Young At Heart Photo Album
The cake mix on my face was the giveaway huh?
According to the very lovely Bumbling Along who kindly tagged me in Tara from Sticky Finger’s Young at Heart Photo Album meme, this blog mentions cake around 94 times. That’s an impressive cake-to-post ratio don’t you reckon?
Looking through my old photos to find one for this meme I was struck by this one. Because in a weird sort of way it sums up everything about my childhood, and, inadvertently, everything I learnt about being a mother.
I feel like I was incredibly blessed growing up.
My parents marriage wasn’t a particularly happy one but all I remember is feeling loved and safe. And I remember time, endless time. Time spent together, especially with my mum who postponed her social work career until me and my brother were in school, and then only worked part-time till we started high school.
I remember baking, crafting, making huge dens out of cardboard boxes, trains made out of chairs that stretched from one end of the house to the other. I remember reading to my parents at bedtime, doing ‘paperwork’ in my dad’s office, the dressing up box in my wardrobe, and the excitement of being given my own ‘patch’ in the vegetable garden you can see out the window there.
We never had much money. We didn’t go on fancy foreign holidays. Our clothes came from friends and church rummage sales (not that you’d ever tell from this photo!). Life was mostly about ‘making do’ on my Dad’s small income, saving up for those things we really wanted and being grateful for what we had.
I am grateful for everything we had.
I am grateful for space to play, and parents that listened, a dad that taught me about ‘funny’ and a bookcases full of old books.
Memories like this and many others are what made me to decide to try and stay at home with Kai as long as I could.
Memoires like this make me try to prioritise time over money, to try not to worry that Kai is growing up in a similar ‘make do’ household.
I know that not everyone can afford to have a parent at home but we can, just. There’s nothing left over and we have to live very frugally but we do make ends meet. Sometimes that’s a tough choice to live with, we have a lot less in material terms than most of our peers, and I have to watch other women leap frog over me in terms of ’success’ but I believe we made the right choice for Kai.
I wish I could be the mother my own mum was – she made a far better stay-at-home mum than I do, but the memories she’s created for me make me want to try to be better. Mum went on, after her career break, to have a very successful career, just like her mother did before her, and even though I struggle with letting go of my ambition for a while this is gives me the hope that my own time will come, and that the time I’m giving to Kai is worth sacrificing a bit of fame and fortune for in the meantime.
I guess the funny thing is that even though I’m a mother now, I’m still the girl in that photo too. I don’t think I’ve changed that much at all actually.
I’m still kind of small and freckly. I either talk too much or not at all. I still spend most of the day with bits of food around my gob… and I still am filled with dreams of being ’something’ even though now I am already something very important.
A memory-maker myself.
A mother.
Now. It’s time to pass on the Young at Heart baton to the next victim worthy recipient.
My tagee is sat in the front row there, third from the right, looking very stern and not AT ALL like she’s having a lovely time as she sits (and I quote) “looking like a swot in those horrible shoes”. I can’t imagine anyone less swotty actually. Although she is rather an expert in her professional field, she’s just as likely to be making you giggle with her funny stories and silly videos then be found doing lots of serious stuff. She also happens to be someone I am honoured to call a friend and one of the nicest people you could ever hope to come across in this blogosphere of ours.
Can you guess who it is? Leave me your ideas and then click on the photo to find your way to her blog where she’ll be posting her own post, and naming her own tagee soon! All she has to do is include the meme name “Young at Heart Photo Album” in her post so Tara can follow it as it winds its way through all the lovely blogs out there…
Writing Workshop #14 – Childhood Passions and a Fantasy Shopping Spree
Welcome to Monday’s Writing Workshop prompts!
For any newbies (and it’s never to late to join in), here’s how it works… I’m going to give you 5 writing/blogging prompts. Pick one, pick two, or do them all if you’re really keen – it’s up to you. How you respond is your choice. You could share a real-life story, or make one up. You could write a poem or just free-write without thinking too hard and see what happens. It can be funny; it can be serious; it can be emotional. It can be whatever you want it to be. The only rule is to have fun with it!
Prompts each week will take their inspiration from blogs, current affairs, daily life, or just whatever everyone happened to be talking about that week. If you’d like to suggest a prompt then send me an email or catch me on Twitter – I would love to hear your ideas.
So here they are:
1. What is your personal motto? Or if you haven’t got one, then it’s time to make one up!
- Inspired by my friend Rosie Scribble with her post “Keep Calm and Carry On” (P.S. Miss you Rosie x)
2. Go on a fantasy shopping spree. I’m giving you a virtual £1000 – go nuts! What will you buy?!
- Inspired by Life Slighty Used’s “On the topic of clothing…”
3. Write a letter to something that you own, that you love, or maybe that you hate.
- Inspired by Victoria from It’s a Small World Afterall’s letter to her bed.
4. Tell me about a childhood passion that somehow got left behind as you moved into your adult life.
- Inspired by Dad Who Write’s rediscovery of ‘Riding’.
5. Talk about a time where you found something magical in the mundane.
- Inspired by ME! and my ‘Falling Snow’
Now here’s what you have to do. Write your post and publish it on your blog between now and THURSDAY. On Thursday come back and use the widget that will be up to paste in the URL of your post to share. Then take some time to read some of the other entries and leave some comment love! We’re not here to critique – just to have fun and support each other in our writing experiments. So be kind please.
Anyone who would like to submit something via email, or even anonymously will be more than welcome to do so. I’ll post them on the site here and include the link in Thursday’s round-up.
Feel free to use the Workshop badge on your blog or as part of your post if you like. Code is here:
Note: I’m told Blogger does something a bit funny with the code so you’ll need to copy and paste it and then retype the quotation marks (“) as Blogger changes them for some reason.
See you Thursday then!
P.S. And if you fancy plugging this workshop on the social network of your choice? Then that would be fan-frigging-tastic.
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This Writing Workshop is brought to you in association with Mama Kat’s Losin’ It – who’s lovely author came up with the concept and runs her own workshop over in the U.S.
Falling snow
I am not going to talk about how hard I have found today.
I am not going to talk about the fact that Kai is sick again. My poor poppet with his ribs still poking out of his once portly abdomen, who has only just got his appetite back and is now back to nibbling miserably at the odd biscuit while he fills nappy after nappy.
I am not going to talk about the fact that all this has meant I had to cancel my one afternoon off in nearly a month. That I’m not likely to get another one for another month, or that the thought of this has made me sob today with disappointment and need, and with guilt that this mattered more to me than the fact that Kai was sick.
That all I wanted was a couple of hours to sit a drink hot chocolate and work on my now-inevitably-late assignment as I watched the people pass outside the cafe window; to wander around the park and take photos of light on water, and to buy nail polish and paint my toe nails a deep, blood red.
I am not going to talk about the fact that, despite my best intentions, the only way I have survived today is by having Postman Pat and Fireman Sam on repeat.
I’m not going to talk about that.
Or not much anyway.
No.
I am going to talk about my amazing, perceptive boy.
Who can sound out a bin-lorry or a police siren from streets away, who notices a tap dripping from another room, and who, despite the thick net curtains that hang from our street-side window, noticed within seconds today that snow had begun to form in thick, soft, silent flakes upon our grey row of houses.
My boy who jabbered and pointed excitedly until my attention and my comprehension had caught up and who raced to the door, begging to see.
My boy who, in a moment of compulsion and an invisible push from I don’t know where, I swept up and outside under the cold grey sky, into the street to twirl and dance as snow fell on our hair and on our tongues, and on my cheeks wet with tears.
In that moment I did not feel guilt, or loss, or pain.
Just love.
Overwhelming, heart-stopping love that made me ache for the touch and the closeness of his little body in my arms as I brought him inside to resume his place on my lap, his head against my face.
That is what I want to talk about.
Because although this has been a shitty, shitty day, that moment right there?
Was perfect.
Writing Workshop: Life Lines
Welcome back to the Writing Workshop link-up! At the bottom of this post you’ll find the widget to post the link to your workshop posts.
First of all it’s my turn. I’ve chosen prompt number one: an honest description of what I look like. I hope you enjoy it.
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Life Lines
I am made of lines. Some deep
some faint and silvery fine.
They run, criss cross, through skin
and bone, through heart and soul,
and make a picture.
Like veins they snake, up leg and thigh
over hip and not-firm torso.
Memory worn of stretch and shrink.
Of tiny feet and form, pushed drum tight
and carried, cherished, close.
Inked into breast and under arm
tell tales of swollen milk-filled days.
Shrunken now, along with waist.
Too many meals skipped
and pavements walked.
Furrows run, across brow and mind,
ploughed deep by thoughts, dug up.
They pull the corners of mouth and eye,
crinkled soft and bright, or firm and tight
and running fast with tears.
They tell a tale these lines of mine
of things both past and yet to come.
They feed the new lines, leaping free
to run in rivulets down fingers keen
and written out.
For you.
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So now it’s your turn!
1. Write an honest description of what you look like right now.
- Inspired by Nickie at Typecast whose post made me smile.
2. Give your curtains a twitch and dish the dirt on your neighbours.
-Inspired by Kate at Two Men, A Cat and Me, who’s decided that life really isn’t that boring after all!
3. Write about ‘one of those days’. I’m sure you’ve had one lately…
- Inspired by poor Metropolitan Mum who certainly has!
4. What were you doing this time last year?
- Inspired by Maternal Tales who celebrated her 1 year Blogoversary this week – congratulations!
5. Tell me about the most romantic moment, or moments of your life so far.
- Inspired by soppy Sally at Who’s the Mummy who thinks that romance isn’t about places but about people.
Leave your name and the URL to your post in the MckLinky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) andleave me a comment to let me know you’ve taken part. If you have the time it would be great if you could try and read and comment on at least two other entries. And be kind! It’s supposed to be a bit of fun – we’re not looking for the next Booker Prize winner here!
If you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve still got today! Or just wait till next week, when there’ll be five brand new prompts to get you thinking.
This Writing Workshop is brought to you in association with Mama Kat’s Losin’ It – who’s lovely author came up with the concept and runs her own workshop over in the U.S.
Blogging part 2: ‘Bad’ Posts
Hello. Me again.
I know, I’ve already blogged once today. Although, maybe you missed it. I published it, took it off, then published it again in the space of a few minutes which probably fooked my RSS feed up good and proper but oh well.
I had decided it was dull. Dull dull dull and wasn’t really about anything and was probably of no interest to anyone and I should just take it down.
And once I’d got over myself and my silly wobble I was pretty struck by the whole stupid thing.
Why on earth did I take it down? It wasn’t THAT bad, just a rambly kind of post that didn’t make much sense and probably left readers not really sure how to respond. But that’s ok, right? Why am I being so insecure?
And then lovely Mum’s The Boss said something on Twitter that made me do one of those head-smack “doh!” moments. She said maybe all this talk in the bloggosphere today about what makes a ‘good’ blog post had made me question myself.
I think she’s absolutely right.
It’s been the hot topic today. A Modern Mother wrote some tips about what she thinks make a top blogger and I liked her message that silly tantrums, cattiness and resentment won’t get you anywhere.
Then Notes from Lapland and Babyrambles almost simultaneously posted their take on writing good blog posts in a weird moment of blogging synchronity.
Now don’t get me wrong. It’s all good advice and well worth a read. We all want to be ‘better’ bloggers, engage our readers, write posts that stand out from the crowd. It’s good to stand back and analyze sometimes, work out what it is that made this post ‘work’, what made it successful or not so. It makes us better writers and helps us to grow and not become stuck in boring, predictable patterns.
But I think it can be counter-productive.
We’re not writing articles for magazines here. We’re writing personal blogs.
Sometimes it’s not about writing well, ticking all the boxes of a ‘good’ blog post.
Sometimes it’s just about writing.
Getting it out there.
So. I just wanted to throw it out there. I hereby give you permission to write bad blog posts. It won’t stop me reading your blog, or lessen my respect for you. It won’t make you any less of a ‘top’ blogger in my eyes.
It will just show that you are human. REAL. That you are fearless in claiming your blog as your own, which is what it is. That are you are not going to let self-doubt and perfectionism get in the way of creativity and self-expression.
Be boring.
Be rambly and mindless.
BE ANYTHING YOU WANT TO BE.
And try and remember that sometimes the ‘bad’ posts, the ‘mistakes’ we make, help to make us better writers too.
In the In-between
It’s been a funny few days.
Ever so often, quite regularly actually, I seem to hit a point in my life that seems like a transition. I feel between, balanced on the cusp of something, but what I’m never really sure. It’s almost like I can smell change: a vibration in the air that makes my brain twitch, registering some subtlety of something.
I don’t know what it is or what’s on the other side.
I just feel… different.
I’m in one of those in-between times right now.
It’s making me a little jumpy, impulsive. I’m finding it hard to settle, my attention flitting endless back and forth between different things.
I’m feeling pushed to move. To get out, walk, only to fall back through the door hours later to collapse, brain and body fried from just sheer being.
But I feel better. So much better from the fog of the last few weeks, in which I felt like I’ve stumbled, half-asleep.
I feel awake. Alive. It’s a good feeling.
I just wish I knew why. And what I’m supposed to do with the building pressure when I don’t feel like I have any time or space to channel it.
