4/52

Poppet - with her favourite book at the moment. Jane Ray's beautifully illustrated and beautifully written The Apple Pip Princess. We've been reading it at least once a day and often two or three times all week.

Sprocket - his Grandpa aims to turn him into a pigeon flyer. He's just released one of the young birds to the sky.

Littlest - my sleeping beauty - with her little doll from Paris. Paris was a bit of a disappointment (possibly because I had a flu that turned very nasty) but we found a very good toy shop and went a little bit wild on a we're-sorry-we dragged-you-half-way-around-the-world-and-it's all-so miserable way. Note: even the toy shop owners in Paris are snooty. This made me giggle between coughing.

Joining with Jodi for a portrait of my little ones once a week, every week in 2015. 

3/52

Littlest - her early morning weetbix is serious business. 
Poppet - dancing down the back of the garden. Only seven am and already unpleasantly hot and so muggy the camera lens fogged up. 
Sprocket - still a little jet lagged from our big trip. We've stopped falling asleep at 2pm and waking at 2am but we're still taking a little while to wake in the morning. 

Joining with Jodi for a portrait of my little ones once a week, every week in 2015.

2/52

Poppet, laughing with her Aunty on a boat on a canal in Amsterdam. 
Sprocket, in a favourite pub in London, a double decker bus passing. 
Poppet. My Joy. Somewhere in Europe. 

We're home now, having journeyed from Paris to Brisbane in the space of forty-eight hours, in my in-laws place in Queensland, where we'll be until we find or build our own place. Sick. Jetlagged. So completely bone weary it doesn't bear thinking about.

The kids are pulling the house apart. We got home at 11pm last night and by 7am this morning Sprocket hadn't managed to sleep for more than an hour but had found four cane toads (that I know of) and dozens of  skinks. One of which lost it's tail in the living room. There was also talk of a brown snake sighting but when we traipsed out after him to the stand of bananas he claimed to have made the sighting I became a little suspicious.
"How many snakes were there, Sprocket?"
"Forty! Forty king brown snakes and forty taipans."  Wordless return (coughing) to the house.
"It was real. Really really real." A-ha.

Joining with for Jodie for a portrait of my little ones once a week, every week, in 2015.

Winter Wonderland

 We drove in and out of weeks and all through the long day, one eye on the thermostat another on the frosted hills. The temperature sank to two below and we were so keen, so tautly eager for snow. We passed deeply, vividly green moss and fog hung low over silvered lochs and finally, just as the sun set we reached the Cairngorms and slopes of snow.

And it was magical.

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Littlest- being held by Nana in her ergo. All rugged up in winter warms.

Sprocket - still a little chesty and sleepy. By the Christmas lights in Jenners.

Poppet - By the Christmas lights in Jenners.

We are now approaching wellness and our time in Edinburgh is turning delightfully dreamlike. Beloved's mum, sister & a good family friend have arrived bringing lashings of food, drink, good cheer and extra hands to herd the kids. The city continues to fill me with constant heart palpitations at the sheer beauty - the castle on the skyline… be still my heart! We met yesterday with my cousin's family and it was so so lovely seeing her and the little ones and watch our little ones play together! (Our girls share a love of pink, plastic ponies in pastels and bling)

It is possible that Father Christmas has been hitting the Edinburgh op-shops pretty hard in cahoots with his/my sister-in-law. Edinburgh op-shops are brilliant! (Also the gorgeous one-world shop under St John's.) Father Christmas only has a stop off on the Royal Mile now for Hairy Coo's (Cows) and a little bit of tartan stuff and I think he's done. (He didn't do any shopping in Australia so he's been a bit busy…)

Joining with Jodi from Scotland for a portrait of my little ones every most weeks in 2014. 

Where My Characters Walk...

My babe carried warm on my chest, rugged up in faux fur and wool, my little girl's gloved hand in my gloved hand, and my boy tripping on ahead, we walk through the winter town.

I ooh and aah as my children ask why we had to come to The Cold Place. 

