Because… roses… and not packing.

Just because I love them and I'm going to miss them. (Do not ask about the packing. Do not ask about the packing. O? You asked about the packing? We leave in under three weeks and the more I pack stuff the more the kids unpack, completely deconstruct and scatter through the house. But look at my roses! With added raindrops.)

Apple Blossom… Just Because (And the Rose of *near* Death)

I was just going to post some photos of our recent apple blossom - because it was beautiful and I love it - but while I was re-sizing photos some of my roses got added as well. Because. Well. Roses.

Apple-blossom and roses are some of the things that I will really miss about the valley.
I suspect mangos and frangipani will make up for them and you know - air that doesn't give Beloved asthma, Poppet wheeze and Littlest gunk-eye - but I will miss the roses.

And the apple blossom. We're due for a bumper crop - the trees are laden with tiny green apples and it's strange to wonder who will harvest them. The fact we couldn't go out to get the apples this year because of all the toxic smoke makes me quite reconciled to leaving.

But o my roses. The roses of the valley are spectacular. Heady, dreamy, lushly scented, deeply coloured. The girls and I went to the Rose Gardens again yesterday and Poppet and I agreed it was a garden fit for a princess, even a fairy princess. (These roses are from our garden, I brought my camera, but forgot the camera card… duh, so we just enjoyed them.)

It's possible I've been googling and discovered a Queensland rose growing society and a place that sells roses designed for the tropics. But, while I reserve judgement, I've never seen a tropical rose that has the same wild, lush soul as a temperate rose.

Please particularly admire the Rose of Death. The big pinky orange rose is the one that was in the cup that Beloved knocked onto a power board reaching for his phone in a dark room. We don't actually know when the pain in his chest will go away, although they steadied his heart and over the course of a night his heart readings went from saying a part had been fried to normal. All because of a rose. If it wasn't so completely petrifying, it would be almost poetic.

Do you have any Spring Garden love? (Or Autumn?) Or stories of electric shock. (The comforting variety would be best…) 

Littlest (Six Months)

Dear-heart,

This month you have grown so much! You are suddenly blooming, just like the roses in the front garden but far more beautiful.

You have learnt to sit up and how to put your toes in your mouth. Your wonderful belly-gurgle-giggle has become a regular occurrence, especially when you see your big sister. You've started eating solids. Hello avocado and banana - fuss free, naturally packaged baby food, I cut you slices and you play and mash and suck on them, as well as throw them on the floor. A lot.

We have promoted you from the bassinet to the cot - the same one we lugged all the way to Vanuatu and back for your brother, and that your sister slept in. It's pressed up beside our futon, and as I write this I can hold your warm little hand that's poking through the bars. (It's possible I cried when we put away your bassinet, we'll be taking it to Melbourne for one of your Nana's friends from West Papua, but o my baby, my last baby, you grow so fast.)

You remain perfect in each and every way - from your soft downy hair that's decided to side part itself and is (after checking photos) the exact same shade as your brother's at this age - you're going to be another little blondie! - to your chunky little thighs and darling tiny nails, all varying colours of delicate pink, like shells from the deep. The little dimples at the base of each of your fingers are indescribably sweet.

(You're feeding again now, busily sucking, your pudgy smooth toes pressed up against my typing arm, my other arm full of sweet baby, one of your little hands possessively curled around the milk)

We went to the pool today, Little-one, and you loved it. You went into a yellow ring, just like your brother and sister, although I held you as well, and you smiled and looked amazed and tried splashing the water. Perfect happiness is having both arms filled with my little water babies.

To be (overly) frank little one, we needed the unwind time in the pool as it's been a week of stresses. Beginning with a colonoscopy (mine, not a lot of fun, particularly the preparation for it the day before with the whole non-eating) two bouts of gastro (your daddy and I) your daddy getting electrocuted and spending a night getting monitored - including being prepped for surgery which was thankfully cancelled- and your brother getting scans and seeing specialists about a lump on his jaw that just isn't going away. And then the packing for our Big Move. Let us not mention the packing.

There's a lot of deep breathing going on. But you, my darling, have been a constant joy and delight.
Your amazed smile, your contented sigh and cuddling in when you're picked up, your desperately outreaching fingers whenever there's food around, your happiness in being lugged about by your brother and sister, the way you coorie in to my shoulder when you're tired with little seal noises.

You think blowing bubbles is amazingly clever. Which of course it is. (Cue long discussions with your brother and sister about why babies blowing bubbles is adorable and bigger kids blowing bubbles is not so much.)

Your favourite trick at present is to grab both my cheeks and then lunge towards me to attack my nose with slobber. You repeat this with enthusiasm. You also think your own tongue is wonderful and stick it out constantly. It is very cute.

You love going out and smiling at random strangers - we're both a little aggrieved when they don't smile back. The rudeness! Your smile is slow growing, so admittedly this is not always their fault - they might be half-way out the door before your smile is complete.

You giggle so much we very nearly decided to add Giggles to your (rather long) list of endearments. Instead we call you Hoggles, a cross between Hogs and Giggles. Your daddy says that as the mother of Hoggles I should be Moggles, but I am unconvinced.

