Six words

Rachael recently attempted to summarize her life in six words. After reading her post I attempted a simplified task of describing the last few years of my life, as everything before childbirth feels so distant and slightly unreal. Yesterday, while unable to sleep due to the milliard thoughts running through my tired head, I finally came up with:
Emotional rollercoaster aggravated by sleep depravation.

“A bit dramatic” my husband would probably say amusedly and I agree, but it isn’t easy to think of six right words. Why don’t you try?

Hi

I disappeared from blogging again, didn’t I (at least the verbal, non photo type one)? I needed to be silent, to think, to adjust to the new life circumstances. I gave myself a week to plan and to finish off few non-urgent chores that were sitting at the bottom of my task list for too long. And somehow one week turned into two and I started to get frustrated at my perceived lack of progress. I have the tendency to focus on things not done slighting my own accomplishments. This leads to the discouragement and disinclination to do anything. However my awareness of this downward spiral helps me to fight it: I wrote down the competed tasks and improvements made (we are certainly eating better and healthier now), I made new task lists, cleaned up (after the house mess reaches a certain point it starts to affect my mood in a very negative way), looked at my finished craft projects and others posts and photos. And today seeing Cumin Cat’s finished crocheted necklace made me want to pick up my crochet hook and instilled into me the new desire to create and communicate, so I thought I’ll say a quick hello to you all today :-). Hope you are having fantastic warm weekend.

Theory on life

My pet theory on life is that life is like a pointillistic painting: stand too close and all you see are the small dots, take few steps back and the bigger image emerges. Caught up in our everyday life we (or at least I) often forget to slow down, to stop, to stand back and allow ourselves a glimpse of the bigger picture.

Yesterday while trying to explain to my husband how I feel about our current life, I came up with a different image. I feel like I’m lost in a maze – there are constantly some decisions to be made, path to be taken. Should I turn left? Should I turn right? Either could lead me to my goal. Either can result in the dead end.

I feel lost. I’m no longer even sure what the goal is. I would prefer to see my life as a painting, even if all I notice are the points of colour.

Though writing about this helps. Whenever I write something like this down I end up smiling at my own ponderous musings. And I think a brisk walk in the park is also in order. Hope the sun is out and shining wherever you are, like it is here today.

Another week gone

I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between. Sylvia Plath

Tranquillity of crocheting

Yesterday I was in both retrospective and introspective mood. Now familiar and comfortable, it strikes me sporadically, but is sure to spring up around my mum’s and my birthdays (They are so close together that I view them as one). I would love to walk for few hours on my own - contemplating quietly, letting go of the current noisy everyday clutter that took secure residence in my brain and opening the flow to the wiser deeper thoughts. But rain and loved but constant presence of the Babe kept me close to home. So I used every trick to encourage the Babe to play by herself or at least to happily enjoy gentler activities with her subdued mum.

We lay on the bed. She put her tiny warm hand on my arm. I stoked her fingers with my other hand. She looked in fascination and then reached out, stopped my moving fingers and slowly and softly started to explore them. And so we stayed there for another magic ten minutes, taking turns stroking each other fingers. Occasionally she would grunt unhappily, arrest my movement, force me to be still. I guess she had some type of game plan and I was too slow to figure out the finer details of the rules.

And later, when she played on her own, I baked bread and finished crocheting a doily. I never learned to sew, embroidery frustrates me, knitting disastrously ends after few lost stitch; but I love crocheting. Treble, treble, treble, few chain stitches, treble, treble, treble. I count, my hands move to the rhythm, the thoughts disappear and my mind achieves temporary tranquillity.

However now my brain is abuzz with ideas for new crochet project – I may try making something different, like a hat or a bag or bead crocheting, there are just so many doilies small two-bedroom flat needs:

Mesh-mash before moving

Whenever Cat coughs or sneezes I automatically say “будь здоров” (Russian equivalent of “bless you”) and it looks like she picked up on the fact that coughing equals attention. So now whenever she wants to be noticed or picked up she does very fake cough together with the usual grumpy “mmm” sound. At first I thought that I was imagining things, but Clive noticed it as well. He and I were having a chat the other morning while she was awake in her cot. Cough. We look at her, the coughing stops. We look at each other and start discussing how fake it sounded. The coughing starts up again. We look at her, she stops. We glance at each other and start laughing. Cat’s eyes widen from surprise, she smiles and does a bit more coughing until I pick her up.

She napped for almost 2 hours yesterday morning while I was making lots of noise with the blender to make her some carrot puree. No such luck today – I was quietly talking to my mum and she woke up after 45 minutes.

