“A portrait of my child, once a week, every week, in 2016.”
Awesome weekend of celebrating in our household, with this little dude being fantastic company and absolutely loving making daddy feel like a superhero.
Summer has officially begun.
Linking up with Jodi at Practising Simplicity for The 52 Project.
“A portrait of my child, once a week, every week, in 2016.”
This boy.
We have just come back from four days in Florida to celebrate the wedding of one of my bestest friends. I was a little apprehensive in the run up: the journey either end was going to take twenty-four hours all in, and I wasn’t sure quite how Arthur would cope with that – or the hecticness whilst we were there.
But he really did take it all in his stride.
I am so glad we are raising such an awesome travelling companion. It makes me very excited about the many adventures still to come…
Linking up with Jodi at Practising Simplicity for The 52 Project.
In just over six weeks time, my husband will become a junior doctor.
Juggling the last five years of training with family life has been hard – the long commutes after sleepless nights, the hours of study when our son just wants to play with his Dad, the fear that the dream of being a doctor that has lain dormant for twenty years maybe really isn’t meant to be – but we have got there.
And now, just when he should be celebrating, just when we are on the cusp of this next phase of our lives, we are faced with this government who are intent on tearing the NHS limb from limb – starting with, or so they thought, its weakest members.
But junior doctors are not weak. Each and every one of them has already fought so hard to be where they are right now, has made tough choices, and sacrifices, and turned away from much easier paths to pursue the one they have chosen.
They are standing up today for themselves, for their families, for their patients, for future generations of doctors – and for the very existence of our NHS.
I, along with every single one of my friends and family, am standing with them.
And we will not be ‘defeated’ by the threats of the Tories, whatever base, bullying tactics Hunt and his cronies resort to.
I’ve been mulling over various different options for this post today – Arthur’s delight in playing with sand at Paignton sea front, his growing interest in helping in the kitchen, the hours of roleplay that followed when we found a Buzz Lightyear costume in the charity shop – but it’s actually an almost inconsequential moment that I keep coming back to.
Leigh was late home on Friday, but with it being the weekend I figured we’d wait for him before pushing on to bed after Arthur had finished his dinner. That’s daddy time, generally – the chats about the day and the washing things and the stories – and both of them miss it on the odd occasions when he can’t be around.
I didn’t really have a plan – which could, at the end of a long day, have ended in disaster – but as it was distraction came in the most unexpected form. I’d been unpacking a delivery whilst Arthur ate his dinner, and it had arrived in a box filled with little polystyrene pellets. I normally whip them away from Arthur whenever I order from this company, but on Friday I guess I was feeling a bit more relaxed and so I let him explore. And the resulting play was, I think, the best fun he’d had all week.
Things started pretty simply: having watched me unpack my order from the box, he proceeded to fill it with all of his precious things and offer it to me as a present.
Then once I’d gone through and admired each of his ‘gifts’, he decided that he wanted to see what it was like in there himself.
Then of course came the tipping out, and the moment when on another day I might have put a halt to all of it. The tuff spot comes in handy for that – even if it didn’t contain the pellets for long…
He piled them up and drove his diggers into them, threw them in the air to see how they fell, smooshed them and squeezed them and generally just experimented with this new material that had previously been off limits.
And whilst he played I sat and watched and laughed, until his daddy arrived at the door and came in to find us giggling in the midst of a pile of mess. Fortunately he got it too.
I couldn’t tell you exactly what Arthur learnt from this little bit of unplanned and unstructured play, but still it felt important: to give him permission to go a little bit wild at the end of the day, to go with the flow even if a part of me was raising some serious eyebrows, to let him lead and explore and make us both laugh.
As much as it’s great to have some carefully thought out activities on hand too I think it is moments like this that remind me why I am leaning towards unschooling, and the freedom it gives my son to be who he wants to be.
“A portrait of my child, once a week, every week, in 2016.”
We don’t get much snow down here in Devon, so when I woke up on Sunday morning to pictures of Dartmoor blanketed in white on my Facebook feed I knew we were going to have to go on a bit of a mission.
It takes about an hour to drive there from where we are on the South coast, but every time we do we tell ourselves we really should do it more often. And this time was no different.
We were not the only people whose minds had been captivated by the romance of some Valentine’s day snow: in fact we were beginning to think, as we wove our way up onto the moors behind lines of traffic through decidedly unsnowy scenery, that maybe it wasn’t such a great plan after all.
