Family

Reproducing Thoughts Out Loud

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I am a curious person by nature, it’s an integral part of what makes me who I am. I love learning new things, I love the getting the opportunity to explore and experience life in new ways. I love asking questions that go deeper, I love getting to know people.

When talking to a mum in my Mother’s Group recently and discussing whether or not we will have another child, I explored within myself why I am sometimes very much for it, and then again also not wanting to go there again. A major reason that came up when diving in to find why I do want another child was rather beautiful. I hadn’t put it into words quite like I did that day, but I’ll try again now. One of the most amazing parts of being a parent is that I have this incredible privilege to get to know someone else on such an intimate level, to know all about them and to really hold that sacred space. It’s such a beautiful experience that comes with a lot of emotions and overall it has brought a depth to my life that I hadn’t known quite like this before. It’s very different from getting to know a lover, it’s different from any other kind of relationship I’ve ever experienced. The parent aspect of the parent-child relationship is all about being there for someone else, and helping them, guiding them to learn and grow, helping to set up their foundations for their lifetime and it’s such a huge role, and so ordinary and so extraordinary at the same time. It’s so everything.

I would love to get to know another person the way I have gotten to know our son. I have really enjoyed getting to know his personality, getting to know how he thinks and how his mind works, to understand his emotions, and to see his process of becoming. He’s an incredibly special person and I don’t take that for granted at all, he’s such a gentle and kind person by nature. He’s intriguing and happy, and has the most infectious laugh. He tries and he likes to perfect what he does alone without my husband or I watching so that then he just does it when he’s ready in front of us like it’s not a big deal. He isn’t showy, he isn’t proud like that, he’s just someone who does what he does and takes his own pride in what he does. He loves to be around people, but even so, sometimes he’d much prefer to just play on his own, even within a group, and he chooses to do both on his own. He’s such a fascinating person and an absolute blessing.

It has been amazing to see my husband develop into the man he is as a father, as a husband, as a really strong role model who is gentle, kind, and supportive. He was made to be a dad and it’s such a blessing to see that happening in his life too. He would make an incredible parent to more children, absolutely and that is also a big reason why when I feel “yes” is the feeling, this is in that mix.

I have grown so much as well as a parent, as a woman, as a human being, man, so very much. I realised recently that a part of my letting go of social media in the past couple of months has been because it made my mind too confused. Seeing so many different lives of people whom I’ve shared life with at some stage or another, all converged in the same room, when truly they should be separated, they are meant to live in their chapters, and not be jumbled together. I’ve always looked at my life as having very distinct chapters, and by having all the characters, and all the chapters essentially open at once, I found it to be subconsciously, stifling to my growth. I am fully in my motherhood stage, but seeing other women my age that I know doing other things, like having careers that they stress out about, or vacations they take because they are still single, or even the ones who are single and putting their posts out there like that, it was just too confusing for my internal compass. I am not sure I like this part of myself, and I am trying to let this come out without judgement, but I am the kind of person who needs to know rules, the kind of person who needs to know what the standard is so that I can surpass it. It’s like I have to know what the benchmark is so that I can not only meet it, but create a new one. With social media blending it all together, it became entirely too confusing because I am not that, I cannot be all of that and still surpass all of it. I cannot be a newlywed couple anymore, I cannot be a single business owner anymore, I cannot be or live any of those old lives at any stage, because my own life is in a new chapter. My own chapter was getting muffled and I had to pull back and refocus on this current chapter with all it’s beauty, with all it’s glory, with all it’s life, with all it’s physical presence. I am here, I am here right now, in person, living my life, and this is where I want to have my headspace, not in some other world that I just happen to be able to access because I have the internet. I want to live the life I have and I find it so much easier to do that, and to appreciate it, when I unplugged from social media and really began living inside of my own life again. Even though I wasn’t actively comparing, subconsciously I was, and it wasn’t healthy. I wanted to be the most genuine or the most “real” because that’s what I know. There will always be people who are prettier, or smarter, or richer, or whatever, but I felt that my area was in being the most honest about what my life is and what was going on in it, so I went that route, but it didn’t really feel good, I looked for the confirmation via my “peers” who aren’t really my peers anymore, and that also became confusing. I definitely needed to clear that out and I have and am starting to see things in a new way, which feels much better. It was like all of a sudden my benchmark for everything came from the internet rather than from my real life. It was the same kind of thing that happened when I grew up in a small town and everyone who was popular copied the magazine look, or what was being shown on MTV. It wasn’t authentic, it wasn’t self generated, it was imposed by some outside force and we just followed along. I found I was doing that too, but that isn’t healthy, at least, it isn’t congruent with the way I want to live my life, with the creative and spontaneous way that I like to lead from within. It’s taken me a bit to step out and see this, and it’s still crystallising. From looks, to way of being, to everything… social media in all it’s guises became some big marketing machine and I really don’t want to be a part of that because it doesn’t feel good.

