River swimming

You’ll keep going your way

I’ll keep going my way

River, stay away from my door

(Paul Robeson’s is an infinitely deeper, more solemn and glorious version of this song than Frank Sinatra’s. It was played at my grandfather’s funeral and reminds me of something of the essence of him, as I remember him, even though that was the first time I’d ever heard it)

When my daughters were very young we spent a lot of time in and around the River Wandle. At one point our house backed onto its banks, and I was warned against letting Cherry paddle barefoot in the very shallow, clear part closest to us due to the frequent volumes of knives and syringes that were reportedly pulled out of it. I came back from a bike ride one day to find the girls, with their dad, planting up some of the banks with a local volunteer group. Violet, barely more than a baby, was plastered head to toe in river mud. I still remember the predominantly male volunteers astonishment that I didn’t instantly berate the girls’ dad for allowing my baby to cover herself in mud. They weren’t to know of course that mud, and rivers, were my domain.

The Wandle is a shallow, meandering sort of river in most of the places we interacted with it. I googled and was assured otters frequented it and the only kingfishers I have seen to date were on the Wandle. I don’t think we ever found a part deep enough for the girls to swim in, which was just as well because they were wading in it years before either of them could swim.

I associated the river inextricably with my experience of motherhood, its meanders seemed to soothe me through the reality of raising two children. I fondly imagined the Wandle parented with me, calmed the girls as it calmed me, intrigued them as it intrigued me, and held us all in its womanly curves. The relentless flow felt like a metaphor for the passage of time as experienced through the eyes of a mother, seemingly always the same whilst constantly slipping away to make way for the new, changes so subtle and imperceptible that still somehow came as a surprise.

Nobody ‘official’ ever told us we couldn’t paddle in the river although well-meaning passers-by were full of reasons why we ‘shouldn’t’, ranging from concerns about dirt and mud, to riverbourne diseases, to an adamance my girls would ‘catch their death’ although to my knowledge not one child has died of exposure or hypothermia from paddling in the River Wandle. We had friends who joined us but many weren’t so lucky. Sometimes passing children would ask their parents or grandparents if they could paddle too and I heard a lot of ‘ugh no! Dirty!’ and other strange attitudes to our waterways. I even once heard ‘no, you’ll get your wellies dirty’.

Now we live in Sussex the Wandle has been replaced by the Arun as ‘our’ river. The Arun is also the river of my childhood and it occurs to me now, as my new relationship with it begins, that I never once as a child paddled or swam in the Arun.

A deep, fast-flowing, tidal river, the Arun begins at a series of springs and ghylls in St Leonard’s Forest, just outside Horsham. A recent bike ride to investigate revealed little of note to the naked eye, trickles and ditches but nothing I could instantly identify as the source of the Arun. Nonetheless by the time it reaches a piece of West Sussex I know as Lee Place, also ‘the end of Harsfold Lane’ that lies geographically somewhere between Wisborough Green, Billingshurst and Pulborough, it is wide, deep and imposing with steep banks. Perhaps this is why I never got in it.

More likely I never thought to. Even for somebody as prone to wandering and blatant trespassing as me the river was off-limits. I still don’t really know why, my parents never to my recollection raised any objection to me returning home in any sort of sodden or mud-soaked state, and I don’t remember being told to keep out of water. I swam in the lakes on family holidays to the Lake District and in the sea at Littlehampton where the Arun returns to the mother. Nonetheless it never occurred to me then that I could swim in the Arun but since coming back to Sussex I’ve felt the pull of the river every time I pass it by.

My good friend and source of all wisdom on open-water swimming Debbie Burton says some people dip, and some people swim. I think I’m the former, because although my instincts now always urge me into the water it’s the experience of being connected with the habitat that I want, I’m a competent enough swimmer but I’ve yet to feel the urge to seriously swim. Maybe it’ll come, as time passes the idea of slipping into the river from one of the various bridges nearby and swimming a way up, or downstream, is appealing.

Even so it took me a long time to swim in the Arun. I’d been living here for nearly a year before I christened myself and the first time I did so it took ages. I can’t really explain why. The area I chose was recommended by several wild swimming publications, all of which seemed legitimate, and there were no obvious NO SWIMMING signs and the presence of a NO DIVING in fact strongly suggested this was a spot many others had deduced was suitable for swimming. But I sat on the bank for a good half hour, sweating after a long bike ride and stripped down to my bra and bib shorts, barefoot and trying desperately not to think about what lay beneath the rushes and what might ooze in the slime at the bottom of the water.

There’s a primal sort of fascination and revulsion at the thought of the secret life of rivers, the nymphs and ghastly worms that live in the riverbed, the horrifying sucker-like creatures we imagine spiral through dank waters, the nibbly insects, the fish - what if they bite? Do fish bite? I’ve seen the size of some of the pike my brother hauled out of the Arun when he was a teenager.

Then there’s the sense of being somewhere I shouldn’t, the awareness that while I don’t know of any reason why I can’t be in the river, I wouldn’t really have any answer to anybody who told me to get out. People feel ownership over land they connect with, I feel it too so I understand it, but some think their feelings are more important and use the depth of that feeling to argue everybody else away.

Contrary to popular belief outside isn’t free and it’s also not terribly friendly a lot of the time. In the past few months I’ve twice been shouted at by angry men for being on public land. I have thoughts on men who shout at women, none of them are good thoughts, and I particularly have thoughts on men who shout at women who are alone or with young children.

Those thoughts loomed large in my mind as I edged around on the riverbank and getting in was a process of gently talking to myself, pushing myself, encouraging and urging myself until in one fell swoop it was done. I let the current carry me a short distance then swam back up against it to scramble out, knees muddied and tingling from the brushes of nettles in amongst the rushes. Whatever invisible barriers lay between me and the river had been breached. Getting back in was the work of a moment.

I don’t really fully know what the pull of river swimming is yet, only that it exists in me and in my children who love the river and embrace it as fully as I do. More fully, they put their heads under and I can’t yet. For reasons unknown I still can’t submerge my head. I think like all relationships the one I have with the Arun will continue to evolve. I think the more I learn about the river the more questions I will have and the more time I will need to spend answering those questions through being in the environment.

Yesterday as my daughters and I played in a particularly good, shallow spot with friends a grass snake swam by, its little head above the surface as its body wriggled side-to-side through the water. I can see us reliving that moment in 50 years, when I am unfathomably old, the girls will say ‘do you remember that grass snake?’ and even through my inevitable dementia I will because who wouldn’t? The moments that make a childhood, make a life, happen in rivers as they happen in gardens and woods and fields and on beaches and up hills and mountains, and only rarely in classrooms and halls and soft play centres and theme parks, but only if we let them, if we’re not afraid to get our wellies dirty.

A loose list for 2019

If I were to pick a word to describe 2018, it would be hard to go past ‘shitshow’. A year that cost me my marriage, along with several other significant relationships, and even my beloved dog, isn’t likely to attract gleaming accolades.

But I am nothing if not an optimist and last year was valuable beyond compare in terms of finally leaving behind old and dysfunctional ways of thinking and being, and finding a version of and vision for myself I am positively and all-encompassingly excited about. It was also extremely useful for observing and understanding patterns in relationships. It’s tempting to sit and blame other people for fallout (and to be fair there’s been plenty of blaming, I’m hardly claiming to be Zen-like here) but it’s a far more useful exercise to reflect on my part in it all, and consider what I could do differently in the future and conversely, what I would not do differently. The changes of 2018 were harrowing but they were all the right changes.

I also had my first novel published, an event that sadly was completely overshadowed by the disintegration of my personal life. The book is out there in the world and hopefully remains the start of something, as opposed to a catastrophic symbol of the price of creative expression and ambition. In my darker moments I think of it as just that, but those moments are becoming less frequent.

Writing goals do remain out of reach at the moment so for 2019 my to-do list is primarily cycling related. One of the advantages of divorce and shared custody is that I have a lot more free time, and what better way to spend it than on a bike? Interspersed with the odd bit of skating, swimming and surfing. In no particular order, here are the plans for this year.

1. London-Wales-London: A 400k audax (aka ‘bloody long bike ride’) that came on my radar thanks to sports psychologist Josie Perry. I’ve never ridden anything like this distance in one go but am assured it is possible, and the second I read about it, I was pretty much in. Training for LWL will involve a fair few distance events, all of which are excellent excuses for a weekend away on the cheap, which is essentially 50% of my 2019 plans in a nutshell.

2. London series BMX: I only started BMX early last summer but it’s safe to say I’m completely addicted. I managed one race last year, at the Olympic track in Stratford where I and one other ‘mature’ female were shoved in with bunch of men on cruisers (BMX bikes with larger wheels) and I tailed around last and finished about fifty metres off the pace. Regardless, it was one of the best things I’ve done. BMX is ridiculously good fun and completely immersive, builds general bike handling skills, is excellent for all-round fitness and is one of the few things that takes me completely out of my own head, largely through blind fear, and allows me to occupy my body 100%. For a deep thinker like me this is gold dust.

