the wee birthday girl

Charlotte had her 2nd birthday today and we celebrated with cake and plenty of time for her to play with friends.

Ruby has been preparing for it over the last few days and although I wasn't really in the mood and I could have chosen to do a hundred other things I let go and celebrated Charlotte's birthday too.  

There may not be many more.

Ruby tells me she notices that her friends play less than they used to: they seem to play less and want to talk more she says. 

She's halfway through nine so I guess it's to be expected. 

Nevertheless there is sadness for Ruby in growing up and the prospect of losing this safe, innocent imaginary world which has been her constant companion throughout her childhood.

We reassure her that she will never lose this world, just as we never lose our childhood. 

We tell her that her imaginary play will enrich her entire adulthood.

We tell her that her relationship with Charlotte will always comfort her, where ever it is she goes in her life. 

We tell her this and yet we also know that as she spirals out and grows, slowly other interests will push her imaginary world to the periphery.

We know all of this and so continue to take seriously the role that Charlotte has in our life.

We know this and happily continue to place play at the centre of our lives.

Happy Birthday sweet Charlotte.

marking the turn

Grab baby and baby carrier, a basket and a pair of secateurs.

Go outside.

Look around and notice the colours, textures and shapes of your local flowers and foliage.

Pick and choose.

Cut and gather.

Wreaths from last year, looping into another round this year

We make wreaths throughout the year, Autumn, in Winter, in the Spring, and the Summer as a way of marking the turning of the year and bringing the beauty of the natural world inside.
Beauty brings peace and joy and connects me up.
To lay my eye on beauty in the midst of the creative chaos our home can reflect during the day, can help me avoid a mini-meltdown ;)

Spread out, place and bind and mark the beginning of the Christmas season and the lead up to Summer Solstice in nature, at home with your family.

The best way to begin.

the spring fair

Yesterday we spent the day at our favourite Spring fair yesterday at the local Steiner School.  

I've been coming to this fair for many years. 

When I was at university I had good friends who had young children and we would sometimes go together and other times I would go by myself, sure to bump into friends there and just for the good vibe.

At that stage I didn't want to have children - I know, that's another story:) - but I always appreciated the feeling that here was a place that was a sort of sanctuary for children. This sense of a sanctuary wasn't a a precious, holier-than-thou feeling but was reflected in the gentleness of the activities, the homegrown creativity in the stalls and the warmth and openess of the people who were present.
Now, 20 years later, I find myself having come full circle, with young children of my own and still greatly appreciating these same qualities.

her seventh

While I was away from here Sky turned 7.
For us, seven (rather than 5) seems quite a turning point and a more fitting age to mark the end of the early years of childhood (I have written about this before, here) and so we like to make their 7th birthday a little extra special.
A little extra special may not look like what a lot of families would call extra special. There is no "buy in" birthday entertainment, we don't do goodie bags, there isn't a long trail of children with endless prearranged activities.
My girls have been to a few of those, they don't enjoy them, they mostly feel disappointed that they don't get to play. I think what they miss is the connection which deep play brings.

Instead we have our faithful birthday rituals - the poem the night before, the tray, candle and crown in the morning while they wait in bed. 

These, I am certain, are the things they will remember about their birthdays - they love them so.
We also spend all day together each year and try to hold the sense of occasion without falling prey to having to fill all the spaces with hype - as with most things, consumerism seems to have ripped the heart out of what a connecting birthday celebration might be.
Being present with each other, feeling loved and having fun are our priorities.

One of Sky's favourite things is to be making art and so she invited an artist friend to spend the morning with her making art. In the afternoon she had invited her favourite friend for a tea party.
They had prepared for the big day by choosing a few special pieces of recently acquired jewelery of my Nana's the previous day. They also chose their outfits, the serviettes and the tea cups.
The sense of occasion was set.
Her day was a beautiful day.

A fishing hook was what Sky had repeatedly told me she wanted for her birthday. 

Yes, really, just the one.

The embarrassing story is that she had got a fishing rod for her 6th birthday but we had never managed to actually go fishing! A whole year and the rods remained dusty and unused. 

No excuses here but we really had no idea where to start. Bait? Hooks? Tides? Dealing with a fish with a hook in it's mouth! We thought that the fishing rod might give us the prod we needed. 

Apparently not.

And so this year we called on the help of Grandad and when we visited Wellington again last week, Grandad took us fishing.

Sky was delighted, as was Grandad.

spring equinox

Friday night we celebrated Spring Equinox.

Right on the balance of light and dark, halfway between Summer and Winter Solstice.

I have been impatient for my rise in energy since the first signs of Spring appeared - my own (lack of) energy became magnified as the flamboyance of Spring appeared all around me, particularly in my garden.
I expected to burst forward like bulbs pushing through the earth.
Instead I have been more tired than I have been all Winter. After two months of predawn rising for a joint session of yoga with Gunter, we both went for a slide in energy and perseverance; Gunter with a cold and I with an injured shoulder.
This slide coincided with the entrance of Spring and so I have felt out of kilter with the seasonal shift.

And then I recognised around the fire on Friday night that this feeling just might be an annual reoccurance.

Although there is a shift early in Spring, it is more subtle in me than it is in the world around me.

There are a few little projects germinating in my life right now, but there's really still not much to see for them. 

Seeds for our garden have been sown but are not in full swing yet.

It is really not until the equinox that I feel the noticeable rise in energy in myself.

It's always reassuring.

saturday night

A winter celebration shared with friends makes it that much sweeter.
Tissue lanterns; glowing orbs floating in the darkness.
Walking down to the water and back again.
Carrot cake at the wharf.
Perfect.

blue sky and a tree

Blue sky and a tree. 

Bark to be precise, to make bark boats. Yes, in winter.

Blue sky because I have missed it so.

Miserable weather pushes patience up the queue of life lessons to work on.

A blue sky day brings relief from such things.

A morning stirring up solutions and hoping for crystals (inspired by the inspiring youngest of the chaos team) and lantern making in preparation for Saturday night's solstice celebrations with friends including the annual lantern walk.

An afternoon of Winter wreath making and sunshine absorption.

May happiness and freedom be yours.

Happy Winter Solstice

snow

Yesterday brought us winter making an utterly dramatic and stunning entrance into our lives.
Snow enough to play in all day along with Gunter getting to stay at home. Added to this was a
birthday cake made solely by Ruby for me.
What a perfect  beginning of another cycle around the sun.

What was especially exciting though was giving the girls their new babies.
I have been working on them for a while now.
Introducing Holly and....well, Ruby doesn't want to feel rushed with naming her wee one.
I am so happy with them and the girls adore them.
Especially the hair it seems.

I have wanted to make these for the girls for a long time (since they were wee themselves) and, well it just didn't happen. 

I'm generally not a "learn from the book" kind of girl. I was certainly inspired by this book many years ago but that didn't translate into actually making a start.  I'm fairly strongly kinaesthetic and so like to get started on new things alongside someone and with my hands engaged.  Without my friend A, I may never have made these girls and certainly not to the same standard. Thank you A for all your experience, materials, time and wisdom. 

Now I would like to make more - there is certainly something special about making these dear dolls.

As I was finishing on their wardrobe basics I wondered about when I could give them. We don't just give presents willy-nilly here, we save them for special occasions but all their special occasions felt too far away.  That is until I thought of my birthday.

My birthday seemed to be the perfect time to gift these to the girls.

In these dolls was stitched and stuffed threads of love for the girls and my family and in the giving of these dolls, I got it all back as the perfect present on my 43rd birthday.

Thriving.

Wasn't it our feminist foremothers who reminded us that all the best (as in real and sustaining) (r)evolutions happen around the kitchen table.

Well, right now, making, constructing and building is all high on the interest list and it all tends to happen at the kitchen table.

(R)evolutionaries in the making.

