In Memoriam – Part II


family & parenting

My 6 year old son is more sentimental about the past than his Great Grandmother who was born in 1920. And yet… he combines this nostalgia (for when he was a small boy, that day when I let him have 3 polos, the time he found a stick in the park, the birthday party three […]

25th May 2014

Half-baked


family & parenting

Depression can make you do some bloody barking things. Even afterwards, when you aren’t in the abyss. I’ve written about black dogs, and howling madness, but I find sometimes the most aggravating of all things related to mental health are the niggles, the things you can’t trust, the draw of magical thinking and other delusions, […]

20th November 2011

Independence daze – Part I


family & parenting

So newborn is on the move. He’s off, crawling like a pro. Properly, on all fours, moving forwards and backwards and to the side. My jersey-clad crab, edging round the lounge. That he’s moving isn’t a surprise. Not because I expect my children to be precocious, but because the blessed scamp has been crawling in […]

13th June 2011

Are you looking at me?


family & parenting

The end of the world is on its way. Newborn has worked out his favourite thing in all the world. Beating Sophie, his brother and I on the list is standing. Standing and stamping (whilst clinging to a grown up finger) and being able, all of a sudden, to pick things up, stuff them in […]

1st June 2011

Instant faded snap shots


family & parenting

Above is an ‘instagram’ photo. A snap my husband took (and made?) with his i-phone app which allows you to play with the saturation of your digital photos, and give them a particular dated look. Smarter media analysts and philosophers of the everyday than I can debate how this speaks to a current oxymoron obsession […]

24th April 2011

Reading too much into things…


family & parenting

Have you read Not A Box? I became briefly evangelical about this book after Spider-boy was born. It became my present of choice for new babies that I know I will love and their parents. The cover is so stylish it feels branded by Muji, and the illustrations are a design-chic delight. Like many of […]

29th March 2011

Lucky Stars


depression, hope

I realise I’ve posted a good bit about remembering – remembering the good and remembering the bad. I saw my Mum this week and she told me that memories faze and fade, and that everyone with larger families, or older children, has melded memories and has forgotten much of the minutiae of early family life. […]

20th February 2011

Today we went to the library…


family & parenting, words

So today we went to the library. I shivered at a future that might have been. It is the first place I lost my son. And it taught me a lesson, in parenting as watchfulness and our duty to concentrate on what our children are doing. He was two and escaped the safe paddock and […]

5th February 2011

Introductions


birth, babies, bodies, breastfeeding, words

First words are a difficult subject for me, and I don’t mean the first words said by Spider-boy (for the record it was ‘baby’, he’s such a glorious narcissist) or his brother. I mean the first words I said to my children. The first words they heard from me. I really believed, before I had […]

26th January 2011