Melbourne dispatch - Fat Tuesday

Happy Mardi Gras! It was Fat Tuesday yesterday, according to the good folks at Gumbo Kitchen, so they threw a shindig that involved bands and buskers and dancers and beads and picnics and sunshine and a second line marching band that led everybody, Pied Piper-style, down the tree-lined path beside the Melbourne Cemetery, and back again. ↑↑ We arrived just as the sun set and the band was warming up, so we were all over the marching and dancing right away. Madeleine busted her best "twirl" moves, which made forward motion somewhat challenging, so I had to keep picking her up and running through the grass to catch up with everyone else.

↑↑ Back at the cemetery gates, we settled in for a picnic while buskers entertained us from under a nearby tree and the sun set behind the little semi-circle of food trucks that kept everyone happy and well fed.

I'm recovering from a stomach bug so wasn't eating, but for everyone else, there was delicious fare from Gumbo Kitchen (of course), Beatbox Kitchen and the Brulee Cart for desert. Mr B opted instead for a piece of giant, doughnut-shaped cinnamon cake that was dressed in purple, green and gold icing. Is this a Mardi Gras thing? Does anyone know?

↑↑ You've never seen a child happier with three strings of coloured beads than my little Madeleine, but she was generous enough to share them with her baby brother (despite his mild consternation and ultimately-futile protests).

↑↑ When Way Past Bedtime started to take its toll on both children, we bundled them into the pram. Jazz bands were preparing to take to the main stage, a few people were already up and dancing again in the grass. It looked like loads of fun.

That night, walking through Carlton North under old trees and past even older buildings, the ferocity all gone out of the sun and cats starting to roam the alleyways... walking with my family as Mr B hummed and Harry sucked his fingers and Madeleine waved her beads in the air... that was one of those sublime "grateful" moments that took me back here all over again. Perfect.

ps. About the photos... Apologies that the quality isn't great. My camera is in being repaired so I borrowed my father's old camera, BUT I managed to bring the good lens and forget to bring the actual camera, AND earlier the same day my iPhone died... so I was snapping away on Mr B's old phone.

ps2. Want to see us at Fat Tuesday, last year?

Snail mail: mail's in

Look what arrived in the mail for me, all the way from Roanoke, VA (USA). A gift from my gorgeous, talented, creative, free-spirited friend Brandi Bernoskie, one of the greatest things (or people) to have come from my venture into blogging. Thank you Brandi!

I won the lottery

Harry has been crying. "What's up little man?" I ask, bending over his cot, and tears instantly transform into an enormous, gummy, open-mouthed smile. "Hoo!" he laughs, "Ahoo!" and I turn my head aside so he can't see me smiling, because it is night-time and all the books say not to engage babies in play during the night, so that they can learn when to sleep.

A frantic scuffling is heard and I turn back around to see Harry now grinning fit to burst, head wiggling from side to side and both legs kicking around like socks in a washing machine. Cotton blankets and muslin wraps are flailing everywhere.

"Now look here, it's 4am," I tell him, though I can't help smiling too. "Ahoo!" Harry responds, never taking his eyes off mine. It is a laugh exactly like his sister's at the same age. I ditch the books and pick him up and cover his dimples with kisses. There is nothing, nothing in this world, like the smell of a baby. They should find a way to bottle it and distribute it and there would be no more war.

"Oh my god," breathes Mr B drowsily from beside me in the bed. We look from Harry to each other and back again, both overcome with wonder. Neither of us can quite believe that we made this chubby, cheeky, loving little boy. It just doesn't seem real that he is ours. That of all the parents in all the world, we and only we get to be his Mummy and Daddy. That the universe has trusted us with the task of loving Harry and protecting Harry and teaching Harry for the rest of our lives.

:  :  :

I am making Madeleine's lunch when she interrupts me and asks to be picked up, little hands reaching, beseeching. I take her into my arms and she rests her head on my shoulder, the way she has done since she was one week old. Then she tilts back until she can look me in the eye. Places a sticky hand on either side of my face and pulls me in for a big, hard, sloppy, on-the-mouth kiss. Then another, and another. Madeleine is kissing me almost fiercely, gripping my ears to make sure I don't get away. As if I would ever want to.

