The countryside remembers us.

Your childhood is etched on the landscape that I run.

Every field is a memory, every stream flowing an echo of your voice.

Your laughter in the trees as they rustle. Grazed knees, muddy hands, sun bleached hair and rainy mackintoshes.

The seasons, every season that we have lived together.

A puddle reflects your face to me, through the ages. A baby in a buggy bumping over the stones, a toddler staring in awe at everything nature holds. A wobbly first bike ride, joy, your joy then ours, at the freedom that you taught yourself.

I love that every memory reveals itself to me, the solitary runner, smiling her head off at her luckiness. What a life.

What a life this is.

Your childhood.

Your freedom.

You’re everything that I hoped for.

The countryside remembers you and it holds our memories safe.

 

 

Mindful Mothering ….

This is me mindfully wondering if I am filling the mower up with petrol or diesel.

So apparently a wise man (or woman) once said, to be truly, truly happy and fulfilled a person must learn to live in the moment.

And I have been pondering this a lot of late. Not least because I am on a course of serious, ouchy self-discovery right now. You remember friends the counselling thing? The bit where I left the blogging world forever on a voyage of fulfilment? Well … erm … maybe forget the bit where I said I wasn’t coming back. A girl can change her mind right?

Anyway, I digress.

So the moment thing. It’s got me 3am, wide eyed wondering. Because as a Mother, I have a problem with it.

If I lived in the moment, like truly, happily, deeply fulfilled in the moment several things would happen:

• That jar of pesto that keeps my kids alive each week would run out.
• Tom would more than likely fulfil his life long mission to kill or maim himself in the most obscure of obscure ways (found him sitting on the roof gutter the other week, it’s no joke).
• My husband would waste away (there’s no timeline on that one right, but it COULD happen)
• Our house would disappear behind a wall of un Hansel & Gretel like greenery and the bugs that attempt to snuggle up with us each night would actually take over.

A LOT of other stuff would happen, in an un-positive, un-Zen kinda way and the family I am apparently responsible for would kick-off.

Since I became a Mother my brain has altered. It never rests. It’s stuck on overdrive between “what do they need right now”, “what could happen in the next moment” and “where is the threat” oh and don’t forget “how can I make this better for them” THAT’S the one I really like. I mean the pressure!

It NEVER switches off. It can be skewed slightly via a Friday night Sauvignon Blanc, THANK-GOD for Friday night Sauvignon Blanc (in responsible measures obviously, that wasn’t me dancing on the table the other week in that bar, it must have been another IRRESPONSIBLE mother) but in reality the moment thing, it rarely happens.

It happens to me in hindsight, which I know, is totally missing the point and it’s annoying me. Because I want to be that Mother, that present person.

I want to count the kids eyelashes and feel calm and content, instead of rushing and irrational. I want to look up instead of ahead.

I have tried and I am trying.

I downloaded that mindfulness app, and lay in the bath. Two minutes in Tom needed a poo, it kind of spoiled my vibe. It didn’t feel very mindful, it felt kind of “mumma, I need one now” urgent.

I just can’t achieve Mindful Motherhood. Does it even exist or is it just an Instagram myth? Because surely all those Mothers snapping themselves and their children in the moment, aren’t in the moment. Right?

Maybe it’s one for the next phase …. You know the one where the kids leave home, in 20 years? The one where the husband and I can actually talk to each other without one of us being punched in the privates or breaking up a fight.

For now I will make do with “simple happiness” instead. Finding happiness in small moments, present and past. Gazing at the babies when I climb the stairs to bed, studying their ever-changing handwriting and laughing at their terrible jokes. These will be my motherhood moments, I will make do with living in yesterday’s moment and I will be mindful, particularly against the backdrop of the worlds current problems just how lucky I am.

The Shisterhood …

WARNING THIS POST CONTAINS ADULT SHOUTY LANGUAGE.

Now that I have been back at work a little while, I feel a bit more qualified and a bit more enraged to take on the “having it all” argument, that is regularly and constantly peddled at modern mothers via social media, lifestyle magazines, various other forms of communication and each other.

