Thursday, October 31, 2013

Portrait Series: Your first pose

Dear Beanie,

After many many portraits of you, this week something changed. For the first time, you were aware of your photo being taken. Sure, in the past you knew there was a black box with lots of buttons (!) pointed at you, but now you understand what this means. You had been busy playing with your new alphabet mat, and then the camera came out. You stood up, faced the lens, put your hands by your sides -- all with a serious look on your face -- and then smiled.


A portrait of my son, once a week every week.
Your first pose.
I feel a little bittersweet about this. It worries me that children are so aware of their own image now, largely because of this digital age (could I sound any older?!) and the ability to have their photo taken and then immediately view their image. I thought that you were still a little too young to have reached the mirror stage, where you recognise that the little boy in the mirror is actually you, but it turns out that you are at exactly that age now. Perhaps you now know what you look like and can recognise that the boy in those images on that screen (and in the mirror) is actually you, and that you can have some control over that image.

This is another thing that I just need to relinquish control over. It is something that will happen... but I'm not sure it is something I'm ready for. It is one of my strongest wishes as your mummy to raise you to be confident in your own skin and to truly know how beautiful you are. I want you never ever ever to doubt this. You are such an incredible creation. Watching your amazing body achieve all the amazing things that bodies are capable of... I want you to forever love that!

Meanwhile, I did also manage to catch an unposed photo of you, where I made you giggle. I know which one I like better... Though there is something in this picture that makes you look about five years old, not seventeen months!


I love you, my beautiful boy!

Love, Mummy.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Autumn

Dear Beanie,

This time last year I was writing about October. It was snowing, the leaves were crimson, and there was a week of warm sunshine forecast. October simply must be my favourite month of the year, and although the first two weeks of this October were grey and filled with what we Aussies call 'European Rain' (that is, rain that just seems to penetrate slowly into everything, including your brain), the last two have redeemed it. It remains my favourite month!

A beautiful Autumn day!

The colours are just incredible, and something that I could never have imagined before living here. It is strange for me to think that this, along with snow and lakes and mountains and punctuality, will be your idea of normal; that Eucalypts, the Indian Ocean and magpie song will be a thing of holidays only.

The incredible colours of October
You are walking more and more lately and we are using the pram less and less. You are fascinated by the fallen leaves and my heart swells in predictable joy to watch you run about in them and fling them above your head, as if you are in an advert for some children's clothing brand.


While I still remain a little scared about the winter and all the slipping, sliding and crashing that will surely entail when we have a new-ish walking boy holding the hand of his mummy who has very little ice and snow experience, we will embrace this new existence together and, as with many future things I'm sure, you will no doubt have much to teach me by the season's end.

I love you, my beautiful happy boy.

Love, Mummy.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Portrait Series: Being a Baby

Hello my little muffin!

I'm still sick, so I'm sorry I haven't written to you much lately. There are so many things I need to write to you about... about your first colouring in competition, about your wonderful relationship with your nanny who is currently visiting from Australia, about your newfound love of all things to do with construction sites, and a thousand times about your changing sleep patterns. Sleep is so boring when you are getting enough, but when you spend seventeen months of your life in a zombie state of exhaustion (maybe one day you will have your own babies and will understand!), sleep is the most exciting thing in the whole world!

But right now, it's portrait time.

A portrait of my son, once a week, every week.
Being a Baby! 


Your life is one big contradiction at the moment, little boy! I spend so much time throughout the day telling you what a big boy you are now and how proud we are of you for not needing a bottle at night (though you still really want one!), telling everyone that will listen and telling all your stuffed animals how you are such a big boy. But then you are having these moments for the past week or two where you love pretending to be a baby! It is the cutest thing ever. You found your old play-gym from when you were a baby, and you love to lie under it like the 'old days' and kick at the mobile and the bell. You always giggle when we say you are 'being a baby'. It makes me laugh and laugh, because of course you are still my little baby! Once your nanny got underneath it to pretend to be a baby too, and you squished yourself in next to her for some giggly time together. So so cute!


Goodness, I love you, my big boy / little baby.

Love Mummy.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Portrait Series: Small Spaces

Dear Beanie,

This will be a super short letter today, as I'm sick in bed and your daddy and Nanny have taken you for a fun day in the mountains.

Small spaces


I chose this photo of you because it shows how you are becoming just a little more confident with going into tricky places. You are yet to ever venture into anything that resembles a tunnel, though you are squeezing into places and very occasionally crawling under chairs or under the table. The day when you pop your whole body into the tunnel at the playground will be a big one!  I don't like tunnels either... Your nanny says you must still be scarred from your tough birth, haha. Perhaps! Who knows!

I love you, muffin.

Love, Mummy.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Seventeen Months: "WOW!"

Dear Beanie,


Happy seventeen months! "Wow!", you'd say, and you'd be right! 
Truly a happy little boy!
I thought I'd start your monthly update by telling you all the things that other people say about you. You know that your daddy and I think you're the bee's knees, but what about the rest of the world? These are some things that people repeatedly say about you – both friends and strangers: You are gentle, sweet, so contented, you have the absolute cutest laugh, you are inquisitive, a thinker and an analyser, you are tentative, you are kind. And you are happy. It makes me so happy when other people tell me how happy you seem!

What can you do now?

A productive morning from my analytical boy :)
Your daddy and I agree: You have come leaps and bounds in the past month! It seems as if your brain has been so entirely focused on mastering walking and all that goes with it (walking sideways, walking backwards, walking on your toes, running, trotting, jumping, spinning, stair climbing...) that all of your cognitive development was kind of put on hold. And now there has been a total explosion! 


One month ago, you couldn't happily sit at your table and draw. Instead, you'd grab your pencils, pens and crayons, run over to our chest and insert them into the small slots, as if it was a shape sorter. Now you love to sit and draw. And just recently, you've discovered how much fun it is to draw all over yourself too :) 

One month ago, You couldn't drink from a cup or a bottle yourself. Or... should I say... you didn't. Now you are an expert! Though not at night in the cot... but this will come, if it needs to (which hopefully it won't!). 

One months ago, you would have a tantrum in frustration when you tried to do the wooden fruit puzzle. I'd have to put the apple just half a centimetre from its place and you'd have to slide it over to fit it in. Now, you can do the puzzle, almost every time, all by yourself! 

One month ago, reading books involved big board books only, and really was just about you flipping the pages as quickly as possible. Now, you listen to a story, you are gentle with real paper books, and you love to hunt around in the pictures for trees, balls, puppies, birds, cars, buses, boats and cows and elephants.


Now all of these things make you say, “WOW!” all day, every day. Indeed, little one. Wow!  

You amaze me, bean.

I love you.


Love, Mummy.



Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Flour Fight!

Dear Beanie,

When I was fifteen years old, I remember going to my friend's house and having an enormous flour fight. I have no idea how it came about... it certainly wasn't our intention, but it happened. I had flour everywhere! I still remember the problems that came about when I thought it would be a good idea to wash it all out of my ear... did you know that when you mix flour and water, it makes dough? Not a good idea when it's in your ear, my love.

That brings me to you. Actually, in two ways, one of which was unexpected until just now... but that little story reminded me that a few days ago you thought it would be a good idea to shove a bunch of very sticky vegetable risotto into your ear. Please don't do that again, my love. It wasn't pretty.

But. Back to the flour.

You didn't say it had to stay on the table, Mummy. 
I've been thinking a bit about what sort of things I can do to keep you entertained inside a little when the weather turns grey and sleety. A friend gave me a link to an amazing list of toddler friendly activities, and I decided to give one of them a try: Plopping you down at your table with a mound of flour and letting you loose.

WOW! What fun! Let's just say that you are lucky that I don't have OCD, because it was not a very tidy activity, but I don't think I have ever seen you entertained by the one thing for such a long time! If only we could bring bags of flour onto aeroplanes...


