Dear Wednesday… where have you been? It feels like it should be Friday already. As the end of term three creeps closer, and the lurgies bite, as Winter seems like it may never end (although it almost has) the days begin to drag. But, the top of the hill is here, it’s a short ride to the bottom and the weekend… I can all but hear the collective sigh at that thought…
So, on we go then with this weeks hump day happiness… the time of the week we reflect on what has made us happy the past seven days.
This week I only have one happy. It’s a good one I promise. You see, I have been waiting for this day for just under nine months. I knew it was coming… I have felt feet kicking through a tummy wall… I have kissed a blossoming belly… and I have laughed, and talked, and wished… but yesterday I got the good news… You see my darling friends welcomed a new member to their family. I have written of this family once before, and the loss of their precious Layla. Their big boy has a baby brother… I am an auntie again, and the joy I feel can only be described as love for my friends and their sons. So, that you see is more than enough for me this week. Now, I’m off to sort out flights to wrap my arms around all four of them.
So, that’s all the happy I need this week. Because right now, all is love at my house.
Now over to you… what has made you happy this week?
Happy Hump Day! And welcome to the world little one, you are loved beyond words xxx
N xxx
image
Tags: freindship, hump day, the family that was made, wrapped in love
Earlier this week the Blue Eyed Boy went on school camp. Hubby and the Green Eyed Girl were there to wave him off on the bus while I was at work. I collected the Green Eyed Girl from school at the end of the day and home we went.
On returning home from school there is a flurry of activity, daily chores to be done, afternoon tea to be devoured, homework, screen time. Apart from the natter of how was your day and newsletter reading, permission form filling in, and some homework checking, I have been made redundant in this. Over the past year there has been quite a shift in our home dynamic. The kids have done a lot of growing up. Suddenly the independence and autonomy I had been working towards and sometimes yearning for is here… and as much as I like it, with one child away there was a definite lack of clatter and chat.
The Green Eyed Girl was happily cocooned in head phones and email messaging to a school friend. Tea was sorted. Hubby was working in the cupboard office. As I walked through the kitchen, I had a sudden thought… which I could almost hear pinging off the walls in the oh so quiet house. This is what it’s going to be like when the kids leave home… this rattle and quiet and jobs done…I stopped. I shoved the thought back. I wasn’t ready for it to be a real thought.
Oh, I have plenty of days when I mutter away about please for the love of Pete when will they leave home? But when given a taste (and I know it was a very tiny taste) I am just not sure I’ll be as pleased as I joke I will be. For the first time in eleven years I am aware of a new stage in mothering. The stage where mother bird doesn’t need to be there… the stage when the baby birds have left the nest.
I know this is the way it’s meant to be. I have carefully lengthened and loosened the ties. I know I want independent children who challenge and problem solve and make their own way, even if it is not my way. And I know for sure that the empty nest is still a long, long way off. But this week I have had a glimmer of what that may be like. Perhaps when the time comes I will be a little more prepared.
But I’ll tell you one thing… I sure was happy when the house was full again.
Tags: blue eyed boy, children, green eyed girl, parenting, wrapped in love
As I stood on the escalator going down I looked at the girl in front of me. Tall, thin, confident. She looked back and smiled, and I fell in love all over again.
How could this person I looked at be the babe I bore? How did she get to be this grown?
Stepping off the escalator we walked side by side towards our store of choice.
“Do you want to hold my hand?” I asked.
“Nope, I’m right,” came the reply, without a hint of regret.
I knew this was one of those moments in time that I needed to remember. I wanted to freeze frame it as my heart clenched. I rummaged through my bag to get my iPhone, thinking if I slowed my pace I could take a photo of her from the back… but she slowed to match my speed. I knew that I couldn’t ask her to walk ahead, the self conscious would take over and the photo would be a lie. So I put my phone away.
I know this is a fragment in time. I know that the path is not always like this. I know there is door slamming, and I hate you! Clashing and worry. Anger, hers and mine.
But this moment is none of that. She may not want to hold my hand, but she still wants to walk beside me. For now, that will do.
Tags: green eyed girl, parenting, wrapped in love
Posted by Naomi on Jun 15, 2010 in
Motherhood,
Teaching 
© The Green Eyed Girl 2006
I was asked to write this for Carly at Early Childhood Resources. She was very patient with me… I took a while to do it. Carly asked me to write about my teaching… so without further ado…
People often ask me why I became a teacher, but really I don’t think you become one, I think you just are one. Yes it takes training, study and a lot of hard work to become qualified to be one… and then more work, study and training to keep being one, but to me it’s a calling.
I often joke that I only applied for a Bachelor of Education because my boyfriend at the time was studying it. But really, it’s what I wanted to do… and the boyfriend was gone by the time I filled out uni applications.
