Second child

When my eldest was born my Mum gave me a lovely book entitled 'Meditations for New Mothers' by Beth Wilson Saavedra and when I was flicking through it the other day, I came across this quotation from Amy D'Agrosa:

I eagerly counted each of my first child's milestones. With my second, all I want to do is hold him like a baby.

It really struck a chord with me as my littlest was 5 months old yesterday and I almost feel that he is growing up too quickly. 

With my first I was looking forward to the time when he could enjoy being on his tummy and then when he had mastered that, I couldn't wait for him to sit up because I thought it would make both our lives more fun. When he'd been sitting for a while I started to hope that he would crawl soon. And so on. 

I enjoyed each moment but enjoyed it as a step to the next achievement. This time around however, because I know that each phase is so short-lived and because I look at my eldest and wonder where the time has gone, I am truly relishing each moment of my little one's babyhood. During the night feeds in the early days I would enjoy just being with him in mutual sleepiness, knowing that the time would soon pass when he'd need me to get through the night; when he gurgles away to himself I am not wondering what his first word will be and when. That's not to say I don't delight in the new little things he is learning day by day; only that I am not eagerly anticipating the next phase because I know that it will come soon enough, so I can just enjoy him for who he is and what he is doing at this moment in time. 

This got me thinking about my relationship with God as Father and I really hope that he views me like the second child the quotation above refers to. I am sure that he wants for me to do more, to achieve my potential and that he encourages me to do so. But I am also certain in His love for me regardless of what I do or fail to do. 

When I cuddle my baby boy and am overwhelmed with love for him, I am also awed by the fact that God loves me in exactly the same way, only more so. God is encouraging me for the future to become the person he fully desires me to be, but He also loves me in the moment, for who I am now, and just wants to draw me closer to him.

To the River

After settling my eldest in crèche this morning I walked back into church during the end of the second verse and the chorus of this song:

I am going to the river,
Lord I need to meet you there.
Precious Jesus, I am ready
to surrender every care.
Take my hand now, lead me closer,
Lord I need to meet you there.


Something about the simple but concrete image of the river really spoke to me; we can all, wherever we are, whatever we are doing, take Jesus' hand and go with him to the river.

I pray the words of this song might speak to you as they spoke to me.

Farewell Facebook!

As we drove off the ferry at Dover yesterday after 10 wonderful days holidaying in France, I turned on my phone and did three things: checked text messages, listened to voicemail, and then clicked on the Facebook app.

Only two hours previously I'd been chatting to hubby about how lovely it was to have such a fabulous time, uninterrupted by modern social media. But then as soon as it was available, I just couldn't resist.

The thing is, after 10 days without Facebook (which I didn't miss at all) I realised that there are things about it which I am really starting to question in terms of how I use my time and the values I want to impart to my children. I will often go on the internet for '5 minutes' when the boys go down for their lunchtime nap and still be there an hour and a half later, having given myself just enough time to sort the house out before they wake up, and having no time to relax (I do not count being at the computer as relaxing!). When my children are older I will make sure that there are limits to the amount of time they spend on the computer so I also need to start limiting myself, and Facebook has become, for me, too time consuming.

I am also aware that by the time my boys are ready to have a mobile phone, all phones will have internet access and the levels of control I have over what my children can access will be far less than it has been in recent years. So if I'm not going to be able to ban phone use, I at least need to be setting a good example about how I use my phone. Being on the Facebook app while my eldest is in the bath is not, I have decided, a good example!

And then there is the tendency many of us have on Facebook to present an unrealistically positive view of life. I know that I do this, and I know from talking to friends that many of them do to. Why share with 200 Facebook 'friends' when something is not working out, or the fact that you've had a rubbish day and yelled at the kids, or why post an unflattering photo of yourself when you could choose one that makes you look like everything a yummy mummy should?!

 I have decided that I don't want to live lovely moments to then think how I can work it into a status update or take a photograph of my children looking adorable and then head straight for a computer to upload it. I don't want my children thinking that something is only valid if it's shared with everyone through Facebook, or telling someone thank you or that you love them only counts if you say it via a Facebook update.