3. Cycling instructor training. I have wanted to do this for years but for various reasons it wasn’t possible, this year however I have taken the plunge and will be training in February. Once the course is done I will be able to work as an instructor, ideally mainly with children but also with women, especially mothers and older women who might feel they don’t have the time to cycle or it’s just ‘not for them’.

4. Mechanicals. Along with starting BMX, learning how to maintain and fix my bike properly was one of the best things I did last year. I went to drop-in sessions at London Bike Kitchen in Hackney, where the extremely tolerant and very lovely Amy provided tea, great conversation and expert coaching in how to wrestle with various metal implements. I have also taken to frequenting my local bike shop, Wallington Cycles, where I am learning a great deal in return for tea, snacks and general banter, which seems an excellent deal to me. Most recently we built a wheel with a dynamo hub, a nifty little invention that uses the power generated by cycling to run lights and even charge things via USB (the shrieking when we were able to charge a mobile phone from it was off the chart). Tinkering with my bike setup is enormously satisfying and if you want to get all deep about it, which obviously I do, building my competence has been absolutely vital to restoring something of my rather shattered self-esteem. In short, doing stuff is super empowering.

5. South Downs Way. I grew up very near the South Downs and that landscape has a strong and profoundly soothing emotional effect on me, a bittersweet combination of home, awareness of the passage of time, and righteous suffering. The latter might be all the hills. At the moment I ride there on my cyclocross bike but even my plucky, can-do attitude is failing in the face of narrow drops, no suspension and a saddle forged straight from Hell. It’s really more mountain bike sort of territory. I haven’t been able to look at my mountain bike since my marriage ended, as it was representative of one of the few things my ex husband and I did together. However the last time I rode on the South Downs I concluded that the emotional pain of dusting off my mountain bike would still be lesser to the physical pain inflicted by my cross bike, which is progress, in a weird way. I’m less bothered about riding the whole 100m end-to-end, as it’s really a landscape I like to wander around on rather than rip through, however my cousins live in Winchester providing an ideal place to collapse at the end of it, so at some point it probably needs to be done in a linear fashion, either in part or in full.

6. Hills, hills, hills. Climbing and descending fill me with a combination of excitement and fear - or nausea, as it’s generally known. In terms of using physical activity as a way to address one’s fears, hills are a prime contender for me. I also happen to really love them even if I am prone to anxiety over heights and I worry hugely about corners when descending, thanks to being a generally off-kilter, right-handed-left-footed sort of person and the lasting physical impact of two pregnancies in quick succession. A few weeks ago I dug out a list of the top 10 climbs in Surrey and nailed four in a day, which felt like a good start.

Jersey and shorts courtesy of Liv Cycling.

7. The one I can’t even write about yet. A while ago a friend contacted me suggesting a cycling challenge that filled me with incredulous terror, so obviously I said yes. We are now making plans. I’m too worried about jinxing any of it to say what it is, but it will happen in September, take around two weeks and be Lots of Fun, Hellish and generally Quite The Adventure.

8. Stand up on a surfboard. I mean, this has to happen at some point, right?

9. Observe my response to landscapes. A bit existential, this one, but I am fascinated by the concept of a personal response to a landscape or environment. After my marriage came to an end I went on several trips to parts of the UK that hold meaning for me, and observing and experiencing my emotional reactions to these places was enormously healing and really deepened my knowledge of who I am and where I came from. Fundamentally the desire to know where we’re from is steeped in our DNA. Whether I was on a bike or in water, the way I interacted with these landscapes brought me understanding I couldn’t have gained in other ways. For example Northumberland, where I was born, holds deep associations for me with the mother bond and significant formative relationships with females including my relationship with my own daughters. This year I want to continue interacting with a range of landscapes that hold significance or curiosity for me.

10. Skate like a girl. Skating is about the only thing I do that has no purpose, goal or achievement attached other than the experience itself. As a friend observed, most skaters really are ‘just about the skate’ and in the adult world it’s rare to have something you do just for the sake of it, for no greater ambition or with nothing to prove. Skating is also what the always-brilliant Lucy calls a site of mutual fulfilment - something my daughters and I can do together that feels exclusively ours and impacts on our confidence in and unity with one another. Skating is by far the most fiendishly difficult of all the sports I do, takes the most effort for the least obvious gain, and holds that fear factor that renders me unable to think or process anything other than the moment.

From stay-at-home mother to working mother

After six years at home full-time with children, including a year and a half home educating, I have now shot to the other end of the spectrum as a pretty much full-time working mother.

I will post about work itself another day, because that’s enough to warrant an entirely separate blogpost. Today I wanted to talk about the transition from stay-at-home to working mother.

This isn’t the first time I’ve worked since having children, but it’s the first time I’ve been away from them for more than the odd meeting here and there. I do two days a week in town in an office, and three from home. I spend four days a week consulting for a NGO, and the final day is devoted to other clients, book promotion and outdoors journalism.

The main change from how I worked in the past is that I don’t fit work around the children. I have had varying degrees of success juggling work and children in the past but overall I don’t find it a good solution.

I can’t stand being glued to a computer or phone while they ask me for snacks and attention. But avoiding this scenario is easier said than done, because it means I have to take complete responsibility for my time. I can’t expect my children to prioritise my work and I can’t expect my clients to prioritise my family. Therefore I have to choose what I prioritise and when. My way of doing this is to only work when my children are physically not with me. This is new to me, and new to them, as they have been physically with me every single day for the last six years.

Emotionally it has been something of a journey. It’s been hard for the children as they miss me, of course, and they have had to get used to firstly school and nursery, and secondly a childminder. On the plus side Noel is at home three days a week so they are spending a lot more time with him, which makes all of us very happy. But it’s not really my place to discuss my children’s emotional journey so I’m going to focus just on mine.

The main issue has been guilt. I know, major shocker right?

There was the obvious guilt of leaving my children to go to work.

Followed by swiftly reminding myself I wasn’t leaving them, they were with their father most of the time and with a qualified professional who I know and trust the rest of the time.

Followed by swiftly reminding myself that regardless of whether they were with their father or a qualified professional, I am entitled to pursue my own career.

Followed swiftly by being annoyed with myself for the entire thought process because did that mean I judged other mothers who worked and labelled them as ‘leaving’, read ‘neglecting’ their children?

Exhausting.

Then came the guilt that I whisper it love my job and am ambitious for my career and personal development. One day, after dropping Cherry and Violet off and heading back to crack on, I was seized with an overwhelming compulsion to jack in a new client right now, shelve my future books, park the journalism (my profession of 15 years, no less) and find something locally based, in an industry I do not enjoy, that would pay the bills.

In that moment I genuinely felt it would only be acceptable for me to be away from my children if I was doing a job I don't like. That should be my natural punishment for leaving my children to work. You can't, went the silent internal judgement, expect to 'have it all'.

I’m so thankful for the school run, because I find thinking while walking so much more productive than thinking while sitting at the table at home. It’s a powerful metaphor. You genuinely move through your thought processes, one foot in front of the other, always forwards. You don’t get a chance to get stuck in your head.

By the time I got home I had seen the compulsion for what it was, a toxic combination of my guilt and self-doubt talking. A strange hash of learned beliefs about the role of women, and mothers, contrasted with my true values which have not always been supported by rhetoric or experience. 

And then there was the guilt when my children asked me why I had to work. It’s so tempting to fob them off with the standard ‘to make money so we can buy nice things’ response, and reassure them I’d much rather be with them all the time and life is just unfair and I am at the mercy of 'the man' and dragged away from them against my will.

But this is not true. I don't just work for money and while it might be harder for my children to hear the truth, I trust them to be able to handle it. I told them I worked because I enjoyed having a purpose and being of service, and I love to write and make people happy by telling stories and this was what I wanted to do with my life.

The hardest part of all is not saying that I wish I didn’t have to work and could still be at home with them all day. Because while I do miss them and think about them, and look forward to the times when I can be at home with them, I don’t wish I was back at home full-time.

The time had come for all of us, for our worlds to get bigger. 

The children were ready for more and it was Cherry starting school that prompted a chain-reaction of events. I’m not saying for a second we could not have met her changing and developing needs home educating, but school was our solution and a choice in which she participated fully. With Cherry at school, Violet's circumstances also changed and home educating was no longer meeting her needs, and so we agreed she would start at school nursery. Noel was also ready for things to change, for more time at home and with the children and less time in the office. And I was ready for the exact opposite. Less time at home, more time out in the world again. This was the solution that worked for all four of us, together.

It’s also not necessarily a permanent fixture. We adapt to change as our needs change. Noel and I are adjusting and adapting our work schedules and at times he will be at home and me at work more more, at other times, I will once again be the 'default parent'.

At some point in future school may no longer be the right thing for either or both of the children. The great thing about having home educated is that you know what’s possible, and you know school is optional. If school isn’t working for us, we will remove the factor of school.

It’s not just our worlds that have got bigger, our minds have too. We have stepped out of the mindset of following the paths dictated to us – school! Office job! Full time work! Money for nice things! And instead we’re putting ourselves at the centre of the equation and asking, what do we want, and how can we make these things happen, for all of us? There are no right or wrong answers either. There's no shame if the priorities switch, if earning money becomes more imperative, or if  we decide to jack everything in temporarily and road-trip for a year. (I would quite like to do this at some point, wouldn't you?!)

