this moment

{this moment} ~ A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. (joining with SouleMama)

- Jane x

so we've reached that stage

Tonight the big boys attended a two-part information session at school: part one was "How We Began" and part two was "Puberty Clues". You get the picture.

Charlie was typically quiet about the idea of going. Jasper stood in the kitchen bouncing a rubber ball filled with a 3D underwater scene and said "I think they have these every year and last year it was about S - E - X!" (Nervous giggle.) "What's a pubicle?"

Ah, wouldn't you love to have overheard the schoolyard chatter which led to that?

I would have liked to have gone but we had no babysitter.

Andy went into the fray and Clem and I stayed home and made cupcakes.

The session was apparently excellent, pitched just perfectly for the upper primary audience. The big boys were bouncing off the walls when they got home. It certainly seemed to have snapped the eleven year old out of a silent afternoon funk. I almost expected them to come home changed somehow but they were still just my boys.

Phew. Well, that's done. And I'm still giggling like a silly schoolkid at pubicle.

- Jane x

polar panda

It's all about the birthday parties in Clem-land at the moment. His friends are starting to turn five. Today's party, at the zoo, came with the option of animal dressups and Clem wished to be a panda. I was pretty happy to oblige, given that I can see my kids' cute dressup days dwindling before my eyes.

(Excuse me while I have a "boo-hoo my baby's growing up" moment. On Thursday we received a letter saying his first school transition visit is next Friday. His face simply lit up with excitement. I'm excited for him and I know it's a new and positive phase for our whole family. But still... blink-sniffle, you know?)

I made yet another version of the Farbenmix Yorik hoodie pattern, this time Franken-patterning the hood with the Cozy Winter Hood (which has ears) from Oliver & S 'Little Things to Sew'.

The fabric is polar fleece from the 30% off sale at the shop around the corner. I know polar fleece can be made from recycled plastic bottles (I don't know if these ones were) and therefore could be an eco-friendly choice but even so... I just find it a bit... yucky. However this was inexpensive, appropriately fluffy and warm and best of all, right around the corner. If he wants to wear this as a regular hoodie, I think the cute-factor can overcome my ugh it's polar fleece thing.

He had a great time at the party. In fact, it was his second party today, with the first being a fairy party for a dear sweet girlfriend at a place called The Butterfly Room. He said "It was good but it wasn't as pretty as it should have been. I wanted it prettier." I guess 'The Butterfly Room' conjures up some vivid images in the four year old mind.

I don't really want to think about it but we'd better start planning his own October birthday party soon, I suppose.

- Jane x

catching leaves

Yesterday I woke up with puffy eyes. The night before I'd been overcome for a while by 'woe is me' after a hectic week and the prospect of another one looming. I was feeling all out of balance; consumed by work and volunteer responsibilities, unable to find enough time to do what I wanted for and with my family.

I'd rushed home from a childcare committee meeting in time for Andy to head out to see a colleague's new theatre show. But five minutes later he was back because he said it seemed like I needed him there. What a darling. Of course once he offered me sympathy and a listening ear, I went all weepy because it's so much harder to hold it together when someone says "are you alright?", isn't it?

I'm worried I'm not spending enough time with Clem before he starts school in October. I'm worried I'm attached far too much to the computer tending to work emails when I officially only work 1.5 to 2 days a week. I'm worried I don't have enough time to keep up with basics like keeping the bills paid (because of the work I do to help pay the bills in the first place). I'm worried that the big boys are growing up before my eyes and their childhoods are slipping away. I'm worried that our lives are over-complicated with unimportant stuff.

So I talked this all through with my darling. He listened and made all the right sympathetic noises. And you know what I eventually realised?

My overriding worry was that I couldn't spend more quality time with my family. And I feel this because I love them so much, and I'm so very lucky to have them. I'm just greedy and want more. And that's not so bad, is it?

And then yesterday, Charlie was feeling a little tired and blue in the morning so I let him stay home from school with me and Clem. In the middle of the day we went to the Botanic Gardens, as I'd promised Clem we would. It's one place guaranteed to make me feel the goodness in the world.

Autumn leaves from the many Plane Trees were everywhere. On the Plane Tree lawn they were falling around us. The trees are immensely tall and looking up, we could see the leaves begin their journey down. 

And we could try to catch them. And if you have never tried to catch falling autumn leaves, looked to the sky, run this way and that, dashed, hands outstretched and finally snatched one victoriously before it hit the ground, I think you should try.

I realised that it doesn't take long to feel like I've 'caught up' on quality family time. A small but concentrated dose of goodness like that can take away the pain of an entire difficult (normal) week.
I also realised that even once Clem is at school, I can, on occasion, steal one of the boys away for a day. It doesn't have to be an ending.
Sorry there are just a few unimpressive phone photos. It was a back-to-basics day.
Things are good.
I'm lucky.
Wishing you a happy weekend.

- Jane x

Who's the Flow Man?

The four year old doesn't particularly like to conform to anyone else's schedule. However, he still wants to know what the plan is. Constantly. "Will that be in the morning?"  "When we get home, can I...?" "Are we going back to the house?" "Is Better Homes and Gardens on tonight?" (He has a real thing about Better Homes and Gardens.)

Andy tried "Just go with the flow, man."

Clem: "Who's the Flow Man?"