I can't. I can't even. There are no words. What did I do in this life or 100 others that was so good as to earn this reward? To be loved by Madeleine? To be her Mummy? How is that even possible?

:  :  :

Harry is crying again. This time the sun is up and he is wiggling in his rocker in the playroom. He is hungry. But before I get a chance to pick him up and feed him, Madeleine takes control. "Harry!" she cries with glee. She wobbles over and rests her head beside his in the rocker. He stops crying. She stands up and faces him and when their eyes meet, both of them smile at each other. I feel a blast of pure happiness that is almost painful. "Harry! Harry!" Madeleine cries again, and then she twirls and tap-dances around his rocker and around the room, to entertain him. His eyes never leave her.

:  :  :

The house is steeped in rare quiet. Both of my children are asleep upstairs, and so is Mr B. I am alone in the lounge room, reading, and it is surreal and precious and quite beautiful because I am almost never, ever alone these days.

There is a baby monitor in Madeleine's room and it is not emitting a peep. There is another monitor in our room, where Harry sleeps in his cot beside our bed. Through it, I can hear two soft snores in tandem: both Harry and Mr B are dreaming.

A lump forms in my throat and I am so filled with love for these three that it takes me quite by surprise.

I think of all the little things I've been complaining about and dwelling on lately. The kids have both been sick. Mr B has been working a lot of nights, leaving me to handle the dreaded bed-and-bath hour alone. Money is tight, until I can get back to a bit more work. I am tired all the time. Bone tired. An aching, dragging, brain-fog weariness that never lifts. I am approximately three hundred and eighty-four years old. And I look it, too. My body feels like I am pushing through mud just to walk from room to room. I forget almost everything, and confuse the things I do remember. I'm snippy and impatient with Mr B, though he doesn't deserve it.

But on this night, all I can think of is how insanely lucky I am. How those three sleeping upstairs are my FAMILY. I can't quite comprehend how that came to be. This much love. I didn't even think this much love existed.

Absent-mindedly I rub my aching feet, curled under me on the couch. This perfect family, it's like I'm looking in at someone else's life. The realisation that this is MY life and MY family doesn't come easy. I don't feel deserving. Surely someone else would do all this much better than me? I feel like I won the lottery.

Favourite things - five botanicals

I've been all about bringing green back into my home lately. It's been a long time since I lived with house plants, and I can't quite think why. Here are five of my favourites. 1. Sky Planter

Have you seen these Sky Planters from Boskke? Our local organic food store has them hanging from the ceiling, and they look fantastic. My brother and sister-in-law gave me one for Christmas. I can't decide where to hang it. The kitchen, maybe? The play room?

2. Calendar

This year, we have a wall calendar in our house, one of the kinds you hang from the wall in the kitchen or hall. I feel like my mother. I think I was about 15 the last time I lived in a house with a calendar, but it seemed the only way to keep track of what everyone in the family is doing. I ordered this one from NZ shop Toodles Noodles on Etsy. I just love the botanical design on the cover (also March), but each of the designs is quite lovely. I may save some to frame at the end of the year.

(I always said that about calendars as a child. I never did get around to it.)

3. Dinosaur planters

We purchased two of these plastic dinosaur planters (one hot pink and one neon yellow) from Etsy shop Plantcycled, for the nursery. I'm yet to buy plants for them but I think that when I do, they will look fantastic on a high shelf where the children can enjoy them but not touch them. On that note, I may also need to purchase some additional bright, plastic dinosaurs for them to play with, since already Madeleine cries "Roar! Roar!" whenever she spots these little fellows, and loves to carry them around the house (and in the bath once or twice).