If there’s one thing our family is learning to be, it’s adaptable. That’s what our species does, after all, and it’s what makes homo sapiens so incredibly successful. We adapt.

A homeschool week

After our trip to the beach at the weekend we had plenty of new loose parts to investigate. Cherry classified her shells by colour and shape, then tested their properties against sandpaper. This was also a good opportunity to add to her sight-words. For Violet, the sea-themed loose parts became incorporated into her nonstop storytelling.

Although it was a cold and wet week, we headed out every day and enjoyed slipping and squelching in the mud and testing the varying degrees of friction on wet and frozen surfaces.

The beginning of the week is now very busy for all of us! Violet has preschool on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. Sessions last three hours which gives Cherry and I a little time together. On Mondays she goes to sports class and on Tuesday she started gymnastics in the mornings and has drama in the afternoon, giving Violet and I an hour together.

Then on Wednesday afternoon Cherry has two hours of Forest School, another new group, which gives me another two hours just with Violet.

This week it felt rather like a lot of rushing around. The challenge for me is making the most of the time I have one-on-one with each of the children rather than using it to run errands, which are much easier with just one child in tow! I am making a list of ideas for these times, so I can have something set up and ready for us to dive straight into.

Thursdays and Fridays are far more relaxed - thankfully! We all go to our home education group on Thursdays. It's an outdoor group all year round - even in the torrential rain we had this week.

Then on Thursday evening the snow came and, ever curious, Cherry and Violet brought some into the house to explore. I gave them each a tray of food colouring and water and some pipettes and watched them experiment with adding colour to the snow. Cherry noticed that as she added more water to her food colouring, it got lighter, so we talked about the concept of dilution.

The snow settled overnight so Friday was an official Snow Day. We headed out as soon as we got up and spent the entire day in the snow.

On Saturday we went to the RHS gardens at Wisley to see the butterflies in the glasshouse and have a wander around the gardens.

An icy puddle in the car park had to be investigated on the way out. The light was beautiful. Watching the children I thought once again how learning for children at this age is all about experiences.

I have struggled a bit with 'learning' as a wider concept. I have always linked it with classrooms, and with reading and writing and sums and discernible, measurable outcomes. By watching Cherry and Violet closely and reflecting on what they do and how they do it, observing what grabs their interest and what doesn't, I am starting to see the bigger picture. I can see how many things we feel we know 'intuitively' could in fact be shaped by our childhood experiences and the connections we make at this age.

This week I re-read Learning Together With Young Children and was able to take much more from it than my first reading. The more I learn about the Reggio Emilio approach the more I like it, and this book is very Reggio-inspired. Although written for early years practitioners it has much that can be incorporated into home education.

I have also become very interested in loose parts and how they fit into learning. Cherry and Violet are irresistibly drawn to loose parts - as their collection from the beach demonstrates - and I am keen to explore more ways to incorporate them. I will probably do more reading around this. Cherry and Violet aren't the only ones learning all the time!

Home education planning for 2017

At the end of last year I wrote this piece for the Telegraph about our first 'term' of home educating.

This term I wanted to begin with more of a plan. Last term was very haphazard and I was conscious that Cherry in particular doesn't respond well to chaos and disorganisation. We also welcomed a puppy into our family which brought what routine we had created to a screeching halt. 

Last term was very hard in places, and at one point we were considering both children attending a Waldorf-inspired kindergarten for three mornings a week as I genuinely felt I couldn't cope with the responsibility of full-time home education. For various reasons this didn't happen and I am now very glad. 

I feel I have a better idea of what home education is and how it is working for us, and how it will continue to work in the future. Through all of this I have been able to look at my children and ask myself some fundamental questions - are they happy? Are they learning? Are they engaged in the world? Do they have discernible interests, passions and lines of inquiry? Are they interacting socially? Are they growing as human beings? Are we all, all four of us, learning and growing? Despite some challenges, so far, the answers are always 'yes'. 

For a long time I have been really excited by the idea of inquiry-based learning - following children's interests and offering mentoring and guidance, and allowing these interests to unfold into self-directed learning. It's a simple concept that felt almost impossible to put into practice at several points in the last few months.

However at the end of the year some strong interests and obvious lines of inquiry began to emerge, disparate but connected. 

At the same time, all the reading and thinking and learning I have been doing - exploring approaches from unschooling to Charlotte Mason to classical to Reggio-inspired - started to come together in a more holistic and connected way. 

Finally, Noel and I began to address the environment. We converted the spare room, piled high with junk and clutter, into a playroom. This has been a long time coming - we decided back in August to turn the space over to the children - only now did we have the vision and the funds to make it a reality.

At the beginning of 2017 I feel in a good place and ready to plunge into home education with a refreshed and enhanced enthusiasm.

We will continue with some of the routine we created last year. Violet will still attend her preschool for three mornings a week. Cherry will continue with her sports class, her drama class and will start gymnastics classes. 

One day a week we all attend a beautiful outdoor homeschooling community. We have made some good friends there and although I have struggled personally with my confidence, with social awkwardness and at times with my parenting in this space, I very much feel we belong there. 

We will also continue to spend time outside every day, this is a top priority and won't change. Nature study will carry on, we started following Exploring Nature With Children by Lynn Seddon last year and we will pick that back up again.

Cherry and Violet are incredibly at home in the outdoors. They never struggle to occupy and entertain themselves and their play lasts for hours. The learning that happens is a joy to behold, as is their capability, confidence and resourcefulness.

But indoors they are less at home. They are more demanding, argue more and are less inclined to occupy and entertain themselves. They have long play cycles and do a lot of dramatic play and storytelling but they rarely sit and play constructively with toys - I hardly ever find them building with the blocks, for example. 

I am hopeful having their own playroom will encourage them to explore materials and resources more. I invested in a little curriculum called Building Structures With Young Children that I plan to work through with them, but at the moment we only have a small bucket of wooden blocks at our disposal. I may leave this until we can invest in a couple of resources - I think they would absolutely love rainbow blocks, for example, and be far more motivated to explore them.

We used Christmas as an opportunity to invest in some resources like geometric shapes and puzzles and a maths set so we are well set up to begin some guided investigations into shapes, patters, measurements and other basic mathematical concepts. 

They love to help me cook and both of them are highly capable in the kitchen. They love cooking and baking and so this year we will be branching out from our staples, trying new recipes together and building on their skills.

They have also started asking questions about nutrition and the general properties and content of food, so we will begin to learn more about food groups and the function of food as fuel for our bodies. As keen gardeners and cooks they're pretty au fait with where their food comes from, but we haven't yet really talked much about the ethics of food, packaging, production processes, eating meat and so on.

Cherry learned to read last term, to the level of being able to read a simple early reader by herself. We used a phonics-based programme which she initially enjoyed but later began to complain about. I also felt the reading material within the programme itself became pretty poor as it progressed. So this term we will add sight words instead of focusing purely on sounding out words. 

In terms of inquiry and project work, Violet remains very interested in space and Cherry has a few interests on the go, including New York, tall structures and electricity.

Over Christmas they watched and fell in love with Ice Age: Collision Course and Cherry asked about friction, so this led to a short but enjoyable inquiry and they both completely grasped the concept and were able to make accurate predictions about the friction generated between various surfaces and objects. 

Finally I invested in a Reggio-inspired arts curriculum for us to work through. We do a lot of art and Cherry and Violet love crafting and creating. Having a structure to follow and ideas of how to present provocations and talk about the materials with the children is really helpful to me as I struggle to overcome my perception of myself as 'not good at art'. It's a bit like having a friendly helping hand. 

With children this age I think the main challenge of home education is simply being with them so much. They are still very young, although both are past the demanding dependency of toddlerdom. Violet is experiencing some big emotions at the moment and Cherry remains highly sensitive, extremely spirited and very demanding in new and different ways. She is quite simply a child who requires a great deal of attention and interaction - she always has been and I can't see this changing any time soon. 

My relationship with both of my children is at an all-time high point. I feel extremely confident in my parenting at this moment in time, but I know how quickly this can change and Cherry in particular hits phases hard and head-on. There is always something new just around the corner.

Managing this, and retaining some semblance of balance so that I feel I have enough interests, get enough exercise and maintain enough of a healthy inner life, is the ultimate goal.

At the end of the day I'm also a housewife, keeping everybody fed, clothed and content is part of my remit too.

I am not a natural home-maker, I am not tidy or organised and I frequently procrastinate and try to avoid taking responsibility. But on the plus side I am extremely resourceful, creative and determined.

More and more I am finding ways to make home life work for me - for all of us. Rather than try and force myself into somebody else's model, looking to Instagram or self-proclaimed 'Monica's' or Marie Kondo I am starting to find a way of running our home that fits in with my personality and my true self as well as with the wants and needs of everybody else. Noel is strong in areas where I am weak, and more and more he and I inspire each other to be our best selves. 

I am so excited for what this year may hold. I hope I can document it a bit more - already this year I have used my DSLR every day, instead of just snapping on my iPhone, and it's just a simple gesture but it feels significant in a number of ways.

Firstly it shows that I have my hands free enough to use the thing - a first since I had children. 

Secondly, it shows that I am investing a more expensive and professional tool in recording our daily lives, which feels like it gives moments and experiences more weight and meaning. Life is to be lived, enjoyed and reflected upon, not just snapped in a rush.

And finally it feels like a representation of an awareness of being mindful and present, of observing my children rather than responding to predicted or learned behaviour. More and more I can step back and watch and learn, rather than constantly rushing about with my hands full. Much of this is a reflection of their age and capabilities, of course, but I hope that some of it is indicative of my own personal growth as a mother and as a person.

It's been a journey for me too - the most exciting journey of all. I can't wait to see where we all go. 

Wild learning: Structured outdoor learning

It's safe to say I am completely fanatical about outdoor learning, mainly because I can see about a billion benefits and not one drawback. 

It's great for children physically because it means they are free to move around - in fact most outdoor learning requires movement. We all know kids who 'can't sit still' but even the more gentle and relaxed children, who are quite happy to sit for long periods of time, would be better served moving their bodies.

It's great for them mentally - the benefits of time outdoors and time in nature are well-documented and I won't waste time repeating them here. It's great for kids educationally, because outdoor learning is hands-on and allows them to see concepts in action, in a relatable space. It also provides a product or outcome, which isn't essential for learning but I certainly find my children like to see they have accomplished something.

It's great for nature and our planet, because children who know about nature and the Earth tend to care about it and want to look after it. You can care about something without any prior knowledge of course, but it's generally accepted the more you know, the greater your interest and the greater your interest, the more you care.

And finally it's great for us parents, whether we are home educating or not, because it gets US outside (see above about myriad of benefits) moving about (ditto) caring about the planet (ditto) and experiencing things alongside our children. Ultimately that connection, those shared experiences and shaped memories, are what parenting is all about. 

Win-win-win-win.

I freely admit I'm an unschooler at heart. I believe wholeheartedly in child-led and child-driven play and activities, I am almost neurotic about not wanting to 'teach' my children anything because I want them to learn for themselves, and so on.

My ideal outdoor learning scenario would involve my children spilling out into the great outdoors and occupying themselves with some fantastic activity, den-building or stream-damming or tree-climbing or bow and arrow construction. Something wholesome and physical and labour-intensive that also helps them learn valuable lessons spanning social skills and teamwork to maths, science and literacy. 

All while I sit and watch.

Certainly some of our time outdoors takes this format. Admittedly Cherry and Violet have never built a shelter, bridge, dam or bow and arrow, but they have climbed plenty of trees. They have also amused themselves for hours, endless hours, with sticks, stones, leaves, feathers, bugs, beetles and other creatures great and small. 

But there are other times when we head out and all they seem to want to do is climb up my face asking for snacks, ignoring uneaten sandwiches and apples with one bite taken out of them. During such times, I find it helpful to have an activity or two up my sleeve to give them a bit of structure and direction. 

Here's some of what we've been up to lately:

Nature journalling

I've been in love with the idea of keeping a nature journal since I read The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady when I wasn't much older than Cherry is now. I adored art at school and it was one of the few classes with which I really engaged. However I became painfully aware that I 'couldn't draw', for this reason art GCSE simply wasn't an option, and I last drew at the age of 14 before dropping art completely. Despite all this I recently felt motivated to buy Keeping A Nature Journal by Clare Walker Leslie and that inspired me to pick up my pencil again.

Unsurprisingly, I draw like a 14 year old who 'can't draw'. Nonetheless I absolutely love drawing and sketching my observations when we are out in nature, and as I do it so much, Cherry and Violet do too. Nature journalling is deeply satisfying and very meditative for me, and hugely useful for them as they learn to focus and observe, to draw what they see, and to identify and name species. 

Map-making

Cherry in particular likes the concept of maps at the moment. It appeals to the side of her that likes structure and order - the side of her that makes unschooling basically impossible for us. More on this another time! This week while Violet was at preschool Cherry and I headed to a beautiful park close to our house to make a map of the local area.

We began with constructing the outline from sticks, this allowed us to do some counting, sorting and basic geometry as we talked about shapes and sides and bunched the sticks into fives to count and sort. Once we'd chosen our shapes (I made a triangle, Cherry a square) we paced out ten steps in five different directions to choose objects to put inside the map.

We ended up with a visual representation of species common to the area, which meant we could talk about what grows in the park, what animals and birds live in and use these plants and trees, how they use the different parts, and generally explore some connections.

I loved this map-making exercise, the idea came from a lovely book called Play The Forest School Way which is full of activities and games for outdoor learning. I am sure we will be visiting it again. Cherry really enjoyed it and got very into it, after initially protesting that she didn't want to be in the park and wanted to go home and snuggle on the sofa, it took very little time for her to become absorbed in her task.  

After we'd made our maps we sat and drew them. This was tricky for Cherry as she became frustrated that her drawings were quite crude, so I demonstrated a few techniques to her and labelled her items for her. Again, I struggle with things like this as I am so passionate about them doing things for themselves, but I am having to realise that sometimes she really does want more hands-on help guidance than I am currently offering and it won't shatter her self-esteem for life if I occasionally take a more 'teacherly' role.  

Patterns and symmetry

I came across this lovely idea from the wonderful Cathy (Cathy's are just the best, aren't we?!) at NurtureStore. Cathy is an outdoor-loving, home-educating mother who has just set up a new resource called Seasons School, full of great ideas for learning in nature with the flow of the seasons. After seeing one of her posts on Instagram, I had to try this activity straight away and luckily we were in aforementioned National Trust property so I was able to grab everything we needed straight away.

I created a frame with sticks and a pattern on one side using natural objects (leaves, seeds, snail shells etc) and invited Cherry and Violet to complete the patterns, explaining the concept of symmetry and things being the same on both sides.

Here's a disclaimer though. I had hoped they would become very interested and make their own patterns, or patterns for me or one another to complete. However just as I called them over, a fellow mum sat down right next to us and opened a packet of chocolate fingers! That was pretty much the end of my nice little learning activity, Cherry did at least complete her pattern (very quickly) but Violet abandoned hers entirely and chocolate biscuits became the focus instead. 

We are sailing

We attend a group held in the most stunning location, in the woods next to a gorgeous, but fairly small, lake. Recently a small bunch of us hired the venue for a day of lake exploring, including sailing little dinghies. 

I always think learning through experience can't be beaten. The day itself was wonderful, a friend had brought a larger dingy and I rowed Cherry, Violet and myself out onto the lake to enjoy some blissful tranquility. The children also floated about on little dinghies of their own. Later we sailed leaf and bark boats. I didn't talk explicitly about sinking and floating and the grander educational principles at work, because this really was more of an unschooling experience. The learning was in the doing and the observing. Later on, when we come to discuss such things in more depth, they will have that experience to draw upon.

That's another thing outdoor learning offers - experience. True experience, not a reconstruction or modified, health-and-safety approved imitation, in my view just can't be beaten.

This Homeschooling Life 5: September struggles

Autumn is my absolute favourite time of year. Normally September brings a delicious feeling of fresh starts and a new focus. This September did bring all of the above with the official 'start' of our homeschooling adventures, but it also brought a hefty dose of doubt. Overall, it was a tough month and I am glad it is behind us.

What took me by surprise this September was how hard Cherry not starting school turned out to be. I deregistered her at the beginning of the month and as we headed to our favourite home education groups in the glorious late-summer sunshine I was full of confidence and ever-so-slightly smug that I wasn't swapping horror stories with friends about the last-minute rush for appropriate footwear in Clarks.

But the two-week festival that is Back To School really took a toll on me - and to my surprise, on Cherry too. She wasn't privy to the relentless stream of photographs of school uniforms, but she was well aware many of her friends were starting school, she was with me when we bumped into mums of her friends and asked after their progress, she knew this time was significant for children of her age and she knew it was something of which she was not a part. 

We bought her a bag, filled it with pretty stationery and told her it was her 'homeschool bag'. We talked to her about her learning journey and goals. All of this pleased her, but it didn't really produce the same effect starting school would have. There was no fanfare - and she likes a fanfare.

On what would have been Cherry's first day of school, we packed up the car and headed off for a few days of camping with some friends from one of our home education groups. I put huge pressure on the trip. It was a lovely few days, Cherry and Violet made some nice friends and had many photogenic adventures in glorious sunshine.

But I think I had hoped the trip would basically justify our choice to home educate - and when I really think about it, I'm not sure how it could have achieved that. I expected something that could never happen, and I stressed and beat myself up about it the entire time we were there. 

Then we all came down with colds and coughs and spent a grizzly week at home, then the car broke down and we had yet more enforced time at home.

This unfortunate chain of events basically led to my worst fears about home education manifesting themselves - all of us stuck at home, bored and irritable, the children incapable of entertaining themselves and with no company as, of course, everybody else is at school.

At any point during this time I could have happily phoned the school we originally took a place with and told them we'd changed our minds and Cherry would be present the next day, in full uniform.

