The postcard that took a month to write

I am writing this post in tears. I had planned it earlier and everything was OK, but then Mr B started reading aloud to me from the little journal he had been keeping for Scout since the day she was born. Little anecdotes: everything from her birth story to her first Christmas, her cousins, her favourite toys, and her first pink and perfect sunset (last night).

Tears! Remembering those moments as he read to me was emotional overload. I kept imagining Scout reading this book for the first time when she was 12, or 16, or 21, and knowing how deeply she had been loved, from the very first moment. I said "Quick! Start writing one of these for Ralph too!" Because he will need this. I want both of my children to enter teenaged and adult life buoyed in the knowledge of their parents' forever love, with physical proof in their hands.

Which leads me to this post.

I've been wanting to write this post for a while now, but I've also been wanting to write a certain postcard, too, and I couldn't get it right in my head. I think I was giving it too much weight, putting too much pressure on myself.

You see last month I received a letter, out of the blue, from a young woman called Jessica (she has a sweet-as-pie craft blog called Jess Made This). Jessica was writing to invite me to take part in a lovely project she had launched, called Dear Holly. Essentially the concept was that you and I and just about anyone who had made it out of our teen years more-or-less intact, were invited to send a postcard sharing our words of advice or encouragement to young people all over the world.

In Jessica's words, "The idea is to cross the generational divide and provide a place online for young people to hear stories and words of encouragement and advice from those who have experienced more time on Earth than they have."

Isn't this a simple and beautiful idea? Do you want to take part? All the details for submissions are on the Dear Holly website (basically: a. send an encouraging, anonymous postcard to the address provided, and b. nope, that's all you needed to do). Their favourite submissions are shared on the website each week.

Here's what else Jess has to say, on the website:

Together we can create a living, breathing collection of real, gritty and heartfelt advice that teenagers the world over can can share, gasp at, learn from, and live by.

No longer will teens have to rely on the repetitive, commercialised advice found in any given women’s magazine or lads mag. This project aims to paint a picture of teenage life to help inspire, support and comfort those currently entering or going through it.

I’m doing this for the Holly in my life. You should do it for the Holly or Olly in yours, or the H/Olly that you once were. Join me.

So anyway, yep, I decided to answer this call, and join her. Of COURSE. But then I spent the next month wondering what was the best thing to say, in the space of a postcard, that I would have wanted said to me. And I thought it over and then I rethought it and then I guessed it and then I second guessed it and, in the end, I felt completely paralysed by the weight of what I would write.

Which was so silly of me and, ultimately, that was what I decided to write about. Because the whole dilemma felt unsettlingly familiar. Reminiscent of my teen years. Do you remember what it was like being a teenager? I remember putting on a facade of confidence and nonchalance while inside feeling completely, utterly, lost. Hopeless, useless, unworthy. Incapable, indecisive, inadequate.

So I decided to write to the teenaged me, because I imagine it's a fair bet that I wasn't alone in those feelings, and that a generation hasn't necessarily changed things all THAT much. I haven't shared the postcard here because they are supposed to be anonymous, but I don't mind you knowing the gist of what I wrote.

I told the Hollys (and Ollys) of this world that they were doing it right. Being a teen, I meant. That they weren't supposed to have it figured out yet, and that it was OK to be themselves. I also urged them to be kind to others, because confused teens are as guilty as the rest of us of sometimes overlooking the needs of others, or forgetting that each of us is fighting a battle of our own, and deserves our compassion. But most of all, with Mr B's loving words to our daughter still hot inside my heart, I told them I wished I could give them a big, motherly hug.

What advice would you give your teenaged self? Will you share it with "Holly?" All it will cost you is the price of a postage stamp, and a moment's (or a month's) thought. In case you missed the link earlier, you can find all the details about this snail-mail project here.

You make my heart sing

I feel a bit sheepish admitting this in public, but Mr B is a huge country and western music fan. I know! Right?! Anyway he is, and I might not love his music but I do love Mr B. So I decided to write some tongue-in-cheek snippets of lyrics from three of his favourites (Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton and Elvis Presley) onto these heart biscuits, then packed him off to work this morning with a very pink box of Valentine’s Day biscuits under his arm.

