struggling with my attitude.

I want everyone to go away for a while and/or not eat or wear any clothes so I can do what I want to do! Chuck! Sort! Clean! Toss! Move!

So I can go from this:

to this:

Deep breathing and reminding myself of what is really important is only just helping.

I'm hoping this gets it off my chest a bit more.

I love looking back at the old year, in a way. I love to see the good things. I hate to see it passing. I always like the old and familiar much better than the new and untried.

Last night we sat down with our older children and shared what we were thankful for over the past year. We came up with over four pages of blessings!  Then we shared a glass of wine with them and prayed. (One glass between the four of us; they are only fourteen and eleven!)

The last entry I wrote down was one from my husband: Thanks for a quiet and an uneventful year.

I'm such a coward. As I look out from the first day of the new year I always feel scared. What will this year bring?  My father could die. Or something awful could happen to one of my children. The first is, humanly speaking, much more likely than the latter. But who knows?

I don't want to think about these things before they happen. I'm not strong enough. Thankfully, I know God is good and will sustain me. But the New Year forces me to stick my head out of my hidey-hole for  a while and survey the huge expanse of the unknown.

Just in case anyone else out there is like me.

I'd love to be a minimalist. (We're not talking books here- you know that, don't you?) 

I'd love a streamlined home with lots of clear space.  (I don't like modern furniture and decor, so I'm an eclectic minimalist, I guess.)

I keep planning and trying to get rid of stuff. Which is hard, because I'm the only one in the family who thinks like that. I have a joke that if we went overseas I'd have a spare pare of undies in my handbag because that would be all the space I'd get.

I have plans for decluttering. I look at a room and think "When I get the time I will gut this room and be RUTHLESS."  And I do try. But it occurs to me that if I gave the amount of time to cleaning and tidying my home that I give to planning decluttering and making the fairly pathetic attempts that I do make, the place would look a whole lot more streamlined anyway.

This might not strike anyone else as profound. But it echoes so many other things in my life.  For instance, my husband has said that if I spent the same amount of time actually praying as I spend on organizing to pray, well then the world would be a different place!

I will keep decluttering. I do need to get rid of stuff.  But I also need to put in the daily work at caring for my home. Which I already knew, didn't I? And it makes me think about what Leonie has been talking about here and  in another post which I just spent fifteen minutes looking for and can't find.

C'est la vie. Well, ma vie, anyway.

We went driving tonight to look at the local light displays. 

Elisabeth was immaculately attired (if you don't count the blue finger paint from this morning) in a pink dress, matching gumboots and one of my bras, worn on the outside of the dress.

I didn't have time to get a photo but I hope I remember it forever!

Changing the baby's nappy while singing "Three little ducks went out one day" ** to the toddler and discussing terrorism and the Cold War with my teenager.

It's a good life.

** It used to be "Five little ducks..." but apparently children's attention spans have got shorter (or possibly adults have got even more bored with that song?)

This is so me!

Perhaps it will be temporary but at the moment, my other blog is the active one. See the post below for the address.

I’ve been watching two shows on Australian ABC TV, first The Abbey and now The Monastery and I’m enjoying both.  Earlier this year I read some books by Kathleen Norris, which explore the monastic life and aspects of daily life in relation to what she had learnt from her explorations into that life. These books were The Cloister Walk and The Quotidian Mysteries. ( I haven’t got time to link atm…)

As well as reflecting on these things I have been really enjoying using Phyllis Tickle’s Divine Hours books for praying.  I’ve tried to make this a discipline, choosing to stop and pray at times through the day. Though these prayer times are short, they often come at times when I would rather be doing something else and so I have seen them as a useful exercise in self-discipline as well as being of great benefit in the more expected ways.

 As I was watching the first epidsode of The Monastery, something hit me again. It has been put in front of my eyes quite a few times over the last months (God, are you trying to tell me something?). As valuable as my self-imposed discipline is, submitting graciously to the interuptions in my day can be much more valuable (and perhaps even more “monkly”?).

 A comment by one of the men exploring the monks’ lives was that they had no time to themselves. Every moment was spoken for and they couldn’t just choose to do something. (I suspect that was true only up to a point, actually.) But he made a good observation and the abbot stressed what could be learn from obedience and what freedom there was in submitting willingly to that other-imposed rule.

 When my baby cries or my toddler wakes up earlier than normal; when I don’t get to do the things I normally get to do or don’t get to do the things that I hoped I would do, I am experiencing something similar to the rule of a monk or a nun. My time is not my own. My day is not determined by what I want to do, no matter how worthy that something is.

This is the hard part of going back to having little kids again after the freedom of older children. I remember feeling almost guilty once the boys got easier and I could do things easily. And I really know what freedom I have lost. I do pray that I might learn from this time that truly submitting to what God would have me do can bring me even more freedom and joy.

I truly need to pray this each day.

I'm having big problems logging in over here. HSB has been very helpful but I must say wordpress is a delight to use.

This is where I might be going.  Stay tuned (if anyone is out there!)

http://paminoz.wordpress.com/

And that is a real photo from our files, not one from the templates. Beautiful, isn't it?

Fear and helplessness are the main feelings.  I do have some triggers for a very mild PND kind of thing and it seems to be happening again. It shouldn't last long and it's nothing compared to what others go through but I would really appreciate prayers and any tips.

Well, I seem to hit a pretty low spot for a while after a baby and I'm there again. So I want to try and focus on some positive and helpful things while I'm down.

Some things I'm thankful for:

The most gorgeous little newborn face.

The fact that, even though she's pretty wakeful,  she's also pretty happy.

The way a toddler feels when you cuddle them.

The sound of a twenty month old laughing with her brothers.

A husband who puts himself out again and again for me.

Two boys who are growing into fine men.

The smell of spring. Dragonflies. Butcherbirds singing in our front trees.

This is the first photo of her when she was one hour old. She's now eight days old and as sweet as they come.  She already has a nickname:  the Puggle.  If you don't know what that is, Google and find out!

Yes, I'm still here.

M2 just provided me with something too sweet to resist posting.

"Mum, what's a smooch in maths terms?"

"I've never heard of a smooch in maths terms, sorry."

"Maybe it's American."

"Maybe."

A few moments later...

"Actually, it was a peck.  What's a peck in maths terms?"

Now that one I could answer!

This baby must be imminent by now. I am stuck in the stage  of being pretty well fed up but also thinking it might be a good idea to stay pregnant for ever. Who needs to bend, be comfortable, walk further than the couch or sleep?

T1 commented the other day I looked like I'd been blown up with a bicycle pump. Funny, I feel like I have been blown up by a bicycle pump.

If you are a praying friend, could you pray for the birth?  I am more nervous this time than last time. I think I feel that E's birth was so great that nothing could be better so I am destined for some kind of hard time. I am probably having a consultation with this birthing practictioner tonight which should be helpful. I used her CD and help last time and to a lesser extent this time as I had another CD and did a script of my own.

Getting dizzy now so I will stop.

Well, I'm actually getting better now but I have been quite sick. I think I just fended off an asthma attack on top of a chest infection on top of a virus, which of course came after the baby had been sick for nearly a week. And being pregnant.

OK, I'll stop wallowing now. But don't bother watching this space for anything brilliant for oh, at least a few days!