craft

Old Me/New Me

/ annamurray / Leave a comment

When C was a baby – not a little tiny baby but rather, hurtling toward her first birthday – I was chatting with one of my best friends, Michelle. Michelle has 3 kids – a boy, and twin girls – who were (doing some mental calculations here) um 7 and 5 at this time. I think. They were all in early primary school, anyway. The point is, Michelle asked me, “Do you feel like you’re not a real person anymore? You’re no longer Anna. You’re a mum. You’re C’s Mum, and that’s who you are and how you’re seen now?” And even now I remember this gasping realisation of oh my goodness me that’s it! That’s a perfect encapsulation of how I feel I am now. 

I mean, there are a few things to explain here. The early weeks of motherhood were a wild ride but  I didn’t experience that exhaustion that I was told to expect (ha – like sooooo many other things) because I was so happy doing these things for this little bub. But then as the newborn phase waned and it became clear that I had a baby who didn’t sleep, things changed. And then she turned out to be an enthusiastic but small eater. But because she was such a poor sleeper and my advice from everywhere was that if she has more solids then she will sleep better – well. I felt like I spent most of her baby time trying to get her to sleep and trying to get her to eat. 

And I know it is perfectly natural for other children – and parents (me included here; I’m not judging this AT ALL) – to refer to other parents by reference to a child’s name. I am C’s mum, or E’s mum, or S’s mum, or sometimes the mum with the three girls, depending on who I’m talking to. And there is all of the mental work that goes into caring for children. Like thinking ahead for the basics like clean clothes, and change of season clothing, and next size up shoes, and swimming lessons and daycare and school and homework and play dates and lunches and snacks and how to go grocery shopping with young children.

But eventually there is the realisation that all that is not enough. “You can’t pour from an empty cup” is a phrase that is thrown around a lot in parenting forums, but I don’t feel it’s apt for what I am trying to describe. It doesn’t describe the feeling of being scraped out with just the shell remaining. I need to do all that, be all that, and more. I needed to be Anna again. Still Anna with the three girls, but also Anna who does… things to be Anna.

Before kids, when I was still a violin teacher, a mother of three girls asked me what I DO with my time? I remember wondering, How do YOU fit everything in? She had three girls. They all did violin, with lessons and practice and ensembles. They each did either ballet or gymnastics. They all went to a private school. The mum worked a full-time job but also managed to ferry the girls to violin and ballet and gymnastics. Like, was there some secret pocket of bonus time that opened up for some people? I’m still wondering that, actually, but in the meantime I have started to work it out. 

If something is important enough, work out how to make it happen.

My health is important to me. Admittedly, partly for vanity. I don’t want to cringe when I look at photos of myself, and I don’t want to avoid being in photos. I know they are important. So I worked out actually when I could exercise, committed to it, and now it happens every morning. Writing this blog is important to me. I know if I abandon it and don’t make any record other than photos of our family life, then in five years I will be very sad with Now Me. Writing happens when I can get up earlier than exercise. Yes, it feels like I hardly sleep. In fact, my watch confirms that I hardly sleep, but I’m working on going to bed earlier. Promise.

There are other things that I used to do that I didn’t even think about as being Anna Things. Wearing jewellery. Making jewellery. Well, that was very much an Anna Thing but I didn’t anticipate how hard that would be with kids. Beading is therapeutic and so relaxing until a small child accidentally tips your box of beads or findings and then you don’t quite know how many small swallowing hazards you are suddenly looking for on the ground in amongst all the other detritus that comes with Living With Small Children. 

Having a food box delivered. This had started with an organic fruit and veg box, then extended to milk and meat and dairy, but when I moved in with Glenn that felt a little redundant. We live right next to a shopping centre, and Glenn likes to shop to cook, and one of the delivery companies went bust, and we just stopped. Fast forward more than 7 years, and I saw a picture of a funny strawberry on Facebook. As it turns out, there are a few companies that deliver supermarket rejects. We picked one company, and now have a medium box of wonky fruit and veg delivered every fortnight. Not surprisingly, this is very much looked forward to by everyone in the family. Glenn loves seeing what is delivered and then planning meals around that. The girls love inspecting our funky food and marvelling at the bananas as long as their arms or the 4.5 kg watermelon or the tiny pears the size of S’s fists. I love not having to shop with children, not having to plan, and working within the parameters of the delivery. Right up my alley.