The great surprise for me was your joy in helping to clean up. In fact, your favourite song at the moment is the 'put away' song, so perhaps you will end up fighting all the odds and being a very tidy person after all.
I should give you this toy more often!

I love watching you discover, little one. I love it when you expose me to things that I had never seen the fun in before.

I love you!

Love, Mummy.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Portrait Series: Declaration of Independence

Dear Beanie,

You are growing up so quickly now, my love! My physiotherapist today asked me how much I am having to hold you now, and I realised it isn't so much anymore. You are becoming more and more independent, and I can feel now that I am going to be one of those sappy nostalgic parents that reminds you of times gone by.

A portrait of my son, once a week, every week.
The Declaration of Independence:
Desperate to get out the door and get walking!  

Becoming more independent is tough. You are having to learn how to tell me what you want when you aren't yet capable of voicing it. During the past week you've discovered that the most efficient way of doing this is with the dreaded tantrum. I am having to learn how to navigate these tantrums by avoiding the things that I know will trigger them (like taking a different walking route that avoids the buttons for the lift, by giving you choices, by ensuring you are well fed and not tired) and figuring out what to do once they reach full force.
Walking! All the cool kids are
doing it, and it's all you want to do! 

Your new trick is to sit down. When there is something you want and aren't getting immediately, you plop yourself on the ground with such force! On Tuesday, I saved you from injury by catching your head as you flung it backwards full power towards the asphalt footpath. You wanted to run onto the road and in front of the bus, you see. And that's just not allowed.

We each have to learn how to deal with your newfound desire for independence, my gorgeous boy. And, as much as I love you, my number one rule at the moment is that a tantrum will never ever ever ever ever get you what you want. I can't wait until you can make real sentences and I can teach you words to explain your emotions, encourage you to speak about what it is that is making you angry/frustrated/bored. But in the meantime... we are just navigating those waters!

(Now I know it's cheating, but can I just slip in another photo of you? You are just so so so super cute that I can't not! You've started to really get into drawing, and you always have such a wonderful look of contentment on your face when you do. So this is a sneaky two-portrait week.)
My little blue-eyed boy, oh how I love you! 

I love you, little one. Goodness I do!

Love, Mummy.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Our Failed Breastfeeding Journey

To my beautiful, growing boy,

This letter to you has been a long time coming, and to be honest, I still don't know if I'm totally ready to write it. But I'm going to give it a shot, and see what comes out.

No matter what anybody says, no matter what any study shows, and, I fear, no matter how much time passes, I will forever feel guilty about your first eleven and a half weeks of life. A mother's job, you see, first and foremost, is to keep their child alive. Of course there is all that 'love' business (and I sure hope you know a lot about that by now!), but the number one job? To keep you ticking. 

Part of that is to ensure you are fed.


The only photo I have of me breastfeeding you, by my friend Olga. Five weeks..
It is impossible for me to articulate how important it was for me to be able to breastfeed you. That 'Breast is Best' campaign really hit me hard.  Every inch of research I did before you came along (and trust me, there was a lot -- websites, pregnancy books, baby's first year books, books specifically about breastfeeding, breastfeeding DVDs, La Leche League meetings, birth classes, etc etc etc.) told me that if we stuck with it, it would work. If you were doing your part well enough, which you were, then it would work! If I had not had any breast surgery or had any other (currently identifiable) medical problems, such as a problem with my hormones, or a part of the placenta remaining attached to the uterine wall, or having a very small amount of breast tissue, then it was just a matter of trial and error. It would work. Patience and stamina.

Everyone tells me that formula is great. And I'm sure it is. People tell me, "I was raised on formula, my parents both were, probably eighty percent of the current adult population was. And now the formula is infinitely better than it was back then. When he's an adult, he won't care, and nobody would ever know the difference." But it's not just about that. It's not even about all of those studies that continue to be shared on the online mama's groups that I belong to, that tout advanced IQ, better emotional intelligence, fewer allergies, a better vocabulary, less incidence of obesity... It wasn't about that, though they sure pour salt into the wound.