4. Vine-covered pergola

Ever since I was a teenager, I've nurtured a fantasy about a pergola, shading an outdoor table setting, with a mixture of grape and wisteria vines growing over it. I sat under just such a pergola on a farm visit way back when, and the mix of green leaves and bunches of purple flowers and purple grapes overhead was sublime. When we renovated our house we couldn't afford to do the back courtyard, but the one thing we splashed out on was a pergola so that I could make that dream come true. Assuming we can find the plants this late in the summer, it all begins this weekend!

(Photo from here)

5. Home-grown vegetables

Madeleine and I filled and planted our new Little Veggie Patch Co crate with seedlings last weekend. It's the end of the season so I don't know how those strawberries she's holding will go - there might be quite a wait for fruit. But we also planted out some root veges like carrots and beetroot, among others, so I'm hopeful we'll be able to start harvesting in winter!

Snail mail: yours truly

I managed to carve out some time during the past couple of weeks to write some mail and draw pictures on the envelopes, to send to blog readers. I hope these letters find them well, and that they enjoy their little parcels.

I really love sending pretty mail, so if you'd like some just let me know! At the moment, I'm posting copies of my book Airmail to people who subscribe to this blog. It doesn't cost you anything or commit you to anything, it's just my way of saying thanks for reading. 

Yours truly (and all that), Naomi xo

UPDATE 5 July 2014: as of today I have run out of copies of Airmail to send you. If you're still keen to read Airmail, there's a list of stockists here.

---

ps. have you heard about my new letter-writing and mail-art e-course? 

Over four weeks, I will guide you through multiple methods of making beautiful mail-art and creative, handmade stationery; teach you the art of writing and storytelling; help you forge personal connections in your letters and find pen-pals if you want them; and share time-management tips so even the busiest people can enjoy sending and receiving letters. Register your place or find out more information right here. 

Guilt free chocolate-banana thickshake

This delicious chocolate-banana thickshake is so easy to make it's ridiculous, and it's completely sugar and guilt free. Great for using up over-ripe bananas, this drink is my go-to treat for Madeleine when I want to give her something sweet that is also nutritious. Last night Madeleine came home from daycare sweaty and exhausted but hyped-up (as is so often the case), and not keen for her dinner. I'm never too worried when this happens because she always seems to eat more at daycare than she does at home, but I do need her to have something in her stomach before bed time or she'll wake in the middle of the night, hungry (one baby doing that is enough, thank you). So I made her this thickshake, first seen on the blog Traveling Sheep, and it went down a treat.

Next time you have over-ripe bananas sitting in your fruit bowl, skip the banana bread and, instead, peel the bananas and pop them into the freezer in individual zip-lock bags. Then when you're ready, you can whip up this sweet, healthy thickshake in one minute. It's just as good for the grown-ups as for the kids!

Ingredients:

1 x frozen banana 1-2 x cups milk 1-2 x teaspoons cocoa powder

Method:

Throw everything in a blender and wizz until it's thick but lump-free and frothy. For extra points with the little ones, serve it up with a colourful or bendy straw.

If you wanted to go dairy free, I reckon soy milk would make it extra creamy and quite delicious. I also think you could add a splash of vanilla or substitute the milk for coconut milk (or half half) to make it extra decadent. Add other frozen fruits, like passionfruit or berries, for a different flavour. Just ensure your frozen base is a super sweet fruit, like banana or mango, then go to town!

How does your garden grow?

When I was in high school we all had to do a couple of stints of "work experience," which essentially meant unpaid internships in fields we were considering for our careers. Since my career goal was "author," I was a little bit stuck. As far as I knew, there weren't any successful authors in my little country town who were willing to let me come along and write a couple of chapters of their book (or make their tea) for them. In classic teenaged-girl style I left things to the very last minute, and so I ended up doing my work experience with a park ranger who was a friend of my parents, simply because they agreed to have me. I showed up on Day 1 expecting to do some bush-walking and perhaps save a wild animal or two from extinction. Instead, we rode around a summer-yellowed picnic area on the back of a 'ute, jumping down every 100 metres or so to empty the garbage bins amid swarms of flies. Work experience as a park ranger was highly successful in strengthening my ambition to become an author.

