#2617 Classroom visit

Baby girls school did an ‘open classroom’ thing today. For a couple of hours at the end of the day, their classrooms were open to parents and carers to come and visit and see what the students had been doing.

This timing was perfect for us. Hubbie has Tuesday afternoons off work now, and I of course am off work for an important, entirely different reason other than rostering… plus I have been going stir crazy.

So we went to visit baby girl’s classroom today. Hubbie, I and her baby brother tagging along. 🥰

We pushed the pram into the classroom and baby girl saw us and ran to us! She was so excited, jumping up and down, calling her teachers to tell them we had arrived, with her friends excitedly milling around to get a glimpse at her baby brother.

We had a great session placing our thumbprints on a classroom family tree, playing maths games with her, and almost everyone, including the principal who stopped by, was leaning over to catch a peek at baby boy.

It was a special afternoon, more so because we were all there TOGETHER. 💙❤💙❤

#2581 New beginnings for all

Baby girl was so excited for the start back at school today. I usually get her up for school, but this time she found me upstairs, brushing my teeth, happily telling me she would not go back to bed – she was just too excited!

It warmed my heart. My girl needs focus, something to do, to look towards. That is just her character. She’s in grade 4 and she loves learning, coming home and telling us things (but it has to be on her terms, if we ask too much she closes up) and randomly telling us tidbits of things she’s seen and heard, whether it’s been from school or somewhere else.

I can see her growing, learning, maturing, before my very eyes. I catch these moments and try to hold onto them, bottle them for future use so that I can call back upon them when I need. 🙏

Something else growing? My belly. For some comic relief, here was the state of my bladder and pelvis today…

Yep. Under pressure! Today must have been one of those growth spurts for baby, because I was in Struggle Street big time. Struggling to move, walk, do much of anything really.

Or if it wasn’t a growth spurt, maybe it’s baby getting ready and rehearsing for their main appearance, the big reveal… 🥰🤰

#2578 The stage she is at, 9.5

Life is going to change very quickly for us all soon, and it occurred to me that it was imperative to capture a very important stage of life, about a very important person.

Baby girl. 🥰💞

My sunshine, my light, my angel. The one who without I wouldn’t have made it as well through so, so many days. I am convinced that God gave her to us, knowing the hardships that would lie ahead, knowing that she would be my guiding light in those very tough times. 🙏

She has grown physically and emotionally over the past couple of months. She is tall. Everyone asks how tall her Dad is if they don’t know him, and I tell them that I too was tall at her age… the tallest in my class! She is tall and thin and does gymnastics, and her hand stands and cartwheels are actually very good. I never was good at any of that, so I marvel at her physicality. 🥰

She has my facial features, my height from that age, but she has Hubbie’s physique. She is strong, she is cheeky, and she is STUBBORN. But then again, so are Hubbie and I, so we have a good few battles around the house, let me tell you.

She knows EVERYTHING. 🤦‍♀️ She knows stuff that I’ve known for decades, and yet she has learnt in the last day or two about it and knows more… she was trying to teach me about tennis, until I had to point out she was wrong, and then she went “oh.” 🤦‍♀️

She is a fighter. I hope she fights for what is right, and fights for her opinion, as much as she fights me on issues she doesn’t know much about. 😂

She has the kindest heart. She will do things for you, help you, run to your aid. She has been amazing during my pregnancy. She helps me with grocery shopping and picks out the cucumbers, sweet potatoes, broccoli, even pushed the trolley.

When I’m upset, her mothering, already big-sister nurturing kicks in. She tells me it will be ok, in a soothing, calm voice. Whether I’m upset at the trivial, losing for the 5th time straight in Nintendo Mario Kart, or upset about something more serious in life, she is there to hug me, tell me “there there” and say it will be alright. 💞

She uses “mate” a lot lately, “mate, you gotta see how…” and “bruh.” I used to tease her, but now I just let it go. I find it cute, a part of her personality she is testing out, seeing how it feels.

She loves school. But she loves sleep. Let’s see how Monday goes. 😂 But I honestly do think she needs to be busy, do things, and have a purpose, so in school she thrives.

She has a reading program. Several times a day she will go in her room, close the door, and read a book out loud to her toys. After asking me for a new chapter book, I managed to fish out of an old box my Sweet Valley Twins books. She’s started reading one, and likes it! WOW. From one generation to the next.

She has the best laugh. When she cracks up, I can’t help but join in.

She is a thinker. She questions everything.

She has inherited our quality of being hard on ourselves, which I hate. I try to be easy, tell her it’s ok to make mistakes… I want to try to stop that self-bashing that we do so often, so unnecessarily.