Teaching is a joy. It is also hard, tiring, stressful, demanding. Yes, we get our fair share of holidays, but really, I wont insult readers by justifying them. It’s obvious that work does not stop when the classroom door is locked and the lights turned off.
Over the years I have worked as a class teacher and as a reading recovery teacher. I have taught Kinder through to Grade Two on a regular basis and worked with children up to Grade 6. I have been in small rural schools with a total of 96 students from Kinder to grade 6, large children’s services, and city schools.
Most days I love what I do. Seeing children learn to read, write, draw… knowing in some small way I helped… it’s a great feeling. Teaching is a partnership with the child and their family. It would be an arrogant and ignorant assumption if I thought I alone taught a child to write their name or read or count.
I have many, many stories, names and faces that have stayed with me over the years. Some so funny I still cry with laughter, some so sad I still cry at the loss. I have had piglets for show and tell, a puppy that came to stay for the day because it was pining for it’s young owner. I have watched a sea of parents faces as their children line danced on stage… and had to explain to Miss Australia that the little one crawling under the mat at her feet was still getting used to the whole sitting still concept. I have had to hold tight to hands and explain that the bad man with the gun will not come and get us after Port Arthur in 1996. I have locked doors and hoped the police get to the parent in the midst of a custody battle heading our way with a firearm. Which they thankfully did. I have been given gifts, had meals cooked… and there are I don’t know how many photos of me sent to children’s relatives in far off countries.
As the years passed I had my own children. Did this change how I taught? Perhaps, just a little. It may have made me a little softer, but it also made me much more aware of just how capable children are given the chance, and the expectation that they can do it!
But to me, really the greatest thing of all has been the lessons I have been taught. They held me in good stead for when my own children came along. I learnt that children have their own agenda, and their own voice, and their very own time frame for doing things… and that really, we are there to nurture them as they travel their own path… it’s a rambling, winding path, it has hidey holes, and wide open spaces, bumps and detours. But it’s a path I love to be on, sometimes leading the way, sometimes being the follower and sometimes walking hand in hand.
Tags: children, it takes a village
I have been thinking a lot lately about schools, and choices of schools. Location, what each one offers, how it is offered, how staff treat students – are they respectful? Do they let students have a voice? Is staff thinking done inside or outside the box? These are the thoughts that fill my mind. These are some of the key things I look for in a school. The uniform makes no difference to me. The outward appearance of buildings is not on my list of things to look at. I care little about NAPLAN results or the MySchool website. So, how do I know a school is the right fit for each of my children?
Next year is the Blue Eyed Boy’s last year of primary school. The search for a high school is beginning to get underway… very slowly. We need to get this right. He needs a school that will allow him to thrive, follow his interests, encourage him to think for himself, solve problems, and help him find his footing in the adult world. It’s a tall order. But one I expect staff to fulfil. I don’t expect them to do it alone, the line that it take a village to raise a child… it’s overused, but it’s true. For the Blue Eyed Boy that village consists of his parents, his sister, his extended family, his friends, the t.v, movies, books, popular culture, the man at the post office, the neighbours, his team mates and cricket coach to name a few… and his teachers.
The Green Eyed Girl will have three more years if primary school after this year. She has, along with her brother been to two other schools due to relocation interstate. But, I have a nagging unease with the school she is at currently. Thinking outside the box? Not much. Real, honest respect for children and their points of view? Not too sure about that… I know lip service in paid. The expectation that children can be autonomous, independent, self reliant learners choosing their own path with guidance and expert help from teachers? Am I asking too much?
Literacy, maths… the basics are covered. But there is so much more to education. So much more. When I think about the amount of technological change that occurs… the amount of information children have at their fingertips it is amazing. My kids think nothing of taking a USB wrist band to school to show the class photos from the weekend on an interactive whiteboard. I took Holly Hobby swap cards. And really, is it that difficult to think of an activity in the school garden other than spreading mulch for a child with hay fever… surely sweeping, weeding, taking cuttings… being the class documenter with the digital camera seems a better option than choosing a friend and heading indoors to just clean out your desk.
I know I sound like one of those difficult to please parents. But really, I am anything but. It’s just when a school continually lacks the willingness to take on new ideas, well researched, well documented research in the field of education with the old ‘we’ve been doing it this way for the past 15 years, no need to change’ adage I begin to wonder if this is the right school for my child. A child that will not be living in the ‘15 years ago good old days’ but in a world that changes and adapts at an alarming rate! A world where people will most likely change career paths and careers more than once. A world where flexibility, imagination, the ability to think on your feet and adapt will be the order of the day, do I need to look at a different school now? Or do I leave her with a safety net of friendship and familiarity? Will the rest of her village make up for the part the school plays?
