That Little Girl.
Oh, I can't tell you how much I wanted my next blog post to be sunny pictures of 2 beautiful, finished quilts and another cute little girl's jacket. Everyday, I have woken up and said, "Right! Today!" Everything was going to work. Tully at Amanda's house (what we call daycare). Eve sleeping up a storm. And Tim, well Tim's been sick for over a week now, so surely he'll turn a corner sometime soon, right? Wrong. Wrong on all counts except Amanda's house. But even Amanda's house can't work it's magic when a little girl doesn't want to sleep or play or doing anything but have a cuddle. And standing up, thank you.
Oh (sigh), when you have an important revelation about your place in the world and life as a parent, you expect everything to suddenly get easier, for the place to look a little brighter, for the next challenge to not be so challenging. And it did for a little while, but then it lasted longer than I planned.
One of the reasons it shouldn't have lasted so long is that Tim and I are hosting a conference this weekend for an organisation we work for(/with). But with finishing uni and well, life, we haven't done it very well. Actually, I don't think we can blame it on circumstance, but really on inexperience. And I think that's much harder to swallow.
When I was about 4, we got a new baby brother. And just this week, I remembered so strongly, after not thinking about it for ages, a little lesson I learned in pre-school. We were painting, mixing colours, as you do when you're 4. And I looked across at the girl painting opposite me, at the big brown splodge on her page and my brain made an obvious connection.
"That's the same colour as my brother's poo!" I exclaimed knowingly.
The girl was offended. She told the teacher. I got in trouble. And because adults are so bad at remembering what it was like to be little girls or boys, I could not communicate, or maybe even understand myself enough, to convince her I was not trying to be malicious.
I was stuck and embarrassed but I learnt an important lesson. You don't tell people their artwork looks like poo.
And you don't leave organising something big for when you have time.
Today, I feel like that little girl.
Oh (sigh), when you have an important revelation about your place in the world and life as a parent, you expect everything to suddenly get easier, for the place to look a little brighter, for the next challenge to not be so challenging. And it did for a little while, but then it lasted longer than I planned.
One of the reasons it shouldn't have lasted so long is that Tim and I are hosting a conference this weekend for an organisation we work for(/with). But with finishing uni and well, life, we haven't done it very well. Actually, I don't think we can blame it on circumstance, but really on inexperience. And I think that's much harder to swallow.
When I was about 4, we got a new baby brother. And just this week, I remembered so strongly, after not thinking about it for ages, a little lesson I learned in pre-school. We were painting, mixing colours, as you do when you're 4. And I looked across at the girl painting opposite me, at the big brown splodge on her page and my brain made an obvious connection.
"That's the same colour as my brother's poo!" I exclaimed knowingly.
The girl was offended. She told the teacher. I got in trouble. And because adults are so bad at remembering what it was like to be little girls or boys, I could not communicate, or maybe even understand myself enough, to convince her I was not trying to be malicious.
I was stuck and embarrassed but I learnt an important lesson. You don't tell people their artwork looks like poo.
And you don't leave organising something big for when you have time.
Today, I feel like that little girl.