Facebook has it's good points too and it has made it easy to keep in touch with genuine friends where otherwise life and its business would mean we may not be in such regular contact; or where friends live such a distance away, it's been the only way of us knowing what each others' children look like. And those are the aspects I will miss when I sign off.

Instead of whiling away hours finding out what people who I've not seen for 10 years are doing and looking through photos of their children who I will never meet, I will try to concentrate my time on communicating better with the people I truly care about. It doesn't matter that the rest of the world won't be in on it when I thank a friend for a lovely night out or tell my husband that I love him, or email a few photos of the boys to people who I know genuinely care about receiving them. 

Instead of enjoying a moment and then thinking about how I can write it into a status update, I will try to simply just enjoy the moment. And when I look through my holiday photos I will enjoy them for what they are and the memories they bring back for me, rather than worrying about whether or not to add them to my Facebook profile. 

Facebook has been fun, but for me, it's time to say farewell.

A weed bouquet makes it all worthwhile!

This time two years ago, my eldest son was two weeks old and I was learning how to be a mum. Two years on and I am still learning! It's been an amazing, emotional and incredibly fun two years, but there are days when I still feel as if I don't know really what I am doing! Just when I think we are into a routine, something changes; or just when one hurdle has been jumped over, another one presents itself. 

With the arrival of our second child four months ago, I felt a lot more able to cope with the changes to family life, mainly because I knew that everything was just a phase. Hour long feeds? They'll only take that long for the first few weeks. Constant night waking? It passes. Screaming til he's blue in the face at bath time? He will soon learn to love it.

And I was right; but it doesn't change the fact that there are always new things to deal with (potty training anyone?!) and new things to teach our little ones. As they are constantly learning, so are we. I came across a brilliant quote from Robert Brault: The trouble with learning to parent on the job is that your child is the teacher. A lovely idea, and great in theory, but in practice children are not always very clear in what they are trying to teach! 

One of the things I have struggled with most about motherhood is the lack of feedback and praise (yes I realise that I shouldn't need to hear other people telling me I'm doing a good job, but I do!) In previous jobs, I have undergone assessments, received feedback, attended appraisals and been in receipt of bonuses for good performance. Now the people in the best position to offer me appraisals of my work as a mum are my kids. And if we are having a bad day, their feedback can be pretty brutal and not particularly constructive (as can be my responses too)!

I've still not found a solution and guess that for as long as I'm a stay-at-home mum I'll find it hard not receiving affirmation from other adults (hubby aside!) but what I am trying to do is focus on the little lovely things each day that my children do which, when I think about it, show me that I'm doing ok. 

I love the following little poem which just about sums it up:

A rose can say "I love you",

orchids can enthrall,

but a weed bouquet in a chubby fist,

yes, that says it all. 

~ Author unkown

That's not to say an annual bonus wouldn't be nice though!

Shouting!

When I was undergoing teacher training I was told that shouting as a form of discipline is generally ineffective and that whispering was a far more effective way to control the class. Shout, and you add another loud voice to a room full of thirty clamouring teenagers; whisper and everyone suddenly quietens down to hear what you're saying.Initially sceptical, I realised within a few weeks that my voice was the best tool I had in the classroom and that whispering did indeed calm things down more effectively than shouting. And so throughout my teaching career I very rarely needed to raise my voice.


Fast forward a few years and I decided that the same techniques would work with parenting too. How naive! Not that it doesn't work with one's own children: I still believe it does and still find that when I speak calmly to my toddler he responds far better and situations are diffused much more quickly. No, naive because I was totally ignorant of the fact that one's own children have an uncanny ability to get under one's skin; that they push buttons until all the calm and whispering has been squashed inside of us and the only release is a big ranting shout!


After a particularly shouty morning this week (all before we'd even sat down to breakfast) I felt unbelievably guilty and vowed to try and revert back to the calm conversations of my previous life. Cue an unruly toddler this afternoon, and it all goes out of the window. He shouts, then shouts again, and again and again. I shout. He shouts some more. I shout. I leave the room. He cries (I'm not proud of this by the way!). But the next bit is the thing that I am trying to work on. I go to him, cuddle him and say sorry for shouting. He says sorry too. We cuddle some more, then he drags me off to show me his car. Incident forgotten.


