Want more poetry in your life? Live with a 4 year old

Cormac: Somebody loves you, is me.

Read Full Post »

Hugged

Read Full Post »

Sticks

My friend has banned toy weapons for her sons. I kind of haven’t but I still feel uneasy about it.

The other evening we are at the beach and my son finds a stick shaped exactly like a bow and her son finds a stick shaped exactly like a rifle… and that’s how that weapon ban is going.

Read Full Post »

Wild things

Photos taken while drinking tea and watching Cormac, the 4 year old playing in the garden.

 

Read Full Post »

Questions to be answered

Questions I’ve been asked by my just-turned four year old:

Why do aliens hate our bodies so much?

What’s your favourite colour that comes out of the sun?

Read Full Post »

Parties

My nephew’s Naming Ceremony.

Arranging a baby and its frou frou on your lap.

I was so cross with Lauca for putting tattoos on herself the day before but now I kind of like the effect in the photos.

Old friends of mine who years ago watched me craftily set up their workmate with my sister.. and now there’s a baby to show for all that.

Cormac’s 4th birthday party. My least effort yet… and a success.

Cupcake decorating activity.

High on turning four… and sugar.

Read Full Post »

Kids

Cormac being hugged by his friend, who also happens to be the son of one of my best friends.

Lauca climbing a tree.

Read Full Post »

Oh my god, Autumn

This is not what it normally looks like when I working on my laptop, but let’s imagine it is..

This weekend, seriously.

My city has a truly wonderful autumn and spring and even though I know it does each year still kind of takes me by surprise. On the weekend I had this beautiful morning where the kids were off with their dad and I used the time to ride to the gym and the Asian grocer and then I rode home and cooked myself brunch. And while I was cutting eshallots in the garden I noticed one of my lavender bushes was also flowering. It was all very reassuring, like my life is just absolutely toodle-pip perfect or something.

I spent the late afternoon and evening at my sister’s house where we walked in the park and played with her baby. In the evening when her husband came home from work we all drank beers and ate take-away curry and laughed too loud and woke the baby up. My sister’s husband is working hard on this big case and he was fretting a little and wanting my sister to look over the work he’d prepared for cross-examining witnesses. I told them to go do that together and I will put your baby back to sleep. Of course the baby would only sleep in my arms which was quite frankly, lovely, and I lay with him on their bed in the dark.

The next morning I promised my kids a bike ride and we went to see some friends to tempt them along with us. Their kid and mine played Lego while she got ready and I took photos of all the lovely light in their house. Because the weather is so beautiful and the preparation is inevitably so involved we took the kids on quite a long ride, sufficient to eventually break the spirit of Cormac, the youngest. So then we called her husband to come and get the kids and the bikes in the car and she and I rode back together. How amazing is this ride without them, we said, and do you think we’ll ever go home.

Behold the morning sun on my friends’ deck.

Cormac stuffing Lego into his pockets like a little thief.

Read Full Post »

Salute

In spite of being a hardcore feminist who breastfed her son until he was over three years old, I am not immune to the discomfort of the judgementalism one receives in public for this, so hats off to the gay hockey dad who is breastfeeding his two year old.

(Trevor is seriously an amazing breastfeeding activist).

Read Full Post »

My brother/their uncle

My first child didn’t just change me into a mother, she also changed my brother into an uncle.

When he flies into town to see us it is always a whirlwind experience. His job is all consuming and there are emergency calls through the weekend. He doesn’t have time for his art at the moment and he says he buys books compulsively but they’re stacked in a tower unread beside his bed. We have conspiratorial conversations with lots of laughter and constant interruptions from his phone. He throws himself into it with the children. You have to pace yourself, I tell him, and pour him a glass of wine. He doesn’t want children of his own, he says. He just loves our sister’s and my children.

This time he is in town for a family event but he spends a day of the weekend taking my kids out on separate outings for their birthdays. They are thrilled. He devises lovely plans for them. He takes Lauca indoor rock climbing followed by some book shopping, and then he takes Cormac for fish and chips via a toy shop, and finally, back home to build a car track with cement in the garden. The car track idea is one from his own childhood, apparently, but I don’t remember our father doing this with him.

Later that afternoon I can hear my brother building Lego constructions at the kitchen table with my kids and the sound of it brings tears to my eyes. Something about how he and I played Lego together as children, and knowing he doesn’t live in this city anymore and I miss him, and that the children now adore him and miss him too.

 

Read Full Post »