She is surprising me by how fast she is getting good at eating from the spoon, though in her impatience she still manages to nock my hand & the spoon around and get some food on her face, hands, bib, top and even pants. I think we need to get some of those super “shirt” bibs that cover everything. I’m happy she liked the carrot puree as I myself dislike cooked carrots – they tastes so horrid compared to the wonderful taste of fresh raw carrots.

We are two thirds packed and hopefully will finish the rest in another hour or so. I’m looking forward to discovering the new area, but a bit sentimental about leaving this one after being here for 3 years. I find a lot of comfort in small familiar things and surroundings lately. We usually pass the cleaner man, who picks up rubbish and sweeps the street, on our daily walks. We started saying hello to each other and today for the first time he wished me good weekend today. Made me smile, made me sad as there won’t be any familiar faces, streets, shops or buildings at first. (OK, I’m being overly dramatic we are only moving few tube stops – I felt less soppy when leaving Australia. I think I’m in my “it would be nice to set up in one place for a long time” mood. Last time this happened I bought a flat, was happily discussing how I don’t have to move ever again and a year later was yearning to move to somewhere new).

If everything goes well we’ll have phone/internet set up on Tuesday (last two times it took a week longer than promised). Until when have fun and UK people, enjoy long weekend.

Still searching

Next time I whinge about anything, please remind me that it’s all going to be different next week. Yep, I know that I mostly complain about weekly changes, but like most things in life there is a good side to it as well as bad. After a week of Cat screaming her head off every time I tried to put her down for a nap, I decided that I'll have to hold her all day long and will never again manage to get anything done. And then the new week came and she changed her mind about where she wants to sleep. For the two weeks now she is happy to be held still for 2-3 minutes before being put into her cot and once I lay her down she smiles at me, turns her head away, sticks her thumb into her mouth and peacefully goes to sleep (ok, not every time, but unquestionably most times). And she sleeps so well in the afternoon for 2-3 hours that I have plenty of time to relax and do my own things.

What wonderful things did I do? Well, I finished reading one book (more about it later) and tried to nap once (but was woken up by some religion salespeople – not sure who they were exactly, but definitely not Jehovah witnesses) and drank many cups of tea (current favourite is mint). But mostly I was looking at the real estate sites for a new place to live. Everything seems to be too small or too expensive or too far from the station or in really dodgy area or unfurnished or available too late or unsuitable for a baby. But at least some ads provide a little bit of amusement. How do you like this description from one of them? “…peaceful development dating from 1761 set in wide open spaces by the river. This former munitions manufacture and military warehousing site has been beautifully landscaped” We still have time to find something perfect, otherwise we’ll lower our expectations or raise our rent budget in a week or two.

Good day, bad day

Until becoming a mother I never had strong feelings about days of the week. But recently I noticed that I love Saturdays. It is one day of the week that Clive can spend entirely with us. Instead of gobbling down the usual small bowl of cereal with yoghurt I can relax and prolong the breakfast experience by also having full English breakfast with eggs, bacon, sausages and toast (usually cooked by Clive) and two cups of tea, since I know that there is someone else to pick up Cat from the swing-chair or play-gym when she gets bored. And we always plan to do something fun together during the day. Three weeks ago we visited Debi & Mark for lunch and almost ended up staying for dinner as it was extremely difficult to leave their cosy flat and interesting adult conversation. Two weeks ago we travelled to the Canary Warf to have very late (by my awake at 5-6 am current standards) breakfast with Margo & Rob. I was totally impressed by Rob’s fantastic breakfast, which among lots of other things included fried aubergine (eggplant). I love aubergines & if a restaurant menu has a dish with it you can be sure I’ll order it. Besides for the first time in my life I got to try pouched eggs. Yes, it is true I never had pouched egg before – Clive struggled to believe me. And last Saturday we had our first barbeque of 2007. It coincided with St Patrick’s day, so Cat got to admire Guinness beer cans – the girl has taste. I love BBQs – I think they promote relaxed atmosphere and it is so effortless to cook enough food for everyone and to have plenty of leftovers.

On the other hand I learned to dislike Mondays. Lately every Monday I notice myself having to quash the irrational irritation and the stubborn rebellion against the small things. During the two short weekend days I don’t exactly loose all my new ‘mother’ skills of peeling banana with one hand, of figuring out Cat’s needs, of keeping her entertained for 2-3 hour stretches (I have to confess that I count breastfeeding and nappy changing as part of my amusing-awake-baby repertoire), of getting her to nap in her cot twice (I usually give up the struggle* in the late afternoon and let her have her third nap in the sling), of getting us outside between her naps, of getting my own things done around her schedule and moods, etc. But somehow I get used to having a choice of passing the baby to someone else, of when and what to do with her or by myself for myself, and I also forget how tiring and difficult the whole day of easy babycaring tasks can be. In the last year or two I accepted that I always rebel against new before accepting it, however I didn’t think that I’ll have to do it on the weekly bases. Understanding the problem is part of solving it and therefore by mid/end of Monday I get back to my “work” mood of: Cat and I had good 15 minutes, an hour, a day and if we didn’t, well there is going to be next stretch of 15 minutes, another hour, next day to try to achieve mutual contentment.