She is the most loving big sister already. So gentle, so soft. She comes up to me and pats my belly, says “hi baby,” and looks up at me adoringly. OH MY GOD. 😍

She is 9, going on 19. Our current discussions are usually about:

“What are we doing today?”

“I want a Ford Ranger when I’m older so I can put my dogs in the back and take them with me everywhere.” (Awwww! 🥰)

“I want a YouTube account by 10, an iPhone by 12, and a TikTok account by 12.”

“Nature is my passion.”

She is the sweetest, funniest, most entertaining girl, and I hope she keeps nurturing her passions and herself, growing into the amazing young woman I know she will become. 🙏💞🥰😍

#2567 My beachside celebration

So when I said a while back that shit’s getting real, well now shit is really getting REAL.

So, apart from our little ‘babymoon’ now over…

Apart from my half-packed hospital bag…

Apart from the one adjustment the baby room needs (happening Friday)…

Today, I finished work.

😲😲😲😲

Another big thing, DONE!

It just keeps going on. Tick, tick, tick. Things are happening, finishing, progressing, completing, and it’s all bringing me closer to meeting baby. 🥰🥰

I like to use the beach as celebration, and just as I took baby girl on her last day of school in December, so too did we go again this afternoon as my little celebration.

My fave thing to do at the moment? Because it’s a bay beach and there are plenty of shallow waters, I like to sit in the shallow water and just relax, with the belly I have, lounging around like a beached whale because that is most comfortable to me right now. 🤣

The countdown is most definitely on! If only I knew what number to start at… 😬🤔

#2566 Home after holidays

Ahhh. It’s good to be back.

Like every time we go away, we’ve made some more realisations post-holiday.

As much as it’s exciting and fun to go away, as you’re seeing new things and going to new places…

We are people of routine, Hubbie especially so.

He is SOOO happy to be back. Back to routine. Back to his food. Back to his bed. And as much as his homebody comments have annoyed me ever-so-slightly today, I also feel like, I don’t know… I kinda agree.

I also, like routine. I also, LOVE my bed. I also like eating well, and I love the set-up of our house, where baby girl sleeps, where we sleep…

I love our town. I love our beach. I love our main strip, in fact it quite frankly smashes other coastal town strips…

And that’s when I realised. We find it hard to enjoy being away fully, because where we live is SO DAMN GOOD.

We live in an area where people travel and holiday to, and we’ve become so used to it, we don’t realise how good it is until we leave!

Also, we are setting up our lifestyle, our house, to be an everyday holiday house. Sure, we still work, we still do the groceries, we still do chores, and all the other day-to-day monotony that drives us insane at times.

But we love our spot. We love where we live. 🥰🌅

We don’t really need a holiday from here. We just need to mix it up at times.

We get to see beautiful water views in the morning when we wake, and watch the sunset glowing over the water at night. I drive baby girl home from school the scenic way, past the water. We visit the beach on Wednesdays when she is at school (when the wind is absent!) after we’ve been to one of the many incredible cafes on our main strip.

We’re trying to live a holiday life already, and we are comfortable in our home doing it.

We WILL still go away. There’s no doubt about that. But the fact that we’re going to be a lot more home-bound in the period after baby arrives, it doesn’t upset me in the slightest.

Home is good. This town, is good. We like it a lot.

In fact, we love it. Which is why we moved here in the first place. 🙏💖

#2540 End of school year tradition

Start of the day, versus end of the day:

The in between? Why, the last day of grade 3 for baby girl! And what a terrific tradition we have gotten into these last couple of years, of heading to the beach on the last day of the school year. 💞

All we need now is for Melbourne weather to fall into the tradition of giving us summer weather… in summer. 🤣🌞😎🌅

#2533 Next year

Despite all of this recent crap Wintery weather, in Summer of all seasons, Hubbie and I had plenty of reasons to be excited and anticipate the arrival of today.

And no, it hasn’t got anything to do with baby (although that is a blessing in itself, every moment of every day🙏)

No, this was about baby girl. 🥰

Today was school transition day, the day they found out who their teacher would be next year, and also, who they would be with…

This year has been an interesting one to say the least. A couple of friend troubles have popped up here and there. And despite things mainly looking to be smoothed over in the last couple of months, the inevitable happened today.

The little friendship group she’s been a part of has finally been SPLIT UP.

This has been the same group since prep. And as of grade 4 next year, it will be only her and another old friend, but not the other one.

She is really happy. Not for the other friend going elsewhere, I don’t think so anyway… but she is excited. She is rapt with her teachers (she has two sharing the teaching load next year) and her one friend who she is with.