Instead on our sixth car-free day I loaded us all onto the train and took us to a home education group and the tides turned. They were always going to. I know enough about myself by now to know that doubts pass but convictions remain.

It wasn't all bad. We actually had some glorious days, involving project work and nature study and wonderful outdoor play and deep connection and all the lovely things I wanted home education to be. And as soon as we were back attending groups, I felt happy and involved and purposeful. And grateful. This is an adventure I am eternally thankful to be a part of. It could so easily have not happened at all.

Some highlights of our month were: the camping trip; finishing our solar system and hanging the planets in the living room (initially led by Cherry and Violet, which produced some interesting results, then subsequently led and managed by Noel which produced stunning results!); a lovely Not Back To School picnic with friends; a riotous and farce-ridden day out in the woods; unexpectedly discovering a skateboarding club just down the road from us; and watching Cherry and Violet's interest in and knowledge of nature really begin to blossom.

Cherry also became more focused with drawing, she's always loved to doodle and scribble but she is becoming much more adventurous with what she draws. She is very eager to learn to write so we have had some self-driven sessions of writing practice which she seems to enjoy so far.

September really was all about finding our feet. It wasn't easy by any means but I hadn't expected it to be. In all honesty motherhood, or rather the kind of positive, peaceful and respectful motherhood I aspire to practice, has never come easily to me. I am not 'a natural' and things that seem to come so instinctively to others remain hard work for, and require conscious effort from, me.

I suspected it would be the same with home schooling. It's something I have to consciously work at, or rather I am something I have to consciously work at, and I would have been highly surprised if I took to it 'like a duck to water'. Perhaps I am being overly negative but knowing what I do about myself, I wasn't anticipating an easy transition.

As we moved into October I felt a far greater sense of purpose and clarity than I did at the beginning of September. I gave a great deal of thought all through September to what I want to achieve from home education - what success would look like. Noel has made his hopes and fears clear too, and from this I am beginning to build a picture of exactly how our version of education will work and an environment to match.

Although I am a big fan of unschooling, I can see that our priorities and Cherry's personality both point to a need for some structure and formality.

Our ideal approach then looks to be project-based, with skills acquisition happening naturally as a part of this as opposed to being the focus. We have had success with project-based learning in the past but now I am hoping to really build this into our weekly rhythm and I will be devoting time and resources to it in the coming months.

Cherry is also attending a drama class and a sports class, both of which have proved hugely successful so far, so she is having a taste of class-based learning. Add to this nature study, groups and of course, as much unscheduled unstructured free time as possible and already I genuinely don't know how we will fit everything in! As I said before, I am profoundly glad we are doing this, and the more I think about it the luckier I feel to be a part of something so exciting - something so life-changing, for all of us. 

This Homeschooling Life 3: Summer holidays

June was dreary and miserable but July brought real, actual summer. Picnics at the allotment, artworks al fresco and day after day of schedule-free, agenda-free time outdoors and free play. 

July also brought the end of Cherry's formal education journey for now. She has attended three short morning sessions at preschool for the last two academic years, however in recent months I began to cut her sessions down and attend home education groups instead.

Her final preschool session was sports day which was lovely and I felt pretty emotional. Cherry made lots of friends at preschool and had some good experiences. I hope she maintains these friendships, regardless of the fact that her path is slightly different to her peers. Violet will also attend for short sessions from September as I would like her to have the experience of preschool and to make friends independently of Cherry.

Our home education journey continued as normal. This month brought some notable achievements from both children, mainly involving numbers. I am impressed how numerate they both are, because I don't feel I've really brought much in the way of basic maths to our time together other than the obvious counting of things.

But in a way that proves the theory of learning through everyday life, because they have both easily grasped concepts such as basic fractions, measurements and sequences through things like baking and artwork.

At one point this month Cherry announced she wanted to count to 100 and proceeded to do so flawlessly. Noel and I were deeply impressed but a quick read around helped me understand that reciting numbers from memory is just one small part of mathematics and that it's far more important she understands what groups, sequences and patterns of numbers look and feel like. For example if I were to put 100 beans in front of Cherry and ask how many there were, she would probably have no idea. It's all useful to know for future reference and highlights the importance of learning taking place in the real world in a connected way. A sequence of numbers, however impressive, has very limited use without a wider context. 

Our artwork has continued and Cherry and Violet have completed some self-directed projects including making a 'car' from a few old boxes, and making Olympic torches. The latter was an activity they saw on CBeebies and decided to replicate themselves and they assembled all their materials and got stuck in. It was fascinating to watch, especially when Cherry became frustrated with one element of the work. They are so different in personality, and it really shows when they are approaching practical or manual tasks. Home education is a journey for all of us and I love the way I learn more about them, just by observing.

Both Cherry and Violet love making things and I can really see a difference in them since our early days of messy sessions around the kitchen table. When I watch them become entirely absorbed in their work, it makes all of those frustrating times when doing any kind of arts or crafts involved copious amounts of yelling, grabbing and demands for more resources only for the entire thing to be over in less than five minutes, worth it. 

We finished reading The Enchanted Wood and blazed straight through the sequel, The Magic Faraway Tree. I am conscious I don't want to stop reading picture books, so I made sure we mixed up our reading. This is really more for Violet's benefit, as Cherry would happily listen to chapter after chapter of a book. I can see that one challenge of home educating will be bearing in mind our second child. It's tempting to steam ahead with Cherry as it's so rewarding watching her develop and learn and of course, everything she does is 'new'. 

We had some messy sessions in the garden with potions and a mud kitchen, headed to a couple of meetups with home educating families including pond-dipping and hunting for rosemary beetles at the lavender fields. I think we have science and nature study covered at the moment!

This month I started reading more around unschooling, the concept of autonomous self-directed learning. There are many different approaches to home education, from rigorous structure to complete and total freedom for children to do whatever they want, whenever they want. At some point over the next month Noel and I will start thinking more seriously about what home schooling will look like for us, how our days will be structured and what, if any, goals or aspirations we have for the children's learning. We will also start thinking about resources and environment.

But this month really was all about summer and holidays. Cherry, Violet and I went on a mini-holiday together, staying with my mum and dad for a few days and taking advantage of their location to visit the beach - where Cherry blagged the pair of them an unsolicited SUP lesson - and a well-known 'adventure farm park'. 

Then at the end of July we packed our bags and boarded a plane for Singapore, from where I am writing this. Noel and I could never claim to be Worldschoolers by any means but we travel far more and far wider than I ever imagined we would, through circumstances and opportunities we never thought we would have. To allow our children this aspect to their education is unexpected but very, very welcome. It will certainly help us bring all manner of abstract concepts to life in a very relatable and connected way - which is after all what home schooling is all about, to us. 

The Gateway (Our life outside)

When I worked as a journalist in London I never noticed the seasons. I only became aware of them very vaguely, noticing one day that all the trees I cycled past had turned russet-brown, or realising one day in March that the air felt warmer and lighter, heralding Spring.

Since settling into life as a mother the time I spend outdoors has increased exponentially. In a way it's like coming home. I grew up in the countryside, was always outdoors, lived and breathed mud and snails and cow parsley and ponies and grass and air.

As soon as I became a mother I swapped days in an office for days outside. Not always necessarily for the most noble of reasons, I hasten to add. Going out for a walk was one way, often the only way, to cope with Cherry's relentless crying. Wandering across the common after her nap became a way to fill and move the time until Noel came home.

But despite these tough moments, it was mainly for the joy. Every joy, every small victory, every tiny magical moment of the early days and weeks and months of her life, happened outside. The first time I took her out in the carrier, watched the sun bathe her tiny precious face, and sat on a bench and drank in the enormity of my life changing forever while the common outside my front door remained steadfastly the same, always evolving but always constant.

The picnics and walks, the sunshine on her smiling face, the splashing and paddling on hot summer afternoons, her first hesitant stumbling steps. 

When Violet was born we spent three hazy golden months, as summer gave way to autumn, outside every single day. We would leave for a park in the morning after breakfast, Violet snug in the sling, and return for naps, then head out for a walk by the river in the afternoon.

Life with two children under two was actually blissfully easy, compared to what was to come. But even when life with two very young children became harder than I thought possible, there was always something I could do to make it a little easier on all of us, and that was to open the front door.

Somehow, somewhere, in the last four and a half years a sense of a deep connection, a grounding, has snuck up on me. Somewhere along the line I have become the parent I always wanted to be. In no way perfect, but definitely a parent I want to be. A parent who remembers what it was like to be a child herself, how it felt.  

I have also discovered many things I learned as a child are there, in the back of my mind, still accessible if I want them. The bird books I pored over mean I can now identify most common species from sight. I don't know how I know it's a mistle thrush. I just look, and it comes to me.

Cherry, Violet and I live outside. We do of course spend time in the house, more so in the winter and more particularly this winter and early Spring when the endless damp, cold, grey weather finally got to all of us. But even so, we spend vast, vast swathes of our time and lives outdoors. From March to November it's pretty much all day every day. As the days cool and the evenings draw in, we find other ways to get our fresh air fix, playing football out on our cul-de-sac under the streetlights, going for walks with our red torches, spotting Christmas lights. 

