Nearly three

'I not taking too long'.  Lily pronounced as I tried to hurry her down the street. 'I taking three long'.

Recent Insults

'You are person which is a poo'

Lily, aged 2.5, to Nina age 7.

Year One, and Two Years

How come I'm always taking the pictures?

It's been a year since I started this blog. I had thought I might review the year, but just now it seems more  important to record the way Lily, two years old, is talking, because it is changing so fast. And there is a certain symmetry as the very first post on this blog was a record of a conversation.

A few weeks ago Lily sat down with perennial favourite 'That's Not My Puppy' and 'read' it like this:

Not is me puppy
Not is me puppy
Not is me puppy
Not is me puppy
IS me puppy!

But already she is saying 'my' instead of 'me' and even using 'I' correctly. 

She substitutes 'L' for 'S' and 'Y' at the beginning of a word so we have:
leeping
locks
landals
leat
landy
loup

and:

lummy
lucky
loghurt
lou
les
lellow

In the car the big girls sang 'Bob the builder can you fix it?' and Lily piped up 'NO LOU CAN'T' followed by a maniacal giggle.

This morning she announced, apropos of nothing, "I love lanner cows".  After some time we figured it out - she loves Santa Claus.

So the blog. Yeah, one year. I've enjoyed it.  If you've stopped by here from time to time, thank you.  If you've commented, know that you undoubtedly made my day.  Eleanor once said that she felt part of her role as a mother was as a witness to, or perhaps an audience for,  her children's lives.  This seems very wise to me and seems to also explain part of why I blog - to bear witness to a little fragment of our life, especially the everyday creative, crafty and observing part of that life that otherwise may not get recorded. They are small things but, you know, as the blog title suggests, small matters.

Questions I was asked today (and some photos)

why do we have two arms?  why not three or four or more?

noughts and crosses in the 21st century

why do people have to be something-handed? why can't we just do everything with both hands?

Lily and Craig at the ice rink

why don't ants seem scared of us, even though they must know that we can kill them?

split point

why don't adults know that war is bad when kids already know that?

pyjamas with parrot

is the Eiffel Tower made of iron or bricks?

what I saw when I turned off the light.

I'm not really interested in questions like "why is the sky blue". Why is the sky blue?

She says

Go way.
No way.
Me up more.
Booby more? no.
Nina
Race (Grace)
Bia (Ruby)
Mimi
Ug (hug)
Arry (Harry - the dirty dog)
Oney (honey)
Ooray (hooray)
Cow
Moo
Yaysh (yes)
No
NO
NO

Lily - September 2011.

Time and Space

Grace's painted house

I've been thinking about the passing of time, and the spaces in which we live lately. Today Grace told me that when she goes into the study her 'heart beats'. I know this is because she is scared of the 'Grinch who Stole Christmas' which is stored in there amongst the DVDs.

Village by Nina

Ruby keeps saying to me that the year is nearly over. And even though it isn't, I know how she feels.

Nina asked me if we would ever move house. She hopes not because she loves our house. She (and all children) know things about their house that adults don't. They know how a dressing gown on the back of a door looks, in the night, like a monster. They know how the carpet smells, which stones look good when you put them in water, which chair to stand on to reach the light switch. They know the scary spots and the good places to hide, the nooks to curl up in and the places best avoided.

Strawberry House by Grace and Kim

Living with young children inevitably casts the passage of time into terrifyingly stark relief. Everything I have to say on the subject seems trite.

My reading, lately, has coincidentally dealt with these same themes. The Glass Room, Room  and
A Visit From the Goon Squad  all examine, in very different ways, the spaces and passage of time that shape the lives of their characters (all worth a read by the way).

Most days we just do the things that fill the days - wake, play, eat, work/school, wash, fold, sleep. I don't mean for it to sound unremittingly dull, it's just daily life. Busy with good and bad and love and frustration. And it is these days that will form the memories of childhood, good and bad, and these days that will, in part, form the adults these children of ours become. I suspect this house will be as big a part of those memories as anything else.

Aerial view - Nina

So I have been thinking, or trying to think, about this space, this house, this home, and the short time we have in it, and what I want it to be. I don't mean colour schemes and interior design, I mean what it represents for our children and the idea of a family.

Our house, in the middle of our street- Nina

I want it to be a true sanctuary, a place of safety. I want their memories to be full of colour and fun and interest. I fear that their memories will actually be of lots of nagging, dinners they didn't like, dark rooms that frightened them, parents with never enough time...

Rapunzel's staircase - Grace

Even all my doubts and fears somehow merge into a painfully indulgent self-reflection that speaks of too much navel gazing.  An intelligent and clear eyed friend refuses to participate in the 'motherangst'. When I, or others, start in, she calls a halt and tells of her taxi driver that night, born in southern Sudan, refugee camps from age 9. What have our children to complain of? 

She is right, and so, without the worry of what I fear it will be, I try to concentrate on what I hope it can be.  I find that I don't want it to be unremittingly good.  I want it to be a place that can hold them in their darkest moments, a place into which they came into awareness of all the wonder and horror of the world and yet were safe, were held, by us, by family, by love.  A place that can resound with joy and make room for silence.  A place where they learned that not every injury needs a bandaid, not every decision will be fair, not every injustice will be remedied.  A place where they learned that their minds were valuable, their ideas had merit, that they could change the course of events and that they fundamentally matter.

Perhaps what I'm grasping at is this: my children are very lucky.  It is my job to make them also feel very lucky.  To accept, without a burden of guilt, the responsibility that goes with this privilege.  And to bring those qualities of home to the lives they lead and the lives they touch.

The last word goes to Nina: " Don't stop working! Writing, reading, and thinking."


(and a note for Amelia and Suse if you read this - I think she's put in an Oxford comma)

Overheard This Morning

Nina's mouse fishes for his breakfast in her breakfast

"And Ross said 'I'll just go fishing in this fishing hole.  I might be able to catch something good, like a ...hair...or something".

Ruby at breakfast

"What's wrong with red hair?  I really like red hair"...  a few pages on "oooohh I think I hate Rachel too, she is a meanie".

Grace needs new pyjamas

"And look my knee comes right through , see? see ?"

Lily and the smiley shoes

"oooze, ooooze, arrgh"

Technically Correct

Our Family - photo by Nina

The conversation turns to types of birds that don't fly:

Nina: penguins

Ruby: ostriches

Grace: dead ones.