jazz hands

These babies have been languishing in the laundry for longer than I care to admit .. dismembered and kind of mouldy from too many happy bathtimes. After a couple of days and a bucket of bleach, hey presto! Good as new. It doesn't get much better than a freshly washed cherub.



I rest my case.

someday we'll find it

I'm so out-of-control inspired by the people of this great big, tiny world called the internet. The mothers, the friends, the incredible creativity that is ours for the sharing. I love it. I love that on the face of it, it's all big computers and techno-speak but deep down, at the very heart of it, it's a long and winding path that you follow without a map, and the wonders you find are so very small and the people are just other people, just like you, dreaming and making and living one day at a time. People you're destined to meet, or even to meet again after what seems like a lifetime. It's a crazy world out there, but there is so much hope.

come the revolution, baby

Let's all hear it for Mr Dan Zanes, a man I first saw on Sesame Street and instantly fell in love with. From what I can gather he's a music man with a huge heart but all you really need to do is watch this and all will be revealed. Come the revolution, baby, we'll all be wearing yellow ponchos and playing the guitar. Dare you not to smile.

with my own two hands

I can't really put my finger on it, but today was a special day. Not only because I spent it at home with my two girls, and not only because the sun was out and the sky was a cloudless blue. I think maybe because I just didn't think about being anywhere else. We played, I cooked pancakes, we painted, sang, danced, read books, and not once did my mind wander past these four walls. It was breathtaking.
Yesterday as I waited for Elsa at school I watched her class playing outside, running but they could have been flying from the looks on their faces, holding their little paper aeroplanes and letting them go, watching them fly then picking them up and doing it all again. It almost made me cry. Today was a bit like that too, just feeling the sheer beauty of everything that I just haven't felt for so long. Not really felt, not the kind of feeling you do when you're just so happy you want to cry.
Been listening to Jack Johnson's soundtrack for the film Curious George, and loving it. Particularly With My Own Two Hands, featuring the divine Ben Harper. The words: Gonna make a brighter place, with my own two hands, gonna help the human race, with my own two hands and the voices, and the sweet guitar, get me every time. I can't think of a more beautiful song, or a more beautiful message, to give our children.

tantrums, tears and trims

I had my hair cut today. Quite a substantial haircut actually, with an alarming amount on the floor afterwards. Ordinarily this could be cause for panic, or gut-wrenching regret, but I'm okay. Really. Hair is hair. It grows back. Could it be I'm getting old and these things have fallen away? The outward artifice? Probably not, but it's nice to think so. And it's nice to run my hand through my cropped off hair and think how nice, to be comfortable in my own skin.

But today was not all good. It involved crying, by myself and others, and I wish I could say there will be no more. But three is apparently a very bad age to be, because you want to do exactly what you want to do, when you want to do it. And not everybody agrees. Tres frustrating, for all concerned.

But I soon learned, your love burned brighter than the stars in my eyes. Now I know how and when, I know where and why.

So sings Missy Higgins in her beautiful version of the Split Enz song Stuff and Nonsense, one of many on the She Will Have Her Way album that lives permanently in my car's CD player. Such a beautiful song, such a beautiful album. Never ceases to amaze me, the Finn brothers' way with words. A portrait of the lovely Neil, my pin-up boy from way back, won the Packing Room Prize at the Archibalds today. When I saw it I felt like I was 14 again, dancing around the loungeroom to Mean To Me and pledging my eternal love to Finn the Younger. I still would (pledge eternal love that is, and dance around the loungeroom given half a chance).

And that is me

Some days, when you least expect it, you find a quiet strength within yourself that you didn't know you had.
On Monday, I left my three-year-old daughter at preschool for the very first time. She was screaming, crying, inconsolable, and I spent the entire day with my stomach in a knot, wandering around the house like a zombie. I felt like Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice.
The next day I did it again, and there was no screaming, but lots and lots of tears from both of us.
Today I spoke to friends, a passing acquaintance and some family members who I somehow didn't think would have an opinion, and by telling them how I felt it just crept up on me, that quiet inner strength, the knowledge that what I think is right is actually really right, the only right, the only truth and there can be no other way.
So this Monday, instead of feeling that knot in my stomach grow even tighter, instead of doubting myself and my mothering instincts, I will spend the entire day with a three-year-old girl who will only ever know one mother. And that is me.

At the end of this path

Time marches on. It is weeks into a new year, and thoughts have turned to real change, not just superficial promises. I took the girls and Sunday for a very long walk yesterday, on a path we had never travelled before, and it was lovely. I'm not sure who enjoyed it more, though Sunday was quite delighted to find a duck pond at the end of it. When the girls grew a bit weary and asked 'Mum, where's the duck pond?' all I could answer, quite honestly, was 'At the end of this path'. There was a moment during our walk that I really wanted to keep. I even had the urge to find my mobile phone and take a picture so it would stay with me forever, but then I decided I could write about it, and keep the image inside my head.

I came around the corner then, and saw her standing, watching me from such a distance that she looked quite small. Just a tiny girl, I thought, and then I realised just how small, how precious, how fleeting, was this moment in her life, in our lives. She had never seemed so small, not even when I held her for the very first time, when she was barely as big as my own two hands. She had taken up so much of my world that I had never realised what a tiny soul she really was. And now I watch her, watching me, waiting for me to catch up to her, but I am suddenly aware that soon she will be on her own way, and I will not be able to catch up to her. I want to run to her and hold her and tell her how precious she is, how precious this day is to me. She just smiles up at me, and we walk the rest of the way side by side.