Giving thanks

I've had a bit of a difficult fortnight, with issues to resolve with siblings and siblings-in-law. No.6 reckons it's the time of year. "I hate Christmas," she said. "This shit always happens at Christmas."

She doesn't really hate Christmas, just family discord. And two of the three issues that needed negotiating had nothing to do with Christmas. (Nope, one was the other big conflict-causer, weddings, and the other was that age-old issue, respecting people's boundaries.) But she had a point, it can be a difficult time of year for families, and there is often conflict.

So I am grateful at this time for the lovely American tradition of giving thanks, to remind me to stop and think about all that for which I am thankful. I am so lucky to have so much family, and for them all to be close enough and caring enough that these difficulties arise at all. Because a relationship that never throws up conflict to resolve is probably not one worth having. So I am thankful for my siblings, my step-siblings, and my siblings-in-law, this huge family, this massive group of peers with whom I am sharing this amazing time in my life.

And of course this year I am especially thankful for my beautiful baby girl, who is sleeping soundly beside me. So let's celebrate with a few pictures.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends, and anyone else who feels like giving thanks today xxx

Follow *your* dreams

A few more thoughts for the Reclaiming Wife / "being a wife *and* a mum *and* me" discussion...

I have a whole bunch of hopes and dreams, none of which I intend to give up for my husband or children. Some of my dreams will be postponed, some of them will change completely, but it will server neither my husband nor my children well for me to give up my dreams to devote my life completely to being their mother. (I think we all know the husband or child of a woman who has done this, and in my experience they always wish she hadn't.) My relationship with Nate has, over the years, changed some of my ambitions, or, more accurately, mostly added new ones. I expect motherhood to do the same.

Becoming a mother has always been my biggest goal. (As a child I never dreamt of a partner, certainly not a husband or a wedding, I just skipped straight to the babies.) This, however, does not make me any less of an intelligent, educated, interested or interesting woman. In fact, I am losing my mind with people asking me "how's motherhood?" I know they mean well, but I am dying for someone to ask me what I think about the situation in Afghanistan, or at least how I think benefits and taxes should work for parents. My role as a new mother may be the most important thing in my life right now, maybe so for the rest of my life, but that doesn't make it my only interest.

It was never a big dream of mine and Nate's to travel. I know, shocking, right? Young, middle class westerners who don't want to see the world! Well, it's not exactly that we don't want to see the world, and we've both been lucky in how much we have already travelled, both separately and together, but travel is not a priority of ours. I'm a home-loving kind of girl and Nate would rather focus our funds on ensuring our financial security for the future. Lots of our friends have travelled more than us, very few have any chance of having a mortgage paid off before they retire. I am not saying one is better than the other, but the reality for most people is that you can't have both. Different dreams, both still dreams.

I hear so much talk about women putting off motherhood because they want to focus on their careers, or travel, or whatever else first. That is great if it works for them, but I think that talking about it this way can sometimes add to the discourse that implies that once you become a mother you give up all your dreams, that you'd better have your career/travel now, because once the children come along, you'll have to devote the entirety of the rest of your life to them and you'll have no time to do the things that make you happy. I have also heard it suggested that young mothers are unambitious, even that they have children because they don't want careers, or can't think of anything else to do.

Let me assure you this is not the case. I wrote before about why we decided to have a baby now, but here are the two main reasons:

1) As above, it was my main goal, probably the one thing in our lives that Nate and I were most excited about doing. We didn't want to wait. (See Meg's post about Lauren's professor: "My best marriage advice for you is to never, ever put off what you want to do. No matter how good the excuses seem, or how little money you have, or how practical it would be to wait- don't wait.")

2) Lots of women put off motherhood because they want to focus on their careers. I decided to have children young for exactly the same reason. I want to spend the rest of my twenties (and some of my thirties, depends how many kids we have!) focusing on the children during their preschool years, so that I can get back to my career, and all my other hopes and dreams, while I am still relatively young. Your own life does not end when you have kids.

As my mother (SAHM to six children, followed by very successful and fulfilling career) would say: there are many ways to skin a cat. It breaks my heart to see women criticising other women, making judgements about the choices they make as wives and mothers. Whether you choose to travel or not, have your children young or wait, stay at home taking care of them or go out to work, none of these things necessarily say anything about your hopes and dreams.

To quote Meg again, who started this discussion and is doing a fantastic job of keeping it going: Having babies, or not having babies, moving to the suburbs or not moving to the suburbs, buying a house or not buying a house, but doing what's right for you, and not losing yourself in your new married life? *That's* what I'm talking about.

Cousins

Long-time readers will remember that, a month before our wedding, Nate's sister Feline announced her pregnancy. We had just two weeks previously decided that we would start trying for a baby as soon as we were married. Once we got over the initial shock, we were absolutely delighted that our new addition would have a cousin so close in age, and that we would get to share the parenting journey with Feline and her boyfriend, now fiancé.

Side note: he proposed in the most adorable way, on their nine-year anniversary, by dressing the baby in a babygro emblazoned, "Mummy, will you marry Daddy?"

Oh, another side note: Feline, my brothers no.3 and no.4, and our good friend G$ all got engaged in the space of a month this summer. Then my step-sister Milky got engaged too a couple of weeks ago. Apparently we started a trend! It is actually G$ and Elisa's wedding day today; they are still on their travels and tying the knot alone on a beautiful Pacific island. Sigh...

Anyway, our new house is just around the corner from Feline's and we usually get together about once a week now, so Talia and her cousin see a lot of one another and we're all hoping they'll grow up to be very close. Having a niece who is 19 weeks older than my own daughter gives me an interesting insight into the developments that feel a long way off now but are really just around the corner. And the hand-me-downs are great too!

