Princess dogs

I was going to show you photos from my morning walk today. But I've run out of time to do anything meaningful.

So instead, please indulge me (or yourself) as I show you the moment this past week where our dear LGBB decided to play princesses with the two obliging doggies.

The Two Posing Show Ponies 

Best. Kid-dog. Everrr.
Jazz poses like that forever if it means getting a photo taken

Not to be outdone, our old dog looks rather whimsical in pink. Don't you think?

Sweet 18 and never been....
Dear Pepper, she barely stood for this one

I'm joining in Maxabella's Grateful For this weekend... hosted today by the ever-lovely Kymmie from A Day In The Life. But a warning to the dieting: there are scrumptious food photos on her post!

Joined at the head

There are not many opportunities for me lately to feel a connection with the LGBB. We're (and when I say "we're" I mean "she's") going through a bit of a stage that's lasted a couple of months now. I think it must be one of those necessary rip-off-the-bandaid kind of stages, where she's growing away from us as she prepares for her New Life and entity at school next year.

I'm getting myself used to it.

But today I was afforded a little glimpse into the bond we have again and I reminded myself to remember to cherish the moments. To not make it so difficult for my daughter - starting right now - to find me wherever I may be and connect with me. If I lose sight of giving her that, then I have lost sight of everything meaningful in life. It's not going to happen. Not on my watch, it's not.

"Mum," the LGBB called to me from her backseat pozzy on the way home from swimming today.
"Yep."
"I have a dream a lot of times and it's about me. In space," she says with a bit of a chuckle.
"Oh, really? That's interesting. And what're you doing in space?" I ask.
"I'm just floating around out there."
"Ah," I say. "I used to have dreams like that when I was younger. I felt like I was in a space tunnel, going really fast."
"THAT'S LIKE MY DREAM!" she says, incredulous.

If I know nothing else about her, I know that my child has lashings of the sorts of insights and occurrences that I used to have. The memory of my abilities has taken decades to return, now that I am not afraid of them. There will be plenty of people in her life who will not only doubt her, they will downright tell her she's wrong. It is they who are wrong, actually - certainly, incorrectly placed - to tell her so. I've spoken here before over the past several years about not only the very strange (but ultimately cool, unexplained) things Lol comes out with. Most recently, she told me (as a 3 year-old) about arguing with a man who came into her room and told her this was his house and asked us to leave. She stood her ground, apparently, and told him this was HER house. Later that week, the neighbour advised me that the elderly gent who had sold us this house two years prior had passed away two weeks before.

Once you live with these sorts of oddities, they're not so odd any more. To say they are odd is to say my child is odd. And she's not! She's magnificent. It is not my job as her mother to be one of her doubters. Guidance and a way to help her accept herself and make sense of what she sees and senses, that is my main task. I don't encourage, I don't sway. And I don't tell her she's fibbing. Besides, she's too moral to lie. This kid may have the face of a poker player but when it comes to rule-breaking, you can be sure she'll give her own game away faster than she can try to cover up what she's done.

So the rest of our car trip is spent with her excitedly telling me what else she knows, now that she's discovered she and I share a "dream" (about space tunnels and really really fast stars zooming past, as if one were travelling somewhere else at the speed of light). And what else she knows is this:

"Mum, you and me, I think we share something."
"Uh-huh," I'm saying it non-committally, as non-committally as I would if I were replying to a request for TV and an icypole when we get home with a "we'll see" and a nonchalant glance out the window as if I couldn't care less either way. But my interest is piqued at this point.
"Our heads. I've seen our heads and there's an arrow going from my head to yours!" she states, sounding relieved to have articulated it, as if she's known with some authority that this is what she sees.
"How cool." I say.

And the conversation ends.

May she continue to amaze me, and may I have the strength and the courage to bend with the winds and opinions of the wider world.

My little thinker:
Putting our heads together (I see no arrows here...)

It's the vlogs about nothing that make them really....

...rather annoying to have to watch.  In this vein, here's one for your viewing pleasure and pain.

What you are about to witness is the result of me, uncharacteristically impulsively, grabbing the video camera and just winging it because I wanted to show you something I couldn't describe in words. One take, no second chances. Certainly no thought about putting any makeup on or even, oh I don't know, brushing my hair?? Pfft, I said to myself when I played it back and realised I hadn't done a damn thing to my appearance. Looking presentable is for the weak. Or at least, the considerate. A-hem. For the record, though, I was NOT wearing trackpants. Or a puffer vest, it should be duly noted.

Let's see if you learn anything new today in this here vlog that has only (note: ONLY) seen the light of day because of some peer pressure support. Unless I am mistaken, you can expect some more super vlogs in support of the "vlog for the sake of vlogging" cause from (in no particular order) Lucy, Sarah, Amelia and Naomi with notable cheerleading from Kelly (who needs some love this week, go say hi and spare a hug xx) The other Sarah gets a leave pass for being poorly, poor chick, with the flu... ah, no "possibilities" today... Get well soon!

Have I piqued your interest yet? Well then, prepare to be undazzled! Unimpressed! Unlikely to ever watch one of my vlogs ever again!  Behold!

Every year the same

"We're pregnant! Due in September, she's six weeks along already," my brother saw fit to tell me and Steve when Ella was about a week old.

It was lovely news. Just wonderful for my brother and dear sister in-law. I felt a familiar pang but brushed it off - I didn't have to feel that envy now! We finally had a baby of our very own after four failed attempts.

