Merry Christmas!

All set for the nightclub that's about to open in our village...

(Sorry I couldn't control the sound volume better...)

None of that spray-on stuff for us!

(It didn't last very long, though. And the snow outside is almost all gone too, sadly.)

In which Geneva Airport saves my son from saying something inappropriate

The first time I said the word baiser, it was because I didn't know I should really have said baisser. Baisser, said with an "ss" sound, means to lower. The same word said with a "z" means to have sex. Only more crudely. As I found out when C burst into laughter and delightedly pointed out my mistake.

(It just occurred to me that maybe this wasn't the first time I had mispronounced baisser. Oops.)

After this, my mind froze every time I wanted to say something about lowering, simultaneously trying to remember whether to use an s or a z while searching for a way to avoid using the word altogether.

So imagine my surprise when I saw "Un baiser de Genève" plastered on posters all over Geneva airport. The English version said "From Geneva with love"... and while "a fuck from Geneva" could be interpreted to mean the same thing, it didn't seem likely that this was really what the posters were saying.

Turns out baiser also means kiss.

It's a good thing I discovered this before last week, when Téo asked me what a baiser was.

A kiss! I replied, wondering exactly what he'd heard on the playground.

Only, as I realized a few days later, he didn't hear it on the playground. He heard it in class, in a Christmas carol they're singing.

So, phew that I had a choice of explanations. Because while in general I believe in explaining exactly what words mean, I'm not sure his teachers would have appreciated him saying that the carol was instructing everyone to have wet sex.

He wasn't willing to film a re-enactment and xtranormal doesn't include carrots

Lukan: (putting a carrot to his nose) Look, I'm a snowman!

C: Or are you Pinocchio, and you've told too many lies?

Lukan: No, I don't got too many eyes.

Identity

Monday evening, a rush to get to the doctor's office on time after work. It's just a routine check-up, Téo's not due for another 10 days.

You're fully effaced and 3cm dilated.

My mouth drops open in shock. I'm not ready for a baby.

He arrives the next morning anyway.

-------

Walking down the street, I pass a woman pushing a pram. I feel no connection to her whatsoever.

Even though I too am out with my baby.

-------

I refuse to buy a nappy bag. The pastel colours, the cutesy cartoon figures, the practical backpack design, I want none of these. I won't let my style be defined by the baby product industry. I will only buy something that fits me. Something that does not scream parent.

------

I'm in Rome for the weekend, child-free and with a friend. I'm enjoying the visit back to life before kids: cafés, shopping, a late night at the bar. Then, introducing me to her friends, my friend mentions I have a child. I am annoyed. I want them to see me, just me, and not a mother.

-----

I'm trying to have a conversation with a friend over lunch, but it's punctuated every second sentence with a repeating stream of admonishments. Use your knife and fork - sit properly at the table - stop annoying your brother - you need to say "excuse me", not just interrupt - don't speak with your mouth full - where's the please.

I hate sounding like a such a mother.

-----

A colleague has come to our house. I only met her a few weeks before, for a project we are both working on. She doesn't have children.

I am a little uncomfortable over dinner. She has only known me in a professional setting where we seemed to connect... but here I am now, fussing around kids' meals and bedtimes and always with those admonishments. Will she think less of me after seeing me as a mother?

----

The kids want her to be there while they get ready for bed. While we're all reading books, she reaches out and touches my knee.

This is really lovely.

And it's like something leaves me then, a tight wall of resistance just puffs away and along with it the image of motherhood I've constructed and projected based on my own prejudices and fears. I am a mother. I am a person. I am me.

Anatomy

(Do you like this format better than text?)

A true compliment

From my 7-year-old nephew tonight, after he took his first bite of the hamburgers I had made for dinner:

- You know, this is really much better than the hamburgers from McDonald's!

Getting into the season

So, I may owe all my friends multiple emails, I may be years behind in making photo books and videos, and let's not even think about those dirty windows or the dust hiding in various nooks and crannies around the place... but it's only the beginning of December and I'm not doing too badly with Christmasy-type things!

(But... holy crap, it's December, how did that happen?)

Christmas shopping - started!

Advent calendar - made and (to avoid last year's problem) fully loaded!

Oh toilet rolls, what would I do without you?

Christmas tree - bought, successfully brought home (with only a small illegal act involving children under 12 and front seats), and decorated!

Christmasy candle - on table!

Kids' Christmas crafting - displayed!

Wow!

But let's see how long all this stuff hangs around after Christmas before declaring any überness....

Reconsidering my position

The first winter in our house was a snowy one. The first time he had to clear our (long) driveway, C said that if he had to shovel snow three times in one winter, he was getting a snow blower.

A snowblower?! Wasn't that just like a leaf blower? A silly, unnecessary gadget for lazy people?

I may have scoffed.

Fast forward to today. When I shovelled 20 cm of snow off just 12 metres of our LONG driveway - which C had already cleared only last Sunday - so I could get out of our garage and onto the neighbours' driveway - which they had cleared before it was even light this morning - so I could go pick up Lukan from the garderie.

And then I watched the snow continue to fall heavily all afternoon.

I am beginning to better appreciate the merits of a snow-clearing machine.

I have never seen our  front yard so snowy. (This is looking towards the neighbours' side - they've also been planting trees. The snowman was built on Sunday - he's all misshapen because of the new snow that fell last night and today.)

Green

The thing that struck me most about Vancouver Island was the trees. Enormous tall trees, towering overhead, lining the roads. Everywhere.

At the campsite on our first night, Téo complained that there were too many trees. I'm going to cut them all down!  

The environmentalist part of me pointed out that the trees have a right to live, that without them there'd be no home for animals, and that we need trees to give us oxygen.

But my gut fully agreed. I craved a break, somewhere, in the mass of impenetrable green, a chance to see a bit further, to feel a bit of space.

I wondered whether this is an instinct born from the dangers that once lurked in forests? Or maybe something that's been bred into us by the invention of agriculture, where the clearers were the ones that prospered? Or a desperate attempt to have some semblance of control over what's around us? Or just that I'm more used to the look and feel of the Australian bush?

I don't know, but the feeling was surprisingly strong.

I've been thinking about this a lot over the past few weeks, as my dreams of transforming our front garden have become reality.

In theory, I want a wildlife-friendly garden.

My gut, though, wants a pretty garden. It's quite insistent. And it doesn't like most of the native - i.e., wildlife-friendly - options.

Like wanting a few less trees on Vancouver Island, I find this strong desire to just go with what I want, and to hell with the wildlife, somewhat alarming. And, given a large source of my work, extremely hypocritical.

(Strangely though, if I were living in Australia I would have a 100% native garden. Do I just feel more strongly for the wildlife of my home country? Or are Aussie plants simply prettier and so "acceptable"?)

(Also, I am more than happy to have a native meadow out the back, it's just this front yard - which is so artificial in character in the first place, being a square surrounded by walls and fences - where I want stylized landscaping.)

(And just to add, I would have definitely planted a crabapple tree - bird-friendly! (pretty!) - only our neighbours planted one on their side.)

So. We've planted one native tree. A pretty one.

And some non-native but supposedly bird-friendly grasses.

But I've also planted some tulips.

And a non-native maple. (Although, it was bought before I realised that insects can't just eat the nectar and pollen of any old flower and birds don't just eat any old seed. I knew this was the case for Aussie species, but somehow thought European species were less fussy.)

And some kind of non-native lily thing (also bought before I realised it couldn't feed anything.)

We'd really like a non-native cedar too.

I did put up some bird feeders though. They count for something, right?

No?

Yeah, my green credentials are shot.

(But it's shaping up to be a pretty garden.)

Wintery weekend

So at the end of the last post, I nearly wrote something along the lines of "shame there won't be any left by tomorrow" ... but lucky I didn't, because that night it started snowing again. And didn't stop until the next night.

This was today:

We have two very rosy-cheeked boys tonight.

Great excitement

We've been watching the snow come lower and lower down the hills ever since we got back from Romania. On Wednesday, we were in a snow flurry at a friend's house in a village just a bit higher than ours. And last night, the first snow finally fell here.

Snow, snow! I want to play in the snow!

Going to school

Stomping around

Mr Credulous

If you asked the kids what they liked about our short stay in Munich, I'm pretty sure the hotel breakfast would be high on the list. Cheese platters - Lukan's dream. Baskets full of eggs - Téo's.

