For the Life of us

Well, this is less than an ideal time for reflection combining the Christmas pack-down which is always sad to me in some sentimental way, and me being super sick over the past 3 days with a throat infection... but here I sit, after sleeping for more hours (or day's rather) than I'd like to count, realising that we are now days away from New Year's Eve! Yikes! It is funny how the our lives are broken up into year's. This long, or not so long allotted time to us, and we get to take a breather every 365 days, reflect and reset and essentially, try again. Here are the things I am most grateful for the grace to have done this year: 1. I started a new job teaching Media Studies and totally loved it and finished the year! 2. I wrote a couple of kids books that are being illustrated (my goal at the end of last year was to write a book, I had in mind another kind but reflecting now, I did accomplish this goal, just differently to how I pictured in the beginning). 3. I ...

I’ve been thinking a lot about connection lately. Maybe it’s because this was provoked by a cool second-hand book my dad bought me “1001 Ways to Connct with your Kids” by James R. Lucas. Maybe it’s because my love language is time and I am always scheming ways to connect with my little people in meaningful ways. Life is so busy, we jam-pack it so full of things that are in the end, meaningless… well in the grand scheme of eternity, if you know what I mean. This book has been a really great tool! And some of you may have followed my Insta-stories over the past 2 weeks as I’ve tried a few of the ideas in the book. I don’t know about you, but I LOVE learning. I love watching, observing, trialling, improving, just gaining new tools to do what I do, better! Parenting I’ve found, is the most humbling journey. We find out pretty much from day 1 that our ideas, philosophies and ideologies were at best idealistic. Our set-in-concrete ideas of what kind of a parent we would be and how our...

Ok, before you start reading with defences as high as your garden fence, relax! This is not going to be a judgemental rant against people who practise something I don't agree with. I just thought this is worth posting about, worth a thought and a discussion seeing it's that time of year again! The time of year when that very Americanised holiday creeps into stores and advertising and bombards us with scary, spooky imagery that provokes conversations with little people who follow us around the shops. I am a huge believer that we all need to do our homework and make our own choices. Sheep mentality, blindly following something you've been told is just sloppy decision making. And there's nothing like forcing you to look into WHY you believe something, like having little people who ask WHY ALL.THE.TIME... and who aren't satisfied with generic, surface answers. I have heard all the pro-arguements and point of views for why Halloween is harmless and even beneficia...

I was listening to this mum-pair who make really funny Youtube videos about the truth of being a parent. This time it was all on laying off feeling guilty because your kids 'go through stuff'. They were making light of the ridiculous guilt we feel if we dare take pre-bought cake or cookies to the bake sale, or refuse to go back for the lunch box that was forgotten at home after the reminder that morning... Their point was, stop feeling bad about things that happen that make us feel like bad moms. They hilariously listed off all the influential people they could, making the point that nearly none of them came from two parent homes, from wealth and privilege, from ideal childhoods all of them came through some kind of hardship and in the end, it was a gift. The gift of resilience that pressing through hard times gives to kids, resilience being the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. I laughed my head off and then went away and thought about the profound truth in that...

So there I sat, across from a wonderfully wise lady, downloading how tricky I was finding certain situations with my kids. Bedtime was becoming a nightmare with Mr. 6 in particular, deciding that was the time for fun and games. My 'very serious' prayer time with him, became a time for silliness and giggling hysterically at his clever insertion of the word 'poo' into the prayer he was repeating with me. That would end in a warning which would end in me leaving the room which would end in a tantrum and a whole lot of consequences to follow through with the next day.  Just what every parent dreams of putting 3 kids to bed at 7pm at night when all your energy is sucked dry... FUN TIMES! This clever lady nodded sympathetically and asked me, with a smile, "so how much fun are your kids having in your family?" It caught me off guard. Here I thought what was coming was some brilliant advice on how to make my kids more holy, how to make them calm down and do as they...

So, I've had rollercoasters on the brain. We went chasing the sun a few weeks back. A week in sunny Gold Coast was exactly what this cold family needed! We needed some sun and some fun, and what better place to have both than across the ditch. Mum and dad went on ahead and met us there. I must say I maybe slightly underestimated the feat of skill it would be to get three little people to another country, alone... Taking three kids on a NZ road trip is one thing, dealing with passports, boarding cards, plane rides with no inflight entertainment, rental car bookings, luggage and X-ray processes, long queues and lots of waiting and behaving required... well it's absolutely do-able, just tiring. The kids were troupers though and aside from a toileting crisis at the point where we had waited for ages in the customs line, finally reached the front and had to make an emergency dash for the toilet which was nowhere close to us, laden with bags and luggage with no trolley...whil...