Of course, little did we all know but three weeks later there would be tragedy beyond any measure in our family when our own daughter, Ellanor, died suddenly before ever making it home.

Now, of course, each year on this day in September our focus is on our beautiful, sweet niece as she celebrates her birthday. She is a classic of a kid, sharp as a tack, quick-witted, cheeky, all those things that make her deliciously unique. She will also forever remind me of the age our daughter would have been turning - seven this year - and it is this connection that both tugs at my heart and brings a wide smile to my face at the same time. The cousin she would have loved who lived and died before she herself drew breath.

How do we possibly instill in these boisterous, life-full children the bittersweetness of their very existence? We don't. Of course, we don't. But I, Ella's mother, can hold that thought. Perhaps when my nieces are adults, with or without babes of their own, they might want to learn more. For now, the presence of Ellanor's name in our family, her pictures on our walls, her name on our lips occasionally, are enough sign-posts for them to be used to the very tricky concept of the death of a cousin. So young, before they met. One day, if it's ordained, I will be so happy and proud (of my nieces and of my daughter) to have that chat with them.

We are reminded in ever more subtle ways of our lost baby daughter, Steve and I, on days like these where it would be considered unnecessary or impolite or otherwise self-focused of us to mention what the day means to us.

Instead, I mention it here, where my family may look but is not likely to. Where it might strike a cord of familiarity in those who are my peers - other bereaved parents, at varying points (weeks, months, years) in their own journey of life without one of their precious children. Where it is more useful a moment shared, both for me and perhaps just one reader going through something similar.

So, whomever you are, I tip my cap at you in solidarity and just want to say, I get it. Get me?

Cousins

Tweet-tweet...

In the busy-ness of Fathers Day, I completely forgot to alert those privy to a new post over at the other private place... dust off the URL for that one, folks!

Getting to know my great-grandfather

I have been given a great swag of files and documents from one of my older cousins recently. This morning, while Steve and the LGBB are out at a movie for Fathers Day, I am sitting in my new den soaking up a brief half hour on my own. And, y'know, just doing nothing out of the ordinary.

I'm reading through the private letters from my great-grandfather Edward Leslie to his wife, Alice Leonora, while he was stationed in France during WWI.

I am riveted. This is the man who was the baptist minister, preaching about things ahead of his time to fundamental religious types whom he had shifting uneasily in their pews. The more I read about him the more I really dig the guy! And to "hear" his voice, in his own words (he even used the term "slacker" to describe himself in wartime France, 1917, because he was writing to his wife instead of whatever it was he was supposed to be doing in his hut!) after all these years and all the family stories is just priceless to me.

Question:

Who would be interested in me doing a series of posts on my family history? On my private blog, a long while back now, I began the story of my father's mother and how it intertwined with my life (my conception journey, to be accurate). This is different. This journey through my mother's side is enabling a softness and a fondness to come over me, towards her, the further I get to know my forebears down her family line.

I want to weave a bit of my learning in there... But I'm not sure if it'd get boring for anyone outside of my family.

So... Hands up here who's a genealogy/family history nut and, if you are, would hearing about another's family history be in any way helpful to you? Do you think?

Pardon me, waitress?

When I originally posted this in Sept. 2008, I was too subtle. Several readers expressed concern and almost went as far as saying I really ought to report the below café to some sort of government health body...

I'm glad for the opportunity to dust it off again, by way of Multiple Mum's weekend rewind (whaaat? She went and took the Rewind off her sis? WHERE HAVE I BEEN and when did this happen???), which this weekend is asking that we link up to a post sharing parenting advice.

I'm going to offer that you can never lose your sense of humour. Ever. If you can help it. It will help carry you through. On the day of the post in question, I had been so far having a shit of a week (I can still remember it three years on, give you any indication?). And the ability to sit in the moment and just be waited on by our young daughter brought not only squeals of delight from her but peals of mucho-required laughter from me.

Don't lose your sense of humour.

If you feel it all caving in on you, give over to the stress and pressure and..... stop. Hand on heart, remembering these two (seemingly simple) things are what saw me through the first three years.

Got a bit of 'advice'? Link up! Here's my contribution:

We tried a new café yesterday. When we turned up it looked inviting enough. We were welcomed warmly and took a seat each.
Then, things started to get a bit weird.
The waitress seemed confused when I asked for a capuccino. She took my order gleefully enough, but instead of waiting for my money, she simply smiled widely, turned and walked over to the cash register where she proceeded to take out a $5, bringing it back to pay me and calling it "A hunret. And fifty. Dollez". I was confused, to say the least.
Then Steve gave her his order too and the waitress busied herself by turning circles, seemingly to steady her excited self, before heading back to the cash register and retrieving more money for him.
Bizarre.
But then, things got a whole lot weirder.
We looked over, while we waited on the comfy chairs, and to our surprise we saw the waitress obviously straining. She made no effort to disguise that she was very noticeably filling her ... pinafore ... with the exception of turning her face away. But we could see, with the lifting of the strands of hair over her face, that she was exerting quite some effort and breathing through it as she *hushed tones* pushed one out.
Steve leaned over to me and quietly instructed me from the corner of his mouth, "Just don't order a hot chocolate, for God's sake." I think it was this point that I finally fell off my chair, unable to regain any composure.
Despite all this, the place was a treat. Absolutely quaint. I highly recommend the brownies.

Oh, waitress?
Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth...