28th May 2009
My creative space this week has been quiet. I managed to finish the doll, but life is shifting slightly as Lily’s afternoon naps all but disappear and we get busier with friends and family. I am looking ahead at the next six months as being fairly full with the daily hub-bub of being a mum, but 2010 will be different again as Lily starts kinder and I start working again. What will that work be? That’s probably where my creative space has been this week – in my head, figuring these things out; making plans… The rest of 2009 is about working that out and setting things up ready to blast into action in February 2010.
More creative spaces at Kootoyoo – thanks Kirsty!
10th May 2009
Bizarre cakes found on the Cake Wrecks blog (via @aussieellen on twitter).
Because I haven’t conducted extensive market research, I can’t safely say that there is a huge segment of the visitors to loobylu.com who are mums, but I can go on a goodly hunch:
Happy Mother’s Day to all you mums! And to mine, and to my mother-in-law in Canada. May you eat loads of yummy cake. I plan to, and then I plan to spend my book voucher on something fab and then eat my Green & Blacks white chocolate (baby!). My girls are lovable today, and the sun is shining. I hope it goes that well for you too.
3rd April 2009
It’s the eve of the school holidays.
Tomorrow Amelia is heading 8 hours north with my parents for two weeks.
Two whole weeks.
When Mum first suggested it, I was totally stoked. The thought that this little restless 6 year old, so used to constant school-style stimulation, was about to land in our laps for a fortnight of boredom and quibbling, had been weighing on my mind. As an alternative, two weeks of running in paddocks, fishing in dams, wading in mud, visiting caves, hot air ballooning (oh yes) and evenings snuggled by a fire is the stuff childhood holiday dreams are made of. I couldn’t be more pleased for her. Although I am sure there will be wobbly moments when she misses home, and phones calls will be made, I know that being away from us in a safe place will give her such a sense of independence and pride, and she’s going to have so much flat-out fun, that I feel really good about the decision.
But then I feel bad.
For me!
Now that she leaves tomorrow, there’s a very big part of me that doesn’t want to let her go. Obviously I’ll be brave and set her free (etc. etc.) and anyway, it’s way too late to change minds and she’s so excited and her lists have been written (an extensive packing list and a schedule for holiday activities broken right down to each hour). I share her excitement and we are packing with clothes-flinging enthusiasm, but I also want to hold on to her and step back to before the decision was made and remake it again. She’ll be such a long drive away.
Our two weeks without her will be long. I know from experience that the first three days of the usual school holidays are nigh on nightmarish as exhausted kids wind down and get used to the new, slower schedule. But after that we fall into gentle rhythms and quiet joys with no need to rush anywhere. No 9am deadline to be in line at the classroom door, no need to get out of our pajamas until lunchtime. Time expands allowing for imaginary friends and cubby building in the garden, ‘chapter books’ are written (hers, not mine), friends come in from next door, sisterly affection blossoms. We’ll miss all that.
I already know that I will go into her room while she’s away and listen to the stillness and look at the neat, unslept in bed and feel completely strange and empty. I am already looking at her and missing her. There are moments when she seems so small and waif-like which, oddly, she was nothing of the sort just a week ago. Now she seems thinner and paler and her eyes bigger and more pool-like and those eyelashes! There are other moments when she is funnier than I ever remember her being, and more interesting and full of startling, grown-up confidence. I look at her soft profile and go quite gooshy – there is no other word for it. I am falling madly head-over-heels-again. Funny that.
Only 16 days until she’s home again. Counting down.
Other words and pictures for “A Long Drive” can be found here. Thanks Pip for hosting again. xx
10th March 2009
When I was little I went to a nice school in a leafy suburb in Adelaide. It was the 1970s so we wore roman sandals and my uniform was pink with a zip down the front. What a crazy uniform. I think they have changed it to something far more conservative now. Roman sandals? The toe-jam was insane in Summer. And that zip? Gawd. There was always the risk that some boy would grab the round ring at the top of the zipper and whip it down, right there in the playground. Honestly, whoever designed that uniform was not thinking.
I had a 1970s Mum – she wore very nice a-line skirts with big floral prints and cute t-shirts and roman sandals. She did 1970s things like, she worked at the university for a while, and she did batik and she had dinner parties. She was pretty cool. She also helped out at our school from time to time - she came and ran a batik session for the grade ones (all that hot wax and small children – wow – the 70s were out of hand!), and she helped with “Healthy Lunches” scheme.
Healthy Lunches were the bain of my existence. Healthy Lunches were the 1970s conchy Mum’s answer to tuck shop lunch orders. I know whole families of kids who got tuck shop orders with glee at least once a week and I would look on with enormous amounts of envy at their sausage rolls and cartons of milk. But a gaggle of 70s Mum’s came up with the funky alternative – Healthy Lunches. Hey kids! It’s fun because you can buy it at school! You could bring along a dollar (or maybe it was only 50 cents) and you could get a brown wholemeal role with thick butter and vegemite, a chunk of cheese and a plastic mug of Nippy’s orange juice. Nippy’s 1970s orange juice was really just pulp with a little bit of juice in the bottom. You know, I can still remember the taste of that plastic mug full of that foul pulpy, sugar free juice. Put me off pulp for life.
But now I am a mum and I appreciate what my Mum was trying to do. I appreciate her conchy 70s ways and I am proud to be following in her footsteps. Get those sweets OUT of the school canteen! Haven’t they seen anything Jamie Oliver has had on TV in the last five years? Geesh. That being said, I’m getting a bit … relaxed… about some things.
When I was a very new mum, food was my big thing. All organic, all home made, no McDonalds, not ever, no frozen food in a box from the supermarket, no sugar and so on. I bought enormous amounts of cookbooks chocablock full of nutritional meals especially designed for the wee kiddies. We ate well all the time. In the last couple of years I have become a lot more slack about it. We still eat well, and I still enjoy making yummy nutritious stuff, but there are days at a time when we might not make a salad, and there are times when we dash out for fish and chips, or whack a handful of potato smiles in the oven to go with the chops. I figure we are still going to be ok, because that’s all still an exception to the rule. I look back on my earlier (slightly uptight – or massively uptight if you ask some of my friends) ways and realise that food was the only thing I felt I could control. I didn’t have a clue if I was doing anything else right in the parenting department, and spent a lot of the time being completely freaked out about it; but at least the freshly stewed and pureed organic apple baby food that I was putting into my baby’s mouth was exactly the right thing to be doing. I was defining myself as a good mother by the food I made.
These days I’m a slightly shabby mum, with maybe a slightly better sense of humour and a box of frozen “fairy shapes” in the freezer.
The hugely healthy roll in the photo is one that I have in the cupboard for Amelia’s lunchbox tomorrow. Old habits die hard.
Thanks to Pip for hosting Words and Pictures! Why not join in too? We’ll make Anne Lamott proud!
