One Perfect Spring Day

Spring took us by surprise this year in that it arrived when it should have. Chances are we won't see another sunny day for months but while it lasted, it was superb. One of the first days, we headed out to the park with my sister and niece.











Later on that day, once Emily had woken up from her nap, we dusted off the picnic blanket and took it out into the garden, brought along a few toys for entertainment and just whiled away an hour. Emily was of course more interested in picking up dead bugs from between the decking boards, and I even got the opportunity to introduce her to a live ladybird (which she tried to kill). I may need to keep an eye on this little munchkin!

An Easter Dilemma

When we were young, Easter was a very important religious event. We attended a mass which lasted almost all night long and ended with a great feast in the early hours of Easter Sunday itself. I'm sure it still is important to practising Catholics, be it in the way we celebrated it or a more mainstream way. For me, once my family moved on from celebrating it the way we did when I was young, it all pretty much lost all meaning. Easter was Easter night, it was fun to be up so late and we participated in the mass, it was exciting. I am no longer practising but somehow, possibly because it once was such an important time of year, I cannot bring myself to celebrate Easter in any real way any longer. For it to become simply a day when it's okay to eat lots of chocolate seems horribly fickle.

And yet I'd like to instil some sort of acknowledgement of the holiday in Emily, and in us as a family. I want us to look forward to Easter almost as much as we'd look forward to Christmas. I'm just not quite sure how to go about it. Perhaps turn it into a Spring celebration. We might make Easter trees and decorate eggs and do crafts and have outdoor tea parties. And we all know how much I adore Spring. It would be quite fitting really.

Emily's too young at the moment, there didn't even seem any reason to give her any chocolate today, which is why I'm sitting here this year really thinking about it, because next year I'd like to begin whatever "Easter tradition" we decide to go with. I'd like to be able to think of Easter and have a smile come to my face once again, decorate the house, really enjoy the holiday.

[image cred]

Finger Painted Easter Cards

I decided a while ago that I wanted to send Emily's Grandparents personalised Easter cards. I searched high and low for ideas (ok, not really, I searched Pinterest) and finally settled on something simple. I mean, let's face it - she's 14 months old, and while I haven't discarded the possibility of her being the next Picasso, I'm not putting my hopes up.

So finger painting it was. Now bear in mind, she'd never encountered paint before. A voice in my head told me I may be being overly optimistic but I was determined to try. I took her out into the garden on a beautiful day, armed with paper, watercolours, a long-sleeved bib, a packet of handwipes and some snacks.





I didn't dilute the paint to keep the colour bright.



The artist contemplates her art and munches on some snacks.

I explained what we were going to do and asked her which colour she wanted to use first. She poked the red. Red it is, then. We used all four colours (the blue somewhat reluctantly) and made some beautiful 14-month old art.



She quickly lost interest (she wanted to eat the paint and when I didn't let her, that was pretty much it) but I had enough for all the egg cut-outs we needed.

The artist seemed very proud of herself...





The paintings were proudly displayed on the fridge to dry.

Later that night, I set to work. I'd dropped by the craft shop the day before and picked up some scrapbooking stickers along with blank cards, and along with a silver pen I'd entirely forgotten I had, I had all the tools I needed for the project.

Many failed egg-shape attempts later, I found a good one online and literally traced it off the screen. I then traced it onto the best bits of finger painting.

Then came the tough part. I had to cut out the eggs. These were my daughter's first ever works of art we're talking about. Cutting into that paper felt like cutting into my heart just a teeny bit (Note to grandparents: you're not to EVER throw these out!!)



As simplistic as they may seem, I was quite pleased with these cards. Here is the finished product!



And the back:


Happy Easter!

New Rules: How Did We Do?

Back in October, I set myself four rules that I felt were important. A winter later, here's how I did:


No laptop use while Emily is awake.
This was going really well. Enter the ipad, and things fell apart for a while until I gave myself a little metaphorical shaking and put it away. It doesn't mean I don't stop to check my mail a few times or tweet a few more times but I'm not sat there glued to it all day (as I may have been before). I get down on the floor and play with Emily, we build towers, we read, we tickle and get tickled. Sometimes we just cuddle in front of TV. It's all good.


Read more.
Safe to say I failed this one. Miserably. I've still not yet read another book, but I have picked up a few magazines over the last few weeks and have made myself sit down for a few minutes to relax every now and then. I need to learn the meaning of that word "relax" all over again, or so it would seem. I have also added a few books to my Kindle that sound promising (and have even read the first two chapters of one of them), so there is actually some hope.


Establish storytime.
For a while, we read every day after Emily's bath. Until I realised she had no patience for it at that time as all she wanted was to get to sleep. So we moved storytime to before her bath. And that worked nicely. But we read so many books throughout the day, there are always books around somewhere (there are even two little ones that live in my handbag for when we're out), and we read bathbooks too, so in the end "storytime" per se faded away and we still read lots. We just do it whenever.


(She even has a magazine of her own which she loves leafing through)


Get out every day.
We've been good with this. However I've also been good about realising that just because we don't go out one day, just because we stay in and just enjoy Emily's toys and I catch up on some things around the house, or just take it easy, doesn't make the day a failure. We've achieved a good balance. We go out often, we have people over often, we have us time often.


Ultimately, things are going well. Emily and I seem to have reached a point where we know how to work with each other. I am slowly even starting to feel comfortable cooking dinner in the kitchen while she plays in the living room. The fact that she is increasingly mobile helps as when she misses me or needs something, I hear the "clap, clap" of her hands on the wooden floor as she crawls towards the kitchen, or the little plastic wheels of her walker being pushed down the corridor, and she's with me again. I never leave her alone for more than a few minutes at a time. More often than not, she chooses to hang around the kitchen with me, playing with her fridge magnets or a wooden spoon, or "cleaning" the floor with the tea towels - and it wouldn't be the first time I've cooked dinner with her hanging off my leg either. Not a huge amount of fun, but sometimes it just needs to be done!

Early Morning Perspective

At nine o'clock on a Sunday Morning, it may just as well be six o'clock. With only a handful of people on a street that you know will be bustling in a few hours, there's a certain stillness in the air. The kind of stillness you can enter but not disturb. Dogs and owners are out for their walks. Shops are shut. Maintenance workers have time to stop and play peekaboo with a baby. There is an intoxicating simplicity to life that you can fill your lungs with. A mental snapshot of a quieter world to keep close for those other, overwhelming days.