One thing that is not an Old Me thing but if it had been around, it would have been. Recycling. I’m not talking your standard paper/cardboard/glass type of thing. I’m talking containers. It used to be that containers would taunt those of us not in South Australia with the label along the lines of “10c refund at participating depots in South Australia”. I legit was super excited to go to South Australia for the container refunds, but it turned out they weren’t lauding it over the rest of the country and this wasn’t obvious at all. Fast forward to that week between Christmas and New Year, and I saw a Containers for Change ad offering to come and collect if you had 100 containers. Challenge accepted. Now we have a special tub for containers, and I have a page of container labels to print. My process is getting better. The tub has a bin bag in it. Every eligible container that goes in gets a tally mark on a piece of paper on the fridge. When the bag is full (about 35 containers), it gets tied up and a label stuck on it, then taken to the garage. New bin bag in. Heavier glass bottles go in paper shopping bags, and once they have 8 bottles, same deal. Container label stuck on and then to the garage. Every few weeks, we organise collection and it’s just… easy. I love it. 

There are still some Old Anna things that I am really missing and yearning to bring back into my life. Some things I feel are the frugal Scottish side of me coming through, or maybe it’s a very strong sense of independence or getting back to making it yourself so you know what’s inside. Making yoghurt. I tried recently, and you know what stopped me? Not the lack of time or available bench space or available milk. No. I couldn’t find one of the containers and any of the lids. How could you lose them, Anna? Old Anna asks me. Pre-kids Anna asks me. If I explain to you that the containers (originally with their lids) live/d in the cupboard next to the fridge and so girls have loved to play with things in that cupboard – sanctioned, thankfully – but occasionally have major imaginative play scenarios requiring removal of said things to other play areas, does that explain it? I have since found a lid in a toy hamper and another in the craft department so there is hope. 

Baking bread is another thing I am getting the urge to do again. As my preferred bread is a spelt bread that used to take 2 hours for me to make I really should just remember to buy spelt flour, shouldn’t I. Hm.

Photography is a big part of who I used to be. Art photography, that is, not just of my girls. I have little flurries of photographic activity but I really haven’t been as inspired most of the time lately. Having scenery dotted with cranes is really not helping. Having children who are either impatient to be where they want to be or willing to be distracted and not get going when I need them to after the photo is really not helping. Only wanting to take photos of my children sleeping in funny or endearing poses doesn’t help the artier side, either.

I am also very keen to get back into playing violin. I said this last year, but when daylight savings ends and my work hours go back to starting at 10am instead of 9am, I am hoping hoping hoping that even a little bit of music making can come back into my life. These last two things – aspects of me that I haven’t gone back to after having kids – are two big things that drew Glenn and me together. I need them back. Not from anything that he has said, mind you, but I don’t want to lose ME and the person he met and married. I don’t want to look back on this time and regret things that actually are doable and regret this being the time of life when something stopped. 

If something is important enough, work out how to make it happen.

School’s Back!

/ annamurray / Leave a comment

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh

Bye, darling girl! I love you! Have a wonderful day!

School is back, and holidays are done. Holidays that went better than last summer and better than feared but still … still had that feeling of gritted teeth. We’re getting through it. How much longer now? Grr.

Morning walking. Walking for physical health but also to find some space in the day, to carve it out for myself, to have the morning sun in my eyes, to breathe fresh air and not have to answer five questions fired at me from multiple sources all at once every ten seconds. Walking because looking after me in this way helps me reset and look after everybody else. 

