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January 11, 2002
January 10th, 2002.
Happy New Year everyone!
It feels good to be back with a brand new year stretched ahead of me. I know a lot of people feel pressured at this time of year; to uphold their endless list of resolutions and all that, but I thrive on the feeling in the air around new year. I don't feel weighed down by grandiose resolutions (despite having many), I guess because I don't take myself too seriously anymore. What I do feel is liberated by the freshness of a new year. I feel inspired to ponder the areas of life I want to work on, the things I'd like to achieve, the things I'd like to change. There's nothing like the feeling when you buy a brand new journal, with all those crisp white sheets of paper folded inside…empty, unformed, full of potential, waiting for life to write it's story on their pages. Yes, you may think I've been drinking champagne in the afternoon but I haven't. I'm simply intoxicated by the emptiness of the clean slate stretched before me. 2002 : a blank sheet of paper to write on.
Mind you, we're a little bit sad Christmas is over in this household. It seemed to pass so incredibly quickly, didn't it? We were enjoying the break from our normal routine: reading Christmas stories, listening to Christmas music, watching Christmas videos, enjoying the decorations in our house and at the shopping centres. There was magic in the air and we were drinking it in. Pixie thrived on it all. Somewhere along the way she learnt all the words to Jingle Bells, and could often be found singing away to herself during the day. She talked endlessly about Santa and was excited by every single Christmas tree she saw. She still asks for her Christmas books occasionally, but I've packed them all away with the Chrissy decorations, not to be pulled out again for 11 months! SIGH. It feels like a very special Christmas has just passed by: the first Christmas in which Pixie sensed the 'magic' of it all.
Oh well…even though the excitement and anticipation of Christmas has passed, we have another exciting event to look forward to in this household! No, no, no, nothing life changing, just the simple and terribly exciting fact that we're booked to go on our first family beach holiday in early February. I am as excited about this as I was about Christmas. We're staying at the beach-town where I spent most of my childhood summers. It's a gorgeous little beach-town with ocean waters that are deliciously warm and crystal blue. Our apartment is right on the beach, so we'll fall asleep to the sound of crashing waves. We'll have a balcony overlooking the pool, and the beach is a 30 second stroll away, through a scrubby sand-dune. I simply can't wait, it's going to be two-weeks of warm-baked bliss…nothing to do but swim, bake in the sun, go for beach walks, read, eat fresh seafood and chilled fruit. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…AHHHHH!!! I can't wait till we have that wild sun-baked look about us: wild matted hair from all the sea-salt, brown skin from all the sun, that healthy beached-out look that two weeks of living within a stone's-throw of the surf bestows on you. I am quite sure nothing in the world beats an Aussie beach-holiday. While the rest of the world has history and culture, we Aussies have beaches!!!!
Anyway, before that holiday comes around we are actually boarding a plane this Saturday to fly across the country to Adelaide for a week. Jay has work over there so Pixie and I are tagging along. Jay's sister lives there so we'll be staying with family. It's high time Pixie spent some time with her Sephton cousins of which there are three!!! So it seems we've just arrived back from our Christmas travels with enough time to unpack, do the laundry, save our thirsty garden from extinction, before packing up and traversing the country again. It'll be Pixie's first plane flight. I hope she's okay, because if she screams and throws one of her two-year-old tantrums (oh yes, the beast has awoken) then the entire plane will know about it. She has the meanest temper and the most ear-piercing screams I think I've ever-heard. Mind you, these days her 'outbursts' are so common I've out-grown the intense discomfort and embarrassment I once felt. Mind you, in the confines of an aeroplane, thousands of feet above the ground, new levels of discomfort and distress might spring to life inside me, don't you think? Sigh…this jet-setting life is a hard-ship, isn't it? :^)
Truth is I love all this travel. I will happily pack up and trek off at a moment's notice. I adored our Christmas road-trip down south. I get a tremendous buzz from packing up the car, jumping in and hitting that long stretch of highway. I love the endless expanses of dry countryside. I love the vast horizon. I love counting down the kms till the next town, the next petrol station, the next roadhouse. I love the bizarre road-signs for weird little out-of-the-way towns. I love driving hundreds of kilometres through blisteringly hot countryside while the air-conditioning blasts in my face and my feet get sunburnt because I rest them up on the dash. I love the huge pile of stuff that accumulates at my feet so I can barely stretch out my legs - snack-foods, fruit, drinks, maps, toys, notebooks, tissues, cassettes. I love stopping in forsaken roadhouses for bad coffee. I love waking up in strange motels in unexplored country towns. I love leaving my house, my possessions, my bills, my budget, my kitchen, my dishwasher, my washing-machine, my phone, and everything that makes up the daily-grind, hundreds of kilometres behind me; safe (I hope!), locked-up, untouched (I bloody well hope!!), and waiting without complaint for my return. There is enormous liberation in being away from all the 'stuff' that makes up your day-to-day life. I always have profound revelations when I'm away for a stretch - weighed down by nothing but what fits into a small travel bag. I can see things more clearly and I can see where I need to improve my life. I usually return inspired to make changes.