Wow. Okay, that was a bit of a tangent, but in essence, by cutting out social media, living in my own physical life, it becomes a lot clearer to me what I really do want in my life. Will we as a family every travel around the globe and be “that” family? Only if it happens organically. Will we be the family that is self-sustainable living on our own land and inviting our friends and family to enjoy life with us? That sounds more likely and more congruent with who my husband, myself and our son are as a family, and it’s been happening organically, it’s been happening because that’s how our life has been unfolding based on what we value and what feels the best to us. Wow, that feels great to get out. It’s so true too. This is who we are. Will we be the family where the mum is a corporate woman who puts here kiddos in daycare, no. Will we be the family who has our own business, that ends up supporting our lifestyle, quite likely yes. Will we be the family who everyone wants to be around because we are good, kind, gentle, fun, loving people? Yes, yes we will.

So will there be another person added to our family? I said recently that if my body was willing and we had unlimited resources then I’d love to have a big family with lots of kids. I would love that. It would be a lot of work and I’d need help, and it would be wonderful. If we had just one more, how great would it be? It would be great.

So when I think of “No” its because our life is really really good right now. Our son is really such an amazing person and we all mesh so well together. A part of me doesn’t want to rock the boat. I also have a fear in there regarding the pregnancy and birth, and if anything is wrong with the child, and if my body can successfully go through another pregnancy. These are all valid fears, and risks, and I’m aware that with having children so many variables come into play. Am I willing to go through the experience again of a NICU? Am I willing to go through the experience again of injecting myself with blood thinners twice a day for months? Am I willing to risk getting stretch marks? Am I willing to have a child with a disability? That last one scares the living hell out of me. Am I willing to have twins if that happens? That’s crazy but so intriguing. What if, what if, what if… what if the child is not like our son, or is like our son… I could play this game for ages… but it’s such a wild card… do we risk what we have for someone possibly even greater? Do we risk what we have with our small little family of three and allow someone else in?

Is one enough? Will we add one more to our family? I’m going to allow this to still simmer in my mind, and allow it to form… it’s becoming clearer… I hope…

One Child or More?

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How do you actually know? How do you know for sure you want to have another child? How do you know for sure that the one you have is the only one you’ll ever want and need in your life?

Always torn between the longing of having a big family, I always think it will be different from my own, that we’ll get along, live nearby one another and be doing well in life. I don’t know this from experience, and I haven’t seen it modelled very much in my life, but I think it can happen, I feel like it can. I would love to see my husband be a dad to another child, he is amazing with our sweet two year old son. I would love to see our sweet toddler be a big brother to some one and teach the new baby how to do things, I can imagine he would be great at it, patient, kind, naturally sharing like he is with our mothers group kiddos. I think myself how lovely it would be to experience this kind of love with yet another person, having a son has opened my heart in entirely new ways, and has helped to deepen my relationship with my husband in so many ways too, it feels secure, it feels strong and I love that feeling.

There are parts that still get me tied up, the parts that make me keep using birth control and keep with our family only having one child. This morning we were having smoked salmon on croissants for breakfast. How decadent really and it’s in part because I am a stealth shopper, but also because it’s just the tidy three of us and our food money can go a lot further. When I think back over the weekend when we went to two different community style festivals, it was awesome for many reasons, including that since there’s only one child, the burden of looking after a child in a crowd is distributed, we can each carry him and still give him attention while we explore ourselves with a bit of freedom for each parent. I guess it’s freedom that is the part that always comes back to me when thinking of staying just with one child. The freedom of being able to quickly get up and go when we want, the freedom of a set sleeping schedule that allows my husband and I time to do other things at night that interest us. I like the idea of a large family, but for practical and slightly selfish reasons I think having just one is great, we can go on trips easier and for a lot less money, we can help educate him in so many different ways because we have the time and resources to do so.

Sleep is such a big deal. Maybe it wouldn’t be if I were in my early 20s and am considering having another child, but now in my late 30s it is a consideration. I like sleep, I need sleep, and when I get enough sleep, everything else feels better in my life. I also like to have independence and now that our son is a toddler, it’s great because he can play on his own and then we can play together, and it allows me a bit more breathing room, especially compared to early on.
Speaking of early on, those newborn weeks, and months, were the darkest, hardest, most gut wrenching and challenging time I’ve ever had. It was compounded by the fact that my body was in such poor repair after the emergency caesar, slipped disc, sciatica, and DVT in my left leg, but also emotionally from having been in the hospital for nearly 3 weeks straight, having to take pain medication when I had set out to have a natural pregnancy and natural birth, and then not knowing if either of us were going to make it through the delivery, then the 5 weeks in the NICU never knowing if he is going to die, or if he can come home and all of it being so emotional, so bizarre, and so surreally horrible. I know I had, or perhaps still have undiagnosed PTSD. I have so much fear wrapped around pregnancy and birth and when I allow myself to really think about the whole process, I don’t want to go through it again. Even now thinking about how horrible, isolating, and confusing that stage was, brings tears to my eyes and my stomach goes in knots. I don’t know if I can actually do it again.

Then, and I know what ifs aren’t so good, but really, what if… what if the next baby has something that needs special attention too, what if it’s special attention beyond just the newborn phase, like a disability or something else? What if adding another child to our very cohesive family messes it all up and we really struggle? There’s no guarantee of who will come next and I know from my mother’s group that they really are their own person, a fine mixture of nature and nurture and sometimes it feels so very much like we just totally lucked out to have such an amazing, well behaved, kind child. He really is special, I mean, it’s like we have totally won the jackpot with our son, I’m thankful all the time. It was such a tremendously challenging start, but gosh, he’s really great. We’ve all started to really find our groove and I don’t know if I want to rock that boat.

The other part of this, which is a huge part, is that I am in my late 30s… and that means a deadline is looming. Maybe it’s not really by the end of the year, but I keep getting fooled into thinking that I have to do it now or never… that if we are going to have another child, if I am going to give birth to another child, then I need to fall pregnant by the end of the year, before I turn 38 and hope that my eggs are still nice and healthy to produce a nice and healthy baby.
I go back and forth with this decision. Having endometriosis just adds another dimension to it because the doctor said that if I have a baby then it puts the oestrogen on hold until after… so if I get pregnant, sooner than later is a good choice, because I *may* have to have a surgery again, this time to remove some of the endometriosis cells, and if it all goes south, then even more would need to be removed. I also have found out that the endometriosis cells have pretty much covered over my left ovary, which is likely why I get so much pain on that side, especially around my cycle time.

So it’s my body, it’s my mind, and it’s my emotional health that all needs to be in consideration ALONG with my own family dynamics. It isn’t a straightforward thought, and honestly since I was deadset against having children when i was younger, I didn’t have the whole dream of a big family after a big white wedding, that simply wasn’t me and wasn’t my life plan, so it’s not like I can just fall back on some projection that I’ve already made. Well, expect that one image that came out of no where when I was living in Brazil… it was so far away from where I was in my life, but I knew it was what I was needing in my life… and in that there was a house on some land with veggies, fruit trees, animals, a natural water source and the ocean nearby, with me, my husband and two little people… two. I don’t know where it came from, it had shocked me at the time… so part of me feels like I need to fulfil this. Maybe I just need to focus one step at a time on my health and well being and then worry about whether or not to have children after that… Gosh I just don’t want to miss that boat, if that’s the boat we really do want.

 

Shaking my head. Still not clear.

Love Still Shines Through Immigration Woes

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“Can you please sign this Stat Dec for immigration for us verifying our relationship.” It’s the strangest thing to have to go outside of my own relationship to have justification that it exists and is viable and continuing. It’s almost like with immigration that you are guilty until proven innocent and there isn’t anything I can do about it. They just assume that the relationship is not genuine and make you go through so many hoops, years, and money, to finally get the stamp of approval to stay. It’s a heartless process for something that is supposed to be about love, about partnership, about sharing cultures and values.

This process of applying for Permanent Residency has been heart wrenching for me. It doesn’t matter that I am married to an amazing man. It doesn’t matter that we have a child together, who was born here. It doesn’t matter that we have been in a relationship for over 5 years now. At this stage, I can still be asked to leave at any time, even though I do have a current Partner Visa. It sucks. It’s so hard to not have that base security. It’s so hard to always feel on edge about whether or not you might have to leave the life you have built.

Most recently I’ve had to ask friends, some for the second time, to bear witness to my relationship. Not only that but I need them to then  get it certified and prove that they are a citizen themselves or at least have PR. It’s a hassle, it’s all a hassle. The thing is that if it’s only me having to be the one going through this hellacious process, that’s one thing, but it’s not just me. It has to extend to family on both sides, it has to extend to people who know us both. It’s such an invasive process of asking for someone else’s okay about the relationship that normally wouldn’t be any of their business. Not only that but normal relationship rules don’t even apply to my husband and I. Since I was not born here, and I am in the process of immigrating, we have to go through so much more effort, and more authority based things than normal couples would even go through, like having a joint bank account, or both of our names being on the lease, or doing either of those two things literally the day that you decided to have an exclusive relationship. No one does that. Not normal couples. So to then be judged as a normal couple when our standards are already so much higher, is crazy, and redundant to me.

A positive in this process, is that I have gotten back some of the statutory declarations and they have been heart warming. Where friends have written how they can see the love between David and I and that we try to make everyone else’s lives happy. This makes me cry even writing it. So a strange twisted positive is, that I actually get to have feedback from friends about how I operate in the world, and how my husband and I as a family operate in the world. That isn’t something you’d normally get, and it’s endearing. It has shown me that I really do extend my love to those around me, that my husband and I really do show loving affection for one another and that we are a connected family unit. I always want to do my best to help improve the world and share love, and oddly, in this process, that has been confirmed.

Now, I’d just like to have my PR granted and move on to citizenship and be done with all of this. In the end we all want to be loved, and I know that loving myself and loving others, is the way that it circulates around. Even with having this heavy burden of loving someone foreign and wanting to have a family who gets to live and have all the same rights as everyone else, it still shines through, my love, our love still shines through.

The Nostalgic Point of No Return

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Recently I’ve been having a realisation that I am in a relationship with my family and we as a whole have relationships with other people, family units, and places.

There comes a point in a relationship, when after you have left it, there is a time when you can return and are able to make amends, things can patch back together. However, after that time, say 2 years, if you go back, it’s mostly due to nostalgia of what was, of who the other person was, of who you were, and none of it is based in what is really happening now in your reality. When returning to a place that has already passed its point of nostalgic no return, at first you’ll be fooled by your self of all the great things, you’ll see it all through rose coloured glasses and things will feel almost better than ever before. However, in a week, the reality starts to creep in. You’ll start noticing all the things that made you decide to leave in the first place. You’ll notice that the show of good behaviour fades away and the truth of the situation, of the people, surface showing a reality that you don’t really want to be a part of anymore.

Two years, is a major amount of time when your growth game is strong. In two years, you can grow apart something fierce and still have the nostalgia to make you think that’s what you want, but in moments of clarity you realise that’s exactly what it is. The old place is the old place that entertained the old you. It’s where you grew in that stage of life. It’s a fine place to visit, but you don’t live in nostalgia as it stunts your growth.

In two years, from leaving the lovely regional area where I met my husband, we have lived in suburbs outside of Australia’s most populous city, we have had a child together, our whole lives have shifted and we are well and truly different people than we were when we first moved here. How can we ever really go back to what was, because we are not that anymore, that place is not the same either, we have all changed. AND this is all okay.

The better option is to take what you’ve learned and move into the new version of you, of your family, and align it with a location that fits your aspirations best, based on who you are now and who you are becoming. A place that supports your growth, your overall well being and your direction in life. Along with that, all of the right players will come in, at the right time, to help along this path, because it is the right path to take. It will be easy, so easy that we’ll look back at how hard the other path has been to get back to and realise that it was because that other path was never the path we were really meant to travel down together, as a family. It’s heartbreaking and liberating at the same time.

Life is meant to be easy. Life is meant to be joyous and fun. Life is meant to have more laughter than tears. Life is meant to be shared. Life flows along when you are in the path that you are supposed to be in. When aligned with the truth, all things fall into place, it’s that simple, it’s what happens. I have experienced this time and time again in my own personal life. The only time it gets hard is when I am out of sync.

By releasing attachment to the old relationship, the old path, the former town where growth occurred, it gives space for the new opportunities to arise, and they will.

It’s a blessing that things change. I also know it’s a blessing to feel that now I get to change with my family, as a unit. We together get to manifest our new lives together. We together get to build our lives how we want them, letting go of any past expectations, letting go of anyone else’s version of life. We get to forge ahead together and have the blessed life we deserve. <3

Navigating the Waters

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In the last week, I have turned a corner, a major corner. I have started to allow someone else to look after my child in a maximum of 2 hour increments. This is a big deal. He’s now almost 22 months, and prior to now, I pretty much count on one hand the number of times someone else has looked after him besides my husband or myself.

I have so many feelings that are arising from this. Perhaps this is what primary carers of little people go through with this transition. Simultaneously wanting to have freedom and independence, but at the same time wanting to make sure that my little person is completely taken care of. The feeling of, YES FINALLY, I’m Doing Something For Myself, AND the feeling of guilt that someone else is looking after my most precious being, who is completely defenceless, completely incapable of articulating with words anything that goes on.

Exhale. I am doing that a lot, deep breathing. He is going to the day care option that is available at the gym I have joined. It’s all super new, totally customer oriented, and really top of the line. The classes are incredible, the machines are the newest available, the instructors are top notch, the child care is incredible. Even in the baby area, they have a huge play section that rivals the places you have to pay to go into for $12 for 2 hours where you have to buy an obligatory coffee as well. The carers are so lovely, so friendly, so very obviously kid people with big hearts and huge smiles.

All of this is good, I know it. I do. Me progressing forward by moving my body and getting back into shape, along with allowing the next stage of our lives to happen by me letting go and accepting help with my child. I know all of this, I know it’s truly all good. There is still a fountain of feelings coming up and I can’t ignore them. I even invited a fellow Mum from my mum and bub group to come over and watch a tear jerking movie that left us both sobbing, just so we could let the emotions out in a safe place.

The new chapter is beginning and I am grieving the last one. It’s normal, and it’s okay. I have loads of self compassion for myself and am being as gentle with me as I possibly can in this transition. I am also doing my best to be there for my son while he transitions, because it’s also a major shift for him as well. Such a big deal.

How could they?

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My stomach is turning, my throat is tight, my brow is furrowed. I have blocked out the majority of my childhood, only a glimpse or two remain from before I was in my teens. Recently, as in about 20 minutes ago, I learned from a close relative, whom I trust, that when I was 4 or 6 weeks old, that my parents asked this relative to look after me for a couple of hours, so they could go on a motorcycle ride, and did not come back for 3 days. THREE DAYS! Three days they left me, their premature baby of 6 weeks, with someone else.