It was about my dream. Since I was fourteen, I've dreamt of being a mother. In my somewhat innocent and potentially a little ignorant head, this was sitting in a rocking chair at night, my baby in my arms wrapped in a white crochet blanket, holding you to my chest and breastfeeding you while humming a lullaby. This is where we would stare at each other and be flooded with emotion. For some reason, having to heat some water, measure out scoops of powder with hands that can't stop shaking because of your crying and putting a big piece of plastic between us... it kind of took away the magic. 
Fifteen minutes old
My mind was focused on the immediacy of  breastfeeding you from the moment you were born. I had researched this idea that if a newborn baby is put immediately on their mother's belly after birth, they will gradually creep up towards the nipple, latch on themselves and begin to breastfeed. This is amazing! I had wanted to give that a shot, but you were absolutely exhausted after a tough birth and had a few problems with breathing for the first fifteen minutes after birth, so we did the next best thing. You remained on my chest the whole time and then, after twenty minutes, we put you on my breast for your first very sleepy breastfeed. 

Yes, you dropped a lot of weight in the hospital. You were born at 3.71kg, and you lost about 13%. The amazingly supportive midwives kept waiting for my milk to come in, kept asking me about this elusive feeling of 'let-down' (what an ironic term this is for me), kept syringing my breasts of the 0.7ml that was available still five, six, seven days after birth. I spent what literally felt like every single moment in toe-curling, foot-stomping, curse-inducing agony as either you or one of many boob-contorting, humiliation-inducing machines were attached to my breasts. Tests were done, everything was fine, it should be working, and I had everything going for me. We had everything going for us.

But it wasn't working.

We began giving you a little bit of horse's milk as supplementation (the closest thing available to human milk). All of that research I had done warned against this -- that it was the beginning of the end. Now, you wouldn't be working so hard at getting my milk and it was pretty much all over. We did everything possible to ensure this wasn't the case. We fed you from a little cup like a cat, your little tongue lapping up small slurps of milk, and giving you only enough to survive, while keeping you on my breasts as much as possible. One night when I finally gave in and let the midwife take you for two hours while I had some sleep, you drank about five times as much as normal. I still remember how much this broke my heart - that you had been so hungry, and I wasn't able to supply you with what you needed. At that time, when you were one week old, this was my number one job. I was failing. 

With the horse's milk doing its job, with lots of information about the best formula, the best bottles and the best teats to ensure there would be no nipple confusion, with a prescription to rent a hospital grade pump, with a prescription for a midwife to visit us as much as needed, potentially every day, for as long as we needed, we were sent home with a lot of luck and love and hugs. 

Potentially not the worst spot to bottle-feed...

Our wonderful midwife, who is also a lactation consultant, came to visit every day. She weighed you, gave every ounce of breastfeeding advice she could (which, for the first few days, was to attempt to find a way to heal my horrifically broken and bleeding nipples while still keeping you on the boob as much as possible), and, I discovered later, took notes on my mood (teary, teary, very teary, teary). My daily aim was to attempt to answer the door to her fully dressed. I only achieved this after three weeks. 

When you were about one and half weeks old, I began to notice strange twitching that would happen during your sleep (always on my chest, skin to skin. It was meant to help too.). It didn't seem to be dream twitches, and it went on for quite a length of time. We spoke to the midwife about it and she said she thought it was just your typical newborn sleep movements, but asked us to take a video. The next day, she watched the video and immediately called the paediatrician to book us in for an appointment that afternoon, 'just to be sure'. I fed you just before we left, ten minutes before our appointment. 

The paediatrician, who, incidentally, was an unfeeling monster who was filling in for your normal doctor, did a bunch of tests. You began crying uncontrollably half way through the appointment and he proclaimed, 'This baby is hungry'. I said that I had fed you just twenty minutes ago, but okay, I'll put you back on my boob (insert whispered cursing and foot stomping). He then began to write notes furiously and his final conclusion? That you were hungry. You were having mini-seizures from lack of food. 

