Thirteen

The ways in which you drive me frantic with worry and frustration are all the same things I deeply admire and respect in you. You've never not been a spark, little wildfire. And now you're almost adult sized and articulate enough to pass for older than your years. There's no taming you, only my attempts at ensuring you think through which consequences you can quite handle. There's no stopping you, only my reminders to look before you leap.

Honestly the next couple of years scare me a bit. If the proof is in the pudding, has my mothering been spent wisely?

You're brave and you know yourself. You're caring. You have boundaries and you know how to stand your ground. You're so filled with passion and wonder and life. I don't want the world to squish you.

Happy birthday, Bean. I hope I can be the person you need for these last precious years of your childhood.

Almost a month in not very many pictures

1: Dinner at my mum's house, giggling
2: Pot painting
3: Cookie dough
4: Stickers and babysitting
5: Some of Rowan's beach collection
6: Park climbing
7: Blue hair, blue tunic, blue icecream at the board game cafe
8: Jenna entertaining Talia, in between a week away at camp and another week away in Estonia (she's having all the adventures)
9: Talia has been taking Milly the Monster out for walks, taking very seriously Jenna's parting instruction to look after her toys for her while she's away
10: Muddy community garden play

(Mainly I am sick and exhausted. Mainly I am not coping with everyday life. I don't really know what else to say, except that I'm very glad of all the people doing things with the children and looking after us.)

I miss me

One thing that I have completely underestimated about this pregnancy is how much of my self esteem is dependent upon what I'm able to do, achieve, and produce. The vision of myself as someone who is more resilient and healthy than ever, who is more capable of carrying on doing the things I feel needs doing through another difficult period of illness, turned out to be a complete illusion. I was feeling so much better, emotionally speaking, because as my children got older I was simply able to see the results of the work I was doing. My life was more measurable, and hence I was more mentally well and strong and all of those things I thought were due to some inner work I had mastered, some level of peace I had won.

I have had a difficult reality check. Not only hyperemesis and its accompanying exhaustion and mental burden. But also much worse sickness, and longer lasting, than in my last two pregnancies (I had utterly convinced myself that each pregnancy was slightly better than the previous and therefore *surely* I would only be a vomity mess for about sixteen weeks this time - wrong)!

Even though medication has reduced the sickness to a level where I no longer feel like I'm dying (not an exaggeration) and am able to stay hydrated enough not to worry for the safety of my baby, I am still utterly wiped out and prone to needing a nap lest I start vomiting again later in the day in spite of the medicine. This week I have had bad days, where medication and indeed everything else I consumed didn't stay down. I have spent more time horizontal, and not gracefully. I have resented the heck out of it.

I am extremely unproductive. I'm behind with work. I'm trying not to look too closely at the piles of laundry and general crunchiness of the house. I dropped out of Index Card a Day after less than a week. I haven't journalled or even written a page in my bullet-journal-ish household notebook for weeks. I'm in bed by nine almost every night. Some days I can't point to a single thing I actually did.

Yes, I'm taking it quite hard.

Call this my training for being glued to a needy tiny human for a few months, if you like. Though I have to say that will feel significantly more voluntary than this does, albeit due to the same tiny human. I miss being able to predict what I will be able to get done. I miss feeling like a reasonably good parent.

I miss the sense of self I gained from doing.

And All is Well

Last week was exceptionally, blissfully, peaceful. This week is going the same way. Sometimes I feel like I'm really used to fighting everything, and I don't know what to do with myself when life is so entirely wonderfully good.

Also, I whine a lot about the rough patches so I feel I ought to capture this while it's happening.

I am so lucky.

These kids, this life, this feeling of home and wellness. The greening leaves. The spaces between us. Walking out of my house at night while Martin puts the girls to bed, and looking up at the stars. The sounds of chatter (constant) and laughter. These days that will never come again.

Seven Days of oh so much chaos

1: I finished a long-hibernated project, a Hogwarts Express for Jenna
2: A dye day
3: Morgan plus stamps
4: Pretending to be an Easter Tree
5: A little block rabbit
6: Yeah. So, they pulled *everything* out again...

Catching up: Picture Dump

There's a London road trip in there, and a week of guests. Christmas, and New Years. I've been in quite a good place. Too busy to wallow in the difficult moments. Making, doing, seeing people. Not fitting in everything I want to, ever.

Sometimes it's really great to stop and think that these adventures are getting easier, that at some point I've stopped forcing myself to say yes and started leaping at opportunities. (Sometimes, sometimes the leaping is harder and more coaxing and handholding is required.)

