#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. 🙏💖

#2489 The excess walk

So much excess this weekend.

Excess food. 🍕

Excess cake. 🎂

Excess standing. 🧍‍♀️

Excess baby kicking! 🤰

Excess heartburn last night… ALL night. 😝

Excess fatigue today. 😫

Excess cleaning! 🧹

And so, it totally made sense to take a much-needed afternoon walk…

Not an excess walk, but a walk to balance out the excess. ⚖️

Ohhh.

Now does it make sense?

Yep, back to routine!

(Even if I wanted to eat ALL the cake, the heartburn doesn’t let me!)

#2472 Back to (creamy) black

It’s been approximately… 3 months since I stopped drinking coffee.

It had become more than just a habit, it was like a routine I was scared to break because of those ill-fated caffeine headaches if I dared missed a cup.

Yes, I enjoyed it. But there were days I could go without, but never used to, just because, routine.

But I was pregnant too. I was getting increasingly ‘off’ so many things, food, drinks… yes, even coffee.

The almond milk I was used to drinking, subtituting for regular milk, was actually disgusting me.

So I moved to just black. Straight blacks.

But that’s when I caught covid, in week 10 of pregnancy. And one day while lying on the couch, ravaged by weakness, I decided I wanted to stop it all.

I haven’t had a sip since. ‘Til today!

Honestly, I have been enjoying the scent of coffee as it wafts over to me from whoever is drinking it, for a week or two now. Realising I was out of those horrible nauseous months, I decided I wanted to try it again.

But also, realising that I didn’t have to have something just because it was 3pm, realising I didn’t have to get my body dependent as it once was on it… I have the control now.

I had a day off today. I made myself some brunch, a coffee, and proceeded to write and edit my novel on this very rainy Melbourne day.

Guess what? I didn’t get affected by the coffee, even in the 3 month absence of it.

In fact, it was like I never stopped drinking it at all.

That’s unsettling. 😬🤣

#2462 Lovely to be back

It was lovely to get back to a little bit of routine.

It was lovely for baby girl to be back at school.

It was lovely to be back to sunshine. (It was ‘refreshing’ to be boiling this afternoon, for the first time in a while!)

It was lovely to be back to ticking things off the list as opposed to adding to the list!

It was lovely to find encouragement and also an opportunity in the most unexpected of places.

It was lovely to share good news, and to hear baby girl chitter-chattering all night about how much fun she had today.

Lovely. 🙏💖

#2458 Revisiting the tulips

It’s been a busy school holiday period, what with 🤰and appointments, being busy with house renos 🏡 and then the normal everyday joys of work and routine keeping us going on going on with not much free time.

We have had some fun, but I’ve been yearning to take baby girl out for a whole day, to see and do something special, specific to the school holidays.

After a 4 year break, half of it due to covid, we ventured back to Silvan to visit the tulips at the Tesselaar Tulip Festival.

I tried to make the day as special for her as possible. I said yes as often as I could – yes to craft activities, yes to watching Paw Patrol on stage, yes to the fairy figurines she wanted to buy, yes to the cookies… 🙄🤣

I am now so pooped beyond recognition and I think so is she, that I’m almost glad to be staying home tomorrow and working. 😆

#2420 Sunshine-y days ahead

Today we all went back to routine.

Work, and school.

But it was good. Looking ahead, we have nothing huge to organise or plan, nothing pressing. Sure, there were phone calls I had put off, bills and jobs and to-dos as well.

But then I looked at the weather forecast, and saw two perfectly sunny days looming in the distance.

When?

Saturday and Sunday. 😎😎

Oh the possibilities are endless on a sunny day! I don’t even need to have anything on, just knowing we can do anything, and the sun is shining in the background, is reason for endless happiness enough. 🌞🌞

#2319 Where my feet lead me

I had the day to myself today, and I totally needed it.

All my days are so structured. Work, school drop-off and pick-up, after-school activity chauffeuring, then there’s the groceries, odd jobs and appointments, cleaning, cooking, washing… 🤯

So when I dropped off baby girl at school today, I was honestly a little lost. I had a decent to-do list, but I was awaiting a tradie to come and give us a quote, but didn’t know what time he’d be over, so I literally started driving… with no clear place to go.

Slowly, a plan formed. I would get some presents I needed to get while in the area…

But of course, the places I needed to look at weren’t open yet, so…

I found my feet leading me down the Main Street. I kinda knew where I was headed, before I KNEW where I was headed, if you know what I mean. 😆

Within 10 minutes, I had an egg and bacon toastie, a coffee, and I was sitting in front of this view:

I spent a good half hour there, eating, drinking, watching. Breathing too, that is important.

I love my town. I love it most when it is quiet actually. It’s often hard to imagine it as still as it was this morning, especially if you see it come peak period on hot days and over Summer.