What I wrote:

“know when to hold ‘em” (uhuh Kenny) “love me tender” (thanks, Elvis) “all decked up like a cowgirl’s dream” (ah, Dolly: Mr B in cowboy boots? The mind boggles!) “don’t take your love to town” (this is good advice Kenny) “I will always love you” (awww, Dolly!)

Actually the point of this post is to give a bit of a shout-out to the Melbourne-based company that made the biscuits, Blank Goods. Not because they’ve sponsored me or anything (they haven’t) but because they made it SO EASY to personalise this lovely gift. I ordered the biscuits online and in less than a week they arrived, beautifully iced and amazingly unbroken, along with a food pen (!!) with which to write my messages, and all the pretty packaging accoutrements you see in these pictures.

I think food pens might change my life.

Anyway, happy Valentine’s Day for tomorrow, all you lovers. And you too, beautiful strangers.

Valentines for strangers

Under the cover of almost-darkness, the dog and I went for a walk down one of Melbourne’s many laneways last night and left behind some little inspirational love-notes for strangers. Because maybe just maybe, the RIGHT words will be seen by the RIGHT person, just when they need them the most. The neighbour’s cat was less than impressed.

One year

How do you compress a person into a year? How do you tell, without being impossibly shallow, what a child's birthday means to a mother?

Can anyone truly build into words the story of a little one who one year ago wasn't here and now, as the sparklers on his birthday cake sizzle and glow, must surely have been here forever?

Ralph turned one on the weekend, and I kept trying to find moments for us: quiet cuddles at the morning feed, kisses on his round belly while changing his nappy, the blowing of Weetbix-filled raspberries, to really notice and remember and mark this occasion with the weight I felt it deserved.

So when the Happy Birthday song was all over and the rousing "hip hip hoorays" of 40 of Ralph's closest friends and family had all died down and the sparkler in the shape of a 1 on his cake had faded back to grey, I found myself in the very unusual position of wanting to say a few public words.

"Thank you for coming," I told our friends, as toddlers shrieked across the room with balloons and streamers in their wake, and small conversations started up while Mr B began to dismantle and distribute the croquembouche. "This little man deserves celebrating…"

I paused. By then the room was so full of the noise of friendships and celebrations and music and food that nobody else was there with me, so I gave it up. Instead I kissed my little boy on the forehead, feeling all the heavy beauty of loving him, and the body-memories of a connection that only he and I could share, and went on with the party.

But this is what I would have said, if I had been brave enough to raise my voice.

Ralph is the kind of kid who is loved by people who don't like kids.

Anyone who has ever met Ralph knows his big, wide smile, because it beams from his face most of the time. Ralph is a gentle and loving little boy who gives people the very special gift of trusting them.

He spreads joy.

He barely cried when he was born, and spent the following days and weeks calmly watching, or easily sleeping, while I learned how to be a mother all over again, and adjusted - not entirely seamlessly - to life with two under two.

Ralph smiled early and often, and crawled late. He was content to sit and watch the people he loved - which was pretty much the whole world - go about their lives and businesses.

Now that he is finally on the move I have watched his confidence and curiosity grow.

With a thumping crawl that sounds like the muffled footsteps of a clydesdale, he follows me faithfully around the house, secure in the knowledge that he is wanted and loved. Which he is.

And then I will look around and he is gone, the thump-thump-thump of his crawl receding to the far end of the house as he embarks on another adventure of his own making.

Ralph's sister Scout is teaching him to talk, and tickle, and play. When he sees her he squeals with delight, racing to be near her. He laughs when she laughs and, when she cries, he is round-eyed with concern.

When Ralph gets tired he puts one thumb into his mouth and lifts the other hand up to twirl his hair. I gather him into my arms and carry him to his cot, where he flops his head to the side (always to the right) and closes his eyes. Utterly trusting, again, and asleep in moments.

It breaks my heart, every time.