Our Giggles, our Hoggles, our little Pearl-Girl, our Lili-Pili, our Chubster. You are our constant delight. In the chaos of the everyday you are our calm and our radiant joy.

Magic Remembered

We went down to the sea in the holidays, my parents coming with us for five slow and lovely days.

With limited internet, and a promise to Beloved to try to keep the camera from harm and not take it near the sand, the world seemed more immediate, the days lazy and gentle.

The sky was blue and the kids stopped wearing their shoes on the first day - it took me three days to start leaving my flip-flops at the house and walk bare-foot along the orange clay roads and pathways.

My memories are of my little ones playing on the shoreline in sun-glitter and blue-water and gold-sand.

My photos are mainly from one walk on a cool grey morning - we hadn't meant to go down to the beach, but the sea draws us all closer. Poppet wore her 'Princess' dress, and walked like a fairytale along all the much-loved pathways of my childhood.

Littlest: Five Months

Our dearest Little One, 

You are just passed five months now and the sweetest little armful of cuddles. Your little fingers and toes are all plumped, you have chubby little cheeks and the most delightful giggling gurgle.

You are sitting up now, with a tiny bit of propping and are very proud of your achievement - although you still prefer it when someone helps you stand. You continue to be our little drool-a-tron, soaking through four or five bibs a day and at least a couple of changes, but there is yet no real sign of teeth, although you busily gum everything you can lay your searching little fingers on. You explore our faces, stick your fingers in our mouths and feel our teeth, try to gum at our noses, lunging at them with your victory grin. 

Is it wrong that my heart gives a little stutter when I see you playing with one of my books as you sit in my lap as I read, your tiny fingers busy exploring the cover, the pages, you pause for a quick taste - hmm, fantasy book- then look up with a grin. 

This morning Poppet had you on her lap while she strummed Sprocket's ukelele and you were in heaven - to be with one of the big kids and a big sound-maker. I don't think you believed the world could get any better. Except of course for the milk. (She says smuggly...) Luckily Poppet's song this morning was cheerier than last nights - this morning it was all about brothers and sisters, last night it was all about death. "Everybody dies. Everybody dies, Everybody's born, Everybody dies, Everybody dies. But God lives forever..."

I have missed you this last week - I've been sick, first with gastro, then a leurgy, and we stayed at your Nana and Grandpa's while I recovered. You're getting quite blase about the trains going past their house, which used to enthrall you, but your Grandpa taught you how to high-five (which greatly entertained me as growing up your grandpa would not allow us to use any 'Americanism's and was quick to remind us to use proper English. Again, slightly entertaining coming from a Glaswegian.) You thought it was wonderful that there was a game you could play and, with great effort, and not a lot of co-ordination, you would slowly move your hand up to meet his.

The week before we had a perfect week by the sea, again with your Nana and Papa, with some of the most beautiful blue-sky weather and you put your little feet in the sand and we lowered your little toes in the water and you studied the waves with fascination.

Increasingly you have no patience for being inside. You want to be outside, studying sky and trees and hopfully coming upon passers by to practice your grins on and coo as they comment on your big eyes and cheery dissposition. You'll just about stand being inside if Poppet or Sprocket are about, but if it's just your Daddy or I you soon lose interest and want to be outside. You howl if your brother and sister leave the room and I don't follow them. You have very clear ideas about your place in the world, and basically it is with them. Preferably outside with them. 

I am a little worried that the slightly larger age gap will mean that you will be forever trailing after them, but hopefully you and Poppet will be able to play together - if only as queen and lady-in-waiting... If your adoration continues I suspect you will have nothing against playing lady-in-waiting... I can easily see your sister as Titania and you as one of her attending fairies...You are talking lots at the moment, oohing and aaahing and making strange indescribably adorable little gurgles and squeaks. They are incredibly sweet sounds and I will miss them when you begin to talk. (I would swear you say 'hello' and 'Lily'... but I am a little biased!)

We are starting to pack up to move, Little one. There are boxes all through the house and I am jettisoning things daily. It is strange to think you'll have no memory of this, your first home. The roses, the blosssom, the all-on-top-of-each-other squeeze. I find it hard to believe that it's only sixty days until we fly up north for the forseeable future. You are still so wheezy the doctor has put you on ventolin - I hate seeing your little face beneath the spacer - but I so hope that it will clear up when we move. Your Daddy hadn't had asthma since he was a kid before we moved to the valley.

Little one, I didn't think it possible but we love you more and more each day, and each tiny millimetre of you is pink and white perfection. I think I drop a kiss on you at least once every hour, because it is just impossible not to. Your smile lights up our lives and no one could fail to laugh when you laugh. We love to watch your eyes take in the world, look from place to place and back again, to see your fingers feel out the world, to see you pull at your brother's top to get his attention, hold to your sisters fingers. I love to watch your sleeping face as you sleep-feed, the delicate sweep of lashes and soft-tinted busily sucking lips.

Each day you interact more and more and you are so eager to be one of us, to be up and about and one of the pack, your gigles and exuberant grins of triumphant when you succeed are such a delight.

Our Lilli-Pilli, our Littlest we're so glad you're you. We're so glad that you are ours.