Lukan's enthusiasm for cheese is long-standing, but while Téo has always liked eggs, we were a bit taken aback by his obsession with them in Germany. He ate two for breakfast each day, and then one evening scoffed at least 3 more at his aunt's wedding supper - and then begged for more when we said he'd had enough.

- Sweetheart, 5 eggs in one day is too many. 

- It's not too many!

- Yes it is, you've had enough. You can eat something else instead.

- (honestly puzzled) But I can't throw cannon balls yet.

And then I remembered what he'd been reading on the train: Mr. Strong.

Thanks, Roger.

(And thanks also our supermarket, for now selling Hello Kitty hard-boiled eggs. Pink Hello Kitty eggs that put my pink-loving, Mr. Strong-wannabee son's pester mode into overdrive.)

Nothing if not persistent

So Splotch was actually the 4th cat we have attempted to have.

The first was back in June last year, when a friend forwarded me an email from a colleague about a lost cat looking for a new home. The cat had been living in the colleague's garden for a couple of months, there'd been no response to the "found cat" notices he put up, and he already had two cats and didn't want a third.

I asked C if we could have him. He sighed and said if there was really no one else willing to take him, we could.

All was arranged. We were to pick him up in two days time, a Saturday. And then on the Friday, the owner appeared.

The same friend, and this time her colleague too, then forwarded me an email about another cat looking for a new home. Her owners, a youngish couple living in an apartment, felt she needed more attention and the chance to go outside. Well, the boy felt this, the girl was not so sure. She was being Very Picky about who would get Millie.

I drove the kids 40 minutes to their place one Saturday morning so we could be assessed, where I dutifully admired all 756 of the cat's kitten photos, discussed my easing-cat-into-new-home plan, and promised to send regular photos and updates on how Millie was settling in. All without rolling my eyes. (At least not that they saw.)

We were declared The Chosen Family. A date was set for them to deliver her to us.

Only then I remembered we were going to Sydney five weeks later, for a month. A month outside in the snow seemed a little cruel, as did sending her to a cattery so soon after moving to a new home. So they said we could have her once we got back. And when we got back, they had decided they would keep her.

By this time, C's brother's family had adopted a cat. On hearing that she wasn't desexed, I said we'd have one of her kittens.

Hence Tabby. Poor Tabby.

And then we got Splotch. Poor Splotch.

(I am really not being flippant, I can't bear to think of them being eaten by a fox.)

The week that Splotch disappeared, we got an email from one of the people we'd contacted about a kitten after Tabby disappeared, letting us know her mother had kittens to give away if we were still looking for one.

We stalled a bit, but by the end of last week it was clear Splotch was gone for good.

So yesterday, I went to pick up our 5th attempt...

...Quincy.

Although, as I discovered a couple of hours after bringing her home, an equally descriptive name would have been Flea Bag.

Grey areas

Just recently, like a month ago, I was thinking how well my hair was doing in the not-going-grey department. There were a couple of grey hairs, true, but that was all. Maybe three. All easily removed.

(Aside: For years I wished the hairs in the centre of my monobrow were not so black. Well, actually, I wished there were no hairs there at all, but if they had to exist then why couldn't they be blonde and fine? Then they started turning grey, which didn't alarm me in the OMG-my-eyebrows-are-turning-grey-I-am-old sense – because these particular hairs had done a lot more growing than any others by virtue of being plucked all the time, so it just seemed logical that they would go grey first – but nevertheless wasn't exactly like my fantasy of non-black mid-eyebrow hairs either.

Fantasy: hairs that would be less noticeable, meaning a lower likelihood that people would see any unplucked hairs. Reality: hairs that are less noticeable, meaning a lower likelihood that I find them while short, meaning I only see them when they're so long they catch the light, and holy toledo everyone else must have been blinded by the light reflected from the forest of hairs above my nose.)

(Another aside: this difficulty of seeing unwanted non-black facial hairs worries me somewhat for the future... will I be able to see and pluck those three chin hairs in a timely manner once they turn grey, or will people be stealing sidelong glances to gauge their length?)

And then, just before we went to Romania, overnight there were grey hairs everywhere. Including in my fringe.

(Another aside: So the explanation for grey hairs is that they simply lack pigmentation because the cells that store pigment in the hair follicle, melanocytes, start to die off. OK, fine, I can understand the biology of this. But then why are the grey hairs also about 10 times thicker than my regular head hairs?? Which is another lovely example of the irony that graces our lives, given that in my younger years I also fervently wished to not have such fine hair.)

I hastily plucked out all the ones I could see, but I knew there must be many more hiding at the back, or under other hairs. And indeed, every now and again I see a glint from one of these sneakier ones. But still, even though the speed at which new grey hairs are appearing is a little alarming, it's not like I have to embrace the grey. Hello hairdresser!

But then yesterday, it got worse.

I found a grey pube.

A grey bush is something that had honestly not occurred to me. And if it had, well, it wouldn't have occurred to me that I would have one in my 40s.

Awesome. Just... awesome.

Dilemma

Last week, after performing Do-re-mi and The Lonely Goatherd for the umpteenth time, I was sorely tempted to let YouTube take over for a bit. Only, watching videos on the computer conflicts with my previously alluded to screen-time-limiting tendencies. Plus, one video inevitably leads to a request for Barbapapa where Cindy bwoke his ankle and then Stinky Pingu and then de jomping elephant and then de hippo and de dog and then the funny cats and then each of the videos that YouTube helpfully displays over on the right and then ends in tears when half an hour later I finally say no, that really was the last one.

So I hit on a compromise - the kids could listen to, but not watch, the Sound of Music songs. Perfect! I wouldn't have to sing anymore, and the kids wouldn't be zombified in front of a screen.

Instead they became mummified on the floor.

Causing me to wonder whether sitting passively and staring vacantly into space is really more desirable than sitting passively and watching a video?

Tough neighbourhood

So, ah, well, we seem to have lost Splotch.

My pro-wildlife stance is developing a decidedly anti-fox slant.

Goodbye little cat, you are very much missed.

Shaping up to be a fine man

Sometime over the weekend I got a tummy bug. Nothing bad enough to warrant staying in bed, but enough to feel a bit unwell most of the time, punctuated by excruciating stomach cramps and many trips to the loo.

And even if it was bad enough to justify a lie down, well, school holidays and an absent husband for two nights this week quickly made that impossible. As did a necessary trip into town today to pick up Lukan's new passport so that we can leave tomorrow for C's sister's wedding in Munich (I'm fearing the 5-hour train trip a little...)

So I've been planning outings around toilet stops, entertaining the kids (who are still requesting songs every 5 minutes) and making meals and washing dishes and doing laundry and arbitrating disputes and brushing teeth as usual, if a bit more slowly, and only stopping to grit my teeth and quietly moan for the worst of the cramps.

So when Téo, who had previously been bouncing around very happily, and in 2 minutes would be bouncing around again, without any evidence of any diarrhea whatsoever, pulled a very tragic face and groaned you know mummy, I've got a bad tummy ache, actually it's really much worser than yours, I found myself saying what countless women have said - and if Téo is any indication of the next generation, will continue to say - to their poor, ill men-folk.

Yes dear.

New converts

So the thing about Romania is, it's quite large. And even though we limited ourselves to one little part, the sights are not that close together, and the roads are not that good. Meaning we spent many hours in the car.

We had brought some CDs along to keep the kids happy, but the car only had a tape deck. A tape deck!! In a new car! Though I guess since a lot of people in Romania get around on a horse and cart, a tape deck is pretty modern. Anyhoo, the lack of a CD player meant I ended up being the kids' personal juke box. For many hours. On many days.

The house we stayed in had the Sound of Music on DVD, which the kids were not so keen to watch. But one day, after having run through my usual repertoire ad nauseum, I started on a few Sound of Music songs, trying to convince the kids that this was a movie worth watching.

The result? This:

And this:

And for the diehards (or severe procrastinators) amongst you, I present the new von Trapp family singers:

(Very thankfully with only two children. Also very thankfully without the father singing.) (And sorry about the so. Ouch)

Still alive!

Sorry for disappearing like that, we've been away... visiting the homeland of:

Yes, Dracula!

We got out with our necks unbitten, to the relief of the kids, who were a bit nervous prior to our departure. (Note to self: it's probably better not to tell children about vampires just before a trip to Transylvania.)

More photos soon...

Changes

My new working conditions.

All of a sudden, it's autumn.

(Actually, it was all of a sudden autumn about 10 days ago, it just took me a while to take any photos.)

Reality check

So tonight I made baked beans. As in, I baked beans. From scratch.

Using organic dried beans! And home-made tomato sauce from home-grown tomatoes! And home-grown carrots! And accidentally home-grown corriander seeds!

Verily did my heart swell at the thought of the nutritious, low-impact meal I was preparing for my family. (It conveniently ignored the most likely glasshouse-grown capsicums, and the cancer-inducing (but organic!) bacon.)

And then:

- What are we having for dinner?

- Baked beans.

- Yuck. Can I have fish fingers instead?

- Me as well, I like fish fingers too.

-----------------------------------
(I recently met someone who, for about an hour, only talked about her fabulous kids' wonderful eating habits. It was pretty tedious. And very hard not to engage in one-up-mum-ship because, you know, my kids have pretty good eating habits too. And I cook healthy, tasty food too. And anyway, I think that what your kids will and will not eat is kind of luck, rather than any perfectly enacted plan of the parents.

So anyway, maybe you are all better people than me, which is very likely, but I got to thinking that my food preparation post may have had you rolling your eyes at me. If so, I hope this post will have them sitting back properly in their sockets.) 

Crossroads

 (looking west)

Sometimes the sky above us is streaked with contrails.

The whole sky.

(looking east)

In every direction.

And it makes me wonder whether, if all of Europe had the same weather conditions, would the sky everywhere look like this? Or are we uniquely right under a huge number of flight paths?

(The contrails were not even lasting that long, which makes their sheer number even more astonishing.)

An Important Life Skill

Rainy Sunday afternoon

To my wonderful husband

When I wrote your card last night, and had to stop and think how old you would be today, 37 just didn't seem possible. Was it really over 11 years ago that Bronnie-chan and I made you choke on your udon by guessing you were 35, when you were really only 25? Did I really know you when you were that young??

A lot has happened since then, but one thing has not changed: how happy I am to be with you. And now there's the added happiness of our two boys, of being a family. Thanks for everything you do for us - for being a fabulous dad and my perfect partner.

(photo by C's cousin, S.N.)

Happy birthday sweetheart!

Provision

The other night, as I turned and turned the handle of my neighbour's food mill to remove skins and seeds from a second batch of tomato sauce, C asked me if this chore gives me satisfaction. Well, actually he asked if I find making tomato sauce more satisfying than ironing, to which the answer is a whole-hearted shit yeah, but as there's very little I like less than ironing, this answer seemed too easy. And it's a fair question, why I'm spending days and nights making things I can easily buy at the supermarket. (In the last couple of weeks I've also made jam and baked pumpkins and then frozen them to make soup later.)

One answer is yes, I get satisfaction from making healthy food for my family. I like knowing what goes in to what we eat, and having control over this. I like that we hardly eat any processed food, I like minimizing the sugar and salt content of what I make, I like using local, organic ingredients whenever I can. I like that my kids are interested in cooking, I like teaching them healthy eating habits, I like it when they enthusiastically like something I've made.

Another answer is that having planted the plants, I can't bear to waste the fruit.

It's the same for the walnut tree. I compulsively picked up every fallen walnut last year, we spent several long nights cracking them open... and now I'm determined to eat them. Not just the nuts, but the oil we had pressed from them, and the flour that was left behind from the pressing. Six kilos of it.

We need to hurry up - this year's crop started falling yesterday.

So today I made a walnut slice.

Cakes and biscuits are actually a bit of a dilemma for me. I am against the regular eating thereof (and especially of store-bought versions) - which means we are the house that offers fruit and air-popped popped corn for afternoon tea, instead of lollies, biscuits and ice creams like all the other houses. But I like making the occasional sweet thing for the kids, because they love them so much. And, well, I'd like to be remembered as a nice mum who provided yummy treats. So what I do is adjust recipes to make them a bit less bad, and so justify winning my children's hearts by feeding them sugar and fat.

