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- 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. 

Librarian Queen Mummy - Returning to 'Work'

"Are you going to be a doctor like daddy?" we asked Poppet recently, as she played with her daddy's stethoscope (carefully sterilised). 

"No! I'm going to be a Librarian Queen Mummy like Mummy!" my Poppet exclaimed. 

While my heart did a little giddy flip at the sweetness of her, my work is also something I've been thinking about a lot recently, as I've started back doing a shift a week, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on how swaps work out.

This is the earliest I've started back at 'work' after a baby and I feel incredibly blessed that it all works so perfectly. I'm doing very short shifts and my parents are happy to make the 6 hour round trip to look after Littlest while I'm away during the week, while on my weekend shifts my beloved mans up and takes on the three wee ones solo (Flatteringly, he does look a little frazzled when I trip gaily up to the front door on my return, rested. recharged and eager to hug my beaming, filthy delights.) 

Financially, I'm not entirely sure if it evens out - just look at the time involved on my parents behalf - that's a combined twenty of their hours for my four hour shift, not to mention train tickets etc. Yes, they get to spend uninterrupted baby time... but that's a massive commitment, which I'm very grateful for and I fully understand would not be an option for everyone. 

What it comes down to for us is keeping choices and options open.

Yes, my Beloved is nearly finished his degree, but life and fate are capricious - you just never know what's going to happen. It's not a 'life is capricious now', life and work have always been capricious. 

We, in (most) of the west, finally have some kind of backup, but I still think it's good to be prepared. 

Keeping my skills relevant, my references relevant, as well as my Beloved's, is something we believe is important as a family, even if I never work full time again - although the likelihood is that I will.

So I'm waking in the middle of the night to express milk, trying to remember to put in breast pads (the wet-patched-chest look isn't the most sophisticated around) giving my dusty work shoes a quick once over with baby wipes and back in the paid workforce again, if only very casually, and only till Christmas. 

My beloved is spending quality, one on one, time with the kids and my parents, remembering how hard it was for my mum to re-enter the workforce after a long child-raising break, are making the mammoth journey.

I'm so very grateful that my work is so flexible (short as my shift is one of my supervisors told me I'd be welcome to bring Littlest to feed, or have her brought to me. Luckily Littlest is taking happily to the bottle... although there was that one time when Sprocket drank her milk and she was a wee tad hangry when I returned...)

I'm returning from work loaded up with books about childhood, motherhood, mothers negotiating childhood in todays world and the nature of work in todays world. (This time I'll return them on time, honest. Ish.)

My brain is slowly fluttering back into action - not that this is a result neccesarily of returning to work - more a confluence of happenings. 

I'm curious about how other mothers negotiate paid work and work in the home, their choices about when to return to work and when to give it away and what motivates/motivated you.

Hurtling

The sky is grey. The rain falls gently. 

I look at my girls - the baby, the four year old, I look at the sky and soft falling rain. The rain - although barely more than a drizzle, is going nowhere. Then I go and find rain coats. I slip the baby into the pusher, wrap her in blankets, cover the pusher with its clear plastic rain coat, put my own coat on, my four year olds. 


And we're away, the rain coming and going as we complete our errands - here, there, back again and over there, while the four year old gets in and out of the second seat of the pusher, her coat coming off and going back on and the rain continues softly falling and the world is slow, close, immediate; the air brisk. 


And I wonder why I don't do this more. 


The kids and I spend a lot of time hurtling around in our car. In a normal day the minimum that Littlest and I spend driving is an hour for the school runs - four fifteen minute trips. In a day when we're dropping off and/or picking up my Beloved from a far-flung hospital, or driving into Melbourne or all of the above it can be up to six hours. 


This seems to me completely excessive. 


The countryside around us is beautiful. Green hills, content cows, lots of early morning mist. The traffic is light and there is little of the city angst. But it's still a ridiculous amount of time trapped in a deadly metal(ish) box. As a kid, I just didn't go in cars. 


Neither of my parents drove until I was about nine - we lived in the inner suburbs and public transport was our friend. One of my earliest memories is of walking home from something in the city - the museum maybe? my short pudgy legs running to keep up with my dad's long legs. I believe that time I was scooped up and put on his shoulders, to survey the world like a queen from my high perch, but anything under an hour was seen as a good walk. Other memories are of returning through the botanical gardens in evening light, tired but happy, looking forward to watching a cartoon show with a minstrel and maybe a fox and some fairytales.

If somewhere was too far to walk we trammed or trained it and my dad would scoff at those poor deluded fools (there were some, even then) who would get in the car to hop up to the corner shops or - far more hilarious, the gym. My beloved has, in fact, done this. More than once. I might even have done this. When it was raining.

But, using the excuse of the kids, the distance, I have become far more lazy. It has become a habit to just 'hop in the car' to make an hours gentle stroll a five minute car trip.


My Beloved's one demand for our next house is national broadband (he's still in deep, deep mourning from the election, and spends hours looking up precisely which houses managed to get fibre) mine is that everywhere is within walking distance. Schools, kindy, shops, train station, all within a half hour walk.


It doesn't seem such a big demand, and yet increasingly suburbs are not planned out for pedestrians, corner stores are disappearing, and we are becoming more car dependant, less likely to do the fifteen minute walk at either end of the train or bus. It's just easier. Quicker. A time saver. We walk less so we can go to the gym? Work out? 

Habits are hard to break, (oddly, thirty years of walking wherever I could crumbled in the five years post kids) but to get my kids to enjoy the rain on their face, the sudden surprises of flora and fauna, I think the effort could be worth it. 

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- 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.

Letter to Littlest - three months old

Littlest,

Sweet-heart, you're three months old today and we spend our days in awe and delight with you. *

You are giggly, smiley, cuddly and very strong. (Who's mama's gorgeous, giggly, gurgly, gummy girl? Littlest is!)

All day your big eyes follow me as we go about our day and we chat and laugh with each other. You catch my eye and your face dissolves into big and joyous grins.

You hate tummy time, but you love to be stood up. Or sat up. Or basically just be UP. I fear you will be away and walking before I have time to catch my breath.

All this week you have had your little fist desperately in your mouth and been gnawing away as your first teeth come through. I have tried to tell you that you are too young for teething, but you haven't listened.

You've already rolled over - flipping from your tummy when I've tried to give you tummy time.  I would swear you've said 'mama' and 'hello' although your daddy laughs at me.

Do slow down little one, I want to savour this time and it's disappearing O so fast.

It's almost impossible to believe that this time last year you were only just coming into being. Hardly visible as you began your miraculous journey into the world. You are now so very much here and so very much yourself. You are placidly accepting as your brother and sister pick you up, cuddle you, sing to you, drop kisses on you, decide you want help rolling after they have been rolling in the grass - and obviously you want to as well.

You are already showing an interest in food, studying people intently as they eat, and reaching for a sausage with great determination and even greater lack of co-ordination. I suspect keeping you off solids until you are six months will be hard. With Sprocket and Poppet we managed five and a half months - with you I think five months might be a stretch. Just think, Little one, only a couple of months before you  too will know the delights of steamed veggies!

You are the first of our little ones to show any interest in television before eighteen months. If you are in a room and the television, or a computer, is on, you crane your head around, trying to catch a glimpse. I suspect (guiltily) that you became used to seeing the glow of the laptop through my tummy when you were in utero. Your daddy choses to think this means you will be technologically driven and maybe you will be the one he can teach computer languages too...

We are still playing 'guess what Littlest will look like.' It has been decided that while your brother is a mini-daddy, your sister a ringer for your aunty bec (and nana budgie) you are my little mini-me. We think your hair is coming in dark (we still hope for at least traces of red and you do have ginger eyebrows) and we suspect your eyes will be blue.

Your daddy is finally getting to know you. He has changed rotations - is in the hospital on the opposite side of us to the last, busily practicing his catheters, cannulas and bowel dis-impactions for next year when he's actually officially working (I'm not entirely sure what you call this year of 8-14 hour days, doing cannulas, catheters and bowel dis-impactions... play?) He is loving getting time to spend with you (unable to leave his student self behind he tried to place you in developmental guidelines but you are leaving them all behind.)

You are a solid little feeder, and your happy grunts and lunges for the milk make me laugh. Your little sigh/grunt as you latch on is hilarious.

When you wake in the morning you gurgle and chat with increasing urgency until your daddy and I come over to pick you up - playing with your hands or desperately sucking on them. When we come over you give us the biggest smile and reach up your arms.

You love being outside - sitting in your bouncr, watching the washing on the line and the changing shadows of the trees. You watch wistfully as the kids go on the trampoline and love when your daddy takes you up. Walks in your pusher are a hit, and you try out your winning smiles and grins on all passers by.

Traffic lights are a curse - you still fall asleep in the car almost the instant the engine starts, but should we happen to stop you wake and start howling. Luckily, there aren't many traffic lights around here!

Little darling one - our sweet little Lilli-Pilli you are our constant delight…and I'm going to use the excuse of your month-a-versary for an excess of photos…

 -one of your favourite places - perfectly positioned to supervise the hanging-of-the-washing and the big kids jumping on the trampoline. Don't worry, you'll be up there with them all too soon!

*This is now a couple of weeks late… next month I'll be on time. Maybe.