I point out the Christmas trees in the windows, the ones outside shops, their lights gleaming against the dark. The houses surrounding us are all nineteenth century and stone, on occasions the street we cross is cobblestones. When we find a Cathedral staring down at us, (St Mary's?) it's stained glass windows illuminated from within, the kids yell about 'the castle' and I have to explain that grand and big as it is, it's not a castle. 

This is where my characters walk. I see them in my head as I walk. I hear their voices as a constant running commentary. Unfortunately, they are bickering, just as Beloved and I would be if we weren't running on zero hours sleep. 

I look down at one of the little basement courtyards and there is a small, brilliantly green fern surrounded by moss growing on one of the stone steps leading down and I can see - see so clearly the toad hero from my story sitting glaring from beneath it. The kids pull me on, wanting to be somewhere, anywhere* worthy of the long flight, but I'm still smiling as we hurry on. 

It took me awhile to work out the precise time and setting I wanted for my retelling of the frog prince.  I  narrowed it down to Scotland when I was fifteen and then took twenty years to fine tune the where and when.

Staying in Edinburgh now, close to the New Town where I've situated my heroine's house, everything confirms my choice. Things are clarified, changed, reinforced, the tactile detail, the scents and sounds and minituae are coming into focus. 

The high ceilings that are such a feature of the house we are staying in, and of the New Town in general, mean my plans to have a plus sized heroine are scuppered. With such a serious amount of steps I do not see how it would be possible for her to have an ounce of fat on her, and that's not even taking her daily stroll to the fish market beneath the bridge and up Calton Hill to bleach the clothes and over to the old town to see her sisters. I think if anything she'd be verging on the sinewy and she can definitely eat whatever she chooses and then some and struggle to gain. 

The size of the rooms is both a surprise and an interesting glimpse into the mind of the wealthy of the nineteenth century - these people preferred the look of the thing to all practicalities of warmth or ease - heat just flees up into the high ceiling and running up and down the stairs (particularly carrying a seven month old) is getting old…

Jeannie could walk fifty miles and not break a sweat. Heck, I think she could run fifty miles and not notice. Myself on the other hand...

Today, tomorrow, soon, we visit The Georgian House and I am so looking forward to truly stepping within a house similar to the one Jeannie and her father lived in, to admiring the copper pots on the fire stove, to seeing with my own eyes what her bedroom was likely to look at in 3d, not just photos. Of course, I've visited it before, but so many years ago I don't want to count them.

Sights, sounds, smells… add a touch of trauma and after a long break I'm writing again. Ideas return… a troll comes marching through my story, stolid and slow of speech, well meaning but guaranteed to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, made worse because he says so little, glimmers of Christmas-in-the-long-ago come to life…

It is so good, so very good to be writing again. (Even if it is in the small hours of the morning when I would dearly love to be sleeping if only certain little munchkins would go the bleep to sleep.)

*I suspect the Christmas market, ice skating and carousel rides which we hope to go to later today will more than live up to their hopes. As they've been up since 2.30 am (again) though, I'm a little wary of taking them out on the town… I foresee tears… lots and lots of tears. And possible tantrums of the lying-on-the-ground-kicking-legs-and-screaming variety. Possibly by me. No sleep is not pretty in kids or adults. C'est la vie. I'm sure it's good for the soul. Somehow. Character building. Though not the pleasant making-up-a-character-for-a-story-kind.

50/52

Sprocket - talking with Poppet on Princes Street, Edinburgh. An early walk on our first morning in Scotland.

Littlest - the dearest smile - Amsterdam airport. She was the best traveller of any of us, and the only one with any smiles left by the end of the 36 hours.

Poppet - Poor darling, the travel's been rough on her. Looking out of the window as we go on a mission in search of food and towels.

We're in Scotland now - jetlagged, sick and so bone weary we can hardly walk. It was a brutal flight. Antibiotics still haven't dealt with my mastitis, my Beloved also had some bug just before we took flight and catching up on things in his home town left him majorly sleep deprived even before we left. The kids are waking at weird and wonderful times in the night deciding it's morning. The first night it was 11, but they went back to sleep, last night it was 2.30, but they didn't go back to sleep. Beloved stayed with them in the lounge while I fed Littlest all.night.long.

