Two things

Playing and dishes. Actually, I wanted to write Dishes. I think it needed a capital. Playing and Dishes. There you are, that's better.
Robin Grille's book Heart to Heart Parenting contains an exercise to address the feeling of complete disinterest in or frustration with playfulness that involves remembering how it felt to play as a child. Specifically at the age your child is now. It goes on to give suggestions of how to deal with any negative emotions that may bring up perhaps around not being allowed to play or getting in trouble for being silly etc. Guess what? I can't remember playing. Not at all. I have plenty of early memories, some hazy, some not so. But I can't remember playing. Not until I started school. No wonder I struggle to play with Meri. Do I have emotions that come up around that? A little bit of fear perhaps, that life from ages 2 - 3.5 really sucked for me. Anger, a little.
The good news? I'm finding it easier and easier to engage with Meri's fantasy play. The fog is clearing. Now if I could just enjoy the silly splashy messy play just as much.
And Dishes? I hear you asking. Well tonight I cleaned the kitchen before Paul cooked dinner. The mess wasn't made by me and most of it wasn't even from a meal I had partaken in. Yet, I offered to clean it up. In fact, I wanted to clean it up. I wanted to give him the gift of a nice clean kitchen in which to cook. Then, after dinner I did the dishes again (I can't really say I cleaned the kitchen again because he is a rather neat cook most of the time). Without grumbling, even inwardly. I do admit though, that the second time was more motivated by me wanting everything clean. Weird stuff to write about you think? This is HUGE for me. Resentment about housework was an enourmous part of my life from age 15 until I got kicked outof "home" in first year Uni and kicked out again in second year (long story....). It continued into my future relationships including with Paul until recently. Come to think of it though, the dishes still seem to be an issue in that household. Well, they still seem to be constantly piling up around the kitchen whenever we visit despite me no longer being resident to play scape-goat. Hmmmmmm

Garden Update continues

Pea teepee

November Garden Update 1

Berries etc yet to be planted

One of two cold-frames made by Paul.

Rental rainwater harvesting

Happy chookies who have just started laying!

A boy and his placenta

Here are some of the little boy's newborn pics I haven't shared. We weren't neccessarily convinced about Lotus Birth before we tried it but now I'm so glad we did.