I’ve been getting awfully deep and meaningful recently, and looking at each new budding and opening outside as relevant. In a way it reminds me of the last couple of months B was on the inside, being Advent, full of expectation, hope, longing, the promise of a new world. This time round it is Spring; Lent is a different sort of preparation, and a lot has to be gone through before the new life the other side.
There are very different reactions around this impending new life, from my husband, my four year old, my friends and family who knew me in December ‘04 and those who have come to me more recently. Life goes on in all its madness, and B thrives at school - his weird English privately educated square mummy never having heard of some of the apparently normal traditions of Welsh state primaries nevertheless doing her best to help him join in…
On Thursday, the end of term (Friday was INSET) Easter Bonnet Parade. I did my best with an old straw hat my father bought me when I was Benjamin’s age, a few frantic phone calls home and a trip to the craft shop for yellow tissue paper and the cake shop for chicks. It transpired that boys don’t do bonnets. The girls wore amazing creations on straw hats, while the boys were in baseball caps with a rabbit on the peak. Oops. B didn’t seem to mind or notice though, luckily, and enjoyed telling everyone who’d listen the difference between his daffs and jonquils:
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(Incidentally, I’m pleased with how well the tulips have come back! We planted them to come up in time for our wedding in March last year, and I hadn’t realised they were perennials rather than annuals. It is so cheerful looking out and being reminded of the red, gold and joy of it all despite the extreme gray and dampness of the day!)
While he has this bee in his bonnet (sorry) about all things garden, we have been busy planting courgettes, mange-tout and tomatoes in our new super-duper slug-proof block of flats, and beans in the veg patch. We also found a packet of sunflower seeds from last year; I don’t know if they have any hope of actually germinating but we had great fun potting them out anyway. It’s one way to use up a sunny Inset day! He has a fab book with ideas to make gardening and natural exploring etc accessible and fab for children, which suggested growing cress as hair for eggshells with faces:
Sometimes B is brilliantly optimistic, sweet and helpful, looking forward to being a big brother and coming up to my tummy with sweet messages for the new baby. Other times he is very wobbly indeed and wants still to be my baby. This week he will only eat if spoon fed, only drink from a spout cup and after we retrieved all his old nappies from the attic and washed and sorted them out, now he even wants to wear them again (fortunately far, far too small even to attempt indulging that one). We did have a friendly time in the baby’s room, doing some toddler yoga, reading some old books he’d chosen to give the baby and hanging pictures. It can be difficult to know how to acknowledge and reassure his wibbles without indulging too much regression. I keep telling him he’s still my boy and I love him and still will even when the baby comes, but he has his moments!
As does their father, but he is less easy to help, because we grown-ups tend not to be so honestly open, vocal and guileless about our feelings and worries, internalising them as disturbing dreams, health worries, unexplained rattiness… temptations, terrifying thoughts, doubts about the future, life changes… and inability to acknowledge, even to oneself, or address them… which seems to come full circle back to the Lenten musings.
As a (currently) full time wife and mother, there is the temptation (there it is again!) to say that I don’t work at the moment. In fact, I am working harder and longer at a more demanding and worthwhile job than I have ever tried before; but it has taken me a while to be able to acknowledge it. My attitude makes so much difference to how I feel about myself and my role - instead of being drummed down by constructive dismissal, being out of work and ashamed about not earning and sponging completely off my husband’s goodwill, I have come to realise that loving, serving and looking after my boys is one of the most important jobs going, and that now I have more time to put into trying to do it to the best of my ability…
Instead of being frustrated by how long my husband spends in front of Top Gear, I must be glad that he is able to relax and unwind at the end of a hard day’s work. It’s his version of my reading. I need to reread the praises of the Psalmist, “Oh God, you have searched me out and known me, you fashioned me in my mother’s womb,” etc, and consciously relate them to the babe, already with his own relationship with his Maker, and be thankful I am an instrument in our small part of the Creation. Instead of feeling fat and tired I must enjoy my changing shape - taking time out for yoga and meditation, or resting up instead of beating myself up with a guilt stick about the housework etc, is all part of nurturing my growing babe even before we meet, and preparing ourselves to welcome him.
Oh, and talking of whom, I haven’t introduced him here, have I? I was holding off putting anything online until my nearest and dearest (my mother at least!) had seen the originals, but here is new baby boy Sullivan, taking after his father (all leg, and camera shy!):
(oh bother, the disc won’t load properly tonight, isn’t that typical?! another time perhaps… )
(gah. you can tell how untechy I am. I think one of the reasons I blog so little these days is I haven’t yet learned the new new dashboard. hmmph.) (nope, wrong attitude - back to positive blonde! I blog less because I waste less time constantly in front of the screen…!)
Husband is relieved to have an accurate idea of time needed to fill it, how to adjust temperature etc, and the emptying pump is the same as the one he used to use to empty his tanks in the old van, so he is quite happy and reassured. Benjamin and I are less worried about the technicalities and have just enjoyed floating about, trying different positions, having more space than in the bath (him) and feeling deliciously less heavy than usual (me). B is now less sad that he wasn’t born in a pool, now that he has at least had turns in it!
