Category: Our Family

Mittagong

On my last visit to Canberra I took a day out to drive to Mittagong to visit my Grandma. She lives in a very spick and span house on the outskirts of the town. The great boon of the day was driving with my sister the two hours to get there, it was so nice to just be able to chat with her for a couple of hours.

It was also awesome to pop into the Sturt Gallery where my friend, Haeli, has a residency where she is sculpting some giant beasties. I love her artwork. This woman! Somehow she manages to undertake huge artworks whilst having the most chilled out of babies as her constant companion. I am in awe. That was a skill I was never quite able to muster, being perhaps more highly strung…? I don’t know. It is hard to examine oneself. All I know is that this mum does it well and all I can do is admire it from afar.

October 31, 2013
Drawing Together

Being a sick mummy, with sick kiddies I got out of mum’s house for a lie down on the oval.

A fruit picnic, organised by Sophia,

Was followed by some drawing.

Here is moi, complete with 10 finger and 10 toes…and a belly button. She made sure to get my ‘straight’ hair right, and there are rain drops over my head.

Here is Gunny with his characteristically wild hair.

And an accidental selfie which I am including because not many photos of me make it onto the blog – that’s called being a mum for you.

October 10, 2013
Keeping Kids Busy

These last few weeks I’ve felt like a piece of elastic stretched between two incompatible opposites: a child’s world and the world of power tools and sharp, pointy and fragile things.

In between helping build I run to check on children or set them up with some game or something which will keep them busy for a few minutes.

We’ve built a cubby house under a tree where they happily and imaginatively hang out together, set up a playground using things around the yard, encourage lots of sand-pit, collecting and dirt-digging play, but by far the best game we’ve come up with is The Expedition.

Here’s how it goes:

1. Draw a map

2. Make some ‘treasure’. I put two teaspoons into a ‘treasure chest’ which they found in their sandpit then hid two fruit & jelly cups in their cubby house.

3. Hand the map over to the kids

4. Off they go!

July 23, 2013
It’s all an experiment

My dad is getting older (no surprises there) and we are having some great discussions these days all about life. I love the conclusions he is coming to.

Some people seem to go through life and become more and more convinced that what they believe is damn well 100% right and that’s all there is to it (the blinkers slowly close in over the years), other people live and all they really learn is that they really know very little at all. I like this latter kind the best and that is what seems to be happening to dad and I…the more we learn the less we know.

We talked about parenting. There are stacks and stacks of books and books and seminars and classes and methods about how to parent. I have friends whose parenting styles are as different as pigs and bricks.

It’s rather mind boggling and utterly confusing.

There are so many empirical methods with spruikers calling their own methods the one and only from ‘to smack or not to smack’, ‘to cloth diaper or disposable diaper or even to just free-ball it’, ‘to homeschool or private/public school’ and parents agonize over all these little decisions which eventually add up to a life – their precious child’s life! It’s a big deal. And everyone is out there trying to drag parents through their own doors.

But, you know what: the problem offers its own conclusion. There is so much information out there. There are so many different ways of going at it that basically it all boils down to this: Everyone does it differently and raising children is all a big experiment every time around. Infinitesimal variability exists, so why bother over analysing.

From going through the methods (well, just those I’ve managed to get around to) in all their muddy detail I can’t settle on just one. Basically I like this approach: Be as well informed as you can be then just throw the books out the window and do the best you can.

Ultimately that is what we will all have ended up doing. No person will ever parent perfectly (though some delude themselves), and all we can do is simply ‘the best we can’ and then after that we can only admit that we’ve made mistakes and let our children run off and make their own mistakes.

That. Is life.

That brings me to something else I’ve been thinking about and that is that the most important thing for a parent to say to their children (I think it may be as important as ‘I love you’ – because it does in fact demonstrate love.) is: I’m sorry.

‘I’m sorry’ is a perfect little phrase that sums up so much: I’m human too, I make mistakes, I think you are important enough for me to be humble about my failings to, I love you, you’re great and deserve better. That kind of stuff.