So here it is, the truth from a modern working mum.

You can’t have it all. Going back to work has been the quickest and the most direct way of me learning this.

Can I just repeat that again?

You CANNOT HAVE IT ALL LADIES, You CANNOT HAVE IT ALL, did you get that at the back? YOU CANNOT HAVE IT, ok ok I will stop shouting.

But also just whilst I am at it what is “having it all” about anyway? Does it mean breaking your neck, your back and your bank balance to maintain a super slick lipsticked aura of calm? Give me a break, I would rather you meet the harassed, welly-wearning, toddler wrangling, au natural Kate any day. Because you will be meeting the truth.

Guess what girls? There is no win and there is no balance. The myth and the pressure we throw at ourselves (and each other) is utter rubbish.

Since returning to work I have learnt one very pertinent and tricky lesson. You cannot have it all (I know I said that bit already but I am feeling a little bit shouty so bear with). You can just learn how to not have it all. Quite frankly, how to be ok with being a little bit shi* (told you I was feeling shouty) at the areas in your life that you choose to be a little bit sh*t at.

I am telling you, if pesto hadn’t been created my kids would have died of starvation by now. I am a little bit sh*t at the food shop. But WHO CARES?? And if you do care and are planning on judging me on it, get over it already.

I don’t think it matters if you have a cleaner, a cook, a nanny, an au pair, a gardener, a handyman, a … hang … on … I’m thinking of another, oh here it is …. a giant mansion with a live in Mother in Law, you will still end up sacrificing things because having it all is not humanly possible and it is not at all what Motherhood is or should be about.

I am fed up of hearing about the hierarchy of the working mother versus the stay at home one. Here’s the deal, the working mother is crying her way to work some days because she has left her screaming daughter at the school gate (not naming any names, could be me, could not) and the stay at home Mum is crying her way into her coffee because she is sleep deprived and some days it is just so darn boring (not naming any names, could have been me, could have not). Where is the win and what were we expecting it all to be like anyway?

WE ARE ALL THE SAME, regardless of how we spend our hours. We are all winging it, making choices, sacrificing one thing for another. But we all LOVE our children and want the best for them, well most of us anyway.

Please, PLEASE, can we stop reinforcing the BS. Can we stop the playground bitching, the sizing up, the meanness and just accept, that we are all part of the sisterhood. Can’t we embrace the reality of Calpol stained jumpers, tear stained coffee mornings, prosecco fuelled Fridays and just be kind and stop pedalling the admans slogans. I used to be an adwoman I know where they come from, it’s not a place of love it’s a place of pound signs, that came out of a brainstorm after a boozy lunch.

Having it all is rubbish, trying to have it all is a little bit rubbish too. So can’t we please all just pull together and celebrate being a little bit shi* together in a loving “shisterhood” kind of way?

My kids might wear the same vest, ok pants on occasion but that doesn’t mean that I love them any less. Let’s stop the stressing, let’s stop beating ourselves AND each other up and feeling like we are failing at every school drop off. How can we fail when we are doing our best? Let’s just lose the slickness and love each other a bit more. I for one would much rather be part of the Shisterhood anyway.

The Motherhood Sucker Punch

When I was 11 I had a best friend called Lizzie. Lizzie had a big house, in a nice town and a Mum called “Lynne”. Lynne wore bright lipstick, designer clothes and always had her nails painted a shiny gleaming red.

Lizzie’s Mum came to every school event. Lizzie’s Mum won the Mum race on sports day. Lizzie’s Mum let us climb on her leather chairs. Lizzie’s Mum took us to the theatre, in London and we wore white tights. Lizzie and her Mum were best friends. In my tiny 11-year-old brain Lizzie and her Mum blew my mind.

One afternoon I walked into the kitchen of our restaurant where my Mum (owner and chef) was cooking her billionth pot of French onion soup for service that night and I told my Mum I didn’t want her as a my Mum anymore, I wished Lizzie’s Mum was my Mum.