My relative only brought this up after asking if I had put my own child into preschool or daycare yet. I said I hadn’t, and that I honestly didn’t really trust it, at least not until he is old enough to speak. This is a deep untrusting level I have, and maybe this is where it comes from. She said that I was so different, like the opposite of my own parents, and told me that story jokingly. She of course didn’t realise how it would effect me, neither did I.

I feel so disappointed. I feel so sad. I feel so very angry and pissed off. How could they do this to me? Why have children if you aren’t going to take care of them? Really, and me? How selfish of them, it really is the opposite of how I am with my own child. No wonder I was reluctant to have children.

This all shows that even from the beginning they didn’t want to be parents. I had this rosey view now that I have my own child, that maybe in their early days they did care, that we really did have a family atmosphere, but clearly that is a fantasy, and certainly not one based on any memories, just hope.

External, internal talk: I love you Jennifer. I know this is hard for you. It is so very unlike what you would do. Try to have compassion. You are special, you have gone through so very much and look how far you have come. I know it hurts. I know it hurts to feel like someone doesn’t care, I know it must be devastating to feel like your parents didn’t care, but they did their best. You are highly resilient, and no matter what happened as a child, you are not destined to repeat their lives nor their mistakes. You are better than that. You are a beautiful, thoughtful human being, and you get to choose every single day how you operate in the world. Let this be fuel to make you better. Let this be fuel to understand your own self reliance, your own self worth that you have developed because of you.

I really feel gutted right now. NO wonder I’ve had self worth issues. NO wonder I’ve had issues with security. No wonder. Without a solid base, everything else is hard to build. I am so lucky that I have chosen this conscious route and have rebuilt myself as an adult. It still hurts though, uncovering a bit of the truth that is so utterly revealing.

Also just from a baby’s perspective, not having your parents there, for days on end. Not having the security of your parents for days on end. I know that can be overcome, like it has with Abraham after him being in the NICU, something I did not choose. However, it has taken conscious effort to rebuild that trust, no wonder I never really trusted my parents.

Lazy Sundays

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Sundays have a different feel altogether from the other days of the week. It’s almost like a calm comes over Australia and people just relax into the day where you don’t really have to do anything. It feels great.

I love to ride that energy and fully enjoy a Lazy Sunday with my family. It’s nice to just lounge and take the day at a snails pace. It doesn’t happen often, and perhaps that’s why it’s so nice. Today was one of those days and the weather was perfectly suited with autumn drizzle. Again, something that I like in small doses, to switch it up a bit.

We all need these kinds of days, where we can truly relax. In a world where being busy is the norm, the change helps to reenergise and allow for a recoup before the next surge of energy, the next project, the next endeavour.

One Million Dollars

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Truth is we really do need one million dollars. Well, specifically Nine Hundred and Ninety-Five Thousand dollars plus fees for buying the land. It’s my husband’s family’s farm, the bulk of the acreage. The family does need the money, his parents are in their 80s and they need to look after this next stage of life, which includes building a specific place to grower in, and having a carer. The other part of the farm, the smaller acreage is still theirs, but it only has about 3 usable acres, with the rest on a slope with trees they planted years ago, which apparently now they can’t cut down due to the possibility of koalas going through there. As much as I understand the koala situation, I also have never once seen a koala there and haven’t heard of seeing one ever.

We need to be the ones to buy that portion of the farm. It needs to be us because we will continue to treat the land fairly, we won’t infringe on his parents, we will allow the poultry processing plant which is on the smaller acreage to continue, and we will be great neighbours. We want to build a house on the farmland so that we can raise our son, and possibly other children if we have them, there too, just like my husband was raised there.

I ought to not go into too many details but I can say that the family farm and land is all under a trust and because of that the members have to vote on what happens, and not everyone wants the land to be kept. Not everyone has the attachment, and not everyone has the keen desire to see it kept in the family either. I’m not going to judge, but it certainly affects us and we have to deal with it.