I just don’t know…
So, dear readers, I’m asking you… what do you look for in a school? What is important to you? Because in our house, we’re at a cross roads…
Post Script -
Ok I should add a few things… our kids have been in both elite private school and the public system.
Also – I am a teacher as are both my sisters, between us we span from the first to the last year of formal education. I attend professional development through out each year, so the research I talk about, way education is heading nationally, I know about. I think for me, this has made the decision process all that much harder. I have an inside view of the schooling system. Not that it is all that much help all the time! Also there has been somewhat of an exodus from the primary school by other families. I have been reluctant to leave because I want to know if we do decide to move our daughter we do it for her, not because other families are. For our son, the choice of high school is less problematic, but still a hard choice.
Also, there are some wonderful staff at the school. Wonderful. But when they are outweighed by negatives… I wonder if it’s worth it.
Image source
Tags: it takes a village, my school website, NAPLAN, never say never
Posted by Naomi on May 27, 2010 in
Motherhood,
random sweet nothings... 
This morning I tweeted this…
It is a moment I will always remember.
Today as I dropped the kids at school 11yo son glanced back at me & smiled a goodbye. In that smile I caught a glimpse of the man he will be. It stopped my heart, just for a moment.
Sometimes I wish I could bottle these moments…
Image source
Tags: blue eyed boy, twitter, wrapped in love
Here we are at the top of the hill, ready to run full tilt down to the weekend…
It’s the time of week I like to reflect on the past seven days and see what has made me smile. It’s so easy to think of the not so happy moments, so, as we celebrate the middle of the working week and the promise of the weekend, lets remember the things that made us happy.
For me this week it was the happiness on The Green Eyed Girl’s and The Blue Eyed Boy’s face when their Granny arrived for a short visit.
It was the extra 1k I ran on a cool Autumn evening.
It was the light bulb moment when I understood what a child in my class with English as a second language meant, and we both breathed a sigh of relief! (It was a peacock by the way!)
It was the pride BestPam shared with me in a photo of her eldest in their first inter school cross country.
So, what made you happy this week?
PS next week I’m going to add a Linky tool so you can add your own posts too! xxx
Image Source
Tags: hump day
Posted by Naomi on May 18, 2010 in
Motherhood 
When I brought home my first baby over 11 years ago we had an old leather couch that we held up with a plank of wood and some magazines, along with two club lounge chairs. Neither were all that comfy for breast feeding. At first, I found it too hard to feed sitting up in bed… all that elbow dropping, and shoulder relaxing, and sweat, and milk…
My Hubby’s grandmother gave me a chair to feed in. It’s well worn wood, soft with age cradled my arms at just the right height so I, in turn, could cradle my babe as he fed. I loved the chair. Many a day was spent gazing at my Blue Eyed Boy through a milky haze of love and sleeplessness sitting in the chair. I have a memory, and a video, of that chair and my boy on his first birthday… of him peeking out from behind a cream knitted blanket hanging over the chair as a friend fed her new born. It was a chair feeding mothers gravitated towards.
When the Green Eyed Girl was born, she too spent much time with me in the chair, often with her big brother near by. The three of us, in our little bubble of home and togetherness, play school and snatched sleep.
We called it the feeding chair. We still do.
‘Mum! – Where’s my coat?’
‘You left it on the feeding chair!’
I have wiped it’s soft wood from time to time, but hidden in it’s simple curves, tucked in carved crevices are tiny spots of milk… they serve as a reminder of a time now passed… of the days when I was their only world. When they were mine. I will not wipe those spots away. They have become part of the story of the chair itself.
Days, sometimes weeks will go by when it is nothing more than a piece of furniture, piled with coats, bags, cushions. Then, one day as I walk past I remember and a nostalgic wave of mother love washes over me. I remove the day to day life, just for a little while to indulge in reminiscence, a little time away from now. Then, before I know it, the coats are back, and the chair is tucked back in my memory waiting to make me smile another day.
Image source
Tags: blue eyed boy, parenting, wrapped in love
Posted by Naomi on May 11, 2010 in
Motherhood 
So, a few days ago it was Mothers Day. I like Mothers Day. I do. Really, it’s just that… well… sometimes I wonder what it’s all about. Each year it seems to become more and more commercial. Each year it seems to get bigger and I can’t help but wonder if this is what it’s really all about. Because here’s the thing… to me Mothers Day is about family, and saying “Hey, thanks Mum, for being Mum…” To me it’s not about expensive gifts, elaborate gestures… and really, are we as mums putting extra pressure on our own children to be, on this day, perfect? Are we???