Lizzie’s Mum comes to everything I told her. Why can’t you be more like Lizzie’s Mum and paint your nails or look glamorous, or just stop wearing those chef things you keep wearing? Why are you so busy? I want Lynne for a Mum not you.

Youch.

My mum stopped the casseroling, the frying, the chopping and all the other things that she was juggling that afternoon and took a deep breath. She looked me dead in the eye and said this:

Tired sigh: “I really love you Katie but sometimes just sometimes, I don’t like you or the way that you behave”.

My mother it turns out is a better woman than I. If it were Elsa and I in the kitchen that afternoon I suspect a frying pan may have featured in a bashy non frying kinda way.

You know that circle of Motherhood thing I bang on about? Well last week it came full circle and punched me right back in the face.

It was a normal busy working week, but I thought I was juggling it. I had failed on the food shop, dropped one of the plates, but it’s ok I thought we can go after school, they won’t mind. So there we were in the Waitrose café, me keeping them sweet post-school-pre-food-shop.

And then it happened. The out of nowhere Motherhood sucker punch.

In the face.

Full speed, no warning.

“Mumma, I wish Miss Walter was my Mum and not you. You are a rubbish Mum” Elsa said.

Youch. Double Youch. Youch. Youch. Youch, that hurt.

I should have been the grown up. I should have channelled my Zen like inner child or something. But I didn’t. I turned it to a four year old.

“Well, I am REALLY upset that you said that” I said, “THAT is really mean Elsa, and I am REALLY sad” and then I did it, the really bad bit, I reached over and ate the rest of her chocolate brownie. Queue shocked gasp from Tom “Ummm Mumma that’s really baaaaaad, naughty Mumma”.

Naughty Mumma indeed.

My friends, I dragged those kids around Waitrose like the devil possessed, there was no sign of Lizzie’s Mum or my own. There was just a half deranged brownie consuming loonie roaming the aisles.

I was a baaaad, baaaad lady that day.

Instead of taking it on the chin, I youched and I grunted and I mumbled about “Miss Walter, this and Miss Walter that”. By the end of the food shop I think Tom wished Miss Walter was his Mum too and he doesn’t even know who she is!

Some days Motherhood hurts and that day it hurt REAL bad.

But the thing is I know my behaviour that afternoon was not perfect parenting. I know that I should have held my head high, looked at my darling daughter, channelled my Mum and said calmly “I understand, but tell me why do you feel that way sweetpea”.

But you know what I think it’s ok that I showed Elsa that I was upset by what she said. I know, I know next time I won’t eat the brownie. However, I think sometimes it is ok to show your kids your unedited feelings in a not too scary way. I think it is good for them to see a teeny bit of unzipped emosh and to know that this Mumma isn’t perfect, in a Lizzie and Lynne kinda way. Because then they know that they don’t need to be either, that even when they are unperfect, they will still be loved.

At bedtime that night, Elsa said to me unprompted “Mumma, I love you. I’m sorry that I said I wanted Miss Walter as my Mumma, I don’t Mumma I want you”. She knew that she had hurt my feelings, and she wanted to make it better. I think that is a good little lesson learnt, that hurting people doesn’t feel too nice and that saying sorry if you have, feels a little bit better.

Elsa still wants me, with all my scary, brownie eating, aisle rampaging, diary juggling, loonie behaviour, she still wants me as her Mother. And that’s just great because I still want her too. With all her moods and her mayhem, her highs and her lows and her perfect imperfections. I still want her as my daughter, her future and her past.

The circle of Motherhood huh, just watch out Els one day it might be coming for you.

 

Helicopter parenting … literally.

You know those moments with the kids, the ones that kind of knock the wind out of you. The ones that happen when you were just there, just minding your own business trying to be a human, but leave you breathless in their wake.

Well the other day I had one.

Elsa and I were playing up in her bedroom and a helicopter flew past the window. I think helicopters are a bit like the dog and cat thing, you know you ether like a helicopter or a plane. Well I’m a helicopter gal, specifically an RAF Boeing Chinook, 3am in the morning, training exercise so close to the house it makes my bones shake … but hey that’s just me.

