Portrait Series: 5/52 - Ready for the rain

Well, my darling, it's almost 11pm, which is one hour earlier than your usual first wake-up call... but you DID go to bed an hour early... Having such fun visitors sure wears you out! Oh the wrath we will pay tomorrow morning... During all this middle-of-the-night molar-rearing madness, it is important for me to remember all the smiles you give me in the day and all the giggles we have together.

This week's portrait is of your first time decked out head to toe in your rain gear, with your gumboots, rain pants and jacket, ready to go out with our friends J and C for some puddle splashing goodness. Your first time!

A portrait of my son, once a week, for one year.
Ready for the rain! 

You did pretty well, my love, and it was so much fun to go out of the house without the stroller when you were so happy! I will have to do it more for such little outings, and perhaps just bring the sling to help me carry you and the shopping home.

Super fun times with our visiting buddies!

Time for bed for me. You haven't made a peep in the entire time I've written this (five minutes! Woot!) so chances are that I'll at least be able to grab half of a full sleep cycle before you once again wake up screaming as those bones plough through your jaw. My poor baby, I wish I could make it all better.

I love you!
Love, Mummy.

MY favourite thing to do!

Good evening my beautiful blonde-haired boy!

I don't know if I've told you what MY favourite thing to do is. Can you guess? My favourite way to spend a moment or two? No, it's not drinking coffee, though I can see why you might think that... It is with you (of course!) on the swings.

You are not interested in trying to go on the swings alone, you only want to go with me. Usually we begin our swing time with you sitting on my lap facing outwards and giggling giggling giggling at the world zooming by. Then, after perhaps two minutes, you become quiet. I slow down, turn you around so that your belly is against my belly and your head is against my chest, and we keep swinging. Sometimes you still have a little quiet giggle, but mostly you close your eyes and smile so contentedly, as if you would never want to be anywhere else, as if these moments are as precious to you as they are to me.

I just want to breathe in these moments, to have them become a part of me forever. This is my favourite thing.

I love you so much, little boy.
Love, Mummy.

Portrait Series 4/52 - Ready for home

Dear Beanie,

I'm writing this on the bus, with you in your pram in front of me, mesmerised by the scenery flying by. It's already seventeen minutes past the time when we always play you your five songs from Play School and then pop you in the bath with Daddy, and you are super tired. We've just had a wonderful dinner with some of our absolute best friends from Australia who have come to visit with their two littl'ns and you have been having a blast with them, despite your cold and your FOUR molars (my poor baby!).

This photo is one that I took of you as we were waiting for the bus. I like it because it is just you as you are right now. Tired, a little sick, needing distraction with your awful flashing and talking phone, and so entirely cuddlable I could just smother you up inside my arms a thousand times over.

The little boy who is visiting sometimes says to his mum, "I love you all the time" and every single time I hear it a little part of me melts.Little boy, I love you all the time. Even when you wake up every twenty minutes all night long, even when you will NOT sit in your high chair to eat dinner because walking up and down that ramp for the 152nd time is obviously much more important, even when you scream at me for not letting you chew on the toilet brush, and especially when you decide to run up and down the length of your cot again and again instead of going to sleep. I love you ALL the time!

Love, Mummy.

A portrait of my son, once a week, every week.
Ready for home.

A is for Apple, A-A-Apple!

Dear Beanie,

Have I told you lately that you amaze me? You are such a smart little cookie! I started singing the song 'A is for Apple, A-A-Apple' yesterday while we were in the bathroom, and you zoomed out of there and came back with the apple from your fruit puzzle. AWESOME! So I have been testing you! Without any hints at all, this morning I asked you to bring me your toothpaste, and you did. I asked for your crocodile, and huzzah! There he was! And today we were skyping with your Nanny and she said that you seem pretty tired and look ready for bed, and you started waving bye-bye. You really understand now!

Apples seem to be one of your favourite things at the moment - The apple song, the apple puzzle piece, spooning cold apple puree into your ouchy mouth all by yourself, and even learning how to wangle that difficult task of eating an apple whole.

It's your Daddy's birthday tomorrow... so when you wake up, we will get to it making him something special :) But it's a surprise!

I love you, little one.

Love Mummy.