Again my motivations aren't always noble. It's often the only way I can keep us going through the day if tempers are fraying, the walls pressing in, there seems to be no physical structure big enough to encompass my daughters' relationship when they are in those moods.

Through the two and a half year of intense sleep deprivation Violet brought with her sunshine-y, joyful presence going outdoors was often the only way to keep me going through the day too.

Everything is made so much easier, so much better, once I step outside.

A friend of mine once said 'I'm a better parent outdoors,' and I agree. But actually that statement isn't big enough for me.

I'm a better person outdoors. 

Our front door has become something of a gateway. Stepping outside of it has led all of us to more than I could have possibly imagined. And the person who has benefitted most, is me.

In the last four years I have watched years and years of pent-up hurt, fear and rage melt away. I have felt myself come creeping, slowly slowly, out from inside my head and into the rest of my body. I have become more aware, more present, more confident, more content and more alive. I have come back to myself. Become myself.

As I watch my children begin their journeys with a strong sense of self and connection with nature and the outdoors I realise more than ever how outside is a true gateway.

For them it's the first, and in my view the most important, gateway to learning and knowledge. Counting sticks and stones, creating art with sticks, leaves and berries, telling stories and creating theatricals with snail shells, wildflowers and of course, sticks. 

The outdoors prompts thousands of questions. Endless speculation and wondering across its vastness. But there is something so comforting in it too. The predictability of the seasons, the steadfastness of the sky, the constant cycle of life.

As I lay next to Cherry last night, waiting for her to drift off to sleep, she said to me 'Mummy, what's bigger than the sky?'

I thought about it for a while and said 'Space is bigger than the sky.'

She nodded. 'And my collection of stones?'

'No, Cherry. You have a big collection of stones but it's not that big.'

'Well what else is bigger than the sky then?'

I thought about it some more and said 'How much I love you. That's bigger than the sky.'

She nodded with satisfaction. 'Yes, Mummy. And I love you longer than the sky too.'

For my children outdoors brings a deep understanding of their wild natures and the wildness of nature. A connection to the world that will hopefully see them become protective and cherishing of it.

A gateway that will always bring them home.

*This is a blogpost written as part of a competition run by Canopy & Stars for a place on the #CSCollective

Decisions

Every now and again a decision comes along that feels particularly meaningful. Life assumes a kind of limbo until the decision is made because so much appears to depend upon the outcome.

Add children into the equation and a decision becomes even more of a burden to an overthinker like me because of course, the outcome doesn't only affect yourself and any other consenting adults involved. It affects the people who depend upon you the most, who depend upon you to make the right decision.

Their future, in your hands.

This really boils down to the belief that there is such a thing as the 'right' decision or, usually more pertinently, the 'wrong' decision. Not 'right' or 'wrong' in a moral way - clearly some decisions are morally wrong. I'm talking about an intellectual 'right' or 'wrong', the very common belief that the outcome of a decision is pre-ordained to shape your life in a positive or negative manner, and it's up to you to work out which is which.

When faced with decisions I have a notable and strong desire to think. I want to think it over, give it some thought, because that's what I've learned is the sensible way to make a decision. You think about it. So I do all my research, I read and read and read, and I store huge volumes of information in that super-retentive brain of mine.

Then I make myself a cup of tea or twenty, and I sit down and I have a good, hard, think.

Round and round I go. Thinking, and thinking, and thinking until I have damn near driven myself crazy. Considering all possible options and outcomes, wondering how I would feel if X or Y happened when the honest truth is I have absolutely no idea how I could feel because I cannot think a feeling. 

I am exceptionally good at thinking. I very clearly remember my first conscious thought. I was watching cartoons and I thought to myself 'I'm not a cartoon. I'm real.'

Pretty existential stuff, from a three-year-old.

I have a great talent for thinking. It's got me far in life and I've swallowed hook, line and sinker the belief that to think is an asset, intelligence means thinking, think it through, think it over, the more thought the better, think about it, what do you think?

I'm so good at thinking I can think myself out of just about anything. I can think of endless reason not to do ANYTHING, and I can paralyse myself. Literally freeze, so overwhelmed with the entirely rational arguments against whatever it is I'm thinking about doing that I can barely get out of my seat let alone my own head.

And so I sit, and feel numb, and depressed, and really bloody annoyed with myself.

There's a fantastic antidote to this kind of toxic thinking I've discovered, and it's called doing. It's to start to live the decision even if the decision has not yet been made.

It's to act and behave as if one option, the option that involves the greatest change, had been chosen, and see how that option feels as you live it out.

It's like trying on a dress in a changing room as opposed to online shopping. I can guess, from looking at a small square on a computer screen, how a dress will fit me. But I don't know unless I step into it in a changing room and physically put it on.

Of course online shopping suits some purchase decisions, and thinking suits some life decisions. But the really big ones, the important ones, the wedding dresses of life decisions, they have to be tried on and inhabited, walked around in, posed in the mirror in a few hundred times, and really felt.

What I love about the decision-making process is even if the outcome is, stick with the status quo, you haven't really arrived at a place in which nothing has changed.

In trying on the other choice for size, living it out a bit, you will have changed. You will have learned something about yourself, you will probably have pushed yourself outside your comfort zone, and you will undoubtedly be carrying a perspective different to the one you had before, even if only slightly.

The truth is there are no right or wrong decisions, barring the very blindingly obvious. There are just different choices with different outcomes. Almost all decisions are infinitely richer, more complex and far, far less terrifying than THE RIGHT CHOICE and THE WRONG CHOICE.

The more I feel my way through decisions, as opposed to thinking through them, the more I am reminded to trust, trust, trust the process. I'm honestly considering (I almost wrote 'thinking' there!) getting that tattooed somewhere about my person because it's proved to be the most life-changing mantra I have ever come across.

I can't even remember where I first stumbled upon it, or if it came to me independently, but every time I forget to trust the process, I take a huge, huge step back. And every time I remember again, it's like a light going on in my head.

Trust the process. Always. 

A trip to Norfolk

Last week we headed for Norfolk for a blissful week of countryside, seaside, no signal and roaring log fires. 

We've already travelled pretty widely with Cherry and Violet, from home turf like the Isle of Wight to the tropics of Singapore. Noel has always hit the nail on the head though when he sums up holidays with our children as 'really hard work, in a different location'. 

This was the first holiday we've had where this wasn't the case. It was also the first holiday where our children haven't excitedly risen at 5am each day and become progressively more hyper and demanding as the week went on.

I think the two factors are related.

It really is incredible the difference it makes to your wellbeing, mood and general quality of life when your children 'lie in' until almost 7am. 

In fact this was one of the most relaxed holidays we have ever had. We seemed to have lots of time on our hands for running, yoga, workouts, reading, writing and all the other things we seem to find it hard to squeeze in back at home. I admit part of this might be because we took a completely relaxed approach to letting Cherry and Violet watch TV - they had as much as they wanted.

It actually surprised me that they didn't just want to watch TV the whole time - I think secretly I've always worried if I let them have free rein with the telly they'd never want to do anything else! But they were really keen to go out, do things and play with each other as well as watch TV. I guess I should have more faith in them really. That said both Noel and I have always noticed that Cherry can become quite aggressive after watching lots of TV, particularly Peppa Pig! For some reason that pink porker makes her fighty. So after a while we put the tablet with the Peppa downloads away and they stuck to CBeebies, movies or videos of DangerMouse instead.

Our cottage was small, perfectly-formed and completely adorable. Cherry and Violet were absolutely wild about it. It was the perfect balance, charmingly free of mod-cons, but still cosy and welcoming. 

I had a real thing about the windows and sills, from the way the light streamed into our bedroom in the morning to the gorgeous dried flower display on the kitchen windowsill. From the window in the living room we could see and hear a hedge full of sparrows going about their bustling business, from dawn until dusk. It was completely delightful. 

We spent our mornings in the cottage as Cherry and Violet were really content and happy and are always very adept at entertaining themselves in the mornings. We headed out around lunchtime every day, ate out and spent the afternoons somewhere outdoorsy and scenic.

And Norfolk really excels at outdoorsy and scenic. From the wild screaming beaches....

....to the sprawling forests....

...the flats and the fens and the wide open spaces.

Even the garden was stunning, and full of wildlife.

I can't get over Norfolk. The wildness, the remoteness, the flat-ness, the unbelievable primal beauty of the place. I didn't know big skies like that existed in the UK. 

We visited a couple of attractions - Church Farm in Stow Bardolph was a hit with Cherry and Violet, and I sneaked off to geek out on birds at the WWT reserve at Welney. But other than that we just made the most of the lovely cottage and the incredible natural resources.

I haven't felt this sad about the end of a holiday in a very, very long time. In the cosy warmth and flickering light of our cottage life felt far simpler and more straightforward than it does at home.

Obviously having Noel around all the time is a huge help - it's much easier to find space and time with two parents on hand at all times. Cherry and Violet also fought and bickered much less than they have been recently and that definitely helped. 