No one is perfect. No one. Not me, not my Mum, not my kids… I stuff up… a lot. I can be a right impatient, stroppy cow of a mother. I love my Mum more than I can say, and as I get older, I love her with more appreciation and respect, I’m a mum now too, and I am beginning to understand just what it was like for her with three young children to bring up, and let me just say she did an amazing job. Amazing.
But should Mothers Day be any different to any other day? Really, should it? I just don’t know. I said in yesterdays post, what a perfect Mothers Day I had, and I did. Why? Because there was no pretence, there was no pressure. The house was a mess, there was (and still is) a huge pile of washing to fold that spills from not one but two baskets. I went with the Green Eyed Girl to run in the Mothers Day Classic. When we came home I cooked my girl and me bacon and eggs. Then I went to finish a uni assignment. In the afternoon Hubby and kids went for a walk and watched a movie while I typed away at the computer. And it was the best Mothers Day I have ever had.
There was no expectation that the day was going to be wonderful and full of happy family picture perfect moments. There was no pressure on any one to make the house tidy for me… we all live here, we all contribute to the mess, and to the cleaning up. My Hubby and kids had not been off to the nearest shopping centre to get me the latest thing I wanted (and believe me there are plenty of things I want.) This is not an anti consumerist rant, I’m as consumerist as the next person. It’s just that I think somewhere along the way the true meaning of Mothers Day has been lost.
Surely the simple things in life are what the day should be all about. And really, my kids don’t get enough pocket money to buy me the perfume I really want, or the new GHD I crave. But, what they do have, is the thought, the creativity and the love to make me their own cards, their own poems, and choose from the school fund raising stall items they really think I want. Chosen with all the love and care two children can muster… enough to fill me with love for them over and over.
Perhaps, for me, that’s what Mothers Day is… to remind me of the unconditional love my children have for me, and that I have for them.
So, my Green Eyed Girl and my Blue Eyed Boy, thank you for reminding me that really, (in the words of a favourite movie) Love actually is all around.
Image source
Tags: blue eyed boy, children, green eyed girl, parenting, wrapped in love
Posted by Naomi on Apr 12, 2010 in
Family,
Motherhood 
Dear Blue Eyed Boy,
Hi, it’s Mum here. You used to call me Mama more than you do now, and before that you called me mum-mum-mummmm in one long word that filled my heart. The years have flown. For a long time we thought we may never have you. It seemed everyone, including a cat could have a baby, just not me. But I dreamt of you, and you came, not when we were ready, but when you were.
So, after tears, and heartbreak, and wanting, you came. I remember the first time I felt you move, little somersaults at morning tea in the staffroom. I remember saying to Dad that although we had a long list of girls names, it was boys names we needed to choose.
I grew along with you, I could eventually hold your foot through my belly wall. I had a thing for Madonna’s Ray of Light album, after you were born so did you… Faithless was also high on our CD stacker, and Gorillaz who are still your favourite band. No wonder you can keep a beat, no wonder when you were a toddler you only walked in time to the music at home, or in department stores… no wonder you still do.
One Monday, eleven years ago, at 6am, 2 days past your due date, I woke with slow, stretching pains… not much, but enough to know this was it. Your Dad stayed home that morning, then at lunch time your Granny popped in… I didn’t talk to her much, I was concentrating on other things. At midnight I rang the midwife, I was so tired, things were going so slowly, so we drove down to see her… then drove home again, to get some sleep, which did not come. At 7am on Tuesday I rang again, tired, emotional, dehydrated, sleepless.
Then, Tuesday, 11.20 am you were here, warm, and wet, and crying on my chest. Ten fingers, ten toes. The smell of you was intoxicating. My blue eyed boy.
I have a mash of memories warming me as I write, like the time you first smiled, or that laugh you still have. The way you walked, holding the arches from the play gym behind you, always looking at things from left of centre. Then today, on the way home from school you said you had been thinking about all the things that we just can’t avoid, like death, and mistakes, and growing up. Or the way you include all the kids at school, because, Mum, to not…well, thats exclusion and that’s not fair.
I know of your inner sense of justice, your wanting for the world to be kind and fair. Your ambition, when just 5 was to be in government and have a big megaphone at tell all the world to just stop the wars. But you also love Star Wars, and learning about the history of the two World Wars. You know names, and dates, and types of tanks. You talk about the way the soldiers felt, the way the people living in the war zones must have felt.
You love to draw, my blue eyed boy, and you read, and read, and read. You said that Einstein was right, because he said imagination was more important than knowledge, and I agree whole heartedly.
So, my boy, never change, never stop thinking, never stop feeling like you do.
Happy 11th Birthday.
Love Mum xxx
Tags: blue eyed boy
