.



We had a wonderful walk. The jobs we needed to do in town turned out not to be that important after all. And we found more bees to watch.

Baby Laughter

Talia has such a delicious happiness. She bubbles over with a peaceful joyful sweetness. I cannot get enough of hugging her. If she is my last baby, she has been a deliciously cuddly last baby, and I have filled myself up on baby kisses and just revelled in her desire to be held. The babyness never lasts - she smells of warmth and grass and biscuit, but the newborn skin smell is long gone. Her arms and legs are strong and sturdy, her hair just curling at the back there, her expression more intent and busy than ever.

It goes so fast, oh so fast. How did I ever spend so much time trying to put babies down to do other things?! What could be as necessary, as vital, as this?

Last night Talia giggled herself to sleep. Actually laughed herself to sleep in my arms. She had unlatched to offer me a kiss, and of course just one kiss was not enough, and I kissed all over her soft little cheeks as she laughed and laughed. I paused a moment. Then swooped in to kiss again, and the giggles started up louder than ever. As I withdrew for another round, her eyes closed - screwed tight shut as she does so often in playfulness. And she was asleep. Soundly asleep, with the biggest grin on her face.

Honestly, I feel like the richest person alive, right now. :)

Yarn Along: stacks of books at my bedside :)

Knitting: I just finished turning the heel on the Toots socks. They're lovely, and coming along nice and quickly (so satisfying to knit little things). I'm not being very perfectionist about remembering where I am with the lace bit, oh gosh, I can't keep my eye on the pattern with our days being as busy as they are and as soon as I put them down I'm lost!

Reading: I got The Long Earth over the weekend and read it in one sitting. I had read a lot of negative reviews and decided not to bother with it, but you know, when you see these things being practically *given* away... I loved it. The only criticism I can really get behind is that this one incredible book would have easily made twenty incredible books - there is *so much* packed in there.

(I also got 2000 Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting through ages and stages, and read that in one go too. The opposite applies - this one has been so talked up, everywhere, and I found it really simplistic and expected a bigger book somehow. I'd call it a good basic introduction to concepts.)

Oh, and I'm half way through Mirror Wakes. Guess who is doing a *lot* of reading in the garden wrapped in a big woolly cardigan this week? This is the state my bedside table is in right now!



Sharing along with Ginny's Yarn Along again this week. :)

Yarn Along - The Unbelievable Sleep-Climbing Baby

OK so this is what I'm actually working on today:


Rainbow wrist warmers. And that's the book I just finished, Mirror Dreams by Catherine Webb which I enjoyed hugely overall (and she wrote it when she was fourteen, which I can't help be impressed by given the number of books I've read written by adults that *sounded* as though written by a fourteen year old)! I likes the random fantasy book series finds. :)

I'm not going to show progress pictures on the shawl. Needless to say it's still not *quite* finished and it's still not blocked and you can just wait til next week when it will be both.

Anyway, the "and a funny story" bit. Last night I was doing dishes in the kitchen while baby napped on the sofa. I hear a whimper and the start of a cry from the living room and thought, uhoh I'm going to be interrupted now. Then nothing. So I didn't go to check on her.

When I came back through, this is what I found: Baby, asleep, hugging the shawl. Clearly mama smells like sheepy squishiness and vice versa.


More impressively, this is what she had done (halfway sleep, remember) to get to the shawl!


Yeah, I have weird kids. And also, yes, Martin and I laughed and took pictures before rescuing the poor tired darling.

Joining in the Ginny and friends for the weekly Yarn Along share. :)

Being Here Now - and curve sculptures

Jenna and I love to play on Pinterest together, and often come away with ideas of artsy craftsy projects we want to try. (It's such a great inspiration to me - as a very visual person - that any time I have a really GREAT new idea or suggestion the children immediately ask, "Did you get this off Pinterest, mama?" *sigh*) This is one of the ones she picked out with an "ooh" of appreciation the last time we browsed together.

Building and Creating with Curves

Recently I've been finding my parenting challenged by the priority-pull of running a business. You know, things like trying to nurse the baby whilst filling in my first ever tax self-assessment form (in the dark, because I couldn't reach the light switch!). Things like knowing that I have a deadline for a big order, and not having enough hands, and then realising that I've done so much "work" stuff I haven't properly attended to my commitment to help them follow *their* passions. I've said, "later" a lot - and "can I just finish this?" OK, not just a lot, actually more like almost all of the time.

I've been thinking through what I want, and how I want to model giving gracefully to others, and how I want to be present with them and set aside time for working so that I'm more available at times when they usually need me more. For the last couple of weeks I've been trying to challenge myself to say yes, to turn my attention to them fully when they speak to me, and to take action *now* rather than always putting things off for someday. The latter is a tricky one for me, queen of procrastinators.

The net result has been that my kitchen has never been tidier, and I have got so many things done *before* the looming deadlines. I have done art projects, answered questions, got messy things out, gone for walks, and read aloud every day. Often right when I was asked to. (This extends to the poor obliging Mr, too. I think it has come as rather a shock to him to find me not doing other things while he's trying to talk to me, and pausing in the middle of a knitting project to make dinner rather than moaning about why he still can't cook after all these years.)

Anyway, once more slightly off topic and rambling on rather than talking about the fun stuff!