To give you a taster, this is how it goes most mornings right now:

Sky: Before breakfast has been eaten, just about to begin playing the piano.

" Mama, I love Brownie( the horse) but can I make a unicorn today after I do this."

Mama: smiling at her enthusiasm but all the while scuffling around my head to check that this idea will work for me.

"Yep I think that will work. I'll get you some breakfast, you play some piano, and then we can take the next step."

And so, yesterday we made a good start on two unicorns. Of course Ruby jumped on board the moment we began.

Sky drew the head, I helped her enlarge it.

We chose some fabric, a perfect fluffy cream from my Nana's fabric hoard. As we cut into it, I talked to my girls about their great-Grandmother who had died before they were born and about the path the fabric has taken to get to our table. It was good to have the opportunity to share the stories and we all felt great to at last put he fabric to excellent use.

Then we cut, we pinned, they figured the mane and then sewed it all together.

We then chose buttons for the eyes - always the most time consuming of the tasks.

We reluctantly put them aside but planned to finish them today - there wasn't much to do.

And so to this morning: the postie arrives at the door with a parcel - an Easter parcel full of goodness and love from their cousins.

Ruby: "Ok, I want to make them a box full of goodies Mama. I can give them one of my eggs and stitch them a rabbit. "

Mama: hesitating for a moment (doing the internal check),"We have 2 hours before the post office closes at 12pm (and then, gaining confidence as I remember the blown eggs we painted just a couple of days ago) but I think we can do it."

And the spiral of creating, mess making, telling stories and problem solving started again.

This morning a concrete cutter worked on earthquake damage next door. We turned up the music and danced while we stitched.

Uni the Unicorn (Sky likes simple names) will wait in the push chair for another day.

(old woolen blankets - a wonderful resource)

If you need a curriculum, make it your child.

Listen. Surrender. Set the boundaries that you need, if need be.

Dive in.

Accept that thriving is the new normal.

Autumn

Today is community garden day - Harvest celebration day - I think we are making bulk sauerkraut. We also have piano. There will be a library visit and I'll try for a bit of horse manure collecting as well.

Hmm, we'll see how it goes.

Wednesday is one of our "out" days, in other words, our car day. We try and make the most of it.

Amongst all of that we will also acknowledge the Equinox - the balance of light and dark.

• Noticing the dark rushing into to fill the evening time and enjoying more space in the evening as the girls head into sleep earlier.
• Watching the kereru fatten up on the cabbage tree seeds.
• Savoring every warm day we get so as we can feel prepared for the coming season.
• Squeezing in more and more autumnal goodness onto the seasons' table - it always gets so full at this time of the year.
• Collecting herbs for to make strengthening tea and brewing honey syrup to strengthen the hive in time for Winter.
• Bringing in food from the garden every day and running out of preserving jars as I always do at this time of the year. Where do they go during the year?
• Clearing vegetable beds and building composts.
• Planning in my head garden extensions for next season.

Today we will forage a little, eat cake and share the gratefulness we feel for all that we have from this good earth.

We might plant something - I'm not sure what yet, perhaps some seedlings, perhaps a wee tree that has been waiting, whatever we have. We'll try to plant whatever it is with intention, as a gift back, in the spirit of reciprocity.

Our humble acts that we make through the year to acknowledge the shifting seasons have slowly evolved with our family and continue unfolding. Most importantly for me they nurture our relationship to the good earth.

Mostly we have made it up as we have gone along.

It's always a good reason to eat cake.

Happy Autumnal Equinox to you and your families.

writing it down.

Why do it?

I guess it's because
if you don't write it down
tell it to your neighbour
plant it in the ground
it all just slips away

which is where
it's going anyway
but we want, at least
to feel some friction.

by Vaughan Gunson

And so I have made a return to writing. I have missed it but then again didn't miss the time inside in front of the screen nor the stream of late night writing sessions.

To make a return is somewhat of a relief.
During my years as a mama of younger children, imagining the life I wanted to cultivate for our family and consuming books on non-coercive parenting and living without school, I stumbled upon a few blogs on the internet.