I still don't know what to say about this. I've paused here at this point of my letter for a week now, unsure of how to continue. 

I suppose I'll just leave that as fact and move on. You were having mini-seizures from lack of food. 

Yes, you were putting on weight, so it wasn't a 'failure to thrive' issue. But you were a big boy and you were growing furiously and apparently wanted to be growing more. So the solution? Try harder. 

I made sure we still had as much of a
breastfeeding relationship as possible, bonding
with you while feeding you.


Three weeks in and I was getting a lot of (asked for) advice from breastfeeding support groups, telling me things such as, 'Oh yes, you're doing great. Stick with it - it took three weeks for my milk to come in. It will come.'  I need to say here that those three weeks seemed like an eternity. Would my milk just COME IN already! I decided to try something that a lot of people recommended. I was going to spend a full twenty-four hours in bed naked with you. There was going to be no bottle and no pumping, you were just there on my chest the whole entire time and my boobs were at your disposal all day and night. I would leave the bed only to go to the toilet, and nobody would interrupt us. Your daddy would come in only to deliver food and tea/barley water. I was so determined this would work. We had everything at the ready, I had spent the day before preparing emotionally, and then we made it through only forty minutes before I couldn't deal with your hungry screaming and gave in. I just didn't have enough milk for you, and it seemed no matter how long we tried, it wasn't going to work. 

At four weeks, my midwife/lactation consultant was out of ideas. I had been drinking breastfeeding tea and barley water all day for weeks. Your wonderful daddy had made a wide variety of strange and sometimes-wonderful foods that were meant to boost lactation, I was taking homeopathics , I had friends bring in special non-alcoholic beer from Germany that was meant to have super-lactation-powers, and a wide array of other things. And I was still, literally, spending at least two-thirds of every day (that is, a twenty-four hour day. Not just the daylight hours) with something attached to either one or both nipples. And the amount of formula you were downing just kept increasing and increasing... Your daddy was amazing at making sure he had all the bottle-business covered so that I might be able to sleep a little while he fed you the ever-increasing top-up bottle at the end. And then he had to go back to work, so I had to figure it out on my own...

The midwife suggested we go to a different lactation consultant. She put us in contact with a Japanese woman in a different part of Switzerland who had an entirely different approach to her. Off we went, on the cross-country train journey, hoping for a different outcome. This hilariously matter-of-fact and business-driven woman whipped off my shirt and prodded and pounded at my breasts. She told us to go ahead and use a dummy. Anything that encouraged you to suck was good (and oh my god were you suddenly in heaven with this!). She gave us different teats that made it incredibly difficult for you to drink from a bottle and made me take detailed notes on everything breastfeeding related. We were to feed for five minutes on each breast, to begin with (! As opposed to 45-90!), and then pump for another fifteen minutes. This was largely to give my mind and nipples a mini rest. We'd then, after a week, increase the times and keep doing this until you reached 4.5kg. Then you would be heavy enough to start to play around with things a little bit. We went back three times before you reached that weight for more specific advice and to get the answers to a couple of questions. The day you finally reached 4.5kg, we called her excitedly, but she was unexpectedly on holiday for six weeks. 
One of many pages of notes I took on your breastfeeding. Tracking your wees and your poos, tracking
how long on each breast, how much formula you drank and how much did I manage to express with the pump.

What the? 

I can't tell you how angry this made me. We had been working so incredibly hard on such a wide variety of things again, and had been waiting waiting waiting until you reached that weight for us to finally actively do things that would help. And now she was gone. For six weeks. 



