Hitting the reset button

Well I've been a bit quiet for a while!  With 2 it's a lot easier to pretend that I'm far too busy. Of course I'm only fooling myself, and then only because I have my fingers in my ears singing 'la la la' to drown out the voice of reason.

I seem to have bought into the delusion that being a good Mum means completely sacrificing my needs and desires. With one child this is lunacy. With two children and an 8 year age gap it is dangerous. I'm not daft, I know this. So why has it been so easy to slip into these bad habits?

I am the first to preach that a happy primary carer is more important to a child's well being than anything. More important than the sex or sexual orientation of that primary carer, whether the child was breastfed, looked after while parents work or what the latest Daily Mail scaremongering is banging on about now. A happy (in this case) Mummy makes everything else possible. It's just when it comes to practising what I preach it goes a bit, ok a lot, wrong.

I haven't been making time to do many of the things that make me feel good. Spending the days catering to the every whim of two tiny tyrants at the expense of me. So when the kids are finally tucked up in bed I'm spent and then vegetating in front of the tv. Binging on trash. I'm not saying anything against trash tv, my love of it runs deep. So deep that I managed to watch an entire season of Once Upon a Time in 3 days. Whilst still being that 'no tv during the day' parent. Yep that's 22 episodes and approximately 17 hours of tv crammed into 3 evenings. Well, I say evenings but there were some pretty late nights going on there.

This morning I had a bit of a revelation. Unfortunately, it was less of the sun breaking through the clouds and more me completely loosing the rag with smudge. Not proud of this. Still falling victim to the tingly nose and wobbly bottom lip when I think about my shouting. But that's the killer about focusing completely on the kids. When they are little shits there is no way to explain it all away. 

Because, lets face it little shits they will be. Sometimes rarely, often not for very long. Sometimes because they have ASD and it's the summer holidays and plans change they can be quite spectacularly big shits. 

Even then I don't want to be 'ragey mama' I want to be calm and zen and floaty hippy skirted, lentil weaving mama. Except I'll probably stick to jeans and I'm still not sure I actually like lentils.

So I'm going to be a bit more selfish. I'm going to float through the day by remembering to take 15 minutes in the morning to meditate. I'm going to look dreamily at the clock and panic about what to feed everybody with because I've spent the afternoon lost in a book while the kids go feral. And I'm going to blog about all the fun I'm having and how much better family life is when I look after me.

And when I get it all wrong and scream like a banshee. I can blame all the time I spent neglecting them. Rather than feeling like a complete mug.

Guilty Pleasures

I don't really feel guilty about pleasure.

That said. I don't drink, smoke or partake in legal or illegal highs, or lows. The things that bring me pleasure are nothing to feel guilty about.

When I'm neglecting everything and everyone, sorry kids, with my nose in a book I am taking care of my mental faculties and setting a great example for the kids to read more.

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My coffee is fair trade so the more I drink the better for farmers in South America. If anyone ever works out just how much Cafe Direct Machu Picchu coffee I consume there will be a Peruvian village hastily renamed "Boobellinaville".

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Some may say my stationery hoard is out of control. I know how much people appreciate a handwritten note. Those cards, notepaper, stickers and washi spread joy and random acts of kindness.

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So there will be no guilt as a side order to my pleasure. Really I'm doing it all for someone else.

Self care Sunday

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Meditation is one of those things I've been trying to do for years. It has featured on my New Year resolutions, on and off, for over a decade.

If I meditate at any point after lunch it's not meditation it's a nap. But I'm not a morning person so before lunch I'm running around like a loon trying to find that extra hour I slept through. Bit of a disconnect there.

So I've been trying to retrain myself to be a morning person. Going to bed early and getting up at an ungodly hour (6am) to meditate, write and blissfully drink a cup of coffee before it goes stone cold or gets a toy dropped in it. 

The days that I manage to get up and get downstairs without waking up a child to bring with me are wonderful. The sense of achievement and calm really does last me all day. 

Now can someone just tell puff so that the wee terror starts sleeping through the night again. If I'm spending 2 hours in the middle of the night cuddling a baby who refuses to be horizontal I can't be held responsible for switching the alarm off before the first chime and grabbing some much needed shut eye!

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What day is it?

So I signed up for BEDM full of ideas and with reams of notes about the first few posts I was going to do.