But at some point during the week, they asked me to help pull up a kitchen garden next to a historic house that was part of the park. The garden had been planted by the lady of the house more than 150 years earlier. Some of the plants there, through seeds and propagation, were the great, great grandchildren of those first plants. I was allowed to take them with me, so each day I would return home with my arms full of lavender, rosemary, comfrey and verbena.

Herbs became a new passion for me. Not just how they looked and smelled (beautiful!), nor the way they filled out a cottage garden (rampant! lovely!), but also the ancient histories, mythologies and healing stories that herbs carried with them through the centuries. I loved how the botanists of the past considered the behaviour and qualities of herbs inseparable from the behaviour and qualities of the planets.

Take sage, for example, a herb I happen to enjoy fried up all crispy in butter and served with pumpkin ravioli. Nicholas Culpeper, on the other hand, preferred to use sage to heal diseases of the liver, for curing itchy testicles, and to turn hair black. Among many other things. "Jupiter claims this herb," he wrote in 1653, and, "Sage is of excellent use to help the memory, warming and quickening the senses." That's something I might need to try, given that my brain seems to be leaking both knowledge and memory at an alarming rate ever since I became the mother of two very small children. I wonder if the memory serum will turn my hair black.

Anyhoo... what all this has been leading up to is to say that I really love gardening, ever since that fateful albeit mostly crappy work experience week. Particularly gardening that has a practical side, like fruit and vegetables and herbs you can eat, and flowers you can pick for the table. But we have been renting for a long time, so building a garden just hasn't been an option. Add to that, the courtyard space out the back of our new house is fully tiled over. One day, we plan to rip up the tiles and turn it into a proper walled garden, but the budget doesn't stretch that far just at the moment!

Last week for Valentine's Day, Mr B gave me the best present I could have asked for. A crate from Little Veggie Patch Co, complete with organic matter to fill it up, so I could start a little herb and vegetable garden in our back yard, tiles and all. I'm really excited to start growing some of our own organic food, and to teach Madeleine and Harry about the whole where-food-comes-from process!

After dropping Madeleine off at day care yesterday, Harry and I took a walk to Ceres to buy some plants. With summer drawing to a close the seasonal pickings were a bit limited (I really wanted heirloom cherry tomatoes but they were a no-go until next October), but we found some lovely seedlings of rainbow beetroot, carrots, kale, green beans, strawberries, sage (!), and one very hot chilli plant. I bundled them all into a box underneath the pram and hurried back home as storm-clouds gathered overhead.

Meanwhile, in our little courtyard, we already have lemon-grass, basil, mint, thyme, oregano, rosemary and a lemon and an orange tree all eking out an existence in the narrow border beside the tiles. My parents are coming to visit in a couple of weeks and bringing with them parsley and Asian greens. There's still more I want to plant, especially next spring, but I think that is a pretty good start.

What makes you happy?

Take a look at this fabulous street art project about spreading gratitude. It's called "The little things." How it works is that you and I will be able to submit photographs we've taken that represent something we're grateful for. Rain over thirsty grass. A kiss from a baby. Freshly-picked strawberries, still warm from the sun. Then Hailey Bartholomew (of 365 Grateful) will select her favourite photographs, print them out as giant polariods, and post them up all over town to inspire everyone else to stop and think about the little things that make them happy. Lovely, oui?

Hailey has launched a Pozible campaign to fund this project, and she could sure do with your support to help make it happen. Plus, there are some rather nice rewards on offer for everyone that makes a donation (even a little one). You can learn all about The Little Things (and help out if you have the motivation and means) here.