Taking myself to the bedroom for a break so that I don’t explode. Breathe. Be interrupted during that minute – that one tiny minute of 60 seconds – because sometimes girls can’t even last that long or I have left my breathing space mental break cool down time too late and then I am rushing back out to nurse the injured child or to remind girls of something like we don’t hurt others to get our own way or that sometimes it’s okay to let others do their thing and let me deal with them.

Two girls going to daycare two days a week. The pre-holiday financial stress of knowing there may be zero income to cover this but also the holiday family stress of having three girls together for all the other days so balancing it out to be two days a week of daycare and then five long and tricky days where they’re all together. The relief – such relief! – when I actually was allocated work for every single day that they were at daycare and I could work and earn just that little bit of money that meant that I didn’t have to use up my entire savings to get through the holidays.

Having that little bit of money meant having freedom to buy girls things like an ice cream on a day out, or buy sushi for them for lunch, or buy craft supplies, or buy replacement sandals when one child just stepped into a pond and when I hauled her out immediately there was only one sandal on one foot and the other was lost at the bottom of a pond and there were so many tears but she didn’t have to go home barefoot. Money that meant I could buy C black school shoes, which are not essential for this school but still a nice thing that she asked for and I knew it would help her feel Proper. Buying school shoes and realising that school socks will be better than her multicoloured rainbow unicorn socks so being able to say yes to school socks. I know this doesn’t sound like much but if you’ve been there, you know. Money that meant I could take her to the uniform shop when it opened last week and buy her uniforms, all secondhand, but not stressing that if there was nothing in her size secondhand then I would be buying new. 

Big Days Out. People hearing about these massive outings and saying how amazing I am but me knowing inside that this is just because I am so far from amazing that this is the only way I can keep girls from fighting with each other all day because when they are out they are so beautifully behaved and just seem to get on better. Big Days Out that wear them out but it’s still a balancing act of Big and not so Big that they are actually worn out and get sick from exhaustion then have to stay home from playgrounds and daycare and then we implode.

Big Days Out this summer that included the trip to Bluey’s World and the day at the City Botanic Gardens playground and the trip to my brother and sister-in-law’s new place on Boxing Day where we also saw my parents and my sister-in-law’s parents and brother and it was a huge day that had girls falling asleep on the way home. There was a Big Day Out to the shopping centre to beat the heat and have girls playing in the shopping centre play areas for three or four hours. There was a mummy-daughter shopping trip that was promising to be a wonderful pre-Christmas shopping trip but ended prematurely when the heat and the sunlight and the people and the noise and the noise and the noise and the noise caused poor C to be so overwhelmed she was nearly vomiting. 

There was mummy cooking more. This makes me happy but also oh my goodness the stress of trying to prep dinner just before taking girls outside when it is shady enough but they are definitely at the point of the day when they need to be outside it is real, this stress, and I finally worked out the need to prep dinner way, way earlier, like at lunchtime sort of earlier and then we managed to have maybe three nights at the end of the holidays where it was not so stressful. 

Baking, both together and partially together and managing to do some on my own as girls were doing their own thing. Relishing this together time while also simultaneously finding the stress of having girls fight over the ladder and the step stool and whose turn it is to tip or stir or taste and that moment when you realise you need an ingredient which requires you to leave the preparation area because you don’t have extendable arms so there will be at least one child unsupervised next to uncontained ingredients and stove knobs.

Craft. Not as much as there could be because the mess is a big factor. Also not as much as there could be because then once they have finished gluing coloured pasta shapes to cardboard or gluing cotton wool to a plastic bottle with fairy lights inside it or making glass jars into tea light holders (actually those are quite lovely) then we have all those things in our place needing places to live because of course they cannot ever be thrown away or repurposed. They are Special. 

There were regular trips to the library. I had neglected it somewhat because I feel libraries are a place of calm, for order, for quiet, and this is all the things my girls are not. Plus the lack of cooperation when I say it’s time to go meant it was a very stressful place and experience for me. However, the last few months I gave it another go and it is such a hit. The children’s area with its pretend cafe and its wall games and big armchairs and ‘doctor computer’. New and colourful and attractive and enticing books. Row upon row of chapter books for C. Indoor drinking fountains. The rituals of borrowing books and returning books.