Talia has started taking an interest in her reflection now, and smiled at the baby in the mirror the other day. And, as you can see, she finds her cousin quite fascinating too.

What a year!

From this...

...to this...

We celebrated our first wedding anniversary with a lovely dinner in the posh part of town where we used to live in this time last year, when we were trendy young renters, and for a couple of hours we almost felt like DINKYs again. I have become more accustomed to leaving Talia for a couple of hours now, and was able to completely relax and enjoy myself this time, and remember how much I just plain love going out for dinner with my husband, always have.

It has been a crazy year, and when conversation turned to our honeymoon, Nate said, "that feels like about five years ago now!" and I couldn't help but agree. Doing a wedding, a pregnancy, a house purchase, renovations, and a new baby all in one year is, quite frankly, a little bit mental. But I love where it's landed us, and I wouldn't have wanted to do any of it with anyone else.

So happy anniversary to us! Here's to many more years, most of them, hopefully, at a slightly slower pace...

"Kiss her first"

At bedtime a couple of weeks ago, Talia wouldn't settle. It was one of those evenings when the only thing that calms her down is being flown around the room like Superman, and every time we sat down she started crying again. I tried talking to her in a low, calm voice. I told her about when she was breech, and I turned her. It worked.

As soon as I stopped talking, though, she was fussing again. "I'm too tired to think of things to say!"

"Tell her a story, about a little bear," Nate suggested.

I'm not very good at making it up as I go along. "Little bears are your thing," I said.

So Nate started reading aloud from his book, which she loved. She calmed down and started feeding, eyes wide open, listening to her father's voice.

He was reading a book I bought him for his birthday, two days before Talia was born, Dad Rules: How my children taught me to be a good parent, by Andrew Clover. It is a hilarious and very honest account of fatherhood, and we soon got into a routine, settling down in bed together, him reading aloud to us as Talia nurses.

A couple of nights ago we reached a part in the book that fit so nicely with the discussion about the parenting part of 'Reclaiming Wife,' both here and over at A Practical Wedding, I thought I would share it with you:

Saturday morning. I'm at Gatwick airport, on my way to Canada. I watch a dad come out of Arrivals. Girl runs over. Dad kisses girl. Boy runs over. Dad beams, and picks up boy. Mum arrives. Dad kisses her briefly. They walk off. I'm thinking: NOOO, you fool! Kiss her first. Obviously, she's not as cute as them: that's WHY you must kiss her first.

Exactly. I can't think what might have a greater effect on my daughter's happiness right now (or for a good few years to come, actually) than her mum and dad's happiness. Which is why my husband and I will be doing our damndest to kiss each other first, put each other first, put our marriage first.

And then we'll pile all our love and kisses on the baby. Because she is indeed an awful lot cuter than either of us, very cute indeed.

Happy Halloween!

Hope you all had a fab night...

...lots of love from Cate and Pumpkin xxx

In the meantime, more pictures

Guys, when I find the time to write, I'm concentrating on the birth story. There's plenty of other stuff I want to tell you about, but I'm making myself focus on that. I want to get it all down while it's still reasonably fresh, for those of you who are interested (I was hooked on birth stories when I was pregnant) for Talia when she's old enough to read it, and for me.

The thing is, it's taking forever. I don't get to (or want to) sit at my computer for hours on end these days. And this is the most important story I have ever written. So bear with me, I hope that by taking the time to do it properly I will make it better for you as well as us.

So, thank you for your patience, and my apologies to those of you whose questions have gone unanswered lately. One I will answer here is about how we pronounce Talia. It's TAH-li-a, as in Natalia. (In my 'r-less' English accent, the first syllables of her forenames rhyme, so Talia Scarlett is TAH-li-a SKAH-lut.)

Finally I must welcome my new followers. I'm trying to focus on quality over quantity these days, but I do blog occasionally! I hope you'll stick around.

Ok, in the meantime, more pictures. You wanna see some pictures, right?!

No.6, no.3, no.2 and no.4, all doting on their niece. (No.1 dotes on her too, but he was in the garden. We didn't set this photo up, I found like them like this, sharing for the first time their experience as uncles and aunts.)

Grumpy bear. (She actually loves the bear suit and the bouncy chair. It was probably the time of day that was disagreeing with her. She seems to be coming out of the evening-hating phase now though, which is nice.)

Ah, sleepy bear. That's what we like to see. More of that in the evening next please, Talia.

Most of her clothes came from Freecycle or were hand-me-downs, so she wears a lot more pink than she would if I were doing the shopping. That's why I love this orange top her aunty Birdy bought her, and when she wore it with these little trousers I found on eBay, I couldn't stop photographing her.

The buttons have little anchors on them! So cute!

I love this one. It feels like a glimpse into the future, like she'll look at me like this many, many times over the years.

Everyone comments on what an expressive face she has. Right from birth she had made these hilarious expressions of extreme emotion, first in her sleep then increasingly while awake. My mum has a theory that she is practicing every face she will ever make. I am wondering whether she might one day be a stage actor.

Lots of her faces involve raising her eyebrows, which reminds me, seeing the way our genes have combined is fascinating. She appears to have my eyebrows, but she can raise one without the other like her father. And she definitely has my hair (which is all falling out like mine did, *cry*) but her crown is right off to one side while both her parents' are in the centre.

This is my favourite of the many photos I have taken of her with Nate. He had just called me downstairs because her back-opening sleepsuit had got the better of him. (He is forever popping her clothes up wrong.) When I had finished taking photos and laughing at him, I showed him how it worked. Five minutes later Talia threw up all over it and he had to start again! Ah well, he needs the practice...