Anyway back to the story. So there we were playing an elaborate game of babies or such like and the helicopter went past the window:

Me: “look Els, a helicopter, cooool!”

Elsa: “Oh yes that is cool Mumma”

Me: “Its soooo cool. You know if you keep learning to read and going to school, one day you could learn to drive one of those”

Elsa: “Hmmm yep, cool. Maybe, I might. Shame you can’t Mumma”

Me: Attempting nonchalant I’m not bothered shrug “Erm what do you mean shame I can’t, I could learn to fly a helicopter if I wanted”

Elsa: “no, you can’t fly a helicopter because you are JUST a mumma”

Me: deep breathing attempting super cool chilled “Erm, what do you mean I am JUST a mum. I am NOT just a mum, I can do anything I want” (might have whined that last word a little)

That was the wind moment. The ouch, ouch, ouch moment. The “I am a “JUST” moment”.

In my own head recently I have been a working mother, a wife, a friend, and a half marathon runner. A relatively nice human? (Excluding PMT days but hey we all go to that dark place sometimes right 😉

In E’s head I am a “JUST”. “JUST a Mumma”.

My little girl’s childhood is already full of so many things that I don’t want to be there. Sexual imagery thrown at her from every screen, pressures to be this or that by the age of 4, her brothers own male view of her, as just “a her? (I am working on that one).

No no no. This cannot be. I CANNOT be just a “JUST”.

I want Elsa to view her mother as a boundless, brave and brilliant thing, that altered and changed whenever she wanted to. That age or circumstance never stopped. That aimed for things and achieved them. That gave her a security but also a sense of surprise, like my own brilliant mother.

THIS “JUST” SITUATION CANNOT BE.

Prior to this conversation, I was looking for a challenge. Something physical like a running race felt too predictable and relative to my comfort zone. Seriously these kids and their lessons …. PROJECT HELICOPTER is a go-go.

It won’t be today and it won’t be tomorrow. I don’t know how it will work or when it will be (turns out learning to drive a helicopter is slightly ahem, pricey, ). But one day Elsa will be standing on the green, green grass of Great Britain and watching her mother fly up, up into the sky. I hope this will be physically, but if not I will do that flight metaphorically.

That slightly cheesy, overused marketing saying goes something like “This girl can” doesn’t it?

Well this Woman Will. Because NOBODY but NOBODY tells my daughter or me what we will be.

To be continued..

Part time full time working and my surprising dilemma.

OOOh look my washing pile is the same height as my son. Coool. Said no Mum ever.

When I decided to go back to work I foresaw a whole lot of anxiety and sadness around leaving my babies. The whole not being with them 24 / 7 thing was the thing I pondered and worried about most with my old friend the 3am hour.

How they would cope? How I would cope? How we would cope? Not living as we had lived for the past 4 years, in each other’s pockets.

I have been surprised to find that the leaving bit has come easy (haters, go ahead). I am not skipping and jumping away from the little ones, but I am not weeping my way to the car as I expected (well only that one time when E cried and the reception teacher peeled her off me, but come on, anyone would have broken?)

The bit I have found the hardest is the leaving work bit. I know WTF?! (excuse the swearing).

I work in the service sector. I love the service sector because it’s so instant. You get instant responses and reactions from the customers you work with. Some day’s instant reactions you don’t like (!), but for the most part it’s all very positive. I don’t wait months for reports or charts telling me how the business I work in is doing. Its written on my customers faces, or on emails they write to me or phone calls I have. It’s great. I love it. Did I say that already? But there is one thing that’s not so easy.

The service sector doesn’t understand about school pick-up times, or Tom’s weird illnesses. It just doesn’t get Harvest festivals that you want to attend, or weekends or evenings or really anything other than itself and its 24 / 7 timeline. It runs ALL of the time, as it should and as it needs to, to keep me in Space NK products and the business I work for going.

