Skip to main content

Slow down; live day by day

This week has been a stagnant, cold week: but very typical for this time of year. We've had a lovely mackerel dish this week and I made a horseradish cauliflower cream. Yum. Squid tonight as I raided the deli counter the other day for the special offers. 

This time of year when we can't escape outside as easily, the girls test my patience and pull my heartstrings more than anything. They have very small attention spans so staying inside for a whole morning or a whole afternoon can be testing, especially when it gets dark so early. We've been out for frosty dark walks to get us all out and ready for a nice warm bath. It feels like the ground is constantly hard and frozen. It's strikingly beautiful. More so than the summer, I reckon. It feels like we've been put on hold and the weather is telling us to retreat back into the warmth and hide away. But we have toddlers, so they need to get outside and thrive off that fresh air to banish all their ailments away. 

Everyone has a cough that is lingering. Everyone is waiting for Christmas. And we're going away for the winter break tomorrow. We've spent this morning packing up the house and getting prepared for leaving. It's a mammoth task but necessary to escape the cold freeze and find our lovely cottage to explore a new place from. The presents are wrapped, the cards have been written and sent. The world seems balanced. 

Unfortunately, the new road I wrote about last week has ended up being a dead end. But these abrupt stops in a pathway means that I'll have to go through a few brambles to find my way through to a new path instead. I'll bounce back after feeling a tad flat because opportunities always come our way when we are least expecting it. I can carry on enjoying the volunteering work I am doing now, and see what comes up next year. Now I can switch off.

I can totally slow down now. No more Mum groups to organise, no more lacrosse coaching sessions to plan, no more Christmas parties to organise. Just me and my little family and the open countryside.

A special thanks to my sister for inspiring my title this week. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Parents: we're all winging it.

As Oscar bathes Olive and plays with her in the bath, I have the time to write. We've had a weekend away from him and we've missed him so much. Their bond is just so heartwarming. Makes me want another...oh wait, we've already made one...just got to get the little one to Earth safely now and we don't have long to go...  This pregnancy is totally different to our first. Kicks are the same, same sickness at the beginning, same waves that roll in my stomach that make me feel so lucky and feminine. Same power. Same tiredness. Same overriding feeling of so. Much. Love. Same feeling of fear. The fear is now: how on earth will we cope with two? I think more about post-birth than the birth itself. As soon as I'm on Mat Leave, at the end of this week, I can feel a shift moving towards preparing for birth and the arrival.  I literally have no idea how we'll cope but we will. It's amazing how much courage and reserves we have deep down. Oscar said the other day that we...
Post a Comment
Read more

Through the bleak grows hope: January 2025

One of my friends said to me last week that January is for organising. She's a vegetable gardener. More will follow about this later, but currently, I'm upstairs in our bedroom after a very average sleep.  --- I managed the above three sentences before I was interrupted. It's now very common with three little lives that come bursting in on me in the morning. We had to get ready for the school run so off I went to convince them to stand still for more than a few minutes just to get them changed. I rudely interrupted their game of MumandDad. They really have the sweetest games. But this post isn't about 3-4 year old games. As always, I never know where this writing will take me but I have a vague idea and I know that I need to write. So I write.  I'll crack straight on with this first post since March 2024...my mission is to use this blog to write every month. I have showered and dried my hair. Alone. A luxury in this Mum world I'm currently in. It isn't just ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Motherhood: A discussion on identity

The weaning post is coming along (halfway there) but something has happened today that is too pressing not to talk about. So today was an important day in moving forward. Yesterday, I was in the doctors with excruciating round ligament pain. Turns out resting while having a toddler to look after is almost impossible being pregnant and my body was telling me to slow down. Today, after lots of rest, my body is feeling better and my mind has shifted.  Last week, I realised that I haven't had a whole day to myself since Olive was born. That's 19 months. I've only just noticed.  At the beginning of motherhood, I was breastfeeding round the clock; then, I went to work for a few hours a week so I'd be gone for 3 hours. I'd be back to take over as soon as I returned. Work hat off, mother hat on. We have no nursery but help from Grandparents while I went to work so it was full on. Then there was a third lockdown so we all worked from home: I had even less time to see people ...
Post a Comment
Read more