We were now eight weeks into our breastfeeding journey, and I was still trying. Eight weeks is a long time. I wasn't going to give up. Surely there were still things to try, other people to speak to, different foods to eat, more barley water to drink. You began to occasionally refuse to breastfeed, which would break my heart. I was starting to cry more and more. I would skype with my mum, your Nanny, in Australia and she would say to me that she supports me and loves me and she would tell me that the most important thing is that I am enjoying you. I never got to the point where I didn't, my gorgeous boy, it is very important for you to know this. I never ever had a 3am urge to throw you out a window. I promise! This, to me, was evidence that I did not have post-natal depression. I looked at you and could not love you any more. You were and are such a miracle. And I enjoyed you! Though I dreaded the minutes leading up to the time where you would be hungry again... I enjoyed you. 

We went to a doctor, the head doctor of the obstetrics department at the hospital where I gave birth to you. She, incidentally, was also a lactation consultant. She watched me feed you with the nipple shields and asked me to try without too. You actually did it without the shield, for the first time in weeks. She ran all the medical tests on me again, doing a vast array of blood tests to check my hormone levels, ensuring that all the placenta really was gone, etc. And she had no answers for us. 

She sent us to a very renowned lactation consultant nearby, though she didn't speak English. So at nine weeks, your wonderfully supportive Daddy came along with us to help translate, and her daughter was also there to help. This amazing woman focused a lot on the emotions attached to breastfeeding. She could tell how injured I was emotionally by that point. She got me to tell your birth story and held me as I cried again and again. I didn't realise that I could develop such a relationship with a woman who spoke a different language to me. Your daddy talked to her a lot also, explaining to her the kind of person that I am, which is someone who is not used to failure, who needs to be successful in everything she does, who believes that once I set my mind on something, it can be achieved. It was quite enlightening for me to hear him explain who I am to a third party.
Going away for the weekend... oh the organisation that was required, instead of just bringing boobs!

The nights were the hardest. They were where I cried the most. And I cried a lot.

Your daddy took a day off work when you were eleven and a half weeks old and sent me into the city to have a massage. This would be the first time that you would have a feed that did not begin with my breasts. When I returned, my whole world turned upside down.

You and your daddy were on the rug playing. You were happy. You were the happiest I had ever seen you.

That was when I realised what I had been doing. What I had been doing to you. You spent the first three months of your life hungry. You were working so hard at being fed that you didn't have enough time to play. I didn't give you the space to be happy.

I had one more appointment with the lactation consultant, and I told her that I was finished. We were finished. No more. There was such visible relief on her face when I told her this, and I realised that the whole time we had been seeing her, she was waiting for me to come to this conclusion on my own. She told me that she has three children. Her experience breastfeeding the first was almost completely parallel with mine, and she felt as if she had gained enough knowledge during that time that she wanted to become a lactation consultant. Her second child, for some unknown reason, was a completely different story, and she breastfed her until she was 18 months old. Her third child was a little more difficult and she only managed four months. She told me that if we decide to have more children, she'd love to see me while I was still pregnant, so she could talk me through all my emotions regarding this issue and help me to move on, to be positive about my second attempt.

I don't know what will happen if I ever get the chance to embark on another breastfeeding journey. I have said in the past that I don't know if I would even try breastfeeding again. I just don't know. Maybe I'd give myself a strict time limit. Three weeks sounds like a small amount of time, but I remember you being three weeks old and that feeling of having struggled for such a long time already... so I just don't know. I do know that you won't remember any of those eleven and a half weeks, but you will remember all the 'I love you's that I say when you are older. And hopefully you will always know that feeling of love around you. 
Photo by Olga Bushkova

I am so sorry, my little boy, that you were so hungry for so long, and that that was your introduction to this world.

I'm so sorry that I forgot about everything else, and that I connected our happiness only with this success.

I'm so sorry that I was so sad for the first months of your life, and that you watched me cry so often.

I'm so sorry that I haven't been able to talk to you about this until now.

My beautiful, clever, thriving, gentle and funny boy, I am so lucky to have you. 

I love you so so much.


Love, Mummy. 

(Since writing this post, I have now had another baby and have battled through another breastfeeding experience. Our breastfeeding journey is blogged about here.
)

Only in the Major Key

Good morning, little bean.

