Grandad's memorial today. sad. healthy sad. there was a photo of Grandad and Grandma cutting their wedding cake. Grandma's wedding dress was made out off fabric from 'coupons' and a lace curtain. she looked beautiful. she is beautiful. she started life as an orphan and ends it as a widow.

my grandad died last night. he was 80.

sheila kitzinger

"When she becomes a mother, it is as if a woman must go deep into the bowels of the earth, back to the elemental emotions and the power which makes life possible, losing herself in the darkness. She is like Eurydice int the Underworld. She is pulled away from a world of choices, plans and schedules, where time is kept, spaces cleared, commitments made, and goals attained to the warm chaos of love, confusion, longing, anger, self-surrender and intense pleasure that mothering entails."

2007

new years eve
sitting at home, having a quiet one.

somehow the most significant year of our life so far doesn't need a big night out to mark it's end.

i watched darkness fall on 2007 from danika's bedroom as she fell asleep in my arms. i never new Life could be so deeply satisfying.

God Bless for 2008
Love charlotte x

danika is on the move.

blooming

our parenting style is slowly unfolding, and it has an uncanny nack of revealing what we truly value. our hidden assumptions slowly come into the light. our fundamental beliefs about Christ, the bible and Truth are slowly exposed.

before Danika was born we were invited to do a parenting course.... "we did it and our kids are so compliant and well mannered."

'compliant'? 'well mannered'? slight cringe noticed somewhere inside myself. there's nothing wrong with those two things per say, they're just not exactly the two adjectives i would use to advertise a parenting course.

i guess when i imagine what i want for dani's life those two are not that high up on the list... they are on the list, but just not that high up.

so what words would i pick to advertise a parenting course??? courage? passion? empathy?

i can feel my perception of Christ influencing this. The Christ of our imaginations are always all of our favourite qualities rolled into one, one man, one symbol.

i imagine jesus to be this brave dare devil, who is absolutely gorgeous and kind and loving but didn't give a rats arse if he offended the snobs. i imagine him to be completely fearless whilst still being emotionally vulnerable. he looks me in the eye and invites me into all sorts of adventures, not one of the least being birthing a child.

jesus - compliant? are you kidding me?

my distaste for compliance is one of the reasons i am (at the moment) unable to let dani cry when she wants a cuddle (even if it's 2am). the baby psychology books i've been reading reckon when a baby consistently expresses a need (physical, emotional or spiritual, and i think they are all the same thing to a baby anyway) and it is ignored, they cope by slowly deadening they acknowledgement of that need. they learn not to listen to their own bodies when they are hungry, or their own heart when they want love. maybe it's the 4 in me (enneagram), but having an internal moral compass and listening to my own heart is one of the most important things in the world.

and the new research (and lots of the old) is saying that babies who are responded to quickly, in the end cry less and are more content.

maybe the psychology books and the research is wrong and maybe i am actually creating a demanding little spoilt brat, but heck, i'll still love her even if no one else does, and at least i'll know i've done my best.

use your mind
but follow
your
heart.

dry sheets
dry baby
happy baby
happy mummy
:)

if we can do this again it will mean the end of day time nappies!

potty

the warm weather is definitely suiting the no-nappy thing. we've made heaps of progress the last few weeks (not that this is about progress per say). she's becoming really clear at communicating when she wants to poo, and she only wees about every hour now and the window i have to catch the wee has grown. (for instance if she does a wee at 9am i can put her on the potty again at anywhere between 9.45 and 10.15 and successfully catch it, where as when she was little if she weed at 9am i would only have between 9.20 and 9.25 to catch the next one.) she doesn't seem to communicate that she's about to wee, or if she does it's really subtle and only about 1 second before she going to go, so for wees i tend to rely on timing (ie put her on the potty before she's busting) and poos i tend to rely on her communication (she stops what ever she's doing and concentrates either into my eyes or into space and her breathing changes.)

i just put dani down for her afternoon nap with no nappy on! i popped her on the potty and she did a tea spoon sized wee (obviously wasn't busting) and then i laid her down in her cot, bare bummed. It's a nice warm day so she doesn't need any blankets. i've left her door open so i can hear her if she stirs. the theory is that babies don't wee in their sleep, but as they wake. this theory has proved true because i often whip dani's nappy off as soon as she wakes up and she's dry, but will then do a big wee on the potty within about 5 seconds.

we'll see how we go :)
i love being a mum

common sense?

my notions of common sense have never been challenged so much as they have in the first six months of being a mum. it seems to turn out that what i get told is 'common sense' is really not so common after all.

according to this book i've been reading 'our babies, ourselves' (by m f small) 90% of children sleep with at least one other adult, over 8% of babies sleep with other children and less than 2% of babies in the world tonight will sleep in a room alone.

less than 2%!! and it's not just the poor families that can only afford a one room house. so it's clearly not the common consensus that babies should sleep alone. and from a quick google search there seems to be a wealth of new research showing that it's actually not good for babies to sleep alone.

i look back at the early settlers and their crazy logic and i say 'bringing foxes to australia!! what were you thinking??!!'

i wonder if our grandkids will look back and say to us 'forcing babies to sleep alone!! what were you thinking??!!'

and the average age for weaning? my little bubble of 'common sense' would tell me 12 months is plenty, but the global 'common sense' turns out to be around 4 years.

so where do we get our crazy common sense ideas from anyway? fill me in if you find out.

ummm... thought i'd better write something since there's now a link to this page?????
hmmm... nothing really in my brain today. maybe i'll post a pic instead.