I would love to be able to say I'm not going to shout at my children. But that would be a lie. The truth is that I will try to not shout at my children; but know that I will fail. The truth is also that I will make a point of saying sorry when I do shout. I will introduce them to the idea of sorry and forgiveness. And as I know that I am forgiven by God after each 'sorry' I pray that they will grow up knowing they are too. And that we will all learn to try again with a clean slate.


And I also pray for just a little bit more whispering!

'I was Dad for a day' article in the Guardian

I came across this article (click on the link above) in the Guardian yesterday and thought the last section summed up really succinctly the change in our lives when we become parents. I love the fact that the mother just gets up to put her child back to bed without even thinking about it and think it's a great example of how we do so many things on a daily basis which we don't even think about any more. One comment slightly jarred with me though:

"All your life up til that point [when you have children] you're self-focused, you're the centre of the picture....When you have kids you stop being the picture: you become the frame."

While I agree that you can't be self-focused when you have children, I can't believe that we as parents should simply let our children take centre stage.If everything about family life is designed to put children first and to develop them to become the best they can be (as so much middle-class parenting seems to be about these days, with the endless clubs, lessons, and activities), how will children ever learn that other people have needs too? And how much pressure will they feel if they think that their parents' lives have been put on hold to bring them up?

Instead of the idea of children as a picture and parents as a frame, I'd like to think of my family life as one enormous canvas where we all splatter paint on, rub things out, start again; a picture that we all create and recreate together each day. Much less pressure for us as parents, and much more fun for our kids too!

If Jesus lived in London....

At the risk of jumping on the London Riots bandwagon, I have been thinking a lot about this recently. It seems that so many people were very quick to judge those who were looting and rioting, but there were very few who were willing to try and view things from a different perspective. 

In my previous life I taught at an inner-city secondary school and can well imagine that some of my ex-pupils will have been among the rioters. During my time teaching my heart would break for these young people who had never experienced someone to love them, to offer guidance and to instill respect in them. Many of these pupils did not have parental role models or people who could show them love and respect. How then are they to love and respect themselves, let alone other people in society?

I do not want to make excuses for the individuals who instigated or were drawn into the riots.What they did was illegal, dangerous and totally disrespectful of other people and property. However, I do want to try and view them from God's perspective:  they are His children, created by Him, loved by Him, able to be restored by Him. 

I feel sure that the same Jesus who said: "let the little children come unto me" (Matthew 19.14) would also draw these young people to himself and show them a better way. 

Unfortunately, Jesus does not live in London, so it falls to us instead to follow his example! As a mother, I pray that God gives me the grace, love and patience that I need to bring up my children to follow His path. I also pray for those children and young people who do not know what it means to be loved and guided by a parent: that they may come to know the Jesus who wants to draw them close. 

Christian Mummy - the History.

About three months ago I was sitting in church on a Sunday morning attempting to listen to the preacher (who happened to be my husband) whilst breastfeeding a newborn and balancing a toddler on my lap at the same time. Suddenly I became aware that everyone was gradually making their way to the front of church with post-it notes in hand and placing them all on a large board. 

I, meanwhile, sat there silently crying because firstly, I was unable to move anywhere, and secondly, even if I had been able to, I didn't know what everyone was responding to as I'd not heard a word of what had been said. All I could do was let the tears fall and pray quietly that God would help me to connect with Him despite the feeding, cuddling and general entertaining of my children that is required on a Sunday morning. (My husband is a curate so is always upfront during services!)

It turned out that my prayer was exactly in line with what everyone else had been responding to: thinking of ways to connect with God. In answer to my prayer, I felt (yet again) God prompting me to start this Blog as a way of exploring how being a Christian can help me be a better Mummy and how being a Mummy can teach me new things about God.

I first had the Blog idea around the time of my eldest's first birthday but being in the early stages of pregnancy, then the late stages of pregnancy, then having a newborn baby to get to know, has meant that I've been putting things off for a while!

So a whole year later (and three months after that moment in church) I finally find time to sit down at the keyboard to write! I don't feel particularly qualified to write a Blog entitled 'Christian Mummy' because there are days when I feel that I don't do either very well. But I guess the point is that I am learning all the time and this is my attempt to connect personally with God through where I am in my life at the moment. My prayer is that He might just use my feelings and experiences to speak to other Mums too.