* She actually napped reasonably well in her cot all three times today, so I feel a bit bad about calling it a struggle. My excuse is that last week I really struggled to get her to sleep during the day, but I think I’ll leave that for another post.

The mood meter revisited

I managed to find a photo of my old mood meter and grainy (but cute) photo of me at work (I think that’s the best haircut I ever had, too bad my hairdresser went into fulltime teaching career few months later. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be lucky enough to find someone as brilliant as her).



I definitely was in much better mood this week. Just thinking of my current life and my frame of mind helped. I have a plan for keeping myself happy and list of things I need/want to do (still need to write it down).

This week I started by having occasional afternoon nap and deciding to cook every work day (with “healthy body, healthy mind” reasoning behind this decision), while Clive volunteered to be responsible for weekend dinners. I love cooking, though I’m not all that good at it. I usually go through a phase of cooking too much followed by having no inspiration to cook. I may try to plan weekly menu in advance to simplify shopping and to make sure we get enough vegetables, iron, vitamins, etc.

I accumulated loads of loose change and so today I walked to Kilburn High Road to browse charity shops for cheap second hand books. You’d think that having a library in 5-minute walking distance and a bookshelf full of unread books would satisfy me, but I love looking for new books to add to my collection. I usually find few recently published ones in good condition in PDSA shop and this time left it with FIVE books. Now I just need to read them. I’m struggling with reading books lately and spend much more time reading blogs written by women with kids. Others experiences of motherhood (and balancing the rest of their lives) seem to hold my attention much better than most of the books I started reading.

Anyway enough about me. Cat laughed today! Twice! I have to admit that I was acting super silly today while playing with her. Hope Clive and I can produce the same result tomorrow, so he’ll get to hear her laughter before going to Hong Kong for one week.

The mood meter

I’m my previous place of work I had a mood meter drawn on the whiteboard next to my work desk. Thanks to my sister it had pretty matching pictures to go with different moods and every morning (or sometimes few times during the day) I would change it to indicate my current mood. I can’t remember why or how I came up with it. But it ended up being very useful. After suffering relatively serious depression for about 2 years I was worried about its re-recurrence and very wary of missing the first early warning signs of it. So when my mood meter was stuck in negative part for more than one day I would examine my feelings to figure out the reason and try to do something to lift the mood if appropriate. I wish blogger had mood label similar to livejournal as I miss my mood meter.

In one of our recent Skype conversations my mum pointed out that I was much more positive during my pregnancy and first few difficult weeks of Cats life than I am now. Since I can’t deny her correctness, I had to think about my reasons for not being as happy as I could and should, specially because so far Cat was a very easy baby. I think the main problem is having more responsibilities and no set priorities or plan. If I manage to nap, while Cat sleeps; I get frustrated about how little else got done during the day. If I spend all free time doing housework, I feel drained. If I neglect housework I get irritated at the messiness (I like living in a clean house) or our unhealthy eating. If I take time to read a book or watch a movie, I ponder if it is fair to take time for myself instead of doing something useful for the family. If I see friends in the evening, I feel happy, but exhausted. If I don’t, I feel isolated and lonely. Etc. I realised that I like having a plan for a day when I wake up, I like knowing what I need to get accomplished and having something fun/relaxing to look forward to. I also know that it takes me time to adjust emotionally to the new situations. I need to muse and whinge about new things before I’m 100% happy.

Clearly (in theory, not so easy in practice) my two highest priorities should be Cat’s and my wellbeing. So last two days I spent trying to figure out Cat’s new pattern of eating, sleeping, playing to see how much non-Cat time I have. Once that’s done I can try to understand how many other things I can fit into my day or let slip to keep myself happy, This weekend I’ll try to sit down with Clive to discuss some sort of joint action plan to keep three of us healthy and happy.

BTW my mood of last two days was very positive thanks to warm sunny weather and lots of time spent outside (and realisation that I’m OK with postponing the cleaning of the flat for the fresh air and sunshine). Until spring settles in properly, I’m going to rejoice that the gloom of London winter is almost over.