Our life at home isn't complicated by any means, and Cherry, Violet and I enjoy a huge amount of freedom. Other than Cherry's three pre-school mornings we have no commitments or schedule to keep to. And yet life does tend to close in, become more stressful and somehow less open and free. Space and time are two commodities that often feel lacking, and in Norfolk I felt we had both in abundance.

I suppose leaving that all behind is the magic of a holiday.

Thoughts on breastfeeding a two-and-a-half year old

I had no intention or expectation of breastfeeding my younger daughter for two and a half years. And I still have no intention or expectation of how long I will continue to breastfeed her, other than I doubt it will be for 16, 18 or 21 years no matter what the internet or somebody else's mum says.

Breastfeeding has always been more than just a method of dispensing nutrition to Violet and me. This in itself has caused me guilt because with Cherry, it very much was about nutrition dispensation. I wasn't interested in the bonding aspects of breastfeeding and thought it lazy and weak to use it as a parenting tool - although I frequently shoved a boob at Cherry to stop her crying, I always felt there was an element of weakness and failure in doing so.

Having radically changed my views and embraced breastfeeding as an essential and in some ways my only parenting 'technique', I do feel anxious that I deprived Cherry. I weaned her easily and happily at nine months but I have since then almost wanted to disassociate myself from this decision, telling myself I was a different person 'back then' and almost writing myself off as having been a completely horrible mother until Violet was born and I changed my views.

But none of this is actually true. The only reason I continue to breastfeed Violet is the exact same reason I weaned her sister so early. It felt like the right thing to do.

Breastfeeding Violet is as natural and automatic part of our relationship as comforting her when she cries, cuddling her when she is on my knee, and helping her brush her teeth in the morning. It is something that my instinct tells me to do for my child, and I have never once regretted going with my instinct.

It's just another one of the routines and rituals that make up our life together. She calls it 'eat-de-deat' which I adore, and whenever she plays mummies and babies with any toys, or items (most recently forks) the mummy will always eat-de-deat the baby. Sometimes she tells me she dreamed that a bumblebee came into her bed and eat-de-deat her. She says when she has a baby of her own the baby will eat-de-deat. I should think so too.

At one point I was convinced I would allow Violet to self-wean. Recently however I have scaled back feeding to mornings and evenings (and nights, of course) only. Although I never felt uncomfortable feeding Violet in public and continued to do so until she was well over two years old, I was struggling with her constant requests to feed when she began to get tired.

Me being trapped under a constantly breastfeeding two-year-old from 4pm onwards wasn't working out in the best interests of the whole family.

At some point I assume Violet will become less interested in breastfeeding. At the moment I could not say whether that will be allowed to happen on her timetable or not. In cutting back feeds I have already begun to set limits and boundaries around breastfeeding, so I would not rule out her weaning being mother-led. It would be nice to feel it was mutual but I accept this may not happen.

But as long as there continues to be no reason to wean Violet, I doubt that I will be in a hurry to make her wean.

On a regular day you wouldn't know Violet was a breastfed almost-preschooler. She still feeds to sleep, but on the rare occasions I am not there for bedtime or she wakes and I am not in, Noel always manages to settle her. And judging by the lack of recent breastfeeding photos to illustrate this post (the one above was taken last October) I'm no longer recording our journey through 'brelfies'.

Although I have always wanted at some point a beautifully shot photo of Violet breastfeeding - not an iPhone snap - just to remind me of what my body was once capable of. So I guess if I ever get round to that it'll be an older child at my breast. 

I do wonder if I am clinging a little to her babyhood in continuing to breastfeed her, but on the whole I think not. I don't think of Violet as a baby any more, I don't even think of her as a toddler. She has been out of nappies for some time, she has a proper bed,  I don't carry her in a sling any more and she is rarely in a buggy. We have no 'baby stuff' around the house.

She is very much a child, not a baby or toddler, and I am very much aware that I am breastfeeding a child, not a baby or toddler. 

Breastfeeding a child, something I once would have shuddered in horror at, actually feels entirely natural to me. In other cultures and countries it's entirely acceptable and normal to feed children to term and allow them to self-wean. This is of course largely how the human race has survived! It's just in modern Western societies that it's considered weird or abnormal.  

Not long after I had weaned Cherry THAT infamous Time magazine cover came out, with a picture of a glamorous blonde woman breastfeeding her three-year-old son next to the caption 'ARE YOU MOM ENOUGH?' It amuses me now that I am one of THOSE mums - that something I do that feels so ordinary and normal to me is global headline-worthy.

Does that make me 'mom enough'? God, who knows? Who's to say what is and isn't mum enough? Only my children, I guess, and when they are grown whether and for how long I breastfed will be a mere drop in the ocean to them and to me. Still, I know I will never regret it. 

Going solo

In some ways I count myself really lucky that I don't do a great deal of solo parenting even though I spend every day from 7.20am to 7.20pm in sole charge of our children. 

Noel gets up with Cherry and Violet pretty much every morning. He's a morning person, thankfully. And he generally does a fair bit of tidying up when he gets in. Sometimes all of it! At weekends he's much more organised with the tidying, laundry and household stuff than I am as well as very hands-on and energetic with the children.

It's all that I miss when he's away, on top of just generally missing him as my husband, best friend and sometimes the only adult I've made conversation with that day. 

This last few days he has been in Texas and I have been at home with Cherry and Violet. We've known about this trip for a long time and I had plans in place, we were going to head to Doncaster to spend time with Noel's parents and give me a well-deserved extra few pairs of hands with the children.

If there's one thing I know about solo parenting it's that I need all the help, and adult company, I can get.

I had reckoned without the Illness Curse of 2016. In the last week alone Cherry has had a temperature and short-lived bug, Violet and I both had conjunctivitis, and I have been carrying around the tail end of a virus for what feels like months. I've been ill consistently for the last eight weeks, including two weeks of sinusitis, and as a result I am very fatigued and still bunged up with a chest infection, sore throat, chills and other unpleasantness. All in all travelling to Doncaster felt like too much of a mission. It's actually lucky we didn't go as Violet then came down with a horrible vomiting bug and as I write this she's still pretty poorly. 

All of this meant my two go-tos, help and company, were pretty much off the agenda other than a brief but lovely visit from friends. Cherry only goes to preschool on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings. I've had a lot of time to fill.

Despite all of this solo parenting definitely brings out the best in me. I'm the first to admit I can struggle with responsibility, not for Cherry and Violet per se but more for myself and for the general administration and day-to-day running of our home and life. If at all possible I do prefer to defer.

Without Noel around as a backup I find I really rise to the occasion.

And I also find I get much more out of the time with Cherry and Violet. I am of course used to spending huge amounts of time with them, Cherry's sessions at preschool are pretty short and other than a short-lived ill-fated flirtation with a childminder, Violet's never been in childcare.

Solo parenting makes me realise how much time I spend with my children not being present.

It's humbling in a way. There is something in knowing I have no backup, no help and no prospect of any kind of time to myself or time to pursue my own agenda that makes me just surrender. When the hope glimmers during the day of a bit of time to write or read or spend at the allotment, I find myself hankering for it but ultimately either grumpy when I have it because it has to come to an end, or grumpy because I didn't get it after all.

I can be guilty of rushing the children into bed just so I can get a bit of space - although given their horrendously early rising this is also just good sense, as I can confirm a child who rises at 5.30am will continue to rise at 5.30am whether they go to bed at 6pm or 9pm! 

Without any real prospect of 'time off' I find it much easier to really sink into my children. I am far less resentful of things like early waking, tiredness, unexpected illnesses and other happenings that get in the way of me and free time. I am much more patient and calm because I am truly present with Cherry and Violet.

My expectations of what I will achieve melt away and I no longer beat myself up for not doing all the billion and one things I had unrealistically hoped to cram into the few short hours between Cherry and Violet going to bed and me following. 

They tend to rise to the occasion too, even with illness as a factor they do tend to be much easier when I'm completely on my own with them. They seem much more willing and able to entertain themselves for longer periods, and much more amenable to working together to find solutions to problems, arguments and issues.

I find it massively confidence-building. Last year we spent some time in Singapore, and after Noel came home I stayed out with the children a bit longer. Initially I went to pieces without him, but by the end of our time there I felt more confident and connected with Cherry and Violet than ever. Our 14-hour flight home was a breeze. 

For some reason when in company I tend towards passivity, which might come as a big surprise to people who know me. Despite my assertive nature and very high professional confidence, I'm actually pretty plagued with self-doubt and general feelings of inadequacy on a personal level. I tend to assume that everybody else is more competent and better able to deal with the general business of life than I am.

That means if there is somebody else around that I can leave all the 'big stuff' and 'boring stuff' to, I will. 

There is also the element of time. I don't have a great deal of free time on a day-to-day basis and a lot of the administration of life does tend to get forgotten, overlooked or pushed aside to make way for the all-consuming work of raising very young children. But I can't deny that I sometimes hide behind my lack of time and use it as an excuse not to do the grown-up stuff.

And given the billion and one other things I want to do in that time I'm often really reluctant to put 'life admin' in there too.

