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If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! Well hello 2012!
It’s a lovely, shiny, happy new year and I for one am overwhelmed with a sense of possibility. Last night over dinner with some beloved friends we talked about how incredibly different Jan 2011 looked to today. There have been engagements and babies and separations and deaths and elopements and parties and sleepless night and oh so much change.
I for one am a very different person today than I was a year ago – in fact this time last year feels like five years ago if its a day. I’ve had a bit of the luxury of time this week to just think about things (usually whilst sat outside Maisie’s door holding it shut so she’ll get back into bed and go the f*%k to sleep) and I am incredibly proud of who I am right now.
For starters I’m entering this year 11 inches smaller than I was last year – and that’s with not being able to do any exercise due to injury – and I’ve given up my scales for a tape measure.
I’ve had several compliments on my parenting this week from people I really admire (and we all know how awesome that is!) and instead of playing it down and making a joke about it I said “thank you” and moved on.
I have enjoyed Maisie immensely this year. I’m not going to lie and say every minute has been a carnival of cotton candy and unicorns but every minute that counts has been lived fully and enjoyed. Last night Maisie awoke with a night terror and I ended up bringing her downstairs to our guests. We had music on in the background and all of a sudden she lifted her tear-stained face and said with a look of pure joy “Mama, our song!” And we all stopped and listened and sure enough it was ‘Dog Days Are Over’, the song we put on to dance together in our kitchen to cook or clean or just get happy. I’ve never called it ‘our song’ but the fact that she sees it that way brought tears to my eyes and reminded me how much our investment of time pays off.
I’m happy. This is genuinely the happiest New Years Day I’ve had in ages. I feel full of promise and a sense of rebirth, I imagine this is what a phoenix feels like if, you know, they actually existed and stuff. But I also feel full of optimism and anticipation, because if 2011 taught me anything at all it’s that I will survive, so I look forward to seeing what 2012 throws my way because I know, not matter how hard, I can make it through.
Last year I gave up resolutions for a word of the year: Consistency, hilariously the only consistent thing last year was change so it wasn’t totally wrong, just slightly misconstrued. This year I’m doing nothing. No resolutions, no word, no new exercise regime, diet, lifestyle changes, diary, calendar, name, goals, declarations or bucket lists; this year I’m just going to live and enjoy the ride, without feeling like I should be working on something else. Cuz let’s face it – I’m a single mum, there’s ALWAYS laundry to be done!
How are you marking our shiny new slate of 2012?
And so it’s done. All the wrapping paper’s put away, stockings unstuffed, play tents errected, presents tidied, long distant phone calls made & love proclaimed.
My first Christmas on my own.
I thought, especially given how painfully lonely this month has been, that I would feel lonely but in the end I wasn’t. In fact I felt spectacularly loved. And I feel very blessed.
In the last 24 hours we’ve spent unexpected hours with friends, had the neighbours insist we have Christmas lunch with them & their families, been surprised by perfectly picked gifts for Maisie by people I never expected to give to her. A dear friend asked his girlfriend to marry him (she said yes), another friend and her husband have separated and the dear, wonderful father of a childhood friend passed away. At times like these it is hard to feel anything but connected to humankind.
This isn’t an easy time of year. Be gentle with yourselves & with each other. Be grateful for what little you do have and if you have more than a little help others who aren’t as well off as you. Life can change in an instant.
Merry Christmas – from my family to yours.
Xoxo
I am a BIG fan of Christmas music. Growing up we had a family tradition of buying one Christmas album a year and it couldn’t be the same type of music two years in a row. This meant the house was always full of a large variety of music but my favourites always shared a trait – I could sing along to them. Maisie’s really getting into singing and dancing now so when I heard Music For Baby were looking for bloggers to review their Baby Sing Christmas CD I jumped at the chance.
Music For Baby is a small independent record label, run by a husband and wife team. Their speciality is music designed to support development and different activities from pre-natal through to toddler (and beyond). The Christmas album is “born from a love of real music with the aim to create an album that is not overproduced with synthetic sounds but with real vocals and instruments enabling baby and the whole family to enjoy at this traditional time of year.”
I have to say I love the music. The compositions are simple, elegant and, very easy to sing along to. I’ve even caught Maisie singing along with specific phrases on certain songs. The variety of songs is great too – I love the jazzy All I Want For Christmas Is You and Most Wonderful Time of the Year while Maisie favours Frosty the Snowman.
The CD is available for sale on the Music for Baby on-line shop for £10 or, more usefully in my opinion, it’s also available for download from iTunes for £7.99 which I think is good value for money.
The only thing I had issue with was the CD packaging – I think it looks cheap and doesn’t give any real indication of the lovely treasure trove of music held within but you can easily avoid having to look at it by downloading the CD!
I think this is a great, classy and calming addition to any Christmas collection and we are definitely enjoying it in our home!
Welcome to Things I’m Thinking About Tuesday. Yes it’s Wednesday so sue me.
- I have 2 new favourite Christmas books: Father Christmas Needs a Wee and The Smelly Sprout. Reviews will come soon but they are both Christmas Awesomeness.
- I read the other day that there is a Mothers’ Union!!! Can you believe it? I mean what absolutely shit negotiating skills must they have if we end up with no holidays, no weekends and no pay?
- Thinking about mothers’ unions led to this tweet. True dat!
- I’m now kicking myself for not taking picture of myself in the green dress at the party. So I’m going to wear it out on Friday night despite knowing I’m going to be very overdressed but so I can show y’all how it looks.
- I have broken down and bought my first pair of Wolford tights. Basic nude ones but I’m terrified because (a) they’re not cheap and (b) I’m a klutz which is probably not a good combination.
- This article -love the subtitle of Ho Ho No - in the Globe & Mail really depressed me. I really want to give the main woman interviewed a slap. Jeeeez her kids would only get 3 things for Christmas so she’d rather wait and buy them tons of crap than teach them two valuable life lessons about money and those less fortunate? Stupid cow.
- And while I’m ranting, this BlogHer article, about parents screening (and not letting their kids watch) kids films really pissed me off too. I mean my first thought was #firstworldproblems then ‘why wouldn’t you let your kids watch age appropriate kids films because they won’t get the references put there for the adults?’ and then ‘sweet Mary mother of god how much time do these people have on their hands?’ Seriously? I expect more from BlogHer than I would get on TheNest or iVillage.
- I’m thinking of getting a tattoo. Problem is I can actually think of a couple of things I would like to get – and don’t know if I should get them both done? Anyone have any advice they wish they had know before getting their tats? I’m thinking it might be my Christmas present to myself!
- Did anyone else have the Playful Penguin Race game as a kid? My mum grabbed it for us one christmas as a last minute present and I remember playing with it for HOURS. I’ve ordered it for Maisie and it might have to be her present from…
- …the Dot Dot Fairy & Father Christmas. I’m feeling like a bit of an evil parent at the moment as I’ve told M that on Christmas Eve we have to wrap up her soother (dot dot as she calls it) and leave it out for Father Christmas & the Dot Dot Fairy to take to a new baby. She became incredibly sad when I told her this and said that she didn’t want Father Christmas (who she’s not a big fan of anyway) to come then. I *KNOW* I should have taken it away a lot sooner (I mean she’s almost 2.5 and I was never going to use one to start with because I hate them) but with all the changes of the last 6 months I thought it was incredibly cruel to take away that which literally soothes her. So I figured advance notice is only fair but seeing her sad little face has made me waver.
- In order to try and get a handle on my upset & stress about taking away her soother I have decided to mentally replace the word ‘soother’ with the word ‘crack’ whenever she speaks of it. I figure it will be easier to stay strong when dealing with “I want my CRACK now Mummy”, “I neeed my CRACK”, “Give me my CRACK” than anything else – whatdaya think?
So you know that party I was throwing? The really kick ass MadMen themed Christmas Party which I have spent AGES working on? The one I saved to buy food and drinks for, the one I decorated my house for, bought a stunning dress for & found perfect themed cocktails for?
TOTAL DISASTER.
And I don’t say that lightly. Worst part was my intuition had been saying “call it off” for a couple of weeks but I didn’t listen, just ploughed on as though hard work and faith would be enough.
The first thing that happened was on Monday, when I started chasing RSVPs, I discovered half the invites weren’t received. Yes HALF, no I have no idea, a combination of postal invites and email/facebook ones. So I knew then that sending a Xmas party invite already a week into December was a crazy thing to do – I was Cinderella showing up at the ball at 11:59pm, and sure enough most people had plans.
But, I still had a small number of confirmed attendees – around 15 (I invited over 45) – which I thought would still be great fun, just on a smaller scale. I cancelled the cheeses for the cheese platter and took the Old Fashioned cocktail off the menu – saving me both money and fridge space.
Then the food order (which I put in several weeks ago) didn’t arrive. This was due to idiocy and miscommunication between head office (where the online orders are processed) and the actual store location itself. I was told that they couldn’t put me in for redelivery this week but I could pick the items up in store the next day.
So the next day, after an insane day with a friend and 3 kids under 30 months, I grab a cab to the store to pick my order up. But they can’t find it. In fact no one knows where it is or what happened to it. At this point the sinking feeling starts to amuse me and all I can do is laugh. I end up volunteering to (re)do my own shopping as I have to pick up some other bits anyway. Except that they’re out of stock of most of the food I originally ordered so I have to rejig my menu on the fly. The store are very apologetic (probably because at this point they are terrified of the overly smiley-laughy lady who keeps muttering under her breath that “everything just keeps going wrong”) and give me a £25 gift voucher as a thank you for not freaking out at them.
Whilst waiting, in the freezing cold for a cab, I received the first cancellation by text message. The first of soooooooooooooooooooooooo many.
Then my dear friend who was supposed to be staying till Monday with her two girls acknowledges that one of her girls is really sick and neither of them is sleeping so maybe she should head back to her parents (who can help with the girls during the night etc) early on Sunday.
As disappointed as I was (I’ve missed her so much since I moved away) I was also aware that I had to be a good friend and do whatever I could to make things better for her which was obvious as soon as I admitted it to myself – let her go Saturday night so that she can at least have a chance to catch up on sleep. She didn’t want to abandon me for the party but in acknowledging that she needed to leave in order to be okay I had to acknowledge that this party I was trying SO hard to make happen wasn’t going to.
I made phone calls to the remaining THREE attendees, all of which were going to be travelling for at least an hour to be with me, apologized but explained that the party was dead and it really wasn’t worth their time to drive 2 hours return, pay for sitters, etc for a few cocktails and nibbles.
I can’t tell you how absolutely shit I felt.
When I told my BFF (one of the three) she suggested that she come over anyway and help me drink some of the booze and I told the neighbours they were welcome too and so the four of us sat in my kitchen and wolfed down all the cute little bits of food I had bought that couldn’t be frozen.
I put my gorgeous (new to me but ebay steal) green dress on and prettied myself up with some (much practiced in the week) 50′s creme eyeliner and figured it was better to go down looking amazing than just hanging out in my pj’s which is how I felt.
So we drank my specialty cocktails: The Honey Badger and The Candy Cane Martini as well as my new seasonal fave, spiced mulled cider, ate tiny vol au vonts and cheeseburgers and pate and spinach dip until we couldn’t manage a miniature anything more.
Then the neighbours left and my BFF caught her train and I took a long look at myself in the mirror. Then I slipped out of my dress, into my bed (where Maisie slept because I promised her she could sleep there the night of the party as her room was going to be used for someone else), wrapped my arms around my gorgeous girl and fell asleep.
I’ve taken Maisie away for a few days to see the outlaws (what I’ve taken to calling my former in-laws). This is one of the difficult side effects of separation when you’re not both in the same country. Normally, and especially considering the things that were said and done after we announced the split, I would only have to see them on a rare occurrence. Sadly this is not the case and I find myself (yet again) doing something simply because it is the right thing to do.
What I find hardest about the whole situation is how close I used to be to my former mother-in-law. (I brought the woman wedding dress shopping with me for god’s sake.) We spent weekends away together, I spent the weeks J went mountaineering with them, bonding over lazy mornings reading the papers and our shared fear that he was going to plummet to an icy death.