And that is the conclusive way to parent your kids.

July 13, 2013
Shots from Above

We’ve had warm sunny days, icy nights, foggy mornings, rainy afternoons. Have been snuggling up, growing antsy, becoming frustrated, playing music, writing stories, drawing pictures, scraping paint, drilling off rivets, cleaning up – many times over, and being torn in two.

If home is where the heart is my home is both here and in Canberra, and so I’m waiting for the reconciliation, which is coming in a few days. I had a near meltdown yesterday and the best thing to do is give myself space and stop putting the pressure on. Sometimes one woman can just not do everything. The most pressure I get is the pressure I put on myself. The pressure to have a clean house, to power down on the bus, to feed everyone, to engage the children, to be putting time into and succeeding at all the things I want to do myself. Letting go of those ambitions can be the hardest. It almost seems as if I would be letting go of myself.

What’s the antidote to this, people?

Maybe I think it could be about enjoying the process. The process of life. And taking note of the detail, like the way the colours play out on a table covered with pencil shavings and pencils, or the steam coming off a pot of porridge, or the pattern created from cut fruit, or the light shining through green glass, or children eating their peas, or my son wearing a fake mo.

And photography is so great at forcing me to recognise and appreciate the small details…though I don’t always like the way it pushes me into spectatorship. Sometimes spectating brings objectivity, so I suppose all things in balance is a good thing.

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I’m meaning to take some photos around here of the houses. As I drive I find myself distracted by the absolute hodge podge of buildings. There are federation style building interspersed with el cheapo weather board. Solid, aging brick and restored relics. I love the absolute variety and the lack of cookie cutter housing plantations that happen in larger cities.

July 1, 2013
Keeping house

It’s been just the kids and I and my little-sister-in-law floating around this gigantic house. We’ve cleaned out the kitchen and I’ve been getting a handle on the old fuel stove. I love these things. They warm the house, heat the water, boil a kettle and can bake and fry all at the once.

June 28, 2013
Canberra Walks

Canberra owns many fine walks.

One of my very favourites is along a road that I used to pedal along as a child.

When my family first moved to Canberra it was during ‘the recession we had to have’ in the early 1990s. So we lived cheap. For the first few years we managed to exist without a car! Just imagine. So we rode everywhere and I am glad we did because those days of riding have become cemented in my memory and those memories are not bad indeed.

We rode, once a week, from Curtin to Yarralumla, where we didn’t cross a road at all, except the one leading to the Governor-Generals house, which is not really a road at all, more like a very long, hot-mixed driveway.

This ‘driveway’, Dunrossil Drive to be exact, has become slightly iconic in Canberra, immortalised in many wedding photographs over the years as about half of them have been taken along the oak and pine forests on either side of the road and very often in the very centre of the road where one gets the classic framing of receding road behind with overhanging Elms on either side. Yes, it’s a lovely picture.

Staying at my Nonnas last week I organised a walk with a couple of friends, new to Canberra and needing to be shown all the iconic spots. This was a good opportunity.

We headed to the Brickworks first, which we found was in fact closed to ‘the public’, and I was glad I had not known that the previous day when I took myself down a dirt track along its side! Ignorance is a friend sometimes.

Into the pine forests of my childhood. They are much sparser now, having been cleaned up following Canberras 2003 bushfires, but still shady and serene.

We stopped many times for children to climb trees and just do what children do.

There are a few patches of land either side of Dunrossil Drive and I was very worried at first, but I thought that surely they wouldn’t strip this beautiful drive of its beauty!? Surely not! And I was right. They are simply replanting.

I really love this photo of Sophia and her friend. They can fight hard sometimes but they love hard too, being pretty similar in nature.

The Royal Canberra Golf Course skirts this drive. That’s where all the posh people play golf.

After coming off Dunrossil Drive you pretty much come to a little wooden bridge straight away. This bridge has essentially remained the same, aesthetically, over all the years I’ve been over it, with a few wooden planks replaced as needed.

It was much safer to peer through the cracks then hang over the edge!

