Will Dig Life

This post's title is almost exactly the same as one I wrote several years ago: I'm not the parent I thought I would be . I wrote that old article very much as a new parent with very small kids. The values I held then are still there, of course. But now, with kids in mid childhood, I'm more and more conscious of my shortcomings as a mother. And this blog is my thinking out loud space - it's not meant as a place to show off and appear perfect in every way, but a real record of where I'm at. And this is where I am today: feeling inadequate, ill equipped, not enough. I so desperately want to do right by them There's never been a time in my life before where I desperately wanted to do something well but kept failing, yet continued on. If I couldn't be good at something despite trying for a while, I'd just give up and walk away. Maths comes to mind... though I was never passionate about that, just had to pass the class somehow. Or playing instruments - I never

It's definitely getting autumnal around here. We're back in our 'school year' routine, which is familiar and regular on the whole - exactly what we need after the action filled summer months. That said, the seasons move on and we're fully into Autumn, pumpkin picking and carving, and dressing up! We went to a pumpking picking farm where Cody met a pig for the first time (he shook like a leaf as he tried to sniff it!) and the kids found enormous pumpkins, then enjoyed equally enormous marshmallows... Roasting... Watching over the fence... We also took part in a few community activities as it was half term - getting dressed up for a Halloween party, cooking and baking with pumpkin, and of course some pumpkin carving as well. Carving time The perfectionist kept at it for aaaages Bit of physical playtime Learning to make sweet pumpkin treats at our local community centre Pumpkin decor to hang in the windows! A big highlight this month was attending a live concert of And

This past weekend has been all about celebrating my delightful daughter.  This really captures her personality! - at her First Holy Communion She's beautiful, she's goofy, and as a friend said to me recently: she skips and sings her way through life!    She's just beautiful, inside and out I'm not sure I can put together a coherent post that eloquently gets across what this girl is like. Her personality is very, very unlike mine - and the more I see that, the more I appreciate her and marvel at how I've been given a person like that to parent. She's joyful, open, funny and loving... everyone's a friend in her world. That beautiful innocence, of seeing the world as a good place - it's beautiful, and I pray it will merely be tempered with wisdom as she grows older, but never taken away. N is also an enthusiastic footballer (making up with enthusiasm what is lacking in skill...) and for her birthday, she chose to have a football party and a great time was h