But then we turned a corner and up ahead of us we saw higher ground. Higher ground with an unmistakeable icing sugar coating, which became more convincingly wintery the further up we ventured.
Ok so it wasn’t Iceland. The ground was wet and muddy in between the patches of snow. And there were an awful lot of other cars. But this being the moors we found our own expanse of ground within minutes of parking up, and Arthur couldn’t care less that it was less than perfect. It was snow!
I got pelted with this snowball seconds after this photo was taken, but it was most definitely worth it.
Linking up with Jodi at Practising Simplicity for The 52 Project.
Is it just me, or do the evenings all of a sudden seem to have got lighter?
I realise that *technically* the lengthening of the days is a gradual thing, but I swear this week someone has just flicked a switch. Suddenly we’re finding ourselves sitting down to dinner in broad daylight, and I’m having a hard time explaining to Arthur why he has to go to bed before it’s got dark…
Toddler sleep habits aside, it is pretty wonderful.
There is nothing that screams to me that summer is finally coming more loudly than when the days begin to stretch out beyond the afternoon. And it is when living here, in our beautiful little seaside town, really comes into its own.
What with all the hectic we’ve been juggling recently we’ve really appreciated being able to go out as a family in the evenings more easily, wandering into town and soaking up the views. There is a sense of excitement and anticipation that all three of us share as we venture out just at that point when normally things would be winding down. Arthur has taken the evening strolls in his stride, enjoying another burst of energy and of course the obligatory beach time.
We even got to sit outside at Rockfish for a bit the other night, gazing out to sea as the fishing boats trundled through the twilight with their catch. Arthur was absolutely transfixed as he watched the fish being docked – he hasn’t stopped talking about it since.
There is certainly something incredibly liberating about the extra hours of daylight this time of year brings, and it’s making me ever-more excited for the summer.
My word of the week this week is anticipation.
This time last week, I was feeling a little sad to be home. We’d had a wonderful holiday with some much-needed quality family time, and I had once again been infected with the wanderlust that makes me want to see all of the corners of the world that I can.
This week, though, we have accidentally had the most wonderful time in our little town, and it has left me wondering why we need to travel at all when we have such a glorious place to call home.
There is Berry Head, where we went last Sunday with my parents, my brother and his fiancee. Arthur was thrilled to see everyone after our trip away, and he had great fun flying his kite, doing impromptu yoga with Uncle Ash, and just enjoying the view.
Then there is Breakwater beach. Our local beach. I honestly never thought I’d be able to say that! With the spectacular weather we’ve had this week it’s felt a little like a corner of the Caribbean at times. Arthur has continued on his mission to get every single stone from the beach into the sea, and we’ve enjoyed a picnic with friends as well as a sneaky takeaway, just the two of us.
I’ve really become aware this week how many lovely people we’ve met in this town. It’s taken a while for us to really feel like we belong here: the first 18 months when both Leigh and I were working in Plymouth didn’t help, and even once Arthur had arrived and I began to spend a lot more time in Brixham settling in to a new town wasn’t easy. But this week both Arthur and I have had social calendars almost full to bursting, and I have realised that we both have genuine friends here now. Which is nice.
Of course my latest venture – standing for election to Brixham Town Council – has made me feel even more as though I belong. It’s been brilliant getting out and about seeing people and places that are new to me, and so far the reception to my election campaign has been really positive. Mostly anyway – but that’s a topic for another post.
For this one suffice to say that I have had a week which has left me loving Brixham even more than usual. Ten days post-holiday when I still lived in London I would have been yearning for escape, but right now nothing would pull me away from the place I am proud to call home.
My word of the week this week is home.
Also linking up with this week’s prompt of ‘travel’.
I had several very late nights last week. Not just because I was on a mission to get myself organised before the craziness of Christmas sets in, but because of what I found in the process.
I have always been a bit (a lot) of a hoarder. This is generally something I chastise myself for – resulting as it does in me being surrounded by piles and piles of stuff that I have no idea what to do with. But this week, as I sat on the floor surrounded by these pieces of paper dating back twenty five years and more, I was very glad that I find it so hard to throw anything away.
There were letters from friends I have not seen for many years, and from those who I still count amongst my very best. From boys I was once in love with, or who were once in love with me. From my brothers, who it is hard to believe were ever so little, and from older family members who it is hard to believe are not around any more.
They were written on pages torn from files, on embossed notecards, on the backs of envelopes, on handmade paper, and collectively they transported me back to a very different time. A time before email. A time before text messages. A time before Facebook. Or WhatsApp. Or Twitter.