So the thing I have been struggling with far more than anything else, and the thing that has surprised me most about going back to work, is that I hate leaving it and coming home. Don’t get me wrong, I adore my babies, I miss them when I am not with them and I love, love, love to be with them. But darn it …. I just want to get to the bottom of my To Do list, and somehow with my part time working versus  my full time service industry I never quite make it. I get to where I need to get that day, but I never get to that “oooh shall I have a cuppa now” place.

You know that itchy, twitchy, annoying feeling you get, when you know you have forgotten to do something? Well I get that A LOT these days. And for the most part its not because I have forgotten to do it, it’s because I have to switch off my mac at 2:45pm exactly and drive like a complete nutter (yep that was me) to get the babies. I just can’t keep on working and frankly it’s annoying the hell out of me.

My house has gone to the dogs. My babies have eaten more pasta these past few weeks than I thought humanly possible and my husband is fed up of me asking him to repeat what he just said again. But the thing is I love what I do, I want to do it. I want to do it too much it seems.

So what do I do? Where is the balance? Is there a balance or is the balance managing the itchy, scratchy feeling? What did I really think part time work meant?!

I don’t know how to answer it. The only thing I do know is that I will never ever be unkind or impatient with another member of the service industry again, unless its REALLY necessary. Because as that old cheesy saying goes “everyone is fighting their own private battle” it turns out that lately my battle is with pasta pesto, washing and ballet classes. In the great scheme of things, it aint a bad battle to be fighting.

Brilliant things that friends (& strangers) have said to me since I had children ….

I hold this little list very close to my heart:

• Ok so you left your shopping trolley full of shopping in the supermarket car park, I get that bit, but do you have the baby? Yes? Well what are you crying about then?

• What do you mean your baby is a girl? She’s wearing blue dear, how am I supposed to tell if you dress her in blue.

• You are not going mad, you just have two children very close in age.

• I’m taking you home, you are not going clubbing, it will not end well if you go clubbing tonight.

• Is that your son doing ballet?

• Just drink this; it will make you feel better.

• No Kate, even though you miss the baby smell we are not having another baby …. ever.

• What’s going on with you today? You are more mental then when you went mental last time?

• Errrrrm Kate, you do know you have to clean behind the babies ears right?

• You don’t need to phone an ambulance you idiot, she has just split her lip open.

• You are not a bad mother, you have just had a very bad day.

• Kate I think you are prone to over dramatisation.

• Jesus Christ, I think you need to lay off the fruit with Tom. Pheweeeeee shall I open a window I thought that was the dog?

• Mrs Phipps, sorry could you stop talking for a minute so that I can actually listen to your son’s chest?

• Mumma I love you, you silly, silly girl.

The invisible tool kit …..

Sometimes I like to think that part of my role as a Mother is to put together a little tool kit for the babies to take on with them into adulthood. A virtual tool kit containing practical and emotional tools to help the babies cope with life’s many and unpredictable ups and downs.

I even have a little visualisation of this tool kit in my head, it’s wooden and “Steiner” like (I know, I know it’s the hippy in me again) and it feels like its radiating positivity.

This week, I added a new tool to the kit, a practical one that I hope I am already inspiring them both to want to use whenever they need it.

The tool I put in is exercise and more specifically running.

Last week Elsa came on her first run with me. She didn’t run, instead she chose to cycle her teeny tiny wobbly bike next to me, shouting and whooping about “how much fun this is Mumma, so much fun!”. We had a blast and it was as my own Mother calls it a “blink” moment.

So in it’s going and this is why.

There have been times in my life where I feel like running has almost, well, saved me.

There have been the practical get me outta here times, but more importantly and definitely more frequently it has saved me in the emotional sense.

I have loved running since I was a kid and I remember relying on it heavily when I was a jumbled up mess of teenage emotions, it has always given me this immense feeling of freedom and mental strength.

In my head I have run from: relationships, jobs, money, mortgages, marriages, babies, houses, illnesses and a billion other everyday live your life stresses.

Running has rebuilt me, when I was broken, has made me and makes me feel both physically and emotionally very, very strong.

