Her again...

Managed to catch Madam smiling in a few pics over the weekend - she normally smiles away and then frowns as soon as the camera gets near her! So recording them here for posterity! (I know, I know - any excuse...).

When Plans Change It Can Still Make For Some Good Times

Several things were planned for this weekend but lucky for me a few plans changed which gave me some unexpected free time.  It was wonderful to have fewer scheduled activities and more time to catch up on a household tasks and errands, meet up with a friend for a trip to the movies and a chance to gather with a few friends for an afternoon gathering.  The afternoon gathering was at my girlfriend's condo with the spectacular view.   Thought you might like seeing a few photos of her beautiful condo.  Several of the snapshots are upside down and if I can figure out how to correct them for posting I will add them later. 

Since I’m on the topic of décor I have to boast about  a fellow blogger and my cousin, The Milkweedpods.  She’s a DIY blogger and recently some of her projects have been popping up on The Pottery Barn blog!  Check out my cousin’s blog here.

Aren't the dogs adorable!!

This weekend the Cathedral Antiques & Tour of Homes kicked off and I’m really hoping to attend the Miles Redd lecture and tour the Inspiration House in the coming week.  It's going to be a great week!

A new look

Lucy's not the only one changing how she looks in our household, as of Christmas Eve I am a brunette after nearly three years as a blondie.

Highlights were going to be too expensive and time-consuming with a little one - hey if I had three hours to sit in a hairdressers I'd rather do something else than sit in a hairdressers, if you know what I mean - so the Boy and I bought some hair dye, took a deep breath, and hoped for the best. So far I'm loving it!

Marvellous Motherhood

The calendar tells me I have been an 'official' Mummy for four months now - although I think you become a Mum from the moment you know that you are carrying a life inside you, so my tentative steps towards motherhood began a long time ago now. I really want to record some thoughts and feelings about being a Mum here as it feels like a constantly evolving process and I don't want to forget about the journey.

Being a Mum, in my experience, is everything everyone tells you it will be. Every cliche is true. It's tough, it's difficult, it's amazing, it's unbelievable... I've felt more emotions in the last four months than I had in my whole life prior. But I've felt a new emotion in the last few weeks and it's one that is very welcome. I've felt happy and confident in myself that I am good at this, and that Lucy and I are growing really well together learning from each other every day.

I say that this is a welcome feeling because I really struggled for the first few weeks. I knew that being a Mum was going to be hard work but I don't think you can appreciate just what a potent combination sleep deprivation, keeping a newborn baby alive and your entire life changing overnight can be until you experience it. I will be honest, for most of the first couple of weeks after Lucy was born I felt sick with anxiety worrying about everything: was she feeding enough (yes), was she sleeping enough (yes), was she getting everything she needed (yes), would I ever be able to get dressed again before mid-afternoon (yes), would I ever leave the house (yes)... You get the idea! At times I even wondered if it had been the right decision to leave our old life behind. I was very, very overwhelmed.

This constant anxiety led me to feel very insecure - an emotion I haven't felt in a long time - and I really doubted my ability to be a good Mum. I didn't seem to feel this 'instinct' everyone talked about; I felt clueless as to how to care for Lucy; all of her cries sounded the same to me and I didn't know if she was hungry, tired, cold etc; and I panicked when there were times I couldn't soothe her. The Boy was a huge support to me, but my confidence was nowhere to be found and as a competent and successful professional woman, I found that very hard.

I also had dreadful trouble with breastfeeding Lucy to begin with that I really hadn't expected. We didn't have our latch right and my nipples suffered some very acute damage that meant feeding was painful every feed until we got to 7/8 weeks. Looking back how we made it that far I don't really know... at times I was literally curling my toes to get through the agony. But with some very vital help from a breastfeeding counsellor and a local breastfeeding cafe, things finally became easier and the fact that I am exclusively breastfeeding Lucy still at 17 weeks after our wobbly beginning is one of the achievements of which I am most proud.

But as much as the negative cliches are true, thankfully so are the positive ones. The minutes really do turn into hours, which become days, and silently pass into weeks... and it all gradually falls into place and becomes easier. Well it did for me, and for that I am very thankful. When I think back to how I felt when Lucy was a newborn it seems a million miles away from where I am now. I don't recognise that scared, exhausted and frightened lady - now I wear a genuine smile and have a very full heart.

It started getting better by taking little steps - coping on my own when the Boy went back to work after paternity leave, taking Lucy out on my own for a walk for the first time, taking her on a train by myself, meeting friends for lunch, joining a few local groups, taking Lucy out in the sling on my own, feeding her in a cafe for the first time... these pigeon steps gave me wings of strength and courage, and now it feels like there is no stopping us. Hand on heart every moment spent with Lucy is a delight - even when she has a meltdown! - because that maternal instinct and rush of love may have been a bit slowburn for me to begin with, but now it's here with avengeance!

I think the Boy and I have been very lucky with Lucy's character. Psychologists can argue the nature v nurture debate until the end of time, but I know that Lucy was born a very chilled out and sleepy baby. These two aspects of her temperament have been a god send.

I can take Lucy anywhere - to a nice restaurant, on public transport, to a pub, and I even took her to the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at the Tate a few weeks back - and she copes. She isn't phased. She's happy to try new things, see different surroundings, and be sociable with new faces. This has been magic for me as it's allowed me to hang onto aspects of my previous life while adapting to my new one.

Lucy and I go out every day (weather permitting, currently on day six confined to the flat thanks to the snow!) and meet friends for coffee, lunch or a drink - and this means I still see lots of my friends who haven't had children so I don't spend my whole life talking about nappies (although this is quite a favourite subject of mine, and put me with the NCT girls and we can happily chat about this for many an hour...!).

Because Lucy is so laid back she rarely cries. We had a few tears over one nap yesterday morning, but before that it had been Wednesday last week that I'd last heard her cry. This did baffle me to begin with, but I think now that Lucy is just a very laid back and content young lady who is confident that her needs will be met by me and the Boy. I still find it bizarre she doesn't cry with hunger or to be fed - but I suppose I know when she's likely to be hungry and as I feed her on demand rather than by some kind of routine, she never has to wait too long to be fed. And this also means that when she does have a meltdown, it happens infrequently enough for me to be completely calm and relaxed and just help Lucy get back to herself. I know that she will stop crying in time, so I keep quiet and chilled and that seems to work really well for us both.

The fact that Lucy likes sleeping has also made motherhood very pleasurable for me, as it means I can get my rest and have the energy for the job. Left to her own devices she will have three/four naps in a day of at least an hour in length - giving me time for that quiet cup of tea, a little cat nap, to read a paper, or to do a couple of household chores to help me stay on top of our surroundings. She also does brilliantly at night, sleeping from 7pm to 8am with one wake up somewhere in between 3-5am for a quick feed before she goes straight back to sleep. This means I get an evening with the Boy (and a glass of wine if I fancy!) and can still recharge the batteries for the following day.

It's funny - before I had Lucy I had lots of pre-conceptions about what kind of Mum I would be and how our life would be. I had read lots of books from the Baby Whisperer to *whispers* the Gina Ford book, and I had ideas of being quite routine-led and getting Lucy to fit around our lives as soon as she arrived. And then she did arrive, and it couldn't have been clearer that the books were of very little relevance. What mattered was getting to know my little girl, making her feel safe, loved and comfortable, and working around her natural rhythms as best I could. So by ignoring all I've read and breaking every rule these books set, I now have a daughter who is alert and happy, sociable, and who sleeps well - everything I had wanted when I read them in the first place.

Right now I feel like being a Mum is everything I dreamed of and hoped for. Some days I really pinch myself that I get to spend my time looking after Lucy and watching her see and do things for the first time. It's amazing how excited I can get when she grasps at a new toy, or moves a part of her body in a new way! While I had a very, very happy life with the Boy I didn't know such joy existed - and I can't wait for the rest of our lives with her. And in being a Mum, I have a new understanding for and closeness with my own parents - and an empathy for all the other Mums out there. Keep up the good work!

Four months old

I knew I'd been a bit lax about blogging but I didn't realise I'd left it quite so long to update these pages. My little lady is now 17 weeks old - she was four months on Sunday! Here's a few of my favourite recent snaps.

 

Still Thinking About My Resolutions

Starting the new year with a rainbow.

We’ve Only Just Begun – And I’m Pooped! - The New Year kicked off a bit too fast for me this year.  Work was already in high drive for the year and already this month I’ve:

-       Attended an all-day board retreat and two half-day planning retreats for organizations;

-       Volunteered at the Alliance Française;

-       Helped produce an inaugural radio program for visually impaired children that will be airing monthly (the program aired yesterday-I’m so proud);

-       Prepared for our annual A Day On, Not A Day Off MLK Day volunteer event (it is going to be a great one!);

-       Hosted an event for the Latin American Association’s legal community;

-       Planned a nonprofit board training event in Dallas being held this week;

-       Organized a music benefit event for the GeorgiaInnocence Project (an amazing and very moving fundraiser event);

-       Worked on a firm-wide celebration...whew! I'm tired!

A Word of the Year -  With all that has been going on it’s almost as if there was no room for thinking about anything but the tasks at hand at the beginning of the month but I was amazed at so many bloggers that were setting goals and making changes in their lives with just one word. The My One Word movement looks interesting and I did see some bloggers posting really good words like BETTER, EXCELLENCE SIMPLICITY but my favorite word is NO.  If I had to pick one word, NO would probably benefit me the most.

Visioning - So here we are near the end of the month and I’m ready to work on my plans for the year and I’m so thankful to be a part of a circle of women who come together for personal planning. For the past couple of years I’ve been working with these women not just in creating a vision for the things we want to achieve but holding one another accountable. Here’s how it works.  Our group comes together with magazines, poster board, glue sticks, etc., with the purpose of sharing our goals with one another then illustrating our goals on our vision boards.  Then mid-way through the year we meet up to talk about the goals we set and how we are progressing towards those goals.  The process is amazing.  It’s also fun because this group formed casually and most of us didn’t know one another very well but we’ve developed a very high level of trust and support for one another.

Vision Boards Go Paperless! So next Sunday is our vision board session and this year instead of using poster board to make our vision board, we decided to use cork or a magnetized board. (We will be photographing our boards as they change so we have an easy way to track our progress). Finding the right board has stressed me out!!! It’s a great idea and it gives us a lot of flexibility in creating our board but have you shopped a cork board or memo board lately?  After much looking around I decided this adorable magnetized board by Curly Girl Design.  

We will be visioning at my friend’s home – a gorgeous apartment in a high-rise with this amazing view. 

A great iPhone picture from her balcony.

How did she end up with such an amazing place?  It was part of her vision planning process two years ago and if I hadn't been a part of the process to see how effective visioning can be I wouldn't believe how hopes and dreams can become reality.

It’s a great new year with plenty of opportunity ahead.  I’m excited!