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.

The half birthdayApril 22, 2015

For one so young every half birthday is a huge milestone, never more so than the first. Our baby reached his today, a full six months, twenty six weeks, half a year. In many ways we are a normal family, a mummy and daddy, a bouncing baby, a little house and a gaggle of friends. In many ways our lives are altered, the shared cultures, the skewed motivations, the oddness blending with the predictable. I am a missionary, a child of the divine, but the two men with whom i share a house, boys i am bound to, intertwined by bonds strong as blood and compelling as love, these are just my boys, and to them I am primarily mummy.

And mummy wanted pictures, pinterest perfect pictures with the same nappy he wore at three months, on the same black background, so she can do some clever editing one day. then why not a family portrait too. It was a predicable disaster, but that seems to be what mummyhood is about. There is a reason there are so many pregnancy boards on pinterest, they are the dreams, rarely the reality.

Today we’ll do what is so natural, look forward and backwards. Remember the fragile newborn and the misty memories of life before we knew of his existence. Dream of what we will do when propping turns to sitting, crawling, and running around. Pretty sure those dreams will be a pale reflection of what we actually do, but that’s the adventure.