But after school drop-off, you know there are only locals around. A handful of people walking their dogs on the beach, a few I exchanged good mornings with. A massive sea bird flew low over the water, its huge wings flapping slowly and deliberately, but with great strength.

It was all so grey, but so peaceful. It was beautiful.

These are the things I love to be still for, to witness.

I still got to do all my jobs, but in this short span of time that occupied the morning, I loved the freedom of letting my feet do the decision-making, of letting it lead me to where it needed to go. 🙏💖

#2302 Going back to sleep

How good is it when you go back to sleep…

AFTER you have gotten up, thinking the day is going to begin.

But then it doesn’t!

This is what happened this morning. I forced myself awake and crept to baby girl’s room, trying to work out how she felt, and if she was well enough to go to school today for the start of term 2.

She said she wanted to stay home 100%… and she wanted to go to school 98%.

(So, we are working with 198% here?) 😆

She made a point though, and that was, that the decision was a close one, but maybe she should stay home.

I have to admit… I wanted her to stay home. For some reason I am in no way ready for routine to begin again. Maybe it’s the colder mornings and nights, but I am not feeling it, AT ALL, and was hoping an extra day might help me get used to it.

That, and the fact that she hadn’t eaten properly yesterday… how could I send her off to school and be confident she would be alright? I couldn’t.

She went back to bed. So did I.

IT WAS BLISS. 😴🥰

As the day progressed she looked a billion bucks, back to her normal self.

I didn’t regret a thing. I played with her at home, then we went for a bike ride/walk around the block.

I had a little extra time with my girl, and it was actually more valuable than a simple school day.

Wagging can be good. 😉💖

#2299 To do as she did

I’ve learnt that so much of my parenting, so much of my mothering, is based off how my mum mothered me when I was a child.

It’s the weirdest thing. To be doing something, knowing you are doing something because of a childhood memory, and wanting to do the same.

You can’t do anything else. Especially when your own childhood is filled with such happy memories… why wouldn’t you want to follow suit?

One of the ways Mum shows her love for us is through food, and it’s something that really stands out to me in my childhood memories. Getting individually made food when I didn’t like what she and Dad were eating… getting scrambled eggs whipped up on a consistent basis as an evening snack… having my favourite meals ready and waiting for me after school.

It happens often with baby girl. She will request something, and often I will go, “ohhh, I can’t be bothered.”

But then I see my Mum’s face. I remember my childhood.

And I get to work.

Most times Hubbie shakes his head and says to baby girl “do you know how lucky you are?”

It happens even with other people around. Like baby girl’s friends.

She had a friend over for a playdate today. I had bought white bread for them yesterday, planning to make them cheese toasties (I knew they wouldn’t like our seeded variety) and so as it approached lunchtime today, I poked my head into baby girl’s room where they were and said “do you girls want me to make you some toasties?”

They looked at each other shyly, and I left them to think about it a bit.

Baby girl found me minutes later. “Mum, can you make us pasta?”

So, pasta it was. It was just simple pasta, with butter mixed through and fresh parmesan on top… and it made me happy. Knowing baby girl was happy, her friend was happy. Never mind that the requests followed quickly with “ice cream” then “zooper doopers.” 🤦‍♀️

But it wasn’t just the food. How my Mum raised me, her ways, her morals, her routines, they follow me around as I do my thing with baby girl, and often I don’t notice it ’til moments like these, when it’s the end of the day and I’m reflecting and looking back on it.

I give them heaps of space. I am not an eavesdropping, try-to-be-best-friend-to-your-friends and clingy Mum. I let them do their thing. I suss them out from afar, and then slowly circle in when they are more comfortable (oh my God, that’s just like my Mum!) I see my Mum giving me and my friends space back in the day, and I follow suit.

But, I think I am pretty cool. 😆 Like my Mum driving us around in the car to the movies, or the shopping centre, hooning the car a bit (safely and controlled though!) and making me and my friends shriek with laughter, so too do I think I bring a bit of fun WHEN ASKED. I was even asked to play hide and seek with them at the end of the playdate, while they searched for a great place to hide in a house I know so well!

(If you are asked to play with your kid and their friend, I think you are doing well 😉)

It’s subliminal and quite subconscious, these routines and ways that we have become so accustomed to that they soon become ours. But when they are treasured and surround happy memories, I am more than happy to keep the tradition going.

Thanks Mum. 🙏💖

#2219 Finding a different path

Now that school is back one of our most tried and treasured routines are back.

Our brunch stop, and then a quick beach walk. 💞💖

Today was lovely in that we walked a little further down Mothers Beach, and found an extra patch of sandy alcove that we don’t usually go down… and then we found a path.

What was at the end of the path? Well you’ll need to find me on @smikgwriter on Instagram and see the vid on my stories then won’t you?

A hint… it’s one of the main reasons why we moved. 🌊🏖️