Apples and good friends at the badi. It's a good life :) 

Portrait Series: 3/52 - The thinker

Dear Beanie,

A portrait of my son, once a week, every week.
The thinker.

This has to be one of my favourite photos of you. It really captures a side of you that not many other people get to see -- the quiet, contemplative you. I feel as if I am looking at you when you are seventy years old. It's as if you can see all my secrets, as if you know me better than anyone could ever know me.

While you are very good at being able to play independently, such as finding screws and buttons on every piece of furniture we own and pondering over (perhaps?) whether it will play music if you press it or turn it or pull it, you haven't always been very good at 'taking a moment' and relaxing. You have only very recently started to wind down when you are tired, rather than wind up, often resulting in laps being run around either a mummy or the kitchen. So I feel very lucky to have captured this moment. 

It's one of your favourite things at the moment to run to the couch and cling onto the edge, bopping up and down while looking at me with your big blue eyes, begging for a leg up. And once you're up? You fling yourself this way and that, throwing your little body onto the cushions while making the same sound effects that I used to make when you were first learning to stand and would then topple over. Now you topple purposefully, and I can't help but laugh when you imitate my noises. 

Occasionally, like in this photo, you just prop yourself in a corner and watch me for a moment with a little reflective smile. You are magical!

As always, thanks to this mum for the portrait series idea.

I love you, Bubbaloo!
Love, Mummy.

Mummy Struggles.

Dear Beanie,

I'm feeling... sad, my love. You know your Baby Faces book? I'm the sad face. I read a saying once (have I told you?): having a child is like having your own heart living and breathing and walking around outside of your own body. When you are sad, I am sad. When you are scared, I am scared. When you are bubbling with joy, so am I! And when I drop you off at krippe and you desperately don't want to go, when you just want to stay in my arms forever, I just want you in my arms forever.

Two weeks ago, when you saw that pretty colourful door with all those little painted handprints on it, you were babbling and jumping about in your stroller, desperate to get out and go play. Today, you saw that door and started wailing, arms in the air, turning as far around as you could so you could perhaps grab a hold of me. When I leave you there in another woman's arms when you are like that, reaching for me, me heart just breaks. Today, I sat outside on the steps for five minutes and listened to you cry, waiting for it to get better. You continued to cry and cry and cry, and so I started crying listening to you. I realised that if I was to go back and get you, like every part of my being was begging me to, I'd sabotage all the hard work both you and I have done in making sure that you can predict what happens on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'd perhaps have to start you off from the start again with all the introduction days we did, and I think in the long term it would make it harder for you. But in the short term? I just wanted to race straight in there and snatch you away.

I want to justify myself to you, my love. I have made this decision so that you can have fun with other kiddies around your age and a little older, which I know will do you wonders. I have made this decision to expose you, immersion style, to the Swiss German language when your language centres are the most pliable. But of course I am doing this for me too. I am doing this to allow me some time to breathe and to rediscover myself as a writer, which will give me the energy to be a better mum to you, to play with you more energetically, to give you my undivided attention when you need and want it. Your grandparents, aunties and uncles aren't around to take you for a few hours here and there, my love, and so this is the next best thing.

Although everyone says this is normal for kids who begin Krippe, it isn't normal for us. And you have me wondering if all those reasons above are really worth it and if this really is the right thing for us. I don't know right now. And today, instead of enjoying my time with a free mind to work on creating my novel, I worried about whether I am doing the right thing, for everybody. But that is parenthood I suppose. I hope that every time I'm met with tough decisions I don't spend too many hours crying in toilets while I worry about you!

I miss you, my love. You are my light. 

I love you.

Love, Mummy.

Photos of you at 9 and at 5 months, by Olga Bushkova 

When the lake is warm...

Good morning, little boy!

You have started to become adamant that you are now a TODDLER and not a BABY, and strollers are for babies (and tired toddlers... but that's not the point). I now have become adept at pushing the stroller with one hand and holding your cute little hand in my other, while walking down our busy street, ensuring that you are shielded from the cars but can of course still see them - otherwise, what's the point, Mama? It sure makes our little trips out of the house fun, I reckon! The pure joy you have at wandering around, poking at screws, squatting on top of drains, touching leaves, bending down to pick up the tiniest of stones that you then give to me as a very special gift... these times are precious, and I know it.