NevermindandcanIstrangleyounowformakinguslaughwhenyouwerejustbeingsofrustrating?

We were lucky enough to have the use of my lovely boss's beach house this weekend. Even though Clem was incapable of going with the flow man whenever we were in the car, on the beach he was pretty much the flow man himself.

little shoe fits in big shoe for safekeeping

Every time we get our kids on the beach we wonder why we don't do it more often. I'm not the world's most beachy person but I could watch my kids enjoying it forever. And give me a patch of sea-rounded pebbles or trillions of tiny shells to comb through and I'm happy.

We always come home from the beach with pockets and buckets of treasures. Recently we've figured out what to do with them. They've become a little layered, scattered nest of 'offerings' at the foot of a tree outside our front door.

It's a tree with special memories for us and the offerings help it continue to feel special. And I can throw out carefully scatter those treasures and when someone asks "where's my beautiful stick/stone/shell" I can point them in the right direction and they don't have to get too huffy at me because it's a special place, right?

Memories are precious things and it feels good to find the 'right' way to honour something. This week an old school friend lost her husband, in the blink of an eye. I can't imagine how you can begin to compile, condense and hold on to memories in such a situation. I felt so privileged to be spending the weekend with my whole family.

And I made sure I did not spend every moment behind the camera. (I swear, I knew the battery was going to run out and I decided not to pack the charger.)

Did you know that when it rains, dried up old pinecones close back up, and open again when they dry out?

- Jane x

books

I was once a voracious novel reader. Since having kids, with so many other things fighting for priority, it has gone by the wayside. Never mind. Books will always be there when I'm ready. Isn't that one of their charms? Books will always be there when you're ready.

First up, here are a few treasures from my childhood.

Norman Lindsay's best-known work was The Magic Pudding but this was my favourite. He was also a fabulous artist.

Rebecca's World was a story I disappeared into time and again. I recently learned that the author Terry Nation was an early scriptwriter for Dr Who and created the Daleks. Looking at this book now I see it has a strong environmental message, which I imagine was fairly cutting-edge for children's books of the seventies.

This collection of Oscar Wilde's children's fables is a such a tear-jerker. Really. **sob** Tragically beautiful.

I adored the Moomin stories as a girl and have since indoctrinated the whole family. My original book pictured here with a 'hattifattener' teacup collected in recent years.

And the girl grew up...

I guess I've grown out of this a little now since it's a story about the summer after finishing uni, but this is a novel I have read over and over and its impact lingers. I referred to it a while back here.

This is actually the cover of another of his books but I think the quote could equally apply to my favourite of Nicholson Baker's, The Fermata (my copy of which has disappeared on loan somewhere). It's a bit saucy.

And my copy of Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates by Tom Robbins? Also on loan (and I hope being enjoyed) who-knows-where so I'll have to make do with this excerpt written by me in chalk above our kitchen doors. It was an awkward space to decorate and it seemed like a neat temporary idea about, ah, five or six years ago. Jasper's second name is Switters, after the book's hero, but he's not allowed to read it for, ahem, quite a while. Excuse the spiderwebs.

And then there are books we use as tools. I honestly couldn't pick a favourite sewing book so I'm plumping for a work-tool that is simply genius (oracle, guru, mentor, shining light, authority, adviser, expert, teacher, guide). Mr P. M. Roget, I salute you.

And from pure words to pure images: an iPhoto book created by Jasper for Clem when he was a wee toddler.

Jasper planned out the photos and took them all on his camera. On the back cover is a photo of his list of shots.

 And here is a sample spread:

I'm sure I could go on. And on. But a more productive idea would be to go read something, wouldn't it?

- Jane x

Bobbin

That damp thing there, that's a bobbin.

Maybe a year ago, perhaps more, he confidently pronounced this body part a 'bobbin'... and who were we to correct him?
He says is very precisely: bob - bin; you hear the 'i' as in 'pin'.
Even better, he sees bobbins all around him. A peach has a bobbin. My attempt at coffee froth art looks like a bobbin. Bobbins are funny, of course.
It was a beautiful day today. "All the white is turning to blue," he says, looking at the sky. He insisted that we go to the zoo, but "not the zoo I go to with Grandma, the other zoo". Er, what's at the zoo with Grandma? "Giraffes and meerkats." What's at the other zoo? "Not animals." Ah. The Botanic Gardens... opposite the zoo.

I only had my phone camera since I just wanted to be there, all for the moment and for him. He could have spent hours in this spot. No-one seems to mind that kids love to paddle and race leaves and flowers down this water feature. I suspect it was designed with that in mind, really.

Other funny word confusions from today: "They are all going in the same collection as us, aren't they?" (direction). And "tadpole" for "seedpod"... we'd seen and discussed both, then he found something he thought was a seedpod and called it a tadpole, then seedpole, and we had quite a discussion about all that.

He's growing so fast. Three and a half. In two terms he starts Kindy, and much as our time together can be frustrating and intense, I am already seeing it slipping between my fingers.

'Premature nostalgia' - a concept from Michael Chabon's book The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, that I read over and over in my 20s - that feeling of missing something already, when you're actually still within the experience.

I'm just going to try to put aside that melancholy and eat him up as much as I can. And his brothers, for that matter. More days like this. Does anything else matter nearly as much?

- Jane x

(I believe a film was made of that Chabon book; a bad film. I'm glad I haven't seen it.)