(ps. What? That's not his name, is it?)

She runs away

She runs away from me, a little further each day. Squealing with glee, captioning her flight, as if I didn't know it:

I running away Mummy!

Even as she runs she longs to be close. She twists to watch me as she races the other way, bumping into walls and trees and tumbling down hills because no matter how many times I call out, "Watch where you're going!" she is always looking back, to me, not forward.

I guess that's the nature of independence in its seed form, isn't it. The growing confidence of a toddler who is testing the boundaries of her world from the safety of her mother's and father's love. Without a strong hand to shake off or a safe harbour to farewell, independence is just loneliness.

Later, she curls on my lap and we read stories.

I really lub you Mummy, she murmurs. I lub you for ebba.

{Joyful springtime photographs brought to you by a rare and incredibly precious mother-daughter morning at Floriade in Canberra}

Lump

Do you want to start your day off really well? Listen to this. [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/157912833" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]

Is there any sound in the world better than a baby laughing? It is right up there with a cat purring and the tea being poured. Probably better than both, which is saying something special.

Sometimes when I am in the middle of my everyday, just going about my business of feeding children and dressing children and changing nappies and kissing scraped knees and bringing out the craft paint and putting away the craft paint and changing the children's clothes and washing the paint-covered clothes and finding the lost toy and finding the other lost toy and feeding the children again and reading stories and playing chasings and playing hide 'n seek and changing more nappies and supervising 'sharing' and, and, and...

... Sometimes in the middle of all that I will get a lump in my throat so large I can barely swallow.

It happened to me yesterday as I was carrying Madeleine upstairs for her afternoon nap. She wrapped both arms around my neck and rested her head on my shoulder. "Just a little nap, Mummy," she reminded me. And there was the big fat lump, blocking my words, making my eyes swim.

It is in ordinary moments like these that I am reminded of just how extraordinarily lucky I am to have Madeleine and Harry in my life. And how narrowly I missed out on having them, if I hadn't changed my mind about having children until after it was too late. The thought that they almost weren't here leaves me breathless.

Winter mornings

It is dark when I wake up, and Harry and I spend our winter mornings together on the rug of the lounge room floor in the gentle quiet of the predawn. I draw the curtains to let the day in but outside, the stars are still bright. Harry wiggles and squeals. "Dad dad dad dad dad," he says. I kiss his impossibly soft cheeks. "Say Mummy!" I tell him. "Dad dad dad." The door is closed to keep the heat from escaping. Through it I can just hear the soft click that means the kettle has boiled and I ease my way off the floor, feeling ancient, and shuffle into the kitchen to make tea. "DAD DAD DAD DAD" Harry yells cheerfully at my retreating form.

I love these early mornings and guard them jealously. Sometimes on a weekend, Mr B will offer to get up with Harry to give me some more sleep. It is tempting. I am sorely tired, and I haven't had a true, decent night's sleep in more than two years. Not one night. But these mornings are worth even more than sleep. So I drag my body out of bed and hold Harry's chubby little hot-water-bottle-body close as we climb down the stairs. Flip the kettle on. Ease Harry onto his mat on the floor. Tickle his ribs. "Dad dad dad dad." "Say Mummy!" And so another day begins.

It is so rare that I am still, in life, ever. Still of body or of mind. I multitask obsessively. I can't even relax doing one thing: I'll draw or craft or write while watching TV. I've never been good at meditating, I'm one of those people guilty of composing shopping lists and having imaginary conversations with people at work while supposedly entering a guided meditatively-zen state at the end of a yoga class.

But these winter mornings teach me to be present in a way that meditation never has. I sit on the floor and smile at Harry. There are books and magazines and my phone and my computer nearby and they call to me, but I have learned that the best mornings happen when I leave all those distractions closed. It's just me and Harry and that cup of tea.

I know I'm not the only one finding the pace of life almost insane these days. It's such a cliche to talk about the progress of time but have you realised that this year is already more than half over? Wasn't it just New Years? Just last month? Life tilts in a dizzying chaos, and any tasks I put off can languish neglected for months that feel like mere days. It's as though the rush and roar of our planet and its moon hurtling around the sun can actually be heard and felt, and in the cacophony of that cosmic journey we all have to yell and scream and jump up and down just to be heard. Even to hear ourselves.