But really, walnuts. Packed full of protein and omega 3. And this recipe has lots of eggs, also good. And do you know you can reduce the amount of sugar in cake recipes by one-third, and no-one ever notices? Plus I use stone-ground flour (lower GI!) and I would cut it with wholemeal flour, only I have that walnut flour to use up, so I used it instead. So really, it's even kind of healthy! (We'll just ignore the margarine and chocolate. Although I did use fat-reduced margarine, so it's not as bad as it could be).

Anyway, this slice is DELICIOUS, and definitely worth making even if you don't have loads of walnuts to use up. Here's the original recipe - as mentioned I reduced the sugar by one-third and used reduced-fat margarine for the topping. I also suggest adding more cinnamon if you use wholemeal flour.

Base:
1 1/4 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup margarine
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup chopped walnuts (or pecans)

Rub flour, margarine, sugar and cinnamon until mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add nuts. Press into 9x12" ungreased pan, cook for 10 min at 180 degrees C.

Topping:
30g dark chocolate
1/4 cup margarine
3 eggs
1 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 tablespoons water

Melt chocolate and margarine. Beat other ingredients, add melted chocolate/margarine, pour onto base. Cook for 20 mins at 180 degrees C, or until topping has set.

Try not to eat it all at once.

Relativity

Lukan these days is a Big Boy.

He wears underpants. He pees in the loo like a pro. (Don't ask about the poos.) He has moved out of his cot and into a big bed with a big mattress.

He is very happy with his new status. He refutes any suggestion that he is still small.

From his brother:

- Lukan is a baby, Lukan is a baby.

- I not a baby, I a big boy cos I got underpants.

From me:

- Hey look at you, my little pirate!

- I not a little piwate. I a big scawy piwate.

And just in case:

- I big cos I have this many years (holding up 3 fingers).

So when I said the reason he can't join Téo's soccer team is because he's not big enough...? See for yourself:

The other side

The train station forms the northern(ish) boundary of the village, from which the fields become meadows and forest as you go up into the hills*. Here is the southern(ish) boundary, above the vineyards that rise steeply from the valley** below and run along this first foothill.

* Really, they are mountains, but C dismisses them as hills because they are not the Alps.

**And really, it is called a plain, but I dismiss it as valley because, well, it's a valley.

See?

(If you look closely, you can just make out snow a real mountain - Mont Blanc.)

Hard life

Splotch isn't allowed outside yet. And while he certainly would like to get out and explore...

... he doesn't really seem to be suffering to badly from his confinement.

Welcome

If you catch the train to our place, and are seated close to the front, then when you get off, you find yourself in a field. Various visitors, whom I have forgotten to warn, have reported this as being a little disconcerting. Which I can understand. But I love stepping out into the wide open space, and a view whose changing light and clouds and colours never fails to make me pause. Which is maybe why I keep forgetting to give the warning.

What happened on July 7:

Oh look, it's the 7th of the 7th. Janet's birthday. She's 40 now. Hang on... actually no, she's turning 41 today. Shit that means I'm going to be 41 soon. F***!!!

What happened this morning:

There was a card propped up against my bedside light.

The kids bounded into the bedroom, sang me happy birthday, gave me a kiss, and bounced around happily.

C revealed that, contrary to what I had assumed last night, he did in fact have plans to take me out tonight.

Various people called/emailed/texted/facebooked me to say happy birthday.

And, that 4 aside, I remembered how much I love the 9th of the 9th.

So glamorous

If you had told me, say, 15 years ago, that one day I would be going to Brussels for a business trip, I would have thought that sounded so glamorous. Brussels! For the day! Wow!

The reality is somewhat different.

You get up at sparrow's fart, leave while the rest of your family is still snoring, and drive for an hour in the dark and pouring rain to the airport.

The plane is late. You wait.

You fly. You are hungry as you haven't yet had breakfast, nothing appealed at the airport, and nothing appeals on the plane.

You walk and walk and walk to get out of the airport, feeling several blisters developing from your hardly ever worn high-heeled shoes.

You get to the organization you are visiting.

You wait. You meet with various people with whom you may be working. You wait. You eat a canteen lunch. You wait. You meet with further people with whom you may be working. You wait. You are starving.

You get back to the airport. You devour some fast food, but not much in the hope you might find something a bit more healthy. You do some quick clothes shopping (that part is fun, not because there's any particularly glamourous shops, but because the prices are MUCH cheaper than at home).