{Photo is from Hailey's Pozible page. First seen via Meet Me At Mikes}

Soupy Saturday

On Saturday, Melbourne was made out of soup. Sticky, steamy, grimy, sweaty soup. We waded through it in the afternoon to take a little look at Supergraph, an exhibition of affordable, contemporary design, print and illustration, at the Carlton Exhibition Buildings. Just inside the big front doors was a sea of giant origami mountains with drawings all over them. We were handed a giant sheet of cardboard and a black marker, and told to use them to make some art and share a secret. Madeleine got to work turning the cardboard her own brand of "art," while Mr B and I talked about secrets. Turns out there aren't many in our house, which is probably a good thing. We sat around trying to think if we had any, without a lot of luck. Mr B said, "Write something like 'I won lotto and I haven't told my husband' because then I can live in hope." I didn't, but I thought it was rather good.

Soon it just became too hot and sticky on the floor so, much to Madeleine's distress, we ended the drawing, added our paper mountain to the rest of the secrets, and took a wander through the building to see what else was on offer. Graphic prints, paintings, a lucky-dip of original artworks for $10. Craft workshops for children, a design-your-own melamine plate corner, coconut drinks. Giant metal fans in front of which we held our sweaty babies to cool them down.

Then, just as we were about to head out to see what was on offer from the little circle of food trucks out the side, the heavens opened. I mean they ripped apart and a team of titans threw giant-sized water balloons at us. We stood in the doorway and watched the downpour until it all became just too much for Madeleine; nothing would please her until she could dance in the rain herself.

After things finally eased up, somewhat, we put the kids back into the pram and walked home through the rain. The air still felt soupy, but it was more tomato-and-mint than potato-and-leek, if you know what I mean. A lot more bearable. Everything glistened: the blackened trunks of the trees in Carlton Gardens, the greasy cobblestone lane-ways, even the trams as they rattled past and Madeleine called "More? More?"

On the downside, by the time we got home the hair I'd had cut-short and straightened just that morning was a frizzy disaster. But that was a small price to pay for an excursion in the summer rain with my wonderful family. It was just a little bit like an afternoon out of Mary Poppins.

Frozen, melted

Here is how we avoided the heat on the weekend. While Harry and Mr B had nanna-naps together in the bedroom under the air conditioner, Madeleine and I headed out on a mama-daughter date to see Frozen at the movies. This was Madeleine's first movie. She is not even 20 months old and I wasn't sure how well she would cope, so I chose seats next to the aisle just in case. But from the opening credits she was mesmerised. Beautiful snowflakes, twinkling over the oh-so-familiar (to me) Disney palace, had her breathing "Wowww." She laughed, she held her breath, she cried "Weeeeee!" as the characters slid down mountains of snow and ice and sailed through the air. When Princess Anna puckered up to receive a kiss from Prince Hans Madeleine made loud kissing noises herself, to hurry them along.

We didn't need our two seats. Madeleine spent the entire movie on my lap, and it was a perfect cuddle. While never taking her eyes off the screen, she would reach back from time to time to stroke my face or hair, or find my hand in the dark and hold it. When the scary snow-monster began roaring, she turned her body around to face me so I could cuddle her tightly, but the draw of the movie was too much. Little hands wrapped tightly around my neck, she insisted on twisting her head back around to continue watching.

As we walked out of the theatre, hand in hand, I asked Madeleine if she had enjoyed the movie. "More?" she asked. "More? More? More?"

It is simple, silly things like this that make my heart swell and make me so happy to be a mother. I absolutely loved my afternoon with my daughter, introducing her to something that for most of us is so ordinary - a movie - yet to her was nothing short of pure magic. I felt a crazy sort of pride walking out of that theatre with Madeleine, a kind of "I'm with her" Entourage moment that had no grounding in logic and was all heart.

When we arrived home, Harry and Mr B were still asleep. We sneaked upstairs and Madeleine jumped on her father and covered him with kisses to wake him up. I picked up Harry, who had woken with a jolt from all the noise, and he gave me his sweet, soft, old-soul grin that never fails to put a lump in my throat. He smelled amazing. I kissed him and kissed him. I could kiss those chubby cheeks forever.

(Oh and the best part? Nobody had told Madeleine about popcorn or choc-tops, so she was content to sit through an entire movie munching on an apple.)