“Hey Siri, play rock and roll music.” “Hey. Siri. Play … STOP! HEY. SIRI!!!!! PLAY. ROCK. AND ROLL. MU. SIC.” As it turns out, I have three rocking rock chicks. Especially E. They love Kiss and Queen and ABBA. All girls can now activate Siri on the HomePod. They are expert at requesting movie soundtracks and have been practising other options like Mamma Mia and I Was Made For Loving You Baby and Rock And Roll All Night. The HomePod is now unplugged as turn taking took a dive and there are only so many times I can listen to children shouting at Siri and then listening to We Will Rock You (much as I love it).

New indoor climbing equipment and balloons and outside time with balloons and scooter and tricycle and ride-on car and playing mermaids and jumping in the massive swimming pool puddle that forms when it rains a lot and the mud oh my goodness the mud that I have had to clean up because when it’s available it is the most favourite thing for the girls ever in their lives.

Even though this feels like it is over, it’s also not really over. All these things will still happen, will still be happening, for the next little while. Weekends still exist. Sick days still happen. We just have all the added extras of school and lunches and activities and girls not having to be in each other’s faces most of the time. 

Annnnd breathe. 

Halloween 2021

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Admission: I’m not a huge fan of Halloween. I’m not a huge fan of dressing up, or seeing loads of ghosts and witches and zombies and ghouls. Or worse, oodles of princesses and fairies and mermaids and just any costume. I’m not a huge fan of being scared, or tricks that give a thrill, or scary movies that frighten me silly.

I am, though, very much a fan of observing the things that make up the rhythm of a year. Doing certain things only at certain times of the year. And, although my family didn’t do Halloween when I was growing up because it was ‘too American’ I am married to an Irishman and Halloween is, actually, Irish.

Hello, Halloween.

This year, as well as doing daycare dress-up, we’ve done some craft and some food and talked a little bit about some of the Irish and Scottish traditions of Halloween. Including the origin of the jack-o-lantern which was enough spookiness for me for this year thank you very much.

Dressing up:

C chose to be a ghost this year. The last two years she opted for black cat (yay for reusing props!) but this year when I asked what she wanted to be, and told her she could be a black cat, or a pumpkin (please no) or a witch or a ghost, she was very excited about the ghost option. Easy. One white sheet I was wanting to repurpose anyway, folded, cut into a circle, head hole cut out a little too big so pleats sewn in, tassels cut in so she could be extra spooky when she ran, eyeliner to make ghostly eyes (Glenn is great at applying makeup). I had to laugh to myself when we got to daycare and the teacher who greeted her asked if she was a ghoul or a friendly ghost and C really didn’t look enthusiastic about being a friendly ghost. She wanted to be a scary ghost. Gold.

Craft:

We made paper jack-o-lanterns, and bought some battery-operated candles to put inside. (I’m very happy that $3 for 6 candles was actually the only purchase for the whole Halloween.) C was quite happy cutting along the lines to make the lanterns, and then insisted on cutting her tape to tape them together. 

Food:

On Saturday we made chocolate cupcakes, and decorated them on Sunday. Icing dunked in ground pistachios then adorned with candy eyeballs and fondant tongues = monsters. We tried to make pumpkins with fondant and icing but they looked more like sad St Patrick’s Day flowers or something (very Cake Wrecks) so we turned them into orange monsters instead. And, thanks to Pinterest, I found Barmbrack bread. An Irish bread baked around the time of Halloween, that Glenn remembers having as a child. The enjoyment I found in baking it told me it will be a staple of our future Halloweens. Not just the act of soaking fruit then mixing dry and wet ingredients and baking in a loaf then slicing and toasting and eating with butter while drinking tea. It’s more than that. It is the making of something only at a particular time of the year, part of the rhythm of the year and the rhythm of our life.