We're going to paint them too. When they're dry. Which might take a while, because squirting glue was Rowan's favourite bit. That and messing about with the cardboard tubes...

Wish me success in my quest to find more hours in the day, and generally be a slightly less distracted more pleasant person to live with?

Coffee with Grandma and Juggling a Toddler

At the weekend we headed into town to meet my mum for a drink and a walk. We all love those times when Grandma Rhoda can do lots of visiting and regular dates. And I managed to get what I think is my first picture of all four of them together this year! Nobody pulling faces! I have to also share the first attempt, though, because this is Talia's constant cheeky expression at the moment:



Oh the sun! I've had a few nights in a row of not-enough-sleep this past week, with Talia just hitting that point where she is sleeping longer and therefore fully waking me when she gets up early in the morning to feed. At least this whole body exhaustion has coincided with warmer days, beautiful sunshine, and busy contented children who are actively pursuing their own interests. We are spending a lot of time right now reading in the garden, and I'm providing very easy low-supervision crafts and sensory play in the afternoons. It feels, well, easy and peaceful. There is hardly any bickering. (Of course, now that I've said all this, we will probably be back to constant fights and whining...)





We didn't walk far, just along the river and up to the Cathedral where we spotted one of the Peregrines and lost Rowan when the children played hide and seek behind the trees. Heart-in-stomach moment when she doesn't respond to our calls. Martin was frantic, and Jenna burst into tears when Rowan appeared, telling us indignantly that she was only picking daisies!



This baby of ours is not easy to take anywhere at the moment. She is sweet and generous-natured, beautifully gentle, and acts much older than her brief sixteen months. And she is also incredibly stubborn and a properly self-directed determined toddler already. Her current trick of choice in town is to refuse to hold hands with Martin and I, and to regularly stop and sit down on the floor for ten minutes or so at a time. If we put her in the sling or carry her she flings herself around and cries as if we were hurting her! It makes the going very slow. Of course, she angelically offers to hold hands with *other* adults. Just not us.

Like all the others at this age, she loves to stop and touch Every Single new texture, piece of plant growth, interesting bit of rubbish, small stone, fallen leaf... When I can breathe and stay in the moment with her, it's charming and peaceful to go at her pace. When I'm on my own with all four of them, and can't stay in the moment because I have to be responsible for the others too, it feels like torture!



Every day is a balancing act. I'm never quite sure if I'm getting it right, or at least meeting most of the needs most of the time, or at least putting some of the priorities in an order that mostly works for our family. Then again, I have four healthy happy bright daughters, and right now it's not too difficult to put a pause on my over-thinking and just enjoy being with them - in the sunshine (and the sudden random hail storms), and the every day peace and activity.

Breath of Spring

I'm likely to ramble terribly today.  Somehow there seems a lot to say, and I can't grasp hold of enough logic to order it into something meaningful and considered.


Perhaps it's the warm sleepy weight of baby, heavy in my arms, slowing me to pace myself to her heartbeat and soft breaths on my shoulder.  She is so very present, and once I slow myself to tune in to her the words come slowly.  This is the trick of mothering babies, I think, to accept and welcome the shift to their rhythm.

The older girls and I have been stuck in a rut lately, doing almost nothing in the afternoons and finding it increasingly boring and frustrating.  It isn't that there aren't lots of things to do, just that we've all been tired and screen time has taken over as the easy option.  I asked them all a couple of days ago whether they aren't finding the afternoons drag on rather at the moment, and whether they would like to do more together when Daddy is at work.  They leapt at my question with a torrent of ideas and enthusiasm.  Can we do this, can we make that?  It seems to me like they were just waiting for me to look up from my work for long enough to ask them what they wanted help with.  I felt a moment of guilt before jumping right in to their enthusiasm.


We made a plan - starting over with Spring Circle time and making space for project time in the afternoon.  The list of things they want to try and make and do and explore runs to two pages!  We've made a good start, this week.


Rowan is totally sea-life obsessed, and learning a rapidly increasing level of detail about her beloved oceans. She has been talking endlessly about orcas this week.  Although she does insist that seals eat them, rather than the other way around...  (The model is a dolphin, by the way!)




It might be just my tortured imagination, but I *think* the baby may be sleeping better since we started having more interesting afternoons...  Yeah, probably just wishful thinking.  She has been waking at silly o'clock in the morning for months.  I'm not a morning person.


Today, we just had to get outside for a couple of hours.  The sun has been beaming down, gloriously warm and comforting.  The breeze is fresh, and smells deliciously of Spring.  All day I have been almost humming to myself with it - Spring is almost here!  The promise of it is on the wind, and in the warm baked brick of the neighbourhood, and the cool fresh aliveness of the brown soil.


Morgan found our first daisy of the year.  :)






The girls all have such an affection for this little patch of park that is our nearest green space.  It isn't much.  It's often grey and bare, and so much of the nature in it has been pruned and weed sprayed and boarded.  The colourful graffiti is around the court where the bigger ones learned to cycle.

As if to prove to me that I'd better enjoy holding her close while she still allows it, this little Tali person walked there and back, and ran around on the park squeaking her disgruntlement that her sisters run too fast for her to keep up.  Oh she has grown so fast...


And already, we are heading into the Spring warmth and rebirth of this year!