But in the still, dark morning, the planets pause. The world hovers. Venus hangs like a jewel outside my window while the dawn waits to happen. My legs are crossed on the rug beside Harry ("Dad dad dad dad"), my fingers are laced around the Pantone colour mug I have chosen to match the mood of my waking (orange or yellow for energy, blue for creativity, sage green for calm), and it is perfect peace. Dawn can wait.

{All photographs licensed for unrestricted use under Creative Commons}

Kindness

I've been thinking about kindness lately, and how much of it is conscious, and how much of it is innate. What do you think about this? I believe some people have a talent for kindness: being thoughtful and generous is their natural default. I married someone like that. Mr B is generous beyond anyone I have ever met, and I get to witness this every day. A long time ago I told this little story about Mr B and the simple kindnesses by which he marks his days. These events are not even remotely unusual in life with my husband.

So here's what I am thinking about. There is a lot of noise out in the world about the tiny dictatorship that is the toddler attitude, and I'm no stranger to what that means. On any given day, I can be screamed at because the mandarin didn't stay in one piece after we peeled it, or because I didn't wash and dry the Peppa Pig top in time for Madeleine to wear it an hour after she spilled food on it, or because I lifted her off the swing after only 40 minutes of pushing.

Recently Mr B bought me a copy of the Reasons My Kid is Crying book and it really did make us laugh. The poor little tot on the cover is heartbroken because somebody broke his cheese in half. Madeleine has actually made that same face over an identical tragic dairy-related event.

But do you know what? As any parent, or guardian, or aunty or uncle or grandparent or friend or babysitter or big brother or sister or anyone else who spends big chunks of time with a toddler could attest, these little people have a natural tendency for love, and affection and, yes, kindness and even thoughtfulness.

Sometimes when I am so tired that for a moment I just have to put my palms over my eyes and press, hard, to stop the pain from exploding out of my temples, Madeleine places her own sticky palms over my hands. "Hi Mummy," she will softly say, with a smile.

"Poor Harry," Madeleine will announce, when Harry is crying. Then she will run over to him and make the funny noise that only she can make that always makes him laugh, or do a little dance for him, or give him a toy (or six). Then she will run to me and report back. "Harry waa waa! Me la-la-la. Me toy." And I'll say "Thank you for helping, is he happy now?" She will beam. "Yes!"

Like most toddlers, Madeleine loves to help. She wipes down her little table after eating, she helps me load the washing into the dryer, she holds doors and gates open for me when I'm pushing the pram (that is actually genuinely helpful), and she even 'helps' lift the pram up the steps and into our house. When she asks for apple and I give it to her, she says "Day doo (thank you) Mummy!" in a happy singsong voice, unprompted. It melts my heart every time.

In quiet moments, Madeleine strokes my hair, or kisses me, or snuggles into me just because... love.

When she is kind to me, or her brother, or a little friend, I make a big deal with the recognition and the praise. Because her kindness, her generosity of spirit, it's all there. I believe it is innate in Madeleine, as it is in all of us. Terrible Twos and Tiny Dictators and tantrums and sharing lessons not-yet-learned... they are all there too. But there is enough noise about those things in the world.

I don't believe in the concept of original sin. I believe in original kindness. Original love. Original affection. Yes yes, and original want, and original selfishness, and original... I don't know... frustration! I guess I believe in original humanity. And I am proud, oh so proud, of the kind and thoughtful little humans that my children are today, as well as the big humans that they are to become.

Joyful, joyful

(Alt. title: THE BEST FLASHMOB YOU WILL EVER SEE OR HEAR) How was your weekend, friends? Mine was pretty average, to be honest. I am happy it's over and ready to start the week fresh.