I certainly have a number of 'parenting' resolutions to try to uphold this year. Truth is Pixie has been a bit of a PAIN since she turned two. Yep, it seemed to happen almost the very minute she turned two - her bad temper, screaming tantrums, and destructive naughtiness came back to tyrannise us, and we've had quite a few bad moments in the past six weeks or so. Her bad temper scares me, and when she's blazing around the house I find myself thinking those yucky, horrible, guilt-inducing I-must-be-the-worlds-worst-mother thoughts, like, "What on earth did I do to deserve this completely crappy kid and God how I wish I could return her to the baby-shop and order a new model!" If you've ever caught yourself thinking along these lines then you'll understand how completely CRAPPY it makes you feel to even breathe such a thought, let alone write about it on a computer screen for all to read. Somedays I find my Pixie is exasperatingly hard to love!! But then the next day I'll look at how completely beautiful she is and curse myself for not being a better mother: a more forgiving, patient, generous mum, the kind that loves her child unconditionally, without any doubts, without any moments of resentment, without any ifs and buts.
So one of my parenting goals this year is to forgive Pixie when she's behaving horribly, and to love her even in her worst moments. I need to stop wishing she was a different kind of child (ie. not as challenging, not as demanding, not belligerent, easier to amuse, easier to love, with calmer moods…unfortunately I could go on) and love her wholeheartedly for everything that she is. I mean she has so many incredible qualities (she is smart, intensely curious, has the most gorgeous Shirley-Temple curls anyone has ever seen, she is breathtakingly cute to watch, is physically precocious, wears clothes incredibly well, is the funkiest dancer…I could go on) but when she wears me down I only see her bad side… and frankly I don't think that's good enough. In fact I think it's rather poor form. On the whole I've been a rather resentful mother, counting the price of what she's cost me rather than wholeheartedly giving her everything that I am and can be.
Pixie, I plan to do better. That's my 2002 promise to you.
On the Pixie front we have many new developments. She enjoyed opening all her Christmas gifts but the funny thing is she hasn't really played with any of her Christmas toys. She doesn't play much with toys at all, come to think of it. She plays with balls. And lately she's discovered art in a big way. She spends a lot of time scribbling with her coloured pencils and textas, and she can be easily amused for 15-20 minutes by them (this is a feat in Pixie's world…she usually moves on far quicker than that). So I have a lot of art projects lined up for us this year: painting with watercolours, oils, poster paints; stamp sets, cutting and pasting, play-dough and clay modelling. She's also developing a greater tolerance for reading. We can read books aloud to her now without her getting too impatient. She loves the Dr Suess books the best: Go Dog Go, The Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish. They're all firm favourites. And she's started singing up a storm. Suddenly she's gone from knowing one or two songs to actively singing about 20!! She sings a lot and loves to be sung to. On a number of occasions she's woke up singing which is incredibly sweet and seriously out-of-character for our usually cranky-in-the-mornings Miss. She can count to twenty and sings the entire alphabet. And she's become a pretty funky dancer lately…she'll punch her arms in the air and then twirl them in front of her…deliciously funny to watch!
On the bad side she's developed an horrendous water phobia. Completely out of the blue, and seriously intense. She will not, under ANY circumstances, take a bath! She screams and thrashes around at the mere suggestion. So we're reduced to sponging her down and even then she roars the house down. Once a week Jay wraps her up and holds her head over the bath so I can wash her tangle of wild curls and she really SCREAMS then. We try to never get her face or eyes wet because we know she HATES water in her eyes. Truth is she's NEVER really enjoyed her baths, she used to scream blue murder as a baby too! So I doubt very much that I have an Olympic swimmer on my hands. But she will play with the hose in the backyard, getting all wet and messy. And I took her to the pool recently and she was happy as long as I held her tight and didn't let the water near her face. Hopefully she'll enjoy water-play during our beach holiday and gradually overcome her fears. In fact I am determined that she'll become a water-baby during our holiday, so wish me luck!
Well, it's another steaming hot summer's day here, and we can't even open our windows! There are horrible bushfires on the coast, 100 kms away, and our sky is dirty grey with bushfire smoke and it stinks to high heaven. Our mountains are shrouded and it feels rather ominous. The other day the setting sun was blood red (I kid you not) and it was stunningly eerie. These fires have been raging since Christmas day, over 200 homes lost but luckily no lives! Let's pray for rain.
I must dash, many things to do before we fly away tomorrow. Hope everyone is fighting fit and we'll catch up in a week or so.
Accept out best wishe for the New Year,
The jet-setting Eloise and the fleet-footed Pixster.
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