You've always been a very sensitive little sausage, particularly when it comes to noise... but, lately, there's something funny going on.

All music in our house now has to be in a major key. Excuse the quality of the photos, but this is what happens when we surround you with some music in a minor key:

Phase one: The lower lip.

Phase 2: Lips part, brow furrows, whimpering begins

The final phase: Big tears, some serious emotion

I'm not talking about Barber's Adagio for Strings, or anything like that. I'm talking about the last few bars of Old Macdonald where it slows down, switches momentarily to minor, then back into major for the last cackle of all the animals. I tried to watch a quick youtube clip about netball (not so emotional, you'd think) yesterday while you were busy playing with your cars. I couldn't get more than five seconds into it before you turned your little head towards me, toddled over with phase one and two on your face, and then buried your head into my lap in a full stage three cry.

I have managed to keep you relatively television-free for your life. There has been the occasional 5pm kiddy show when you are... especially... active :) And when perhaps I have only slept three hours or less... And there was a phase where we were watching In the Night Garden before bed. But now? Nothing is safe! It can be something as simple as watching Thomas the Tank Engine, and then the music changes when they all go to bed and the moon rises. Disaster! Or when Postman Pat's parcel just might not get there on time? Oh the horror!

Oh my little one, I can't help but laugh. I know that the emotion you feel is real, and this really is quite magical to me that I have created a little boy that reacts so explicitly to music. You poor thing. Sometimes I think it must be really hard to be you! But I hope that the cuddles I give you make it all better. We obviously just have to have more jam sessions :)


I love you, little one.
Love, Mummy.

Edit: A friend suggested I put my little one to the test by playing some fast minor music, such as Bach's Double Violing Concerto in D Minor. Still not so happy, but not a disaster. And then I put him to the ultimate test and actually played Barber's Adagio for strings... Oh the horror! My poor bean! 
Putting you to the test by listening to Bach - some fast minor music. 

The control: Barber's Adagio for Strings.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Portrait Series - 10/52: My Woodland Elf

Dear Beanie,

A portrait of my son, once a week, every week.
My Woodland Elf

Another seriously tough week to choose just one portrait of you!

I've chosen this one from our wonderful little hike through our local forest last Sunday morning. It was so wonderful, in fact, that we have decided to make it a family tradition, in the same way that my family always had a roast on Sundays. We will have a little forest walk on Sundays. Rain, hail, snow, sunshine. That's how wonderful it was!

Grabbing a pear for morning tea
We took you in our new hiking backpack that we bought from a local children's second-hand market and we wandered into the woods in search of an elusive waterfall that we had heard about but never discovered. As soon as we reached the forest, we took you out to walk, and you absolutely loved it! You raced down little paths, bashed your way over fallen tree branches and almost tumbled down a ravine (though I am trying to forget that one). When we came across the stream -- wait, it is a stream? A small river? A brook? A creek? What are the real differences here? -- we knew we must be close to the waterfall, so your daddy and I were excited to really up the pace and get a wriggle on.

But you? Oh no. There was no way we were going anywhere. Despite the freezing water, you were desperate to get in there and have a splash about. It seems you are developing tough little Aussie feet!

We did end up following the... brook upstream and found what we thought was the waterfall, but it turns out we only found the 'little' one! This Sunday, we will find the big one!

I love you, my little nature boy!

Love, Mummy.




Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Tuesdays I cry.

My little bean... I hate Tuesday mornings. Every Tuesday morning I cry.

You go to Krippe (daycare) on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and it seems the amount of time between a Thursday and a Tuesday is just too much. You forget that you have fun when I'm not there too. You are so upset... so so so upset. And when I hand you over to Mäggie, your tears turn to absolute rage. Oh my darling, I love you so much and I am so sorry that there is ever a moment where something I do would make you this upset, let alone once a week.

I'm still waiting for it to get better. Thursdays are better. Tuesdays I cry.

I hope you know how much I love you.
Love, Mummy.