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.)

Sometimes we go outside

1: Cuddles with Roo
2: Ice cream
3: Middle kids ready for a boat trip
4: If she can borrow a baby, she will
5: Park community gardening
6: Very rained-on coffee stop

Polly

Two years have passed. Two years ago we didn't know yet. We thought you were safe. All I want to do right now is go back in time, find the magic words that would have saved you. There weren't any magic words.

http://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/polly-161005

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.

More of our June

1: Wildflowers
2: Midsummer
3: Tree climbing on the park
4: Tali's new umbrella
5: Drawing from Animalium

Returning to myself

1: Post-sunny day evening treat, wildlings laughing and jostling, feeling very lucky.
2: Leicester visiting, my dad is recovering from surgery for cancer, we stopped by the pump house museum on our way over.
3: Tiny weavings, I'm building up to doing regular activity with the children who have been hanging around bored and worried a lot of the time I was really seriously ill. I have a lot of guilt about not being more present through this, but I'm trying to practice kindness to myself. Being so ill is hard and I'm lucky it's fairly temporary.
4: A long walk in heavy rain to the library.
5: Book festival wildlings.
6: And we met Mog, too. Rowan was terrified and squeezed my hand tight.
7: Flower bashing (hapa zome craft in the community gardens). I can't even express how lucky I feel to be vaguely back to doing things again.

In related news I'm now 17 weeks pregnant and starting to feel little goldfish wigglings. The middle kiddos came to my midwife appointment and heard the heartbeat last week, and now they are all competing over who can talk to (and kiss) the bump the most so it will be well socialised to being pounced on by siblings by the time it arrives!

May catch-up: the worst of it

I spent May throwing up, crying, falling asleep on the sofa, doing really simple crafts to occupy the children, and getting to grips with taking meds during pregnancy. The medication that worked well only continued to work well if I took it on time, getting my prescription re-filled wasn't as simple as I thought it would be, and just not throwing up every meal and every glass of water felt pretty damn wonderful actually. I'm getting there, honestly. But May was mostly hard work interspersed with sunshine.

Postcards from hyperemesis land

1: Being patient with a little who wants to play the big kid board games but doesn't want to follow the rules is harder when feeling nauseous
2: Rowan turned eight, somehow
3: Tali overcame her terror of the walls. I only threw up three times at the climbing centre.
4: Attention seeking cat
5: Pumpkin seedlings
6: Museum visit to catch up with cousins
7: Leaving the children behind for a walk along the river
8: And now they all have chicken pox, which is pretty good timing really before Jenna hits her teens and while I'm unable to venture anywhere without another adult thanks to hyperemesis...

Fourteen (?) days of this ordinary chaos, projects, and family

1: Living room bubble wrap stomping loveliness
2: Light table sorting and stacking
3: Glue plus little flower sprinkles
4: Lego marble maze
5: Rowan is always climbing things!
6: Mud pie kitchen and loose parts building in the garden (oh thank goodness for this sunshine!)
7: Anniversary Yo Sushi. Thirteen years.
8: Jenna reading everywhere, this week I've rarely seen her without her head in her book
9: Lemon cake (Talia told me very sweetly how much she LOVES baking with me so of course we had to immediately make a cake)
10: A hilltop climb with Ashleigh, a little adventure without the family again
11: Rowan conversing earnestly and politely with a bee! It made her week that it bumped her cheek as it flew away.

I've been horribly ill for most of the last couple of weeks, so we've been quite quiet. Fresh air and sunshine, sitting in the garden, and drinking lots of water, is all helping a bit.