Ice Cream Parlour Love

 It's a balmy Friday afternoon. Its ice-cream day.  It's just what we do now, the walk up the hill is slow with four kids but it makes the ice cream taste all the better...
Miss H, A young twenty-something year old, hip kindy teacher is also at the famous inner city ice-cream shop.  She is fun, gorgeous and embracing and loves not only Miss Seven but her siblings also.  She spots our little gaggle and sidles up to master Four on the vinyl bench seat.   She asks him what flavour he is having and then when he replies chocolate, inquires whether it is yummy.  Without warning  he in an declaration of affection lunges his pre-licked and rapidly melting scoop toward her mouth suggesting she 'try it?' Taken aback Miss H forfeits the offer purely by hesitation and Master 4 gives her a look of absolute disdain.  I would be pressed to think of another incident that has left him looking so discombobulated.
I have always suspected that Master 4 feels quite affectionately toward Miss H but this confirms this notion (a Four year old does not share ice cream with just anyone) as well as a knowing that she will no longer be at the top of any list after this rejection.  

Such a grown up disappointment for my little man.

Bear Marmalade and lunchbox letters

This moment of creative cuteness greets me this morning as I reached my desk in our sunroom. It entices me to reciprocate with a wee note to pop in miss Sevens lunchbox for tomorrow. Just a little thought for her to enjoy at recess after the inevitable 'put your shoes on, brush your teeth, is your homework in your bag, where is that home reader that has been eluding capture and return for over a week now?'

All you school mummas know how that script runs at 8.40am...

Spring rolls and pillows

There is a take away container of frozen spring rolls in Miss Three's bed. To be more exact there is a a take away container under Miss Three's head; she is using them as a pillow. Its complex. After hours of fun, swimming, eating, hunting for (dairy free) chocolate Easter eggs and playing with the friends who joined us for this sugar driven race around the garden, we all slump in front of a movie. I use this distractedness to my parenting advantage brushing their teeth and pyjamaing them while they are watching - I'm flying solo tonight. Soon after, I am surprised with the ease that they transition to bed. It isn't until I am strewn lazily on the couch (after a clean up that sees the clock racing for 9pm) that I see a little set of fingers curved around the door. Miss Three looks bewildered. 'I need an ice pack..' she uses one when her eczema is itchy at night. I still haven't retrieved the icepack from last night to re freeze it. Miss Three won't be appeased by this. In fact, the more I reason the more I see her winding up to begin bawling. Hubba bubba is finally asleep after huge efforts so with visions of him to waking up i open the freezer door with frantic enthusiasm. I am desperate. If it were for daytime use I'd offer a pack of peas but I don't really want them going to waste. Spring rolls! In a moment of genius I wrap these Asian delicacies in paper towel and offer them.. I hold be breathe. Miss Three accepts this package as an acceptable option.

Half an hour later I sneak in to retrieve it... It had been re wrapped in one of her (party) dresses and is under her head. Remove it? That would be madness. So there it is... Frozen spring rolls and party frock under her head. One more try before bed, but I'm not gonna tempt fate, or the feisty Miss Three.

Some days all it takes to get through is a double shot coffee and a vitamin B tablet

I could either do a 5 km run or sleep for a week and both sound equally appealing. I know it’s strange, in another life I think I would have called it fatigue, now it is more commonly referred to as having four kids. Some days all it takes to get through is a double shot coffee and a vitamin B tablet.  Today wasn’t one of those days.  By 4pm the toys strewn from one end of the house to the other where just a minor annoyance.  The hole cut in our less than year old couch was slightly more notable.  When asked the reason for this handiwork Master Four replies that he was getting rid of the pen mark on the fabric – what a logical solution, why had not thought of this. There is more but I feel like retelling more would not be so therapeutic.  

Do I love these crazy kids? Indescribably. Did I want to be lying on a deck chair on a beach in Mexico (without them) today? Without a doubt. 

Everything in Moderation, Even Moderation

Three weeks ago Miss Seven declared that she hated school and that she wanted to go to another school. When I asked her if she would really want to leave all her friends she said no but that she could come back next year.  

Two weeks ago Miss Seven asked if she could move to the other class  – she made it quite clear she did not love her teacher this year.  

Yesterday the lovely Miss Seven drew a very elaborate picture complete with pop up people standing back to back.  She advised me that it was herself and her teacher and that she would give it to him today. When I asked her how her day went she beamed that her teacher had put her picture up on the side of his (insert specific details about the size, shape, colour and location - she really can talk) cupboard so that everyone could take a look. 

This is what I love about my girl.  She is fire and ice.  Win her heart and she is yours but do anything she perceives as unjust and heaven help you.  I don’t know where she gets it from?

These past weeks have been hard as a mumma, trying to find the balance between hiding her under my wing and teaching her how to find her way in the difficult relationships which will occur throughout her life.  I'm so proud of you Miss C you have given me an increased confidence that my little girl really can hold her own in the big world.    

One March day

I am sitting outside a cafe on the main drag. But today the cafe isn't the relevant fact. Suffice to say it is a busy locale with a steady trade of health professionals and local business owners and their staff...

Hubba bubba and I are sitting outside so I can feed him lunch... I am smiling, cajoling, absorbing him. Our animated interactions make him squeal and giggle between each mouthful and sometimes during. It is as though the crisp air on this sunny March day suspends us here.

The attention our play is attracting neither distracts Madd now deters me. I know now these moments are to be prized.

Our new addition

I need to come out with it. I'm not sure how to say it. We have a new addition to our family. Breathe.... It's not another baby!

She is a beautiful nine year old Brazilian girl. Miss Seven has been asking for a pen friend for ages so we finally sponsored this little lady through Compassion International. Both Miss Seven and I are overjoyed by the whole experience.

I feel like there will be much for us to learn from this new adventure and that it will help remind us of the much bigger world beyond our very middle class dilemmas.

I am away now to write a wee note to our little lady instead of a note about her.

Welcome home

I wait for it, every day for seven years now I have devoured it. The moment, when the children see their daddy after his day at work. I watch hungrily the smile in his eyes, the response in them, the softening in their tone, in their play. He kisses each of his loves on the head, the cheek, sometimes hands or feet. Enthusiastic, jumbled recount of the events of the day, stories reserved for his return fill the room and I am overwhelmed again by their shared delight. I was not gifted with this as a child. I had a mumma who was a strong and loving woman who worked to fill the longings of my little heart as best she could.

It was in the absence of a daddy that I knew what I wanted one day for my little ones if and when they would come....

Thank you for loving them and in that loving, loving me.

Velvet cheeks

It's as though there is a force stronger than my will dragging my eye lids down. I've not felt this sort of exhaustion since Hubba bubba's early weeks. It's two weeks until he is eight months... Today I worked, outside our home that is, work that involved financial remuneration. It is the cause of my weariness tonight. But this is all I have to say about it. Instead I want to cradle my boy as he feeds and stroke his velvet cheek. It is the longest he and I have been apart and we both felt the absence. He by refusing his sleep and me with an edginess that is not my usual demeanor. But not again, well not too soon my little love.

People Watching versus stalking

I am sitting in that little organic bread bar in the leafy stretch of South Dowling Street with Hubba Bubba and a double shot Latte. I'd like to say I am minding my own business but - I am not.  I never really do I've realised. People are enchanting, watching them, listening to their interactions with other people.  I find it all fascinating. A women walks in.  She is a little older than me, on her own, smartly dressed, buying bread she has collected and put in a brown paper bag from the bread boxes beside me. I am staring (unaware at this point that I am doing so). She is not unaware of this and looks over, smiles and asks whether I am waiting to order. I smile sheepishly and fumble with an excuse 'No, no, sorry, I'm in another place this morning, just staring into space, sorry.'
Ugh, I've never been completed sprung in the throws of 'people watching' or if I have never confronted about it.  I will need to revisit my observation strategies to avoid appearing a stalker I feel.

Would you like some beetroot with that Chocolate Cake? or 'Little Lisa's Fruit Cake'

A few weeks ago I declared to Husband ‘I’m bored of eating’.  So on one of my google obsessed days I went in search of some new inspiration and clicked across a fabulous blogger – Jules Clancy. Her blog Stone Soup - http://thestonesoup.com/blog/ is so where I was at that I devoured the content like it was bible. Her mantra is 5 ingredients 10 minutes, along with an ideology of using what is on hand. Her result? Easy, healthy, tasty meals.  What is not to love?

As I am not one to keep new passions to myself, I have been sharing this recent evolution in my cooking journey freely.  So on Friday when I collected a fabulous friend for a morning in the park with small people, coffee and treats, I was excited to hear that my cross pollination of these ideas had motivated her to bake a chocolate, beetroot and cardamom cake purely because she had these things in the cupboard. 

 

The colour, the texture, the something, momentarily took me to a morning when I was no older than six.  Awake early, I crept past my mum who was sleeping her last minutes of sleep before a day with her girls.  This was a more difficult feat than one may imagine as her bed was in the corner of the lounge room which then led on to the kitchen of our one bedroom duplex. I tiptoed across the over sized black and white checked flooring, pulling a chair awkwardly to the cupboard to retrieve the ingredients I believed would make a good fruit cake.  I mixed it and poured it into a tin ready for my mum to wake up –I knew I mustn’t use the oven alone.  Mum masked her initial alarm at the carnage my production had created brilliantly. And what was emblazed in my memory is a glow from knowing she was proud of my culinary attempt. She even managed to smile her way through the eating of it. I have no memory of how it tasted but I am guessing I was no Junior Masterchef. 

Back to Friday's cake and the taste was delightful and the texture amazing an experience I want replicate in the near future. 

Coffee isn't Coffee....

It was with hesitant gratitude that I accepted the gift of one of those pod type coffee makers last weekend. After an initial cup and then another and another in the name of experimentation I declared in a hushed tone to husband 'its not evil'. And later....'On the very long continuum that is barista made coffee it is somewhere up the good end'.  I know, I may have to renig on these comments at some later moment of realisation but this week they are my truth.  

However, after a couple of days of satisfactory usage, I sense there is a problem that I can't quite put my slightly jittery finger on.  Then it occurs to me! My issue is not with the quality of the espresso shot but rather in the gaping hole this machine has put in my morning routine.  I realize that coffee really isn't about coffee. Coffee is my connection, in fact it is community.  I need do need caffeine to function but more so I need people, and I need to be part of the world that is outside mumma land! 

So on Wednesday after two long days of no cafe visits I am in withdrawal.  I crave the experience. The leisurely walk to the 'local'. The knowing that I will be greeted by the young nonchalant owner, and chat about something topical before he makes my piccolo.  I will smile and nod at familiar faces. Hubba Bubba will smear his brekkie across his face and smile his gummy grin in innocent joy over the whole sensory experience.  I smile similarly (but with teeth) knowing this lightening of the morning is in fact about a sensory experience for me also. 

What to do with the 'do'

Can I preface this by saying that I am aware that this is not a critical issue in any way – to anyone really – not even me!  But, sometimes we all need to think about something of no great significance or long term consequence right? Just to forget that there are far more important thing happening (just for a sec).

So following that disclaimer, here is my dilemma.  My hair was long, for quite a long time, then it was coloured and straightened and coloured again (and again) to the point where it was very blonde and very shall we say - lack lustre. Gradually it got a little shorter and then a little shorter until at some point a decision was made to go short – really short, boy short in fact. I loved it! I still love it, for about a three week period after it is cut and then? Then I have in between length hair that is now impossible to style… thanks to the recent departure of all hormones that grow a baby and other fabulous things like thick healthy hair and radiant skin.

  So the long and unmanageable short of it is that I am heading back, back to hair that is long enough to be styled or not styled, as required.  And while I know that there will be mixed opinions amongst friends, Miss Seven is excited by this decision - she has asked if I can grow it to my feet, 'we'll see' I tell her, but here’s to enough hair to tie a pony tail to hide a bad hair day.

A little note to a little lady

I guess I've know for a while that relationships need different levels of care at different times. And, that sometimes I have far more emotional capacity to give than other times. And that these two thoughts can be terribly incongruent.  Today I am acutely aware that our (no longer littlest)baby girl is in need of some nurturing. So to help get myself in a place where I can give her what she needs I am writing a little love letter to remind us both how special she is. It feels like the writing may have the same power in it as the reading. 

Beautiful Miss Three,

 

There are so many things that I love about you, and in the busyness of life perhaps I have forgotten to say them.  I love that you lunge at life – that you approach every event with enthusiasm and force. And that you feel everything feeling in its entirety.  I love that you are determined and courageous even if it involves saying no, a skill that will serve you in years ahead!  I love that you are curious about so much and so open to learning. I love that you are kind and thoughtful, that there is always a hug or a toy for a friend who is down.  I love that this is a list about a three year old, because I marvel when I think what a beautiful soul you will continue to become as you grow if this is what you are capable now.

Mum x

A change in the Air

Oh My! I believe I have started a blog.  I said that this was not in the writing plan, but...  The breeze that is meandering through the open window is different to yesterday's. And there is something about the change that has allowed me to commit to this new little project. It is the gentleness of autumn. The in between season that I am soaking in this morning.  Good things happen in Autumn. Almost three years ago I got married in March and last April I trekked the kids to Taiwan to spend time with my sister. So it seems that my Autumns are a time of inspiration.