The one thing I neglected to do was to work out what day it started on. Yeah I managed to spend all of yesterday unaware that it was May Day and under the impression that April had somehow grown at 31st. Nope I never did learn the 30 days rhyme.

In fairness this has provided a pretty good introduction. The internet equivalent of running in late, trailing chaos and apologies. Which as my friends and family will testify sums me up.

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The unsent letter

Today we had a visit from Puff's Social Worker. It was a planned visit so the house was clean, tidy and staged to create the impression it looks like that all the time. She brought a letter with her. From birth mum for when Puff is older.

Having a tiny bit of self awareness made me realise I didn't want to read this with an audience. A good choice; it reduced me to tears in the first sentence. 

The sadness, regret and promises to never forget her beautiful wee girl are heartbreaking. Even more so when you take into account all the missed opportunities and choices I might find easy to label stupid.

It won't help birth mum to get a letter from me but it doesn't mean I don't want to write one. I just won't be passing it to a social worker to get to her. 

Dear ****

We share a daughter. The little girl you kept safe and warm for 9 months is right now tucked up safe and warm in her bedroom in my house.

The tragedy of circumstances that led us to be here does not escape me. Yet I am unable to look at this with anything other than unbridled joy. 

She will grow up always knowing that both her Mum's love her. She will know she grew in your tummy but you just couldn't look after her so social work found us. 

She is a much wanted daughter, sister, granddaughter and niece and will grow up surrounded by people who only want good things for her. She will know to count you as one of the people wishing her the world and sending her love. And in time she will be told of the incredibly brave decision you made in signing the paperwork.

I'll keep your letter safe and when the time is right will be there to help her understand the love that went into the writing of it.

Thank you.

Currently

As my lack of recent posts might suggest I seem to have misplaced my blogging mojo. It might have been put out with a dirty nappy, sterilised with a bottle or just have run away from the chaos. So when I read Bex's Currently post a wee lightbulb appeared over my head and I'm unashamed to be rocking the copycat vibes.

Reading

I'm reading loads at the moment - 6 books so far this month, boom. But I'm not going to talk about any of them, brilliant as most of them were.

I'm loving is It's Time to Sleep, My Love. It has a panda on the front cover so of course smudge wanted to buy it for puff and I'm so glad she caught me on a weak willpower day. It is such a lovely wee story to read to a sleepy baby and the illustrations are beautiful.

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Hysterically, smudge heard me reading it to her baby sister and was a bit put out. Her new bedtime routine is a chapter of something age appropriate and this - she's 9 years old!

Watching

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SOA baby. 

I love the escapism of a Californian Motorcycle club and have to admit that despite the fact he definitely looks like he is need of a long bath and a good scrub Jax Teller might play a small part in the attraction of this show! 

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Listening

My November Prudence and the Crow box came with a mix CD. It's in the Kitchen CD player so I can dance around singing into a wooden spoon as I puree all the veg a growing baby consumes.

Recommending

Not really recommending more of a forcing everyone to agree with me on how brilliant they are by buying all the small children I know Blade and Rose leggings. Puff now has a few pairs of these and I am awestruck by just how good they are. They look amazing, are lovely and warm and just fit so much better for small wigglers than ordinary lycra leggings. I would love to post a picture of puff rocking them but all I can manage is a blurry fuzz - she just refuses to sit still!

Loving

Still loving winter and the boot wearing opportunities it provides. I did have a momentary wobble about what I am every going to wear on my feet when summer arrives. It didn't last long, I remembered I live in the west coast of Scotland, summer is months away and surely I can put up with non-boot footwear for 3 days. My purple DM triumphs are still going strong and I fall more in love with them every time I wear them. Which seeing as they seem to be surgically attached to my feet at the moment is saying something.

Making

I made the most delicious Herby Cobbler for tea on Thursday. Seeing as I'm the only one who enjoys lamb I decided to be wonderfully unselfish and substitute the lamb for stewing steak. Served with mash it was a perfect tea for a cold night and worth the faff of the preparation. 

That said, next time I'm substituting the baby onions for a couple of normal ones sliced!

Anticipating

I've got a really busy week coming up - something fun in every box of the next weeks filofax page. Brand new babies to visit, catching up with people and generally opportunities to drink coffee and eat cake. The best kind of week then.