All too frequently I hear statistics on the news these days about how “stress” and “anxiety” are our modern illness. After Tom’s birth I succumbed to my own post-natal version and combined with amazing family and friends the only prescription that made me feel like “me” again was my old favourite, running.

Our lives can be so complicated so this tool is a simple one. Any time the going gets tough or the sun shines and life feels like a celebration, I hope the babies put their running shoes on, open the front door to their mind or their house and just go for it.

 

 

What a way to make a living …

This is me, at work the other day. Cool look huh?

This week I went back to work. Not in the normal Kate style of will I won’t I hang on let me think about this for months, but in the proper got up, got dressed and actually went to work sense.

In the days preceding I thought it would be a lot of things but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine coming home and using the word “wonderful” to describe it.

On the drive home after my first day I had a feeling, which for a little while I couldn’t understand. Then later I realised what that feeling was.

I felt like I had come home.

The thing I have only just light bulb kind of moment realised is that quite a large part of me, myself, Kate was defined by my career. Not in a negative I needed work to live sense but in more of a purposeful enjoyment way, it gave me a sense of myself.

Work gave me a massive focus that was a really positive part of my life. Although the babies have of course been more than my focus these past years, there is a part of me that they haven’t fulfilled. I don’t expect them to “fulfil” me and my needs at all but it has taken me until now to realise that I was really missing and sort of grieving for a part of myself.

Here’s the thing (and haters feel free to hate):

• I like working. I like helping people to grow their business or their brands (so call me shallow or driven I don’t care). Without this external stimulation and navigation point, I get a little bit lost in my own head and start to over think just about everything and it can all become a little bit negative, for myself and anyone close to me.

• I like earning money and contributing to our household income. I thought I would be ok with this element but it has been a MASSIVE deal for me. I have hated having to justify (to myself mostly) where and how I spend “our” money. Aside from the money itself I have felt really uncomfortable about the weight shift this has bought to my relationship. As Beyonce is always saying I want to be an “independent” woman again but this time in an “un-independent” way.

• I love my children without measure or end, but I want to spend sometime away from them just being me. I don’t enjoy being with them 24/7/365 and I am finally going to stop beating myself up about that. I don’t think that they will suffer if I go back to work, I believe that they will get to know a more focused and happy mother.

There are a million Mum blogs out there and the work thang is a regular top topic. There is definitely not a one size fits all answer and I don’t think anyone’s decisions should be judged but it seems part of being a Mother is about accepting the changes it brings in yourself and your children. Motherhood has changed me beyond recognition in many ways and it is only now that am I realising that there has always been a constant invisible niggle inside myself. So I am excited to give the niggle the space it needs for a bit and just see what happens.

Here I am back humming Dolly Parton again. However lately it’s a not so catchy 9:30 until 1:30pm but in my heart this time it really is “a way to make a living” 😉

Little E gets bigger …

I am sitting at my kitchen table having just left Little E at her first settling in session for big school. Post drop off I am thankful for three things: oversized sunglasses (I blubbed all the way home), good friends (I blubbed down the phone to two of them) and strong tea (I blubbed into my tea cup once home).

I am going back in 1 hour. She will have spent 2 hours there however in my head and maybe hers too, our tiny separation feels like a lifetime. Walking away from her in her new “big girl” classroom, I felt like a time lapse of the last 4 years flashed in front of my eyes.

You know that sentence I warned you about, that “hold onto every moment, it will go so fast” mantra that the supermarket grannies kept throwing at me every aisle. Well it’s happened, it’s true. It has gone so fast and my Little E has turned into a medium sized E full of attitude and questions and long limbs that don’t want to be cuddled so much anymore. And here I am left drinking tea and wondering when it all happened and how we both got here; I swear we only just came home from the hospital sky high on each other.

Hold onto your babies tightly girls. Breathe in their heady baby smell and really take the time to look at them, because it turns out the grannies and the cheesy sayings were right “the days really are long but the years really are short” and suddenly I am the mother of a 4 year old.