That, friends, is another Canberran icon, Telstra Tower, which looks over all of Canberra like a sentinel. Past the bridge there is a sweet little forest which borders the lake and hides the golf course fence. Bikes zoom past. Serious bike riders. So it was a bit of a hazard with little children buzzing around like little bees.

Coming out of this little forest you come to the grounds of the English Gardens where Sequoias and other very large trees tower, trees that may or may not be cut down very soon in the interests of public safety. For now it is a gorgeous area where there are Mulberry trees, Persimmon trees, Fig trees and Olive trees. There should be more public places where fruiting trees are grown. I really don’t know why fruit trees aren’t planted as a matter of course. We finished this walk so much later than we thought, though it was glorious. The moon sprung up and darkness descended, though walking through the well lit suburbs of scenic Yarralumla was no burden. The houses here are just as delightful as the forest along the lake. In the end my brother picked us up, though I was sure we were only 10minutes from the house!

June 3, 2013
Home Life

Being here is fun.

Dad cracks jokes. We all tease each other and laugh out loud a lot. We communicate what we are trying to get our minds around in this great but small world of ours. We talk about food and movies and art and politics and economics and sustainability and religion and faith. They talk about sport. We fumble over our words, but fill in the gaps naturally – as we all think alike. It doesn’t matter if your words don’t match up to your thoughts. Family is the place to spill these things out. Refine ideas. Practice speaking. There is no safer place and no better place to crash a little and laugh at yourself. Love is all around.

As I listen to them I see myself at that age: passionate, questioning, struggling to come to terms with a world that is not what was expected. And it’s a journey that is all your own. It must come from within. We each must learn our own ways of dealing with life, ways that are unique to each of us.

We sit together in front of the blazing fire which filled the winters of my youth. The fire we cooked fish soup on once, baked apples in tin-foil many times, slow-cooked marshmallows and sometimes crispy fried them in blue flames. They are the younger three and there was some sort of divide growing up. The three eldest stumbled through study, travel, career choices, moving out, relationships, children. We married around the same time, we all have children. I think that these younger ones have learned from us. They saw us blunderbuss our way through our young twenties. They saw us having kids young and, naturally, they have turned their hands to other things. They have learned from our fashion errors. They each dress very well.

The three youngest are comfy here. It’s like a different home. It’s pretty relaxed. Confident, intelligent, attractive, gloriously refreshing. They’re all adults now. I really like them. They are great people. They are fun to be with. I’m really treasuring this time.

It’s not always you can enjoy your original family again when you have begun your own. It’s nice to put the kids to bed each night and have some of the best ‘adult’ conversation you can get on tap – conversation with family, people so connected to you – it’s in the blood.

I’m a lucky girl and I know it.

(I think I’ve finished my essay now. Just some reviewing to do. Time to study for exams! I am loving this study thing. One subject is just enough. I could not do more without regretting the time spent away from my children. As it is I can easily work this in around them with very few babysitting engagements. An important value for me.)

May 14, 2013
Bus Update

I know so many of you want to know how progress on our bus is going and although we are taking bets on when she will actually be ready, I will have you know: things are coming together and we may yet surprise you all…and ourselves.

Here is the children’s playground of choice while Henry and I work. I like having them so near to us while we work and I try to involve them when I can, but when the job involves toxic fumes or power tools then it’s definitely a no-no to even think it.

A big job, which took me all of a day to do, was to get into every crevice and vacuum up the accumulated dust of 35 years. It was only slightly rewarding as most things looked the same after the vacuum.

This has been a time of firsts, first time angle grinding, first time using a table saw, first time drilling, first time belt sanding, first time using that paint chiselling power tool thingummyjig and first time using a rivet gun. Using the rivet gun was rather fun and I now know how rivets work – never knew that before – I likened it to craft, but the boys did not like that at all.

Here below is our fantastic insulation and my(then Henrys takeover) job of riveting a panel BACK ON, no way, we are up to that stage! eee.

My main activity over the past week has been bogging, sanding, vacuuming the floor and then rebogging, resanding, revacuuming the floor.

