I’ve got the kind of focus you want in an emergency: clear thought, process orientation and endurance. Those skills and that laser sharp focus come into play when I’m called upon to deal with a sick child or wedge a car out of a scrape (both of which I had to do last week). But that kind of thinking also comes to mind for me when I recall the first weeks with my babes. (more…)
My hair is the part of me Michael loves the most. He uses it to sooth himself, sometimes rubbing his face in it or gently stroking it like some babes snuggle a blanket. But as he gets closer to 3 years old than his is to 2, I see the baby in him evaporating. (more…)
I saw a moment a woman interviewed the other day who was talking about her experience of feeling fear and lost after she lost over a hundred pounds. While she’s expected that she would feel more like herself with the pounds shed, what she was left with was the raw truth: it was not being fat that was making her unhappy, it was being lost to herself.
There are moments when I look into my daughter’s face and see her for the woman she will become. At present she is innocently unaware of her beauty and able to enjoy her body for its strength, agility and dress-up fun. She is able to simply “be”.
I hear more than the leaves blowing in the early autumn winds these days. As the rain thrashes the soil and pulls at the foliage and its tenuous stems, I hear cries against the routines of Fall. The transition to more serious routines, away from the fancy-free flow of summer is pulling at my kids. And they in turn cling to me, yanking on my heart strings.
Running into a former colleague last week, we began to catch-up the last 3 years in 5 minutes, as one might in a chance encounter. But we quickly stopped the high-level recounting of milestones when we connected on how becoming a mother changed our priorities.
The voices in me are having a field day this week, praying on that elusive fluid idea: being a good mother. I’m not a person driven by guilt, unless I’ve blindly let someone down. Then I can swim in the soupy stuff with the best of them. I’m all about trying to get it “right” and usually accepting that when I don’t, I did the best I could with my understanding of myself and the situation. It’s not a perfect approach, but works well for me.
I hung up the phone and the sound of Kate crying a lonely heartbroken cry hung in the air. My heart ached but I knew that her bedtime routine and a good night’s sleep would give her the comfort she craved from my arms. I didn’t feel guilty, but I’ve come a long way since our first trip away from the kids.
“Cookie Baking Mum” is not one of the handles I imagined myself adopting. Somewhere between a desire to avoid excessive refined sugar in my family’s diet and a judgmental snarl at behaviours reminiscent of June Cleaver, I have stubbornly avoided having “Baker” become part of my Mummy tool-box.
I became acutely aware, early in my second trimester, that Planet Baby was a stage which served to transition me from being a pregnant woman to being someone’s mother. This sounds obvious — but the distinction was about the sense that it was not just about “having a baby”. I was becoming someone’s mother and it made me sit up and pay attention.