There were some good parts, especially catching up with some lovely friends who dropped by on Saturday afternoon. But mostly, it was taken up with sleep deprivation and taking care of an increasingly-sick little girl, culminating in a visit to the hospital in the early hours of Sunday morning. She will be ok, but right now she is SO sick and SO miserable. Poor little Harry has been incredibly patient and sweet. I am just praying that by some miracle he won't catch whatever Madeleine has.

On Sunday night over a late dinner with both kids finally asleep in their beds, I looked across at Mr B and the bags under his eyes just about reached the table, as did mine. I felt a surge of love for him. You have never met a man who works as hard as this man. He is phenomenally dedicated to his job, which by the way happens to be a job that helps thousands of hospital patients every year get the care and treatments they desperately need. At the same time, he is also phenomenally dedicated to his family, so we get all his love and all his loyalty and incredible levels of self-sacrifice. There isn't much left for him after all that, and the exhaustion of these past few months with two children so very young has taken its toll on his health. He seems to be catching every little thing lately, just like Madeleine. We had both been awake since 2am that morning and, at at 4am when Madeleine's fever still wouldn't come down despite taking both Panadol and Nurofen, he'd taken her off to the Children's Hospital. After they returned, he spent most of the day with a sweaty, vomit-smelling, unhappy little girl asleep on his chest. Then after dinner he made the two of us the famous Bulger Family Chocolate Pudding as a treat. All of this was despite the towering piles of work he had intended to do on the weekend, meaning the alarm went off at 5am today. Again. And it will probably continue for the rest of the week. I really need to think of some nice things to do for him.

Anyway, while nursing Harry in the midst of all this blah on Sunday afternoon, I saw this video on a friend's Facebook profile (thanks Matt!) and, call it exhaustion or whatever, it brought tears to my eyes. It was a little moment of happiness and goosebumps in my sad and sickly weekend, so I thought I'd share it with you, too. I hope it makes your Monday joyful!

And now for the video:

In the kitchen

Mummy-blogger creates amazing recipe for cake that she cooks with angelic children in pristine kitchen. Cake tastes like extra-rich mud cake but is actually made from organic beetroot, powdered kale and sun-dried goji berries. No sugar or gluten in sight. Mummy-blogger and aforementioned angelic children cover cake in silky-smooth icing, then use tweezers to artfully place edible flowers all over, creating culinary masterpiece. Only, not in my house. I won't be winning any Mother of the Year awards for healthy toddler foods (or clean kitchens), but Madeleine, Harry and I have been having a ball flexing our baking muscles of late.

Madeleine is going through an "I can do it myself" phase, which is frequently excruciating to watch but also so sweet, seeing her confidence and independence burgeon. Also, Harry is a most appreciative sous-chef, grinning and gurgling and kicking his little feet with gusto from his front-row seat on the kitchen floor.

Lately Mr B has been working a lot of nights, meaning Madeleine is in bed before he gets home. She is really missing him. Everything right now is about Daddy. I convince her to eat her vegetables each night by shaping them into a face on her plate and calling it "Daddy." I talk her into wearing pants on a cold day (when she would much rather wear a tutu) by telling her, "These are Daddy's favourite pants."

When we baked chocolate cupcakes last week, they were "for Daddy." When I told her in the morning how Daddy had gobbled his cupcake up when he got home, and that he said it was delicious, she radiated pride. "YEAH!" she yelled, balling her chubby little fingers into fists and punching the air.

Then yesterday, we made sugar biscuits "for Daddy." She was so excited, and determined to do it all herself. Madeleine mixed the dough, rolled it, pressed out the shapes, made the icing, chose the colour, decorated the biscuits. Harry was helpful, too. He laughed and said "Hoo" a lot.

I texted Mr B a picture of Madeleine decorating the biscuits and told him she was making them for him.

Then at around 6.30 that night, just as she was finishing her dinner and finally about to have one of her biscuits for dessert, Daddy walked through the door. He'd seen my text and thought, "That's it." He packed up a whole lot of work to do from home at night, and hurried back here to surprise her before she got into bed.

I pulled out our best floral china, and Madeleine and Daddy had a tea party with the biscuits she had made all by herself.