The doctorApril 30, 2015
Yesterday we went to see the doctor. It was just a checkup, some injections, and a measure. In some ways health care for the youngest amongst us hasn’t changed for centuries. The head is still wrapped with a tape measure, the wall has height charts stuck upon it, while younger infants lay in a a wooden box with a slider and a metal rule glued down one side, and there is a set of scales. Our doctors have a set of mechanical scales, in fact, meaning no disrespect, the stuff looks very similar to an episode of call the midwife.
We saw other parents there, saw babies at different stages, children much older, parents whose faces mirrored our own. As I picked my way through the doctors weaning hints (delivered in Serbian) it struck me afresh how timeless life is. This was a conversation that wouldn’t have changed, bar the tweaking of odd details from medical research, any country on any continent at any point in the last few hundred years could have hosted us.
We pick up threads left hanging and carry on the great tapestry. For all our grandeur and preening, all our advancement and technology, we are just weaving the smallest of threads in a picture so vast. Perhaps our job is not to ‘make a mark’ as society seems to encourage us so boldly, but to make sure the threads don’t drop. To develop the picture so it can be the truest to what this thing called ‘being human’ is, to serve the whole irrespective of time. Perhaps while we strive to be the truest to ourselves, the truest to our beliefs, and the truest to our passions we can also strive to be the best of humanity. I’d like to think that’s part of the job of parenting, and if we succeed… What a wonderful epitaph that would be.
Mummy spaceApril 27, 2015
I think every home should have a nook, a cranny, a chair, a step, or just a time when you get to slide into a bubble of you. I’m one of those people who recharge from having a bit of ‘me’ time.
My mummy space is really just a corridor, it could have just been used for storing bags and hanging coats but I’ve carved an office out of it. I literally built my shelves using plastic bottles filled with water and one of my notice boards is just a sheet of polystyrene, still, it’s a space I adore. It’s the perfect space to work, you are connected to the house but separated from the activity.
But, the space was NOT child friendly. To be truthful the piles behind the plastic draws were a collapsing monster coming to attack me. Plus, beneath the desk, suffice to say that feet could not go there. It needed to be seriously streamlined.
There is some sadness in losing the ad-hoc stuff, the beauty of things you threw together and yet they worked. This is my new office space. It’s much less fun than the open shelves, but when Adam starts moving I’m sure we’ll appreciate it. 
The bright sunshine is spurring me to make the home into a place we’ll enjoy over the long summer and beyond. It’s all part of my big spring sort-out, this is not nesting as much as laying roots. This is not mission with an end game, this is mission in the smallest acts and the biggest sweeps of life, it’s organic and spectacular in it’s ordinariness. These are the daily watering can moments, and I’ll be thankful for each one, because in this clear space I’ll achieve so much more.
The pushchairApril 25, 2015
When Adam was born some lovely people gave us some pennies to buy a pushchair, and we love it.
When you buy a pushchair they make all these claims that it can do 50 thousand different things. Fumbling sales assistances make them look like transformer toys and you’ll wonder if there is a coffee machine about to pop out. Then there is the saga of the extra this or that, and what gadgets come free with which model. In reality just about any pushchair will suffice, but we all, like narotic parents, want what’s going to suit our needs best.
Ironically, the first few weeks of his life we only really used the car seat, clipped onto the empty frame. Daddy wanted the carrycot, I was reluctant but completely wrong. The carrycot is amazing, It’s his day bed now, but it’s kind of restrictive in the view department. Recently he hates not seeing what is going on. Yesterday we had to stuff a blanket down his back so he could better see out of the car seat. With it being over 20 degrees this was not an ideal solution. Hence, it’s was deemed time for the pushchair to be just that, a pushchair. Clipping bits on and zipping bits together this morning we strapped him in for a short stroll.
As we wandered the familiar streets around us and he looked out then slipped into dream world, I realised afresh that these are tools that we really had no idea how to chose all those months ago. We didn’t know our baby’s character and so couldn’t pick a pushchair for him, we just took our best guess, learned to take advantage of what was there and fudged our way through anything else.
I’m learning more and more that parenting is a gamble, an educated guess, a blind faith and futile hope. It should terrify the pants off me but it doesn’t. Rather, it makes me pray a little longer as I fall asleep, look a little closer as I encounter the new, and praise a little louder all the wonderful things we’ve been blessed with.