Now I have to manage a strange balance of giving them time with Maisie, trying not to get myself into a situation where I feel I owe them anything and carefully guarding my true thoughts and feelings. It doesn’t help that they don’t speak to J often so within an hour of arriving the questions about him and what he’s up to start. I usually reply cautiously but generally tend to want to shout “He’s your sodding son why the hell don’t you ask him!!!” Ahem. I’m the grown up, I’m the grown up, I’m the grown up.
We had a bit of a tense moment last night where MOL put cow’s milk in the mashed potatoes and when I pointed it out she said “It’s only a little bit – she’ll be fine.” I was stunned (and livid). First off – we’ve put Maisie on a dairy free diet on a DOCTOR’S recommendation, not because the stars are aligned in Jupiter. Secondly – its called a dairy free diet because it is dairy FREE its not a Little Bit of Dairy Diet. But finally, regardless of all of those things I am her mother. I went to great lengths to explain the diet & what we needed to avoid and I get that some things are habitual and she probably didn’t think about putting the milk in there when she made it but in that case apologise and accept my suggestion that Maisie just doesn’t eat the mashed potatoes. Don’t undermine me in front of other people and repeatedly tell me that she’ll be all right. In the end I stood my ground and said quite firmly, “It won’t be alright. She can’t have dairy and she’ll be fine without the mashed potatoes.” (Which you would have thought would be the end of it but no, an hour or so later (a) the leftover potatoes were suggested as bubble & squeak for breakfast and (b) I was asked, again, who had suggested the dairy free diet!!!)
I’m not sure how long this current arrangement is going work. I know they hope to have her up here on her own, which is fine with me in theory (I mean my parents have had her and I’m trying to be the fair grown up here) but the statement “We look forward to being able to meet her at the station” had me in hysterics because it is going to be YEARS before I just plop Maisie on a train and hope she knows where to get off. (I can just imagine her with a tag like little Paddington Bear!) But I also don’t fancy having to take 3 days out of my month to come up here and facilitate fun for them all. I’ve had them down, which was ok – much easier for me of course plus a built in babysitter – but I need a break from her every now and then too. I think Js visit next month will give them all a chance to be together (and I get some time off!!!!!) but after that we need some sort of a plan – I’m all ears if any of you have suggestions!
xoxo
Wow – I can’t believe today is the last day of #NaBloPoMo. When I started I never really believed that I would actually do it but as the days passed it seemed more and more like an act of defiance against my lazy self.
And what a month it’s been! I gave up on finding work till the new year, I quit my job in Canada severing my safety net forever, I baked, laughed and contemplated love. I came to terms with not being enough (and always being more than enough), went on my first date in eight years and, most importantly, I found my voice and my creative spirit.
The personal change in me is incredible – I’m so grateful, so enthused and I feel so incredibly creative.
I can’t say I’ll keep posting every single day but I will definitely be posting far more than every couple of months. Reconnecting with you, my readers, has been yet another unexpected joy.
I feel as if the shackles have been removed, the veil lifted and I think we’re in for a fabulous ride! Thanks so much for being here to hold my hand!
Xoxo
November 26 2011
Christmas Market on the Southbank
Sorry about the blurry image that girl of mine never stays still for more than 2 seconds.
Fleece lined heart rain coat – Florence & Fred, Tesco
Navy stripe bow top – Next, £7
Red skinny cords – Carters, sale $3
Strawberry trainers, Converse, ebay, £6
I have a date tomorrow night. My first “first date” in over eight years. I’m not really sure what I’m feeling. Nervous. Excited. Unsure. I kind’ve just want to get it over with if you know what I mean – like ripping off a bandaid.
It is a very weird thing to be dating and have a child (he does as well) – I know that we’ll probably talk about our kids (especially if we don’t have much else in common) but I don’t want Maisie to meet any date (potential or otherwise) until things get serious but right now serious is the last thing on my mind.
I suppose, like most things in life it will be easier when I’m there and I’ll just have to see what happens. I just feels like such a foreign place to be – somewhere I couldn’t ever have imagined I be earliere this year.
Anyone have any advice? Any single parents have tips on dating someone with a kid when you have a kid? This is a whole new frontier.
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