We have just returned from a wonderful morning at the badi with some of our best friends. We were there as it opened and had the entire place to ourselves! A dream! You still seem to be in struggle town a little, with those mean old molars almost totally in now, but we had fun splashing about none-the-less. You, mister 5.45am, became very tired very early, and this morning was the first time that I have seen you just lie there, relax, zone out, and actually almost fall asleep - not in your bed or in the pram - since you were about three months old. I've always been in awe of those children that are asleep on towels at the lake-side! And maybe you will become one of them as you get older.

I love you, my sleepy boy.

Love, Mummy. 

Portrait Series: 2/52 - Your first painting!

Dear Beanie,

We've had our first finger-painting success! Your Daddy and I have thrown you and paints together before, but you have never been interested. We've managed to get you to paint a few things (like my mother's day card), but it has never been something that you have wanted to do. This time, though, was a different story. It was fascinating to watch the cogs of your mind turn as you discovered the link between your fingers and the pain on the paper. You began very tentatively. I put some paint on a plate, you began to gently touch it and swirl it around, and then I showed you how you can now put your fingers to the paper and draw lines and swirls. First, you touched the paper gently, one finger at a time, very slowly. And then, as you seemed to understand the immensity of your power, you smooshed that paint everywhere! All across the paper, the table, your body, your hair, and, eventually, me!

A portrait of my son, once a week, every week.
Your first painting! 

It wasn't a full-morning activity, mind you. It lasted about five minutes before you got enough paint in your hair to call it quits. And then, of course, the clean-up-the-bean process lasted about ten times as long as the activity :) But now we have your first painting proudly displayed on the fridge. The first of many!

I love you, my little Artiste!

Love, Mummy.


P.S. Thanks again to this mum for the portrait series idea! 

Bellybutton!

Are you asleep, little boy? I don't know... today is your first real big boy day at the krippe. And of course I miss you. Am I going to be this connected with you for your entire life? How do other parents cope! How must my own mother feel with me being in Switzerland! Oh I can't bear to think about that right now.

I want to tell future you about all the funny things present you does. Like the way that you have started break-dancing: you sit down, spread your legs wide apart and use your feet to push you round and round in a circle. You begin with extreme concentration end end with the biggest grin on your face, perhaps because you are aware of how it makes people around you laugh.

Bellybutton!!!

But the most hilarious thing of the moment? Your discovery of your bellybutton. You have always
loved finding my bellybutton when I lie down on the rug (which, my little non-sleeper, is a little too often) and distinguishing it from the real button at the top of my jeans or my skirt. If I happen to have tights on that day, you are visibly disappointed. One of the first clues to me that you understood language was when I asked you, 'Where's mummy's bellybutton', and you pointed to it, which was months ago. Now? You have discovered that YOU have one too! And if you had it your own way, you'd spend absolutely ALL day with your shirt lifted up, one finger poked right in there, looking cheekily at anyone that will notice. You've even started to say 'be-e bu--u'! The other day you got very confused when I had you in a onesie and shorts, and you simply couldn't find it. You were lifting your shorts legs, looking at your arms, turning your head to try and see behind you, it was perhaps one of the cutest things I've ever seen.

Goodness, I love you, I love you, I love you. I hope you are having fun, Possum.

Infinite love,
Mummy.

Are you Aussie?

Good afternoon, my snoozy boy.

It was August 1 two days ago, which is the Swiss National Day. And it's gotten me thinking about your national identity. I see you as Australian, because I'm Australian. Your daddy is Australian. And that's how genetics works, right? Well, so says the Australian government, who have issued you your passport, but to be honest, you're one of the most Swiss people I know. You were born here, and this is where you call home. You're already learning a little Swiss German, like saying "ciao ciao" and "adieu" as well as "bye bye", and I realise how much German I speak to you now when we are out and about. At home, it's all English, but there's something that makes me subconsciously switch languages when we are around other people. It won't be long before you are cringing at all my grammatical errors, I'm sure. I've read about raising bilingual kids, and everything says that I shouldn't be speaking German to you... So we'll see how damaged you turn out :)

I'm just really curious, little one, as to which country you will associate yourself with. You won't get a Swiss passport until you are eleven, but will that matter to you? Maybe we will all become Swiss at the same time :)

I love you, my kleine bäbeli, my herzige bueb.