This Blog is For ME

On Mother's Day.

These days we stay up later than normal and get up later.  This morning we all slept until 8:30.  Way to start a kick-my-ass mother's day.

How vain I am.  My weight frustrates me.  Now in my late thirties, I can no longer binge eat and eat anything.  I had a pretty good run of it, but it's over.  And so that last 10 pounds...that last 10.  I lose 5 - it takes me three weeks of no gluten, no dairy, no meat - and then I feel great and so I stop trying and gain it back.

The garden consumed my free time and energy for a couple of weeks there.  I'm bubbling with projects and have trouble stopping.  This past week I've been winding down and today, there it was, Mother's Day.  Anneka said to me at bedtime, "Mother's Day is for Mum's, but on Mother's Day the kids kind of miss the moms and the moms miss the kids too!"  Gawd, I love her!  I'm the kind of mom that by noon on mother's day am ready to stop mothering and start just being me!  Biked to the chief, hiked the chief with a friend during which we each had a catharsis of verbal output, and biked home.  Paul happily made the day for me.  We did all have a lovely time together in the morning.  I was served cafe con leche in bed.

I want to blog about Halle and Anneka.  Such amazing people each in their own rights.  So, so lucky we are, but I don't even know where to start.  They are as I have described them in the past just more developed.  Anneka's doing some early reading.  Sounding out words and playing with letters to create words.  I'm sure if we worked with her she would be reading, but I like how it is just coming out of her as she is ready.  During brunch she told us how to spell cat, so we went through rhyming words with her and she soon got the pattern and was pretty speedy with spelling them.  I asked her if she sees the letters in her head and the word in her head (we do a lot of this stuff verbally) she thought for a while and said she does.  Certainly, quite spatially inclined.  She does simple arithmetic too, on her fingers.  A technique she arrived at on her own.  The kid goes to Waldorf School for goodness sake where there is no propensity toward early reading.  But there she is - it is her.  So like Paul in many ways.  Perhaps it is why she and I are so close - we are a very good mix.  Paul and I are quite similar in the way we learn, although the way that learning manifests can be quite different.  We certainly have similarities in our cognitive strengths, which I see in both Anneka and Halle, but with Paul and I our emotional responses to our world and the way we deal with them different.  Anneka and I are a great mix - her so like Paul cognitively, but with an emotional approach more like me.

Halle I just bang-on recognize at a basic level - as does my sister.  It's like "I get you - I just do."  There's a slightly odd but tangible and infectious intensity inherent on my side of the family which some of my siblings display and I feel but display a calmer disposition, without so much of the nervousness.  She loves animals, especially dogs passionately.  She is passionate and boisterous and loud and totally silly and wild, but also can become very nervous, stranger shy, angry and heartbroken.  She is so much fun and some times quite a challenge.  She can also really focus for a long period of time and loves to draw and read books.  She's great at imaginary play and does it on her own and with Anneka or I.  She definitely been a bit precocious in most areas of her development.  Yesterday she drew circles, coloured them in in pink felt, then in red drew eyes, nose and a line for a mouth.  She made a whole line-up of them.  I think, but I'm not sure, that that seems pretty advanced for 27 months.  She's very goofy, (tonight she made a four sided garbage bin out of her carrots, then started putting her salmon into the "bin" in little pieces, and in a goofy voice and laughing starting shouting "garbage" as she stuffed the salmon in the garbage bin).  Anneka thought that was the greatest thing ever!! (Anneka loves to laugh.)  I was a goofy little kid too.

And so was Paul - and he still is.  And there we have it.  Four bright, goofy people prone to emotional outburst inhabiting the same small space.  Paul and I have learnt not to have emotional outburst (the negative kind we still have lots of the positive kind), at least not in the presence of the kids.  He has his downstairs while he is editing.  From the sounds of it he's lost everything, so I tread gingerly downstairs, only to be greeted by a smile and an assurance that everything was fine.

On this mother's day I can same I'm a lucky Mummy in a crazily sane family.

Was just reading through previous posts.  I embark on graduate studies starting July (actually just a pre-req) then the real-deal in Sept.  I hope it's not too early to still meet the needs of my children.

Transformed?

Sometimes I hear grumblings or yearnings of greater freedom spoken by newish mums, especially those now onto their second child.  Almost into the third year with my second child, I can not recall feeling such a need in sometime.  I recall fantasizing about a trip away on my own, to get away from it all and just have my own damn space to move freely, think freely and follow my own rhythm to somewhere warm, tropical, spicy .... but that was a while ago.

Maybe that is because we no longer have a baby?  Although I still nurse Halle two or three times a day, I have more of my body to myself.  Halle likes to do things for herself: walk up and down the stairs, climb into her carseat, do up her seatbelt, put on her own socks and shoes, which gives me a bit more freedom of body.  Freedom of mind tends to follow freedom of body.  In some ways I feel I am obtaining this freedom I previously desired right here at home.

Maybe it is because my ability to find freedom has changed?  Maybe I've become a better freedom-seeker.    There's freedom in my thought, there's freedom in my choices; when I'm with my children, whether it be sitting beside them in the bath putting on goofy puppet shows, tented under the comforter with the star maker in the dark telling stories and singing songs, or walking in the rain as they stomp in the puddles, there is freedom.  They invite me into their world of total freedom of thought; freedom of imagination.  Who is more free from conforming to social norms - them or me?  Who is more free from self-judgement - them or me?

Absolutely I still desire doing fun and healthy and fun and not-so-healthy things and that they are unable to participate in at my level - skiing, yoga and nights out, for example - but it is not freedom from them I desire.  In some ways, they have brought me greater freedom.  As with anything, it's all a matter of perspective.

Halle-luna will be two in two weeks.  Her capacity for imagination is as big and round as the moon - imaginary things are so real to her.  Still, she is a bit like a skittish foul - prancing, jumping, tossing her head, playing and startling.  Jumping out of her skin with excitement and fear.  When her little cousin is over she goes completely nuts.  And she is so, so loud.  She talks, shrieks and laughs (and cries) so much and so loudly she loses her voice!  She has fantastic linguistic abilities.  She is putting together completely articulate sentences of four, sometimes five words.  We converse...in no time at all, her language will reach a point where she will be able to explain her actions.  I can't wait to see her logic behind some of her lunatic actions.  She is going through quite a defiant and aggressive streak.  Her and her little cousin have hysterical fun together but since I now look after her two days a week I think Halle is feeling a little unsure of her postion - that combined with her adored Dada being away- may be cause for some off her difficult behaviour.

These two girls I love so much.  They are, currently, a source of freedom for me.