Life seems to have an intensity about it at the moment. I wonder sometimes if I’m being affected by Kai, who seems to live life in such vivid colours right now – everything is bold flashes of red and black, purple and gold with him. If anything I feel like he is the force pushing me, challenging me to change and to grow.
Life doesn’t seem ‘right’ with him. That feeling of missing something, waiting for a piece of the puzzle to click extends completely to him too. I feel like if I can just find the thing that I’m so obviously missing with him everything will be better.
Maybe that’s naive, I don’t know. I doubt there’s some magic answer that will suddenly make life easier.
But I find myself thinking, planning, pushed into making changes to try and anticipate and accommodate his needs a bit more, to try and find better ways of relating to each other and muddling through our day as companions, since that is what we are and what I so often seem to forget.
It’s meaning less time for my own things. Less time for writing, blogging, project work. That’s enough to make me twitchy on its own I guess, but right now I feel like I have no other option, at least until this feeling of pressure lifts, this need to think and adapt. And that’s confusing because my need to write, to be creative, is still very strong and yet seems at odds with the direction that Kai is pushing in.
Something is changing. Or something needs to change.
I just don’t know what.
Is it me?
Do you ever feel like this? How do you deal with times of challenge and change?
Mama’s got a brand new blog
Notice anything different? Yep, Sleep is for the Weak has had a make-over!
I’ve been after something a bit lighter, simpler. Somewhere I can show of my writing and my photography a bit more without lots of other things getting in the way.
It’s not quite right yet but I’m getting there and will be obsessively tweaking over the next week or so.
I’d love to know what you think so far though!
Workshop #13 – A look in the mirror and one of ‘those’ days
Welcome to Monday’s Writing Workshop prompts! Ooh it’s nice to be back. Glad I took a week off last week (much needed) but I don’t half miss reading all your posts! Hope that this week will be a good ‘un – I can’t wait to see what you all come up with!
For any newbies (and it’s never to late to join in), here’s how it works… I’m going to give you 5 writing/blogging prompts. Pick one, pick two, or do them all if you’re really keen – it’s up to you. How you respond is your choice. You could share a real-life story, or make one up. You could write a poem or just free-write without thinking too hard and see what happens. It can be funny; it can be serious; it can be emotional. It can be whatever you want it to be. The only rule is to have fun with it!
Prompts each week will take their inspiration from blogs, current affairs, daily life, or just whatever everyone happened to be talking about that week. If you’d like to suggest a prompt then send me an email or catch me on Twitter – I would love to hear your ideas.
So here they are:
1. Write an honest description of what you look like right now.
- Inspired by Nickie at Typecast whose post made me smile.
2. Give your curtains a twitch and dish the dirt on your neighbours. Any exciting stories? Or, if not, what do you imagine is going on behind those closed doors?
-Inspired by Kate at Two Men, A Cat and Me, who’s decided that life really isn’t that boring after all!
3. Write about ‘one of those days’. I’m sure you’ve had one lately…
- Inspired by poor Metropolitan Mum who certainly has!
4. What were you doing this time last year? If you had a blog back then maybe share a post from that time? What has changed? What have you acheieved? What are you still struggling with?
- Inspired by Maternal Tales who celebrated her 1 year Blogoversary this week – congratulations!
5. Tell me about the most romantic moment, or moments of your life so far.
- Inspired by soppy Sally at Who’s the Mummy who thinks that romance isn’t about places but about people.
Now here’s what you have to do. Write your post and publish it on your blog between now and THURSDAY. On Thursday come back and use the widget that will be up to paste in the URL of your post to share. Then take some time to read some of the other entries and leave some comment love! We’re not here to critique – just to have fun and support each other in our writing experiments. So be kind please.
Anyone who would like to submit something via email, or even anonymously will be more than welcome to do so. I’ll post them on the site here and include the link in Thursday’s round-up.
Feel free to use the Workshop badge on your blog or as part of your post if you like. Code is here:
Note: I’m told Blogger does something a bit funny with the code so you’ll need to copy and paste it and then retype the quotation marks (“) as Blogger changes them for some reason.
See you Thursday then!
P.S. And if you fancy plugging this workshop on the social network of your choice? Then that would be fan-frigging-tastic.
——————————————————–
This Writing Workshop is brought to you in association with Mama Kat’s Losin’ It – who’s lovely author came up with the concept and runs her own workshop over in the U.S.
On TV, boredom, and not knowing what on earth to do with this child.
I was just over at Notes from Lapland this morning, reading about her dilemma with the TV in her house, worrying that it’s on too much and wondering how people ‘balance’ TV watching with other things . My comment to her was getting far too long so I thought I’d better write my own blog post on the subject and, well, it sort of turned into being about something else.
I’ve struggled with the TV this week. In the past I’ve felt we’ve done pretty well, with Kai watching the television what I feel to be an ‘appropriate’ amount (which is up to every parent to decide). We tended to have it on for an hour or two in the morning, maybe twenty minutes while I made some lunch, and then sometimes half an hour sat with his dad while I make tea.
But the last few weeks, the amount of TV watching has crept up.
With Kai being poorly last week all he was well enough to do really was flop and watch his favourite programmes and I think it set a bit of a precedent. This week that’s ALL he’s wanted to do, and I’ve been too ill and shattered myself to complain much. When Kai gets it into his head that he wants something there’s very little you can to do to change his mind and the result is usually a great deal of tears and anger that I don’t always have the energy to deal with. So this week I just gave in and it’s been on A LOT – most of the day really.
Now I’m very concious of the fact that we need to re-set the balance again. But I’m not really sure how. And actually? The thought scares me a little – I think I’m as reliant on it as he is.
If I’m honest I think it’s become my way of dealing with ‘managing’ Kai and his increasingly challenging behaviour and getting a break. But I don’t like that and I guess that is what this post is about.
Increasingly I’m finding it very, very hard to get anything done during the day while he supposedly ‘occupies himself’. He just won’t do it! When he wants to he is an amazingly impressive attention span and can concentrate on something that has grabbed his interest for a long time. But the thing with Kai (as it is with everything about him) is that it has to be self-motivated – he has to CHOOSE to play.
But if you try and ‘encourage’ him to sit and play with some toys so you can get on with something? When he hasn’t chosen to do so? NO chance.
Housework mostly involves constantly disentangling him from whatever it is I’m trying to clean. He has a completely irrational, mortal fear of the hoover and will scream constantly and hysterically when ever I use it (also food processors and anything else whizzy). He objects, loudly and bodily, to my talking on the phone and to my use of the computer, often physically climbing on to my lap to pry my hands from the keyboard and turn my head away.
Even when I actually give in and play with him (I know… the horror! I’ve talked before about how I hate toddler play) it doesn’t usually go well. I do it ‘wrong’ – the fireman should go HERE not there, and GOD DAMN IT MUMMY you put Postman Pat on the WRONG SIDE of the van. SCREEEEEAAM!!!!
‘Messy’ play, crafts and the such, which I know you will all suggest and are all such masters of, completely baffles me at Kai’s age. You get everything out, he spends approximately five minutes doing whatever activity you have organised. Pouring paint/glue/sand/water on the floor and smearing it on the furniture becomes far more interesting than doing what you’re supposed to be doing. Cue battle of wills , temper tantrums, defeat, an hour cleaning up. Well, it’s not really worth the bother is it.
*sigh*
The ONLY thing that works is taking Kai out of the house. Something that I don’t always have the energy to do all day long. Add in trying to get Kai to have a good nap in the day (nightmare) which only happens if we’re at home, and the trauma that is playgroups at the moment (that all seem to be at funny times or far away) and, well, I think you begin to get the sense of the juggling act that I’m trying to manage.
And failing at. Miserably. I’m not ashamed to say that.
Because the main problem is that I think he’s just bored. Unbelievably bored. He almost needs more stimulation than I can give him, but we can’t afford nursery whatever way I look at it. Space is in an issue too: he hates being cooped up in our little rooms 9ft square and we ARE moving soon, but not for another few months.
Something is going to have to change. We need a new system. A new schedule.
But I have no clue where to start.
So, (because you’re always so good at this) advice please.
HELP!
How can I manage his needs and his behaviour during the day?
Is it just a case of me stepping up (and be honest), finding a way to give him the stimulation he needs? How on earth am I supposed to find the energy for that??! And what exactly do I DO with this child?
Or is it a battle of wills. If I ignore the bad behaviour and the attention seeking enough will he get the message and just go and toddle off and play on his own? *wishful thinking that leaves me feeling guilty*
And what do I do about the damned TV. Cold turkey?
Mobilise the forces people! I need some help here!
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*This post was brought to you by Fireman Sam, a session terrorising daddy in the kitchen, two bowls of dry cornflakes poured one into the other for ten minutes (and mostly on the floor) and finally finished after one twenty minute screaming session persuading a very tired and grumpy boy to have a nap. See what I go through for you people??!*