Big decision time

Lindsey & Dave finally set the date for moving back home. When I mentioned it to Clive, he said that we should also set the date for going to Australia. This statement left me in a bit of the shock and lots of confusion as I didn’t think he was keen to move there. He says he was prompted by my homesickness and unhappiness about Cat growing up away from the rest of my family. I don’t really know my grandparents as we lived on the other side of Russia from them and I really don’t want my mum, dad and sister to be total strangers to Cat.

So last few days instead of trying to weight up pros and cons of staying in UK and going back to Oz , I was dumbly playing the images of the possible Australian life in my head. I’m usually very good at making decisions, but this one scares me as it will affect so many other people. And I’m also terrified of having to examine my feelings as deep-down I know how much I miss my family and how comfortable & relaxed I feel in Australia.

While Clive says that he’ll be happy with any decision I make, if we move to Oz he’ll be even further away from his Cape Town family and will have to start his life again in the new place. On the other hand there will be plenty of people happy to see me (and my new family) back in Melbourne, who will warmly welcome him.

It will be sad to leave Julia (I long ago started thinking of her as part of my family, as another sister) behind in UK and there are plenty of other old & new friends currently living in London, who I’ll miss. But for many of them London is a temporary location and eventually they’ll move away. With Polina and Jack moving back to Melbourne at the beginning of 2008 and my mum saying that they’ll consider coming back as well there is a strong possibility that the main members of my family will be in one location again (I miss our huge family dinners and BBQs).

The other main considerations are jobs and accommodation. I like my job here – I got bored with the everyday tasks, but there are plenty of new possibilities and the people are great. I have no idea about the current state of IT job market in Oz/Melbourne. And as Jack pointed out the real estate prices went up even higher, but using my flat as guarantee and any money saved in UK we probably still can buy a much nicer place than we would be able to afford in London. And at first we can always be very comfortable in my flat (Who wants to relive the old times and have a New Year Celebration there again? ;-) Though I have to inform you that Ross (the neighbour who always complained and once called police) sold his flat and moved away).

I’ll miss London museums, theatres, Barbican (my favourite place in London!), the history on every street corner, the proximity to Europe. But I doubt I’ll be able to do much travelling/socializing with a small child and Melbourne has enough cultural activities to keep me entertained. I’m also under impression that Australia is baby friendlier. And while London has all the benefits of big city living, I love Australian outdoors and miss bushwalking, the fresh air, the open spaces.

My mum & Clive mentioned few times that Cat will need a sibling soon. I always wanted to have a large family, but don’t want to go through pregnancy and childbirth in London again. While both were easy and almost perfect, I felt very lonely without close everyday support of my family. I think it would be so much nicer to experience pregnancy in Australia where I can share my thoughts and feelings with my mum and friends, who have kids.

These are just some of my thoughts and (as you can probably see) it looks like I want to be back. I’ll have to talk to Clive a bit more before making the final decision. If I decide that it is time to move to Australia we’ll have to wait until the end of Clive’s 2-year mortgage period (May 2008) and will probably come back at the end of my current visa (10 August 2008).

Anyone has any opinions? Anything to say? Please comment or send me email.

Tired

Yesterday was very windy, so after feeling like I or the pram will fly away while walking around the block I cut down the morning walk from 1 – 1.5 hrs to 20-30 minutes and avoided going to the park. I wonder how much stronger the wind was in the open space. And as we got home Catherine woke up and the rest of the day was spent trying to entertain her and trying to get her back to sleep. She woke up every time I put her down in her cot, so eventually in the late afternoon I gave up and just carried her around in the sling. Comforted by my warmth Cat slept really well and I managed to get some things done.

Today is wonderfully blue-skied and sunny day, so we went for a long walk in the park. The sidewalks are covered with small branches and I saw 2 fallen trees (pretty big ones) in the park. Catherine woke up during the walk, looked around for 5-10 minutes and went back to sleep. I felt so relieved! Hopefully she’ll sleep until her usual 12:30 – 13:00. Entertaining someone, who has attention span of the gold fish, is extremely difficult, though seeing her smile and learn to do new things, makes it worthwhile. Still I’m really looking forward to Clive taking over on the weekend. Last weekend he spent doing thing for his renovation/investment property, so I think I’m due for a break and he for some quality time with Cat :-D

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I can’t believe it is Xmas day already. Catholic Xmas always catches me by surprise. When I think it is still two months away, there is only one month. When I think it’s still one month away, it is only 1-2 weeks away. And when I think I still have a week, it’s already here. I guess I’m just in denial that another year is about to end and for me Catholic Xmas is the first marker of its end.

Naree & Vihn came for a visit in the afternoon (sadly it gets dark by about 4pm) and brought more presents for our cute baby girl.