Something beeps as you go through security, prompting a full body pat down.

You board the plane. You are still starving, having found nothing healthy to eat at the airport that didn't have a huge queue. Nothing appeals on the plane, once again.

You arrive back in your country, eyes watering and very tired. Your feet are killing you.

You snatch the last bread roll from the small food shop at the airport, along with some camenbert.

In the car, you make a hasty sandwich and gulp it down. And see your fly is undone - since when, you don't know.

You drive for an hour in the dark and rain back home.

You go to bed.

Very glamorous indeed.

Cat v2

So, ah, Tabby is no longer. I let her out one morning and we never saw her again. My niece is sure she tried to go back to their place and simply took the wrong road, but I suspect a fox.

There were tears. From the kids too.

After a couple of weeks I started searching for a new kitten. And this morning we got one!

Hopefully we'll manage to keep little Splotch alive...

Fruition II

You've seen the before, here's the after:

There's sunflowers!

And cornflowers!

And some kind of pink flower!

So pretty!

What's that? Oh, right, it's meant to be a veggie patch, not a flower garden. Well, you know we have lettuces... there's also pumpkins!

And cabbages (slightly overtaken by the pumpkins)!

And leeks (also slightly overtaken by the pumpkins)!

And carrots, corriander, peas... and tomatoes. LOTS of tomatoes.

Which the kids eat like lollies.

And which fulfilled a dream for this year: making my own tomato sauce for winter! (and also some oven-roasted tomatoes)

I suspect I'll be making more...

Fruition I

8.30pm. Kids in bed. Washing up done. Right, what's next... the raspberries. Sigh.

And so you go out, across the road to your in-laws, where your raspberry plants have their 2-daily batch of fruit ready to pick.

Trudge trudge trudge up the drive.

Mind whirring with all the other chores you have.

At the vines, quiet. Just the sound of the water gurgling from the old-fashioned water pump in the garden of your child's friend's grandparents' place next door, the jingle of the cow bells in the paddock across the road, the odd swallow above.

The fading light silhouetting the mountains is gorgeous.

The air has a bit of a nip, reminding you that autumn is coming.

The berries are dark, swollen, delicious.

You are all alone.

And you are struck by just how beautiful this life you have is.

It's my happy birthday!

More photos here...

Back to school

You know what mummy actually? The 2eme enfantine is much harder than 1ere enfantine. You know what we have to do? We have to write words, and then we have to take them to the teacher, and then we have to sound them out. It's really going to be much harder this year.

All said without any acknowledgement that he can already read pretty well, and has already, off his own bat, had a pretty good stab at writing.

And despite his avowal of just how hard his second year of school is going to be, he very happily bounded off this morning, barely even saying goodbye.

If only I could equally happily get myself back into the Regime. Sigh.

Relief

I can't remember exactly how many times Téo has been pulled spluttering and gasping from a pool or river, but it's been many. Too many.

Although actually, the last time was pretty funny. It was in the hotel pool in Paris, where thanks to my magnificent packing foresight, he was splashing around in underpants and no swim vest.

- Look at me mummy, I can swim!

- No you can't! You don't have your swim vest! Stay on the steps until Miss M can carry you!

- No I can swim, look!

He leapt off the steps with a huge grin stretching from ear to ear... which, in a very cartoon-esque manner, morphed into a look of wide-eyed panic as his head went under.

So. Swimming lesson time it was.

(Yes, I know, I have said this before. Like, 2 years ago. But! It's not entirely my slackness that has kept him at risk of drowning! I tried to get him in last year, honest, but over here they won't take kids under 5. And even at 5, they hesitate.)

He only got in 3 lessons, thanks to a wet and cold August. But from unfailingly sinking whenever he was unsupported in water, by the end of the third lesson he could do this:

And then yesterday we made him jump into deep water and swim back to the edge.

Which he did, with no sinking and only a little spluttering.

Phew.

Things I've learned as the owner of a veggie patch

Uneaten lettuces don't get bigger and leafier, they get taller.

Much taller.

Who knew, huh? (Quiet, all you inhabitants of my village. I'm a city girl, remember?)

(And sorry for the atrocious picture. The Hipstamatic let me down today.)

What happens to a cat in a house with kids