After calling council and realising that they have a rule in place where a farm zoned area cannot be broken into smaller acreages other than by two, apparently, then the 110 acres must be sold in two lots as they are. They do this in order to stop people from whittling down the land to keep it farmland. Honestly there is no way in hell that a property that is one million dollars would ever recoup that running cattle, or chickens or any other animal that is suitable for that hilly land. So farmers are cut out of the option. Next would be someone who wants to buy the land and build a house on the “million dollar view” land, but surely they wouldn’t use it for farm land, unless it was a hobby farm and they didn’t need to generate money from it.

Since we are in the start up phase of our family life, we are not in the position to have that kind of money laying around, especially because I chose for me to stay at home with the baby to be the primary carer and to ensure that he is well looked after. I do not regret this one bit, AND I’d like to have the money to do this anyway.

So in essence I felt very sad, frustrated, dismayed and physically in pain when I saw the farm posted up on the real estate web page. There it was, with my mother-in-law’s Simmental cows grazing in the paddocks. It’s been talked about for a while and I’ve know this was coming, but something made it all too real seeing it posted along with every other property that is out there. It’s just so sad to me and I want to change this. We want it for all the right reasons, and I know life isn’t always fair, but I really want it to go in our favour, very soon and now, please.

Life is Pretty Great

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There is nothing like getting away on holiday for long enough to fully appreciate your normal life. What a blessed life I live! Truly. There is an ample amount of love flowing through my family, we are all healthy, happy, enjoying one another. My husband has a day job that he really enjoys where he gets to make a difference and has some authority and responsibility. I have been really In-Joy-ing being a mother lately, being the person who is with our baby, looking after him, growing with him, discovering and revelling in the curiosity of life, it’s wonder-filled for certain!

We have a great place to live, the weather in autumn in Australia is perfect, it’s always around the mid-20s, with blue skies and some clouds, it’s divine. Our backyard is plenty big enough to house Mrs Brown and Mrs White our chickens and their coop. I just love watching them peck around and do their chicken thing of scratching, putting their bums up high and pecking into the ground. It’s so funny to witness them being who they are in their true chicken essence.

Our house is great, everything works and it’s in good repair. Our furniture and everything inside of our house feels comfortable and I have a spacious kitchen to prepare meals and get creative with our food. Our bed is so comfortable and I sleep so well in it.

The recent restart of meditating at least once, usually twice a day has really helped me and I need to remember, that by doing so, it brings such clarity, peace, presence and appreciation in my life. That along with travel and a whole heap of love, and life well and truly is great.

Yay!

So Much Love

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The amount of love I have been feeling for my baby, err toddler, is out of this world. Seriously, the dopamine must be pumping through my veins, as I feel euphoric a lot of times just cuddling with him. Gosh that feeling is amazing, it’s overwhelming at times, it’s like the feeling when you first fall in love and it feels so very warm, decadent, inviting, encompassing, and so very dreamy. I feel all of this and so much more when we are just cuddling on the chair. By cuddling, I really mean that he is sitting on my lap and I have one leg crossed so that I am holding him into place, and he lounges back onto me, essentially I am a cushy chair to him, and I happily oblige!

Interestingly this also corresponds with the recent notice that I can tell he is understanding me AND that he has a response for sure to what I am saying about what I am saying. It’s different than before, it’s like a click has happened in his head, and between us, and it’s so nice. He still grunts a lot and makes sounds but he does have a few words that he says that I know he knows what they mean, like when he says ahnana, for banana when he sees it. He also says dada and knows that is his dad now. He says mama, but certainly not as much as I would like for him to! 🙂

Also he has THE SWEETEST smile there ever was. I know I am biased because I am his mum, but for real, he does. He plays peek-a-boo with you, he shines that big beautiful smile where his entire face and being lights up, it is so precious. He garners the attention in a really subtle way where everyone just gives it to him and enjoys it too. It’s so sweet and certainly not look-at-me, over-the-top at all, he has a nice gentle way about him.

I just adore this baby, this little person, this unique being that I am blessed to be with on this life journey. How lucky did I get in life that I get to have this sweet boy AND an amazing husband. My cup runneth over and it’s wonderful.