Posts Tagged "Rememberings"
Always Remembered
When I was pregnant with Kai, in those days where I could still sit down and concentrate on something for more than 20 minutes and would often spend an entire day curled up in bed reading, I read a lovely book called Ursula, Under by Ingrid Hill. Although the book itself didn’t entirely grab me, the concept behind it did. In it we are shown how miraculous the life of one child is through her genetic history: all the chance encounters and extraordinary stories that led her ancestors to meet, to survive, to have children of their own, cumulating down the centuries in HER; her story. You are left with the powerful and moving sense of just how wonderful it is to be alive, and an enormous feeling of gratitude to those people who lived before you. Those who carved a living, who fought for love, who lost and suffered, but who lived long enough to have children and though them bequeath you their life blood and their history.
So moved was I, in fact, that I began to research my family tree; something I have continued to do on and off since. Through it I discovered a passion for research, quizzing family members, scouring census records and tracking down birth certificates. It has been enormous fun – like being a genetic detective hunting down leads and following up clues. Through my research I’ve built up a fairly comprehensive picture of my ancestors, tracing some branches back to the 1700′s. At the moment it’s mostly bare bones, where they lived, names and dates and some information on occupations etc. but gradually I am starting to get a sense of the people behind these facts. They are really coming to life for me.
Read MoreA Sad Goodbye
I had a blog post planned for this weekend. It was going to be lovely: in it I was going to tell you about the sense of peace and real happiness that came over me this last week; a real feeling of rightness that I haven’t felt before. Not contentment, that is something I am not so good at, but happiness: yes.
Firstly, I was going to tell you about submitting my first assignment for my creative writing course… on time! OK, I stayed up till midnight the day before but I work well under pressure and always have: nothing like a looming deadline to get those words flowing. Competing my first short story, from seed thought through the research and exploration process through to finished piece, was one of the most exhilarating experiences I’ve had in a long time. I was quite breathless by the end, the story building and twisting till finally those few last words came tumbling out. And the best thing? I love it. I love what I wrote. Those of you that read this blog know that doesn’t happen very often. I don’t even really care about the mark to be honest. I just want to write some more.
Then I was going to tell you about the Great Toy Guide, about how well it is doing, with mentions in two national papers in the last week and on the Asda website. About all the great features we are working on, about the sense of purpose it’s given me and how much I’m enjoying it, despite the fact that dealing with PRs sometimes makes my head feel like it might implode.
And then, finally, I was going to tell you about Kai. My beautiful boy who is now walking like a pro and at every given opportunity. And not only walking but squatting, twisting, bending down, falling over and getting back up again; working into a little shuffling run and swerving round corners in a way that makes smile every time. About our week of playing in the winter sunshine, and treats of hot chocolate and cream scones, shared just between the two of us and we grin and chat in a language no one else would understand. I might even have mentioned the fact that the night before last he finally, blissfully and inexplicably, decided to sleep from 7pm to 7am with only one brief wake up at midnight.
I was going to tell you about all those things. In excited, enthusiastic tones.
But then, on Friday, as most of you know due to the overwhelming number of lovely, sympathetic messages I received on Twitter, I finally had to say goodbye to my precious old cat Beth. So this is not the happy post I had planned.
I am really trying not to be too sad. Beth was 18 years old; she had had a long and comfortable life, much loved and much cherished. She didn’t suffer, having just one morning of very quickly going down hill as her kidney’s failed, but then being put to sleep as I held and stroked her, falling away so quietly and peacefully with no pain and no distress.
But she has been my little shadow for 18 years. She has watched me turn from 10 year old girl, to stroppy, rebellious teenage; she was there as Ant and I first began our relationship, moving with us as we moved into our first house, watching me through years of illness and recovery, through pregnancy and the introduction of a brand new little person into our household.
I shall miss her. Tremendously.
So I leave you with memories of Beth.
Of me, in my wisdom, falling in love with the runt of the litter of kittens we went to view for my 10th birthday and insisting she was the one for me. Her as a teeny tiny scrap of kitten who had to be drop fed milk; surviving cat flu, swallowing a whole needle and thread and having it removed from her stomach, and mysteriously disappearing for nearly a fortnight before arriving back home, timidly peeping from behind the back door: I can still see her little scared face as we tempted her back.
So vividly I remember watching her bravely stalk a mouse across our front garden, only for the mouse to turn, raise up on it’s hind legs and chatter at her ferociously as she almost fell over herself in her rush to get away. I kid you not.
My girl, who was never once vicious or nasty, submitting to cuddles like a newborn baby with a deep purr like a cement mixer. Who went slowly do-lally in her old age, forgetting where she was and when she had last eaten and turning into the epitome of a cranky old lady who just wanted to sleep and have her meals served on time.
And watching her with Kai. Kai, who loved to sit and stroke her with the most gentle, loving touch you could imagine, and twist her ears like a transistor radio in a way that was a little less gentle yet still met with only purrs and indulgent, half-closed eyes. Kai, who chose this week of all weeks to learn how to say her name and now points to every cat with excited cryies of ‘BU BU’ or ‘ETH’.
Yesterday we laid her to rest in my mum’s beautiful garden, under an Azalea bush named ‘blue tit’. My scrawny girl, who couldn’t have caught anything if her life depended on it, has finally got her bird.
Night, night sweet girl. We will never forget you.
xxx
Homeward Bound
I sit, in the almost-black. Head nestled deep into my pillow, positioned carefully between the edge of my seat and the window, periodically turned to transfer the cool window’s freshness to my rosy face. I am, perhaps, six years old, and we are in the car, cruising through the night at a steady seventy. I don’t know where we have been but I know where we are going – home. Back to familiarity and light and solid ground, my inner compass pulling us along the motorway to my waiting bed.
My body is warm under its duvet cocoon, my bed-from-bed. The close, womb-like feeling of the car heavy around my body; its thick air in my hair and permeating my skin. The only light comes from the glow of the dashboard, the comforting silent figures of my parents looming large in their seats. My mother nods sleepily in the passenger seat, her hands lying gently on her lap, my brother’s still form, huddled and soft at my side. If it wasn’t for the appearance of my father’s hand from time to time as it reaches into my field of vision to change gears I would think that I was the only one awake. My limbs are heavy, lulled by the momentum of the travelling car, but my eyes, my eyes are wide, every sense on fire.
Outside my window I watch the laser display of the passing cars. Twin star-flares fly past in the opposite direction, floating in inky black, dazzling and bright. The glare from their lights shoot up and out into the night in thin, sharp pencil lines; the silhouette of their propelling vehicles vague and gray. Motorway signs loom dimly and then are gone, their blue and white flashing in my vision with only seconds to register unfamiliar sounding names and places. The trees alongside, ghostly and dark with only the occasional flicker of a streetlamp on an adjacent road or the sudden view of tiny square lights in distant towering flats to hint at humanity outside of this long, gushing river of light and not-light and heat and sound. The noise of the engine is strong and steady. A hum that fills my ears and my head, punctuated with the sudden rush of the cars approaching, crescendo to sudden diminuendo. Sound with pressure somehow, pushing on my ears with heavy enveloping force.
The fact that we are moving at such high speed, so vulnerable in our fragile shell of metal and glass never occurs to me. I feel so safe, so warm, held safe by the close feel and smell of my duvet, by my unflinching certainty and faith in the man behind the wheel. I know I should sleep and yet I can’t close my eyes, transfixed by the sights and the sound and intoxicating sense of being an invulnerable spectator in this intergalactic light show, although I would never be able to verbalise this feeling as such. And yet I know, I plan in fact, that once our journey has come to a gentle, halting stop on our drive way I will pretend to have been asleep all along. Faking heavy, mouldable limbs and closed eyes to ascertain my transfer from one carrier to another. To my father’s strong and gentle arms, to bed and inevitable sleep, lights still flashing under my eyelids.
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There’s going to be a bit more of this creative stuff coming your way in the future I think. Hope that’s ok with you reader. Let me know your thoughts… Are you happy with my creative spewing in with the main feed? Or should I just hide them on a page somewhere for you to find in the menu bar…
Read MoreGagging Not Choking
I survey the carnage.
I have been cooking. With three cupboards, an oven that doesn’t work properly and one work surface measuring less than half a metre wide, preparing food becomes a complicated dance of pirouetting, rearranging and balancing, with a few swear words thrown in for good measure, and giving everything at least 10 minutes longer to cook than it should.
The dishes are piled high in the sink, with me somehow managing to use every utensil I own just to cook chicken and rice. I have spilled sauce on the hob and on me and may have inadvertently ‘lost’ some onion down the side of the cooker. You know nothing ok? We’ll just pretend that didn’t happen (or that I dropped some pasta down there yesterday).
But, I’m done. And nothing is burnt. Bonus.
I stick my head round the door of the front room where Kai and his dad are zoned out in front of Gigglebiz – ‘Little Britain for toddlers’ my hubby has described it as. Spot on. “Kai, do you want some food?” I ask while doing our ‘food’ sign that Kai’s just beginning to start to copy “It’s time for tea!”. “Yeah Yeah!” shouts Kai jumping up.
Wrestled into his highchair Kai is soon tucking in with gusto to his rice and chicken. He grabs his fork for good measure and gives a few half-hearted stabs but it is soon forgotten in favour for great big fist-fulls alternated with delicate pincer-grip motions, picking up tiny grains one by one and examining them before down they go with a enthusiastic lip smack. Big bits of chicken are chewed and quickly devoured. Water is quaffed and waved about and dripped onto the high chair tray to make patterns with. When interest starts to wane, daddy steps in with the forgotten fork and I watch as they share their special mealtime game of ‘one for me one for you’, amazed that Kai is finally letting us near him with utensils after months of refusing to eat anything off a fork or spoon except Kai ambrosia (yoghurt) and that only because hands just don’t get enough in quick enough.
I love mealtimes.
They are my favourite part of the day. Ant is home from work, bedtime is fast approaching and ensconced in his highchair with a big plate of food before him Kai is (usually!) at his most charming and entertaining. Mouthfuls for him are usually alternated with tidbits offered to daddy and me, and sometimes the cat for good measure. He sings, he chews his way through enough food to feed a small army, he pulls glorious and comical faces as he tries and assesses new tastes and at least half the offered food ends up on his lap, in his hair or on the floor.
It is glorious.
At not-quite fifteen months old I have to say that I think eating is one of Kai’s party pieces. The way he gets through a meal is usually enough to stop most people in their tracks, and make them smile and comment especially when they realise how old he is – an age when a lot of his peers are still only just being weaned of mush and onto ‘grown-up’ food.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am far from proud or sure of many things I have done as a mother. But Kai’s weaning is one thing I think I’ve done rather well. In fact, both Ant and I are in complete agreement – weaning Kai the way we did was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made as parents. I talked a little about it previously, but the long and short of it is this:
We held off weaning until Kai turned six months old, despite everyone’s abject horror and insistence that we were starving the poor child. And then we did something that everyone thought was completely mad (and by everyone I mean my mother – come on mum I know you’ll admit it). We didn’t give him pureed baby food, we just gave him big chunks of proper food to pick up and gnaw on himself. He could choose what to eat or not to eat and how much. And if he didn’t want anything at all that was fine too. It’s known as ‘Baby-Led Weaning’ but personally I think it should just be called ‘common sense weaning’.
“But he’ll choke!!” was the first objection. Well actually, no. He didn’t choke. He did gag a lot to start with which everyone PRESUMED was choking, but look – he’s just coughing and learning to move food around in his mouth and not bite off quite such a big bit next time. And he’s already tucking into the next piece. It upset everyone else far more than it upset Kai… Gagging is a natural and pretty essential reflex if you’re going to learn how to eat safely.
“But he’s not really eating anything!!” was the next concern. OK – granted, not an awful lot got ‘consumed’ as it were in the first few weeks of weaning (although the first time it did the resulting nappy was a shocker I can tell you!) In fact, not really till Kai hit about 10 months old did he start eating consistently. But look again. This boy is hovering above the 75% percentile on his growth charts and I’d done my research – milk, breast milk especially will meet up to something stupid like 98% of his nutritional needs for the first year, and still provide the vast majority well into his second year. So there was no rush. Exploring tastes and textures were always the priority to start with – if in doubt I just kept repeating the mantra “Food under 1 is just for fun”. It worked – just look at him now.
“But he’ll be a picky eater if you let him choose what to eat – he won’t eat the right things!!” I never really got this argument. He has tastes, of course he does, and preferences same as anyone else. He still thinks broccoli is the devil’s fare no matter how many times I offer it him. He loves sweet things, but will choose fruit over a biscuit any day. Strawberries don’t even touch the sides. Some things (like potato) he took a long time to warm too but now are his favourites. Other things, like carrot, he seems to go through phases of liking. One thing I have noticed that if offered a good variety of foods, over the course of a week Kai will usually eat a good balance of protein, carbs, diary and fruit and veg. 
But not all in one meal – sometimes all he’ll want to eat is pasta, or cucumber. But the next day you can guarantee will be a ‘chicken day’. I’m working on the assumption that somehow, intrinsically, he knows what he’s doing.
“But you’re encouraging him to play with his food – what about table manners?!”. That’s for next year. At the moment we’re all about the fun. Babies wash. Floors wash. We wash. It’s not a big deal. Flinging didn’t last long and once Kai learnt what ‘no’ meant it got short shrift from us. But if you want to draw patterns in your spaghetti and smear Shepherd’s Pie in your hair? We’re ok with that.
Now, 8 months after starting on our weaning adventures, not one person questions our decision. The results speak for themselves. My dad is evangelising baby-led weaning to the girls in his office, my mum is humbly proclaiming that she has ‘learnt a lot’, and the mother-in-law is glowing with pride.
So there we go. One big success story. Nice to share one of them for a change!
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This post was written for the Carnival of Eating over at Tired Mummy’s Blog – please pop over and lend it your support.
And If you want to learn more about Baby-Led Weaning as an option when weaning your babies I would really recommend this blog and forum for tips, recipes, and much needed reassurance when you’re getting started. Or talk to me!
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