I remember coming across Miranda's blog; it was like finally finding an ally as well as a mentor all rolled into one. She had older children and seemed to deeply trust them. She enjoyed the fabric of their days together and wrote about learning in a way that made sense to me. I drank deeply from her well of experience at that time.

Lori's blog was one of those early touchstones too.

In the beginning reading these blogs helped me build belief and confidence in my vision for my family and our learning journey. What their days looked like resonated more with me than anything I could see in my daily life. Without their writing I may have made a different decision and I'm so glad I didn't.

I love the place my family is right now. Our lifestyle reflects our deepest values: that our youngest citizens have the right to freedom in childhood; that deep, meaningful relationships are more important than any well-meaning curriculum statement; that healthy communities depend on these deep rich relationships; that authentic experiences grow stronger people than those experiences that are contrived and that children with a deeper understanding of themselves and their relationship with the Earth will be better prepared to face future challenges.

A lifestyle in step with your values is deeply satisfying; there is a peace that comes with such a good fit.
That is all to say that I am deeply grateful to those people who have written words that have given me the courage to remain true to my own path and now I write to add texture and depth to the larger collective human story.
To write it down is to somehow claim a little space in this collective story if not for anything other than to, in the words of Vaughan Gunson in the poem above, "create a bit of friction."
Today was a good day; it didn't rain which gave us a bit of a head start on some other days this week and it was our dear Charlotte's first birthday. The party was a hit and they all the babies had a ball although Charlotte needed a long nap in the afternoon after all the hooplah. Ruby's birthday card to Charlotte read "I love you. Thank you for the magik I have got now."

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I'm posting over at lyttel-town blog again too... yep, riding the writing wave while the surf's up you might say. Local, grassroots community regeneration Lyttelton style and nice clip on cultivating gratitude originally found here.

taking time to remember.

We took time today to celebrate the life of Wangari Maathai.

After hearing about her death from a friend's comment on my last post (thanks N) it's what naturally unfolded for us today.

I continue to enjoy and appreciate how celebration and rememberance springs forth from what is current in our lives or what catches our interest.

When so often it seems like time is the most scarce resource in people's lives right now, it is such a privilege to have the time to follow what appears ahead of us.

We celebrated in some of the ways we know how: we talked and read and sang and skipped and drew and watched some footage.

We lit a candle.

We might have planted a tree but we didn't. We happened to have planted a mandarin the day she died. That was the tree for her.

As I have said here before, I love my girls being immersed in stories of women with such power and clarity so you can imagine my response when Ruby declared we would save to buy Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai.

She figures if she can't meet this woman then she wants to at least watch a movie about her.

Surprisingly I have no qualms with that!

"life happens....

...when you are making other plans."

Like earthquakes - a few big ones that brought down our city and town, and thousands of small ones.

Like good friends moving away.

Like stitching thousands of hearts on a street corner for weeks just for the sake of sharing a little kindness.

Like moving and then (in a couple of weeks) taking a deep breath and moving back again because there is nothing a family can do with their current home's owner returning, a tricky section and the "no-go-further-land-investigation-needed" white zone.

Last weekend was the first anniversary for the first earthquake.

I'm not big on anniversaries but a lot has happened in our lives here in the Canterbury area since last September and it sure is nice to stand alongside a community of people who have been through the same thing and mark it together.

We gathered in the Spring sun, ate shared food, played music and stitched medals.

The medals were a variation on the hearts and acknowledged in a fun way our bravery and sheer stickability.

And here's the thing; major earthquakes are, well, major.

They kill people, damage families, bring down homes and split people's hearts open.

They don't happen every day.

Thankfully, we have had the time to fully take part in this significant year in our lives.

We have had time to engage in many, many ways with each other, our neighbours and our wider community around us.

We have had the freedom to take and create our own meaning from it all.

I'm so very grateful for that.

** I think Bob Dylan originally said the quoted line, but don't quote me on that.