It's a highly frustrating character trait because I'm actually very competent and capable, but it seems I hide it well even from myself. Without anybody to hide behind I really come into my own. And I realise actually how much more smoothly things run and how much easier life is when I take the time to be organised and self-disciplined, and make myself do more of the things I don't really want to do.

I also realise how much more connected with Cherry and Violet I feel when I stop throwing obstacles and expectations between us. How much easier it is to find alternative ways of doing things and to remove the little barriers and hiccups that get in the way. 

On a day-to-day basis we coexist reasonably harmoniously and we are all pretty happy with life. But lately I have been noticing I am less happy. With life, with myself, with everything. I have felt stuck, almost paralysed in a way, incapable of making changes that I know will benefit myself and everybody around me.

These last few days have shown me a way forwards. When I am left with just myself to rely on, I always seem to have the answers. 

I just wonder why I have to feel I am completely on my own before I realise this! Perhaps one to think about when Noel goes away again in June. Until then, I will be counting down the hours tomorrow until he gets back. 

That's the other great thing about solo parenting. The knowledge that at some point it will come to an end.

My third child

I have a confession to make. I know you all think I have two children but actually that's not strictly true. 

I have a third child.

This child, like the other children in our family, is female. She lives with us. She sleeps in our bed. She comes around with Cherry, Violet and I every day. She's a fully functioning part of our family.

But quite often I overlook her. I generally ignore her. In fact, sometimes I forget about her altogether.

Unlike her two rambunctious sisters, my third child is a quiet little thing. She is not this way by nature. In fact she's ferocious.

But because she's usually overlooked and often downright ignored, she is very quiet. She has learned the hard way not to expect anything at all from me.

The fact is I am busy. I have my hands full with her two demanding sisters and there are only so many hours in the day. I work so hard making sure that Cherry and Violet are fed, watered, content and occupied. I make sure their voices are heard and their preferences are listened to and where possible, acted upon. Truth be told I don't have time to take into consideration the needs, wants and wishes of my third child too.

It's just easier to expect her to wait. To tell her I'll get to her when I can, when I get a moment, when I have the energy. She rarely makes a fuss. She knows she has to wait, and she's so good at waiting.

She's my dependable one. She's the one who will always shift her needs to make way for everybody else's. I count on her to stay quiet and stay overlooked, while I attend to the rest of our family.

Not only that but I rely on her for support. I expect her to be there for me, with a sympathetic ear and a gesture of comfort, when I am feeling tired and bottomed-out. I expect her to keep going, physically, mentally and emotionally, even when she is clearly in desperate need of a break.

And if I am really, really honest I don't want to have to look after her. I don't want the responsibility of making sure her needs are met too. I don't want to risk the potential confrontation and upset of backing her and speaking out for her needs. It's too much effort to fight her corner.

I want somebody else to do it. I want somebody else to take responsibility for her. That way, I can just blame them when she feels upset or overlooked or neglected. I can make it - make her - somebody else's problem.

'You deal with her. I don't have the time. I have enough on my plate.'

My third child is certainly extremely patient and very considerate, but she's only human.

After a while she gets fed up of waiting. She doesn't want to be overlooked. She resents being ignored. And then she gets really angry, justifiably angry, about the way I treat her.

She insists that she needs to be heard. She demands my attention RIGHT NOW.

But because I am not a very good mother to this child, because I am so busy trying to be a good mother to my other children, I tend to get cross with her. I round upon her and I yell and shame. All the things I try so hard not to do with my other two children, I pile onto her. 

'How dare you', I shout. 'Who do you think you are? What makes you so special? What makes you think you deserve special treatment?' (That's the really silly bit because she's not asking for special treatment. She's not asking for anything other than her voice to be heard and her needs and feelings to be taken into account. She's just asking for the same as the rest of us. Nothing more, nothing less.)

'It's your fault,' I will continue. 'You're not good enough. You're not good enough with Cherry and Violet. You're not good enough to Noel. You need to try harder. You need to change.'

And then, the final blow. 'And you're fat.'

I treat her shockingly. 

And she continues to try. To be more patient, to be more thoughtful, to wait longer, to suppress her needs even more. She turns herself in knots. She bends over backwards. Trying to be more. To do more. 

Enough is enough. I can no longer treat my precious third child this way.

I have started to realise that she has the most important role of all to play in our family. How vital it is that she is heard, how essential for all of us that her needs are met.

Despite her quietness she is in fact the epicentre of our family.

She is the beating heart, the life and soul. She is the party.

It is only through being a caring and nurturing mother to her that I can care for and nurture Cherry and Violet. It is only through watching me attend to her needs compassionately, empathetically and lovingly that they will truly learn how to be compassionate, empathetic and loving. 

In respecting and loving my third child I will teach my children possibly the most important life lesson of all. To respect and love themselves.

I hope when they are grown they would never entertain treating somebody the way I treat my poor, overlooked, neglected third child.

My third child. Me. 

Slowing down

Both Noel and I do a lot with our children, to the point where we sometimes wonder 'do we do too much with them?' I do think there's a difference between doing things WITH them and doing things FOR them, and neither of us want to look back and think 'I wish I'd spent more time with them and done more with them.'

We are both really keen to have the energy to keep up with Cherry and Violet, to have fun with them and enjoy these precious short years while they think their parents are the centre of the universe and want nothing more than to be with us.

I think I really take it for granted that I will always be healthy, energetic fit and strong. That I will always be able to get up and go for a run before spending a full and active day with my children, cooking every meal from scratch and keeping on top of the housework, then putting them to bed and doing 90 minutes of yoga. 

Both Noel and I look after our health. We eat healthily, exercise a lot and I in particular spend as much time outside as possible. We also try and get enough sleep, difficult with a constantly-waking two-and-a-half year old and a four-year-old who considers 5am an acceptable rising time, but we get round this by going to bed early and taking it in shifts. I do the night wakeups, Noel does the early mornings. It's always worked for us.

But since the start of this year we have both been constantly ill. I've had a cold, then a stomach bug, straight into another cold, then sinusitis which is still lingering. In fact today I've finally resigned myself to going to the doctors for antibiotics. I haven't taken medication in years - including during childbirth - and I am very careful about what I put into my body, even OTC remedies like paracetamol.

I have the greatest respect for modern medicine, but I also think we turn to it far too quickly as a society because we don't have time to be ill, and wherever possible I prefer to use natural remedies. 

Unfortunately, I don't have time to be ill. I have two exceptionally energetic children at home with me and after weeks and weeks of doing everything I can to get enough rest and recover, I've accepted I am going to need some medical help.

This bout of illness is the worst I've ever had in my life, and that's not an exaggeration. I have never been ill for longer than a week, two at the most, and other than chicken pox and whooping cough as a child I have never had anything more serious than a common cold. It could just be bad luck but I have taken it as a wakeup call to look at my lifestyle and make some changes.

On an average day, I basically don't stop. I will usually run before Noel leaves for work at 7.15am then straight into 12 hours of parenting. If Cherry is at preschool Violet and I will be off to playgroup or out heron-spotting or visiting friends, and afternoons are usually busy with playdates, art activities or outdoor adventures. Neither of them nap any more so there is no let-up at all throughout the day, and we have chosen to really limit screen time. 

Cherry and Violet do spend a lot of time in free play, but I always use this time to cook and tidy up. I do bedtime by myself every night, and try to tidy up and cook dinner before Noel gets home. I often don't manage this and as soon as he gets in, he will tidy up and cook. 

And at weekends I feel too guilty to take time for myself. At the end of last year I did take a few days here and there and promised myself I would do it more. But this year Noel has been super-busy at work, putting in really long hours and he's also been poorly. Even though he is always encouraging me to go and take some time I feel I can't, he needs some time to rest too. 

It would appear my body has decided this is unsustainable. 

So I have to persuade my mind to catch up! I have to work on shaking those feelings of guilt if I take even a second to myself. Today Violet eagerly asked if we would be going to playgroup after we dropped Cherry off. When I told her no, we'd be coming home as Mummy is poorly and needs to rest, she burst into noisy tears. I felt AWFUL. 

But not as awful as the thought of charging about all morning followed picking up Cherry and a full afternoon of bouncing, excited, rampagingly energetic children. We came home and she pottered while I cooked, then we sat on the sofa and watched Nemo. 

I can't deny I do feel bad about it. I feel like I have to do something extra exciting this afternoon to make up for it, or something super wholesome and outdoorsy to make up for the screen time. 

I have a long way to go before I can truly put my needs into the mix!

Most significantly I have found a childminder for Violet and she will go for two mornings a week. This feels like the biggest thing I have done for myself and a really big step in putting my needs first. I don't work enough to 'justify' childcare and while she is a highly sociable little girl, I'm sure given the choice Violet would prefer to be at home with me than anywhere else, so it genuinely is a decision made purely for my quality of life. 

All I have to do now is make sure I don't pack those hours full of work to make myself feel less guilty! I am keen to take on some work, because I have also identified it would be nice to have something in my life other than my children.

But I want to be very, very careful I don't gobble up those free hours working and find myself in six months time just as tired and run-down because I've taken on too much.

Ah, the endless work-life balance! Does anybody get it right? Is it even possible?! Answers on a postcard please. (Or the comments below!)