I think I could write a book on how not to travel.
Anyway, Edinburgh is beautiful. The castle is stunning and the snow on the nearby mountains never fails to make me catch my breath. I love the way the light falls on the stone, the history, the memories, bitter sweet and happy. I love the Christmas lights in boughs and door arches, the gorgeously painted carousel at the Christmas markets. There is no sign of snow yet, but we live in hope.

Please Lord, let there be Peace (and a white Christmas).

49/52

 

 Sprocket - playing with an old oar in the driveway down at the beach in the early morning.

Poppet - still sleepy and hair all mussed, eating her porridge. (Made with instant milk as we haven't got to the shops yet after our epic drive across the state the night before.)

 Littlest - no matter how early her smile lights up the world. (If you have a magnifying glass you might just see her new tooth)

Joining with Jodi for a portrait of my little ones every most some weeks in 2014.

We have begun our move to Queensland. We've said our bitter-sweet farewell to the fibro shack that has been our home for the last four years and that Littlest came home too. (Beloved still has to go back for one last tidy, and then some unknown time next year to load our boxes and stuff up and bring them up, but the kids and I have said our farewells.) We're stopping at the family beach house to rest and recharge a little before making the trip up North. New beginnings here we come! 

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- Littlest, on the rug with her favourite toy. It is true love.
- Littlest, rugged up for the beach with grandpa.
-Poppet, by the shore in evening light.
-Poppet, walking the beach paths in her princess dress.
-Sprocket, engrossed in sand and water play.
-Sprocket, in the ti-tree grove.

We've had a blissful week at the beach - but I rarely got out my camera. In fact, only really on the one overcast morning of the week.

Joining with Jodi for a portrait of my little ones once a week every most some occasionally in 2014. 

37/52

- Sprocket, up a tree. A favoured place. He was throwing down blossom for me - delightfully fragrant.
-Littlest. She loves to be standing, and standing on the trampoline with all the pack is the biggest of delights!
-Poppet. My bold and brilliant girl. Red suits her - she is flamboyant and dramatic and full of stories and  vitality. She's finding Littlest taking up so much of my time, and so much of everyones attention hard, but she's trying so hard.

Joining with Jodi for a portrait of my little ones once a week every most some weeks in 2014.

35/52

- Poppet, just home from a 'rainbow' party and sitting in the windowsill.

-Littlest's darling little fingers. The strange thing about babies is how perfectly they're designed to be absolutely and completely adorable in every way. Except perhaps the waking up all through the night bit.

-Sprocket, upside down on the trampoline. He's just had a rather brutal haircut and I'm taking awhile to grow used to it. (The boy before us in line at the barber had his head shaved, so this was a compromise!) He looks so much older, such a school kid, but the thing about hair? It grows back...

Joining with the lovely Jodi for a portrait of my children every most some weeks in 2014. 

34/52

- littlest
-poppet
-sprocket

We have had glorious weather recently - sunny & blue skied & mild, with the air all scented with blossoms & jonquil. The hills around have been outstandingly beautiful & I've sighed & smiled & said how can we ever leave. We've tried to be out in it as much as possible. Spring is so close we can taste it.

Joining with Jodi for a portrait of my little ones every most weeks in 2014.

33/52

- my Poppet, running in late afternoon light. You can see some of the scratches on her face where Kik-Kak protested her excessive love. She instantly forgives him. I… do not. She asked for her hair to be cut short like her cousins this week and I'm loving the flapper bob. We've nearly, but not quite, got rid of the evidence of her time-alone-with-the-scissors.

-Littlest. Uncharacteristically solemn. She so wants to be up and playing with the big kids. She has been giggling this week and it's the most gorgeous sound.

-my Sprocket, climbing in the playground the afternoon before we went to the hospital to get his grommets put in again* and the unexpected removal of his adenoids. He is also displaying the results of Kik-Kaks protestations.

Joining with Jodi for a portrait of my kids once a week most weeks in 2014.



*just before that someone told us how they'd had grommets put in nine times. And we know the studies show that the long term benefits of grommets aren't great - but it's so hard for Sprocket just not being able to hear, that we'll settle for short term benefits.