Time passing

I remember thinking, when my first baby Amelie, was born that I would be sad when she left one stage (snugly newborn, giggly 3 month old, sitting, toddling etc) but in reality I haven’t felt sad, mostly excited about the new things she learns everyday. Then Juliet came along and it was the same, joy at her new discoveries. When Euan was born, I really didn’t have that much time to ponder these things with 3 children to care for.

Euan is now 19 months old and we have arrived at a point where we have decided that there will be no more babies. Now I am in awe of the individuality of each of my three children, and their unique talents but as Euan grows and passes his milestones I feel sad to be leaving the baby days behind.

My salve, for now, is breastfeeding. I can clear out the boxes of baby clothes and paraphernalia, saving a few precious keepsakes for each child, with mild sadness. Breastfeeding gives me a few quiet moments with my otherwise rowdy toddler, when he will cuddle and look into my eyes. Then he is off again, continuing his exploration of the world.

We will keep going as long as we are both happy to continue. I’m hoping we still have a while to go. I’m not ready to let go of the breastfeeding stage yet. It seems that for us, it will be one of the last vestiges of babyhood before boyhood.

Wannabe Soule Mama

For Christmas I gave myself The Creative Family by SouleMama. I love it! I want our family to be allowed to exercise our creativity, and I want us to show gratitude. I have a jumble of ideas going around in my head, things we can do in our family.

The first project was to reorganise the crafty, colouring things so they stay organised and are easy for small people to tidy up, with guidance and nagging of course. I reclaimed a quarter of a cupboard in our dining area and using some cheap plastic food containers sorted the pencils from the textas. I went to work with my trusty labeller so we know where to put things back. We've given the system a couple of workouts and it is easy! Things go back where they should! I wish I had batteries in the camera to document it.

In the process of organising I culled our crayon collection, leaving only some chubbies. I am working on Soule Mama's principle that children only need a few good quality art supplies, the same supplies that the grown-ups use. The assortment of broken mismatched crayons were put aside for our next project.

Yesterday we recycled the old crayons into these. I enlisted my big girls and we set about removing the paper wrappers from the broken crayons, then we sorted them into colours. I put them in a tupperware silicon mould that is mini "booby cakes". I'm not sure of the proper name of the shape but they do indeed look like boobies.

Our first batch was a mixture of colours: yellow and black, like bumblebees and purple and brown, like um... purple and brown? They weren't so great looking so in the next batch we kept to like colours, shades of red, shades of green. They are spectacular.

Anyway, normal service will no doubt be resumed shortly when I'm back at paid work and the craziness of schedules returns.

Where's the matches?

Last night we had a blackout, right in the middle of me organising some stuff for today. One minute I was surrounded by stuff strewn about, next minute I was in pitch black darkness surrounded by stuff strewn about.

Luckily I had my mobile phone and a couple of glow in the dark wrist bands that Amelie got from school in Book Week to light my way. I fumbled through the house and found a candle - great work! I kept fumbling through the house looking for some matches to light the candle. No matches to be found, no way to light the candle. I did think about going out to the car to get the car cigarette lighter out of it's socket, however the car was locked behind the electrically powered automatic roller door. By this stage I really wanted a cuppa.... and baby Euan needed a drink too. I didn't get my cuppa before bed but Euan got his breastfeed(s). At times like this I am so grateful for my breasts, that provide nutritious, delicious, just-the-right-temperature milk for my babies, on tap anywhere, anytime, blackout or not!