But, in the end all those patches turned into one large patch of white. A clean slate. That floor is now ready to build onto.

For the moment my driving ‘cab’ now looks like this:

But, be not deceived, this is actual partial progress. Even though this looks worse than it did it is actually better off as it is being improved.

We are now focusing on the roof, here is our ladder to the sky:

Henry’s plans, being sketched out on roof paint, and it did not take him long. In less than a day he designed, drew up and pieced together our decking base. A few days later his mate welded it, and but for a coat of paint on the roof they are ready for installation!

Here are the draws to our bed. Just a’waiting.

Have you ever seen a country home basement?

Well.

Forget Country Style, Real Living or Vogue. This is the real deal:

That is one practical, lived in, full of ‘stuff’ basement.

Dear Aunty Glenda had a home day today and she and the kids curled up and got cosy.

Why so engrossed?

Oh, the one and only of course! They went on their very own ‘Dora’ explore. Glenda drew up a map which even had the Dora formula of three locations: Home. Creek. Park! It was brilliant. Then I joined them and we all went on this explore together. Mid way I asked: ‘Where do we go next?’ and this is when I discovered this map. ‘Wait a minute,’ said Sophia so matter-of-factly, ‘I will just look at our map.’ And so she did and next we had to go over the creek. Which we did. Then we found the creaky, squeaky park and had a play. The kids have been missing our next-door park which we had in Sutton. We were there every evening during Summer, so it’s a big deal not to have one here. Not that there is any lack of fun to be had around these parts.

Finally, today and tomorrow we are doing roof work. We are hoping to get all of this done by about midday tomorrow because…

…these babies arrived today!

Finally! We are a proud Solar Owning Family. It actually feels really good to own our very own power generators. It feels amazing. We were the Computer Generation. Our kids are the Renewable Energy Generation! That is absolutely wonderful.

(a bit squinty, the sun was shining right into our eyes, and right onto those panels, just where we want it.)

May 1, 2013
These days

Last week was a very tiring one. I won’t say ‘the most tiring of my life’ because that would not necessarily be true. There are many momentous moments in life and ones that tucker you out more than moving house like having a new baby – or for that matter just being pregnant, starting a new job, travelling away from home or organising a wedding, but the thing about moving house is that there is very little that is pleasant about it. Sure, perhaps the only good thing is that new house, but it’s just another house. You’ve just changed houses. In our case it’s not yet even another house (or bus, let’s just say), though it is extremely nice to be living in this large house on this large property in rural NSW. The aftermath of moving follows you like a stray dog. That final house inspection, changing addresses with thirty-odd interested parties & unpacking those boxes. I still can’t quite believe that that house I’ve known for so long, those couches, that home of my children’s first years is mine no longer! (Not that it ever truly was.)

With routine and rhythm thrown out the car window as we drove off into the sunset we are facing a varied reality.

Time at mum & dads was brief as we were out at Sutton every day for five days packing and cleaning. Thankfully I managed to spend a bit of time walking with the kids in the bush and on the oval of my youth.

Mum was so good to watch my kids, with no complaints as ever, but by the end she was exhausted. I don’t know if I could’ve done it without that patient help.

We passed this guy as we walked down to the oval. I was struck by his presence as I realised that this fellow, selling ‘fresh flowers’, has been here in his van – possibly even the same van! – every day since I can remember – 20 odd years! It is an anomaly in this day of fast changing, fast paced, high profile, ambitious careers. I was struck and I was also thankful. It is so nice to have something that remains steady and unchanging – even if just for one lifetime.

The end of the week came, house inspection over, I took the kids to see our old house on the way out of town for closure’s sake, and as we headed out we literally drove off into the sunset.

It sunk into me and I thought:

‘This feels good. This is right. This is what we need right now.’

Though it is somewhat bittersweet, with relationships I will miss, people I will long for. I still feel that for me, for my family, this is the logical, natural and proper course forward for us.

I drove away and I felt the walls fall off my life.

April 17, 2013