Bloody cold

This weekend was freezing, literally. It probably has been colder but I can't remember it.



Grace was moved to draw cold things - a penguin, a snowman, and a walrus (of course, you could tell that was a walrus couldn't you?)

Robot Century

Recent work

Robot Century by Nina

Mr Puglo by Nina

Painting by Lily

Morning time by Grace

Girl with hair by Ruby

This girl is getting into trouble for wearing her hair out.

Cross teacher by Ruby

'It's just not acceptable' says her teacher in a Southern twang

Same girl with different hair by Ruby

'Well how about if I wear it like this?'

Ruby can spend hours drawing and narrating the story as she goes. She does all the characters and voices and draws over the same bits of paper so at the end it is usually impossible to really follow the action. That is not the point.

Cooking for the queen by Ruby

This is typical. The poor girl is forced to cook for the queen. Her little brothers and sisters hide in the corner of the kitchen in sacks and peep over the top (one clings to her leg).  Here's a close up.

Peeping out of sacks by Ruby.

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)

These are a few of my (recent) favourite things

Nina's Post-it Note world

There is a story which I cannot now recall involving the ants building a house near a sunflower.  They are also holding signs but I forget why.  The girls have baskets because they are going to pick apples from the apple tree.

'Ahh Shelly, your curls are very floncy today"
"Oh Mrs BusyBody!  It wasn't very kind of you to burst in like that"

A recent Ruby drawing  -  I wish I could recall the story.  It was delivered with full theatrical flourishes and appropriate voices.

Ruby -  close up of Shelly

I cannot explain why this appeals to me so much.

Nina's City at Night - collage

Grace's Christmas Tree

I especially like the little gingerbread man decoration at the bottom of the tree.

Nina's mini Egypt

Like nearly every Victorian primary school child. Nina went to the Tutankhamun Exhibition with her class.  They made model pyramids.  Nina's, inevitably, was miniature.  She added a camel.  Ruby's comment: "That must be a giant camel if it's as tall as the pyramid".

Amazing Grace

I am  interested in the different ways in which children draw and develop their own sense of the world and how to record it.
My girls have, inevitably, been inspired by each other, but also have their own distinctive styles.  With Grace, my third daughter, I am especially enjoying the familiarity of seeing each stage emerge - the move from scribbles, to scribbles with names, to form, to the adding in of details (eyelashes, cheeks, fingers) -  as well as the uniquely 'Grace' way she has of doing things.

Girl, flowers, rainbow

Rainbows are a common theme in her drawings at the moment, as are flowers and stars.  Those three fingered hands kill me. 

Girl with fireworks and hearts

I like that anatomical correctness is not important.  Soon enough she will never draw a person without arms but this girl is right, just as she is.  The conforming of the child to artistic conventions is always slightly heartbreaking.

 

Map to the shops

When granny was minding her, Grace thought it might be useful to draw a map to show her the way to our local shops.  Sometimes she brings her various maps when we go out and instructs me; "just around this corner, yep, and then another corner, yep, here we are".

Signed by the artist

One of her first autographed drawings.  It's a great day indeed, in the life of a child, when they can write and recognise their own name.  Now she points out letters that occur in her name that she sees in other words.  It's a cause for excitement each time.

Once she mastered her name she moved on to copying other words.  'Fairy'  and 'Nina' were obvious, but 'Foleys' was a mystery until I realised it is on a free mouse pad I use.

Plasticine mouse

Three fingers are obviously just right.

Pictionary Wizard

Now that she is a confident drawer she can join in games of Pictionary.

Rapunzel

She was insistent that the Prince be doing the raking.  And look - five fingers!  It's happened already.
On the Monday she turned four, on the Tuesday she rode a pedal bike without training wheels for the first time and just took off, on the Wednesday she went to kinder, kissed me and said "I'm going outside" without a backward glance.