I think this is a good thing, for ALL of them. As I said to her, it doesn’t mean they can’t hang out during recess and lunch, or see each other outside of school, have play dates, etc. It might even make their friendship stronger… absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?

I was never with a friend for so long in a row at school, for 4 straight years. She’s had that with both of them. I think it’s super healthy to make a bit of a break, albeit with one of them, and make some new friends, give themselves an opportunity for new relationships, see where it can go, and see what else is out there!

And if they find their way back to each other, all the better for it.

I am looking forward to a happy, healthy and productive 2023 school year for baby girl. 🙏💖

#2526 Listening to the girls

One of the nicest things you get to experience as a Mum, is when you are still privy to your child’s conversations.

Let me explain.

I picked up baby girl along with her friend from school today… definitely a well overdue raincheck for all the times her Mum helped me when my car was broken down weeks ago.

And I loved it.

I could hear their lingo. Hear them talking about friends, stuff they do, what they like… catchphrases, like ‘Ya,’ (but a dragged out “yaaaa”) and the infamous one most parents would know by now, ‘Bruh.’

🤦‍♀️🤣

Then after a bit of a play at home, I took them back to school to engage in this Kaboom Sports activity thing for the whole school, where kids ran around, and parents sat on picnic blankets and comfy fold-up chairs and had a chinwag amongst each other.

The girls had gotten changed at home. Put on pretty skirts, tops both tucked in, and then pulled out, just that little bit.

I think they wanted the engagement, to be amongst friends, rather than wanting to play in any sports… but they did both.

It was nice getting a window into their world today, as they talked, joked, and mucked about.

While I am allowed to hear it. I am blessed. 🙏💖

#2513 Girly shrieks and rosy cheeks

In amongst our many jobs today, we managed to head down to the main street to vote early at a local voting centre before Saturday’s state election.

It was really close to baby girl’s school, so seeing as it was the afternoon already, we decided to park in our normal pick-up spot, walk to the main street, do the voting, plus tend to other random things before getting her a couple hours later.

We only realised as we parked that it was lunch time at her school! Of course. I was like “let’s walk along the school gate in case we see baby girl playing outside.” Now the school is big, it’s not like the only play area is the street we were on. My hopes weren’t high, especially as we first went by the canteen and basketball court with so many kids with senior school tops on (not baby girl’s year for a couple more years).

We kept on walking, keeping an eye out, and then suddenly Hubbie went –

“Look, there’s baby girl!”

Sure enough, there she was! Running! School hat on, shrieking, clearly playing some kind of chasey game, the red pipe cleaner and red string she’s attached to her school hat hanging behind her. Hubbie called out her name and she looked over and saw us as she ran, and kept running! 🤣

5 seconds later, and she’d lost whoever she needed to and run to greet us at the fence. A beaming smile, her eyes wide, cheeks flushed. She grabbed my hand, and we told her where we were going and what we were doing. Her old friend was there, friends since kinder days, chomping on a vegemite scroll, and we said hi to her while another newer friend asked, “is that your parents?”

Soon, the game began again and she shrieked once more, all the girls dispersed and ran off, chasey commencing again.

Oh, my heart. 💖

It was the best thing to witness, because I am asking her every day who she plays with, what she does, and her answers are cagey and vague in their lack of descriptions. 🤦‍♀️ Kids, right? Also, I’m always encouraging her to cast her net and play with different people, not just the same 2 girls. I saw about 4 girls there, and even 2 boys, which I think is great! I think it’s great to break that gender gap and have girls and boys playing together from young, knowing they can be friends with each other as much as girls and girls, and boys and boys can be.

I know she is my daughter, and she is always beautiful to me… but she looked so beautiful in that moment. Eyes sparkling. Laughing. Rosy cheeks.

She looked beautiful, because of all of that, but mostly because she was so happy. 😍😍

And there is no better feeling in the world than seeing your child happy. It made my day. 🥰🥰

#2512 Give yourself permission to be totally wrong

Yesterday and today, I haven’t taken baby girl to school.

Or picked her up. My car is at the mechanic’s and it may be there a couple more days.

Hubbie instead, has left work both mornings to run home and drop her off.

Yesterday I asked baby girl’s friend’s mum to pick her up for me.

She more than happily obliged.

Even though she told me that she was able to pick her up again today… I was hesitant.

You see, I kinda realised something about myself.

I find it REALLY hard to ask for help.

It’s something I’m so used to doing, being, ever since we moved down here and made our sea change. We knew we had no one in this area to rely on, to help us out with child-minding duties, random help here and there, and although we were prepared, we weren’t really prepared.

