Counting Magpies

A very busy week. I’m hoping to persuade Max to blog Friday as a guesting blogger (he might) but I don’t think I’ll hang on for him so I’ll do a quick phot round up.

After the busy weekend and then Monday doing art with le Ciel Rouge, we visited Stanwick Lakes on Tuesday with Claire and Charlie.

Kids had a lovely time and Claire, one of the few people who got to meet Freddie, let me waffle on again. All that’s a bit “sometimes forward, sometimes back” – hopefully I managed a little bit of listening back, though I’m not very good at that when I have things on my mind. I do appreciate all the friends who let me. This month is particularly hard because all the dates are playing out on the same days as they did in April. Tomorrow is the 13th, 3 months since he died and will also be a Tuesday. The temptation to do “this time in April…” is huge. This time three months ago I spent the only whole night holding my son, stopping (unbelievably) only for tiny breaks to sleep to prepare myself for what might have been a long and difficult death (it wasn’t).

It was a confusing morning in many respect as before I went I had to go to Tesco. I met one friend who had a baby a day or two after Freddie, so chatted to him, then another who I hadn’t seen for nearly 8 years who has a child with the same disability (the mild end) that Freddie would have probably had and a son, with her, called Freddy. Ain’t irony fabulous?

And of course, that makes me wonder. I wasn’t convinced, AT ALL, that Cerebral palsy of a terrible type was coