January's Gifts

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.  It turns what we have in to enough, and more..."
                                                                                                           (Melody Beattie)

January's gifts so far;
- A healthy, bonny baby, getting used to eating food and putting on weight, phew!
- A few quiet moments in a beautiful cathedral
- My biggest girls got to have a sleepover at their cool Auntie's, they had such fun
- Three girls sitting in bed, two of them brushing their teeth, my baby Isla using her new toothbrush to brush her new tooth.
- An evening of reading and writing, lovely
- A wonderful, magical day watching the snow come down from the warmth and comfort of our nest, then outside to make snowmen and snow angels.
- Opening up the curtains one morning to find a flock of goldfinches in our Lilac tree, they are so beautiful.  The girls ran to get the binoculars and were excited to see them too.
- Baking with Caitlin and Erin, I stood back and let them work out what to do themselves and they lived up to the challenge.
- A mum who comes to stay, takes over cooking dinner and the cleaning up and spoils my girls rotten
- A new addiction, 'Twinings' peach and cherry blossom green tea, love it!
- A husband who reminds me that I actually do really love writing and should just get on with it!

Obviously, these are just the moments for which I am most grateful.  There were moments too when I wasn't feeling so positive or grateful for what life was throwing my way (lots of broken nights and 4 a.m. starts to the day were pretty tricky).  Yet, why dwell on them? These are the things, and there were others, which I can count as blessings.  Small, simple little things which enrich my life and enrich it again when I take the time to remember them.

'Creative Play for your Baby'

"Play is joy.  When we play, we are fully integrated into ourselves and we feel at one with the world...This is the wisdom of childhood."
'Creative play for your baby.' C.Clouder

I just love this book so much.  I first came to it years ago when my older children were babies, it inspired me then and has done so again the third time around.  It comes very much from a Steiner-Waldorf perspective, a philosophy which really speaks to me and just sounds so very 'right'.  This book has lots to read and to reflect upon as well as very practical guides to making little toys for your baby.  I made this little family of chickens for Isla, they're sitting on a 'nest' of wool, on a 'field' of green velvet (a plaything which is used pretty much every day in this house).

This is one of the things that so interests me about this book and this philosophy.  The idea that children need 'playthings', not necessarily toys which have been bought from a toy shop.  That's not to say that we don't have those things, we do, but I also like to add to the collection in our house things like the green fabric above, handmade little animals and just the wool itself is regularly used for stables and to feed the horses.

They are not the most beautifully crafted animals, but they were made with love.  I see now that they were also made (subconsciously I think?) as a representation of me, the Mother Hen, and her three little chicks.  She likes to keeps them close in her soft, cosy nest.

A wintry delight

It has been the most magical of weekends.  The snow arriving in our little corner of the world is still novelty enough to incite sheer excitement and delight in both children and adults.  Especially when it means Mum calls it a snow day and the girls get to stay home from school.  We rearranged the furniture in the living room and made a den by the glass doors.  There we nestled for the day, watching the snow come down, watching the birds come to and fro from the bird table and from the pine cone feeders we made (just pine cones spread with peanut butter and rolled in bird seed).  Wood pigeons, robins, blue tits, blackbirds and even a flock of my favourites, goldfinches, arrived in our garden this weekend looking for food. It was such a beautiful spectacle.

'Magical' is all I could think.  The snow, its brilliance and purity, invites such a feeling of stillness and an oppurtunity for reflection.   All I have wanted to do this weekend is sit in the chair now facing out to the garden and watch the snow fall.  It is so quiet and so peaceful it simply commands you to slow down and breathe and appreciate this wintry delight.  As dusk came I didn't want to turn on the lights, it plunged the garden in to shadow, instead I lit some candles and held on to the magic of the day for just a little while longer.

"I like it when you smile"

The day had felt like an endurance test.  As life with three little ones can.  How many tasks can I perform?  How much patience do I have? (not so much) How tired can a person get?  All I could think as I helped her in to her PJs and brushed her hair was, "I'm going to bed"; it was 7pm.  We had a cuddle  and I smiled a weary, puffy-eyed smile.  "Hmmm, I like it when you smile", she said.  It struck me, I could take this one of two ways.  First, I don't smile enough and she really noticed that I had smiled for a change? I hope not! Secondly, (the one I'm going with) she just likes it when I smile, I look friendly, warm and loving, not tired, irritable and impatient.  I know how I would like to look as she climbs in to bed each night.  Preferably that warm and loving version of me.  It seems that all I have to do, in fact, is simply just smile.

Mindful moments

Rush, rush, rush.  We were rushing to one school to pick one daughter up before we rushed down to the other school to pick up my eldest daughter.  Racing along the road.  Isla bobbing around in the buggy as we went.  And then I looked at her.  Really 'looked' at her and I had to stop to drink in her sweet beauty.  "Mummy, I'm here and I'm gorgeous and in all your 'busyness' you're missing it!" she said, though not using words of course.  "You're right" I thought. "I'll slow down, I'll really look at you and appreciate your 6 month old 'wondrousness".

Such mindfulness is something I am very interested in right now.  Being mindful in daily life of what is really important to me, what it is I truly value and being aware of the abundant blessings in my life.  Even though I don't want to always admit that I am blessed in so many ways and I just want to have a good old childish tantrum because someone has something that I would like or gets to do something that I want to do.  "It's not fair!" I think as I stamp my foot.

In my better moments I am drawn back to the moment, the life I do have as opposed to the life I 'think' I might like.  I am drawn back to this precious little creature staring up at me from her buggy, always smiling and pleased to see me.  She is a reminder to me to BE HERE NOW.  She is my little Buddha, my little Guru in a fluffy pramsuit.  "See me, connect with me,  because I love you Mummy", she says all of this with her eyes.  "I love you too baby, I'm here, I see you." If I do nothing else better today, I have done this, I have really connected with my daughter; it has been a good day.

My little bundle of inspiration

This is Isla.  She is one month old today.  I look at her and feel such a wealth of emotions.  How can I best look after her?  When will she go to sleep?  Do we have enough time to save for her university education?  How did I get to be so lucky to be blessed with a third daughter?  She is also my little bundle of inspiration.  When I look at her I wonder will she be proud of her Mummy?  What lessons will she learn from me?  Not just the things I will explicitly teach her, how to say the alphabet, how to bake muffins, the words to many songs, but the other things I will teach her just by example and without me always being conscious of them.  She will learn from me how to cope with stressful situations, how to behave towards people, strangers, friends and our loved ones, she will also learn from me how to live our lives.  What is it I would like her to learn then?  What should I be modelling for her to absorb from me over the years?

I would like her to learn that family life is sacred and that we are lucky to have each other.  That it is important to take care of our bodies and minds, to eat nourishing food and to read nourishing books, these things are important to me.  I would like her to learn that as she grows up she will be on a journey towards discovering who she really is, as I still am and will be until the day I die.  I wish for Isla to learn from her Mummy that it is our job, our duty, to continue on this path of self-discovery, to dedicate our lives to it.  If we are being our true, authentic selves, then we can be the best parent, sibling, spouse to each other.  We can do a great job of being all these things.  And so, 'to practice what I preach',  I return to writing, for myself, with no expectations, no pressure, just to writing because when I slow down and listen it is something that emerges from within me and to not listen to this inner voice wishing to be expressed is 'inauthentic'.  My Isla is so beautiful, so little and vulnerable and she makes me want to be a better Mummy, a Mummy who is true to herself and carves out ten minutes of this day so that I can return to my 'motherly duties' of changing nappies, feeding and starting her off with those songs I want her to learn.

On New Year's Day...

"The soul's awakening is gratitude"  (Sarah Ban Breathnach)

 This New Year's Day will not see me joining a new gym or starting a new healthy eating plan, I don't have to give up smoking because I don't and I didn't drink very much before I got pregnant anyway.  What it will see me doing though is starting my new journal as I did this morning, a precious hour in bed alone while my girls were downstairs with their Daddy.  I took some time to think about the upcoming year and about January in particular.  January can be such a bleak month, all the festivity is finished and all that stretches ahead of us is two more months of winter and the usual daily routine, but with some reflection and creativity it can be a month of new beginnings.

 So, in my journal I've thought about how to make January a bit brighter - just with a few simple ideas.  Making plans for lunch with friends, planning a trip in to the museums in London with my girls, a trip to a local art gallery on my own for a little treat, spending some time organising photo albums and writing in dates and special memories to go with the photos, compiling a list of books I'd like to read ( I find the 'New Books' magazine particularly helpful with this), making some little plans for the gardens (I don't plan on doing much gardening this year with a new little one on the way) and I'm also making plans for the things I would like to make for the new baby, starting with some little cardis and some bootees.

 Also in my journal I'm trying to start as I mean to go on with a list of the gifts that January will bring.  Already this morning, before I even got out of bed, I wrote down the following;
"- Lying in bed, before sunrise, kissing and cuddling my girls, laughing and singing - heavenly.
 - Sunday morning reading and writing in bed."
Already January has started pretty well.  How happier and more content does it make me feel to start the day knowing that I already have something for which to feel grateful.  If I write nothing else in my journal this year I want to commit to recording the gifts in my life.  The really small moments in my day, that can go by unacknowledged unless I'm looking for them.  Flicking back on previous journals when I've done this well, each entry brings a smile to my face and makes me feel as though my life is so rich and full.