I've felt some resistance to writing, and have been painting instead. I'll probably try to drag myself back here a bit to document more of these days before they're gone.

This morning I was woken early, to the sound of my button box being dropped in the kitchen (the shelf collapsed "for no reason" apparently "we weren't touching it!")! I'd stayed up until midnight to pay our internet bill and get services turned back on, and then had weird dreams I can't quite remember clearly.

It's still dark outside, mist softening the houses opposite. The cat is sitting in the middle of our season table, clouded in blue silk and purring smugly.

I feel like I'm running behind with everything, not keeping up with myself, playing catch up with my life.

Wordless, again

It's done. I can't pretty it up yet or wrap the right words around the raw spiky places. As emergency surgery goes it was easy and she's fine now the half-teeth are gone. As fine as a stubborn and extremely miffed five year old can be when she lacks the vocabulary to express discomfort and just howls and howls for hours at a time.

I've been so anxious about this I haven't even written about her birthday, or Christmas knitting, or crafts, or the learning they are all engaged in. I feel really stuck. At least now it's more literally physically stuck what with trying to make her immediate world feel a little less horrible - rather than the emotional stuck of not-really-coping-with-anything and awaiting boiler repairs and surgery and landlord's inspection and more appointments at the same time as getting last orders out and saying goodbye to my mum as she flies out to Estonia to meet my new nephew...

Oh look, a few dozen words. Quick, shut them down before they overflow everywhere.

Seven Days in which I don't have time to remember my own name

1: Advent in full swing, Saint Nicholas Day shoes
2: Crafting
3: And craft fayres (two successful charity events in one week)
4: She might not love board game cafes or board games but she's certainly a fan of attached comic book shops
5: Incredible art at Derby QUAD ("What a Loving and Beautiful World")

I don't know whether I'm coming or going this week. So much going on, and I'm not fully on top of any of it (except posting orders out, I am up to date with that and only have one more bag to take to the post office before Christmas). One out of the two back-to-back birthdays. Two craft fayres. Assorted attempts to get the house chaos back under control. Yeah. My head is a bit of a mess; this year I have found each birthday really emotionally hard. Something to do with not being able to make them perfectly happy and perfectly peaceful any more. Something to do with being afraid that I'm not as good a mother as I used to be (or not as confident a person, or something, I don't know). The elusive feeling of striving for good enough and not being sure I'm ever close.

Seven days in which I coax Morgan to eat, and we mess around at a garden centre

1: Rowan cuddling her baby cardigan
2: Walking a friend to dance class
3: Life goal; I would like to live in such a way that I deserve an introduction like this
4: Candle making
5: Snowflakes and babysitting
6: The obnoxious worksheet book (which Talia loves) has stickers. She put a star sticker on my arm and told me it was for being a lovely mummy.
7: Helping Ash pick out her tree. Lots of giggling and silliness at the garden centre, abd a photobombing dino.

After her sickness last week getting Morgan to eat food has been a mammoth task. It was Tuesday before she ate an actual meal. So even though she was doing better, and was much perkier last weekend, I've still had quite a worried week. On the other hand I'm laughing more, and this bunch of sillies have been immensely delighted by Advent activities again.

Every year I wonder if this will be the last year Jenna wants to do these things with us, and every year she is delighted by the simple and ordinary sharing. I'm glad they're not growing toooo fast.

Seven Days during which I have a birthday and feel sort of lonely and quietly desperate

1: Gradients, because yarn makes things better (always)
2: Changed over Winter decorations in a fit of pique at it being rainy and bitterly cold, having a sick kid on a day I wanted to see people, and generally feeling blue
3: Stacking things
4: Birthday walk
5: The lights in town, photographed by a giddy Jenna
6: Snuggly not-a-baby excited about stickers
7: There's this Christmas fayre we go to every year which I loved as a child and tolerate as an adult. The children adore it, of course. Compensation in the form of vintage tea set.
8: Basically after two huge meltdowns this week (mine) I gave up and we decorated on the first Sunday in Advent. It worked. Prettying things and familiar traditions helped a lot.

I need a calmer week.

Beneath everything this week has been huge painful anxiety about Morgan. She was ill on Monday and better on Tuesday, but continued to refuse any solid food all week. Eventually I told her she had to have a bite of food every hour and her appetite gradually returned. I can't accurately describe the heartbroken sobbing every time I stood over her and insisted she ate something, but goodness, she was so floppy and listless. I'm not yet really able to sort it out into words. And I feel like a failure for coercing her AND for not coercing her sooner. But also so grateful she's perky again and asking for food.

What a week.