There are so many ways I keep in touch with people now – and probably if there weren’t I would find it hard to keep in touch with as many people as I do. But there is something incredibly touching about those fading and dog-eared pieces of paper, about the effort of writing out a message by hand, of finding a stamp and an envelope and a postbox.
Very few of the letters contained anything of much import. And yet in their banalities and ramblings they said more than a carefully considered few lines on a special occasion ever could. And often, hidden in the clutter of the everyday, there were flashes of the souls of those who wrote, of what I meant to them – and them to me.
I often look back on my later childhood and teenage years with feelings of sadness and regret. I struggled with depression and anxiety – the degree to which came across starkly in the tortured diaries I also discovered. But my memories of that – blurred themselves by my reluctance to fully transport myself back to the waves of misery I felt at the time – have clearly clouded the reality of the very good times I had in between, and the very, very good friends I had around me. How they put up with me I’ll never know; I fear my demons made me incredibly selfish at times.
As well as this quiet self-reflection, this archive from my past got me thinking about something else too. Letters are going to be very important in my third novel. It was a letter from that world, a particularly significant one, which was initially going to form the basis of this post. But that was before I found my stash. And what those letters have reminded me is how different communication was in life before the internet.
I’m looking forward to reading and rereading the letters that were sent to me so many years ago as I continue to unpick the lives of my main characters. So much of their friendship – and their love story – will unfold as they put pen to paper. The waiting for their letters to be read and answered, the delicious anticipation when an envelope addressed with familiar handwriting falls through the door, the peeling open of that envelope and becoming immersed in that contents for a few precious moments: all that will need to find its way into my novel.
And I think also it needs to find its way back into my life. I have so many friends and family who are not as geographically close as I would like them to be, and whilst the internet has brought with it the wonderful ability to keep up with what they’re doing with their days it will never replace the simplicity or the complexity of a letter.
So whilst I’m not normally one for new year’s resolutions, I can feel one simmering here – one that will mean that pile of letters from my past may still have the chance to grow.
Thank you to Sara over at Mum Turned Mom for inspiring this post with her prompt: a letter…
This week’s been a bit of a funny one. It feels like we’ve been doing lots of different things, but at the same time it feels like we haven’t done much at all. The weather’s been pretty shocking so we’ve spent lots of time indoors, but the outings we have made to Arthur’s regular groups have been great. When we’ve been at home, Arthur’s really enjoyed getting stuck in to some serious playing and when I haven’t been entertaining him I’ve been entertaining myself with some serious Christmas planning. All in all there is only one word to describe our week, and that’s fun.
Whilst I’ve been sat getting all excited about Arthur’s advent calendar, he’s been taking advantage of my inattention to create an almighty, joyful mess.
There’ve been some awesome train tracks…
And some equally awesome hats.
The second one was Arthur’s pick at his drama class this week, after which we actually managed to get a bit of fresh air. We went on a tour of our local charity shops where I was on the search for present-making materials. Arthur found a brilliant wooden tractor for just 30p. He drove it home alone the harbour wall – managing to fit in plenty of puddle splashing too.
Back at home there’s been some serious chilling, from cuddling up to watch Attenborough’s monkeys to greeting Daddy with a cup of tea when he got back from work.
There has been a healthy dose of pure unadulterated silliness too…
All in all a week of fun and laughs and love: just as it should be.
This is one of the earliest pictures I have of Arthur. He’d been born less than two days before, and was still very much adjusting to being in the outside world. Everything was new. When he yawned, he scrunched up his big eyes and his tiny fists, and my heart melted.
Just as he was experiencing everything for the first time in those early days, so my world had transformed too into something I barely recognised. Its boundaries had shifted, the things that had seemed important before had become insignificant if not invisible. The edges of the universe had blurred as if to throw into sharp focus this being which had hurtled into its very core.
We didn’t move far from our bed at first. The bed where he was born. We snuggled up against the December cold, a family born along with this precious baby. Others came and went, cooing and crying and declaring his perfection. It was lovely to have them there, but lovelier still when they were gone and it was just us three.
Slowly we adjusted to our changed reality, venturing down the stairs and into the open air, that little being tucked up close beside my heart. Every step we have taken since has been an adventure, but I will never forget the magic of those moments when we lay still, cuddling and stretching and yawning and nurturing, watching and listening and glowing with the wonder of it all.
Joining in with The Alphabet Photography Project over at PODcast.
Sophie is... 