But we have accepted it, it’s what we wanted, and it is the way it is.

Because we rely on ourselves so solely, I think this is part of the problem.

My problem.

Not only do I find it hard to ask for help… I hate to put people out. I felt sooo bad to ask the mum again if she could help out this afternoon, I was on the verge of tears. But my Mum had told me on the phone yesterday to ask again, to not feel bad about it, and Hubbie was much the same, saying one day, you’ll help her kids out too!

But there’s a little more to this story than meets the eye.

I was reluctant to ask for help, because this mum I’ve been feeling up and down about for a while now.

Without getting into the full history, we started off really good. Since prep. Lots of playdates, the girls had fun, and we always bump into each other at the same beach.

Sometime in the last year, I found out she had a playdate with another friend of theirs. Not just someone, but a girl from baby girl’s small friendship group. Essentially, out of the three girls, baby girl was left out.

This kinda enraged me, I will not lie. I never exclude her close friends from playdates, I include them all so no one is left out.

I didn’t know why baby girl was excluded.

I withdrew. Avoided her at the pick-up gate. Gave her a bit of the silent treatment.

Then to make matters worse, that friend of hers actually said some really mean things to baby girl. I got involved, told the teacher, there was intervention, etc, etc.

Things have been returning to some kind of prior normal, but I’m an elephant. I don’t forget.

I thought I had this mum all figured out. At first, she seemed to be the super friendly, easy-going, happy-go-lucky type, but clearly there was no loyalty. Clearly she wasn’t too involved in her daughter’s life, or else she would have stepped in to tell her not to say such hurtful things to a so-called friend.

I thought she had been my type, but I had clearly been way off the mark. I was keen for baby girl to move on, and being the end of the year I knew there was a chance they would be split up next year.

But then, a birthday party happened a couple of weeks ago. At that birthday party the mum told me that she was available if I needed her to watch baby girl, at any time now, leading up to baby’s arrival, what with all the increased appointments I have during the end months now, etc.

I was shocked, moved even. It was the furthest thing I was expecting after the year that had passed.

Which is why I had been so tentative yesterday to ask her to pick her up.

Which is why I was tearful today when I had to ask her again.

I felt guilty. Very, very guilty.

Clearly, I had gotten it all wrong. I had gotten her ALL WRONG.

Yeah, she was happy-go-lucky. She was casual. She probably didn’t look into things as much as I did. I’m a classic overthinker. She probably set her daughter up on play dates, not to exclude baby girl, but just to keep her daughter happy (now that I think, there have been plenty of times only her daughter and mine have caught up too).

She didn’t know about her daughter’s mean words, probably…? Which child tells their parent everything though? It’s a really tricky area, because her daughter is actually nice, but I think she is used to getting her own way, a bit like baby girl. So they clash. 🤦‍♀️ I often wonder what baby girl perhaps said or how she contributed to words being spoken between them. However, I see that their teacher did a wonderful job of helping to repair that friendship, because nothing has happened since.

I had gone grrr. All mama bear. Ultimate protector of my child. I went into defense mode, got judgmental, and decided that I didn’t want her in my life anymore. Hi, bye, that was fine.

But nothing else.

So when she offered help, and then again kept saying to me yesterday “just tell me if you need me to pick her up” insisting she was there for me…

I was quite honestly at a loss to explain her actions.

I was only left with one conclusion.

I had been completely wrong.

Or really, my first thoughts were correct. It was when things went askew that led me to have these other thoughts, and I guess, I’m human right? I should have trusted those first positive instincts, and if anything this experience has taught me a lot about myself, how I look at others, and that sometimes, I can be completely wrong.

It’s very easy to let your experiences and biases cloud your judgment. It happens on a daily basis for everyone! I want to try and not be so quick to assume, to judge, and only hope if I make a mistake somewhere, others give me the same benefit.

Her real person came through these last couple of days when we had no one else to help. She threw us a massive lifeline, and I know now who she is, where she stands, and what kind of person she really is.

There is enormous power in allowing yourself to be completely wrong, owning it, and then changing your thoughts, your ways. We have so much to learn in life, and by stubbornly holding onto views or opinions that serve us no more, we limit ourselves to a close-minded view of life where growth never happens, and learning is non-existent.

Allow yourself to be wrong. I was talking about this with Hubbie today, and there was something incredibly refreshing and liberating about saying to him, wow, I was sooo wrong.

(Even he admits, he was a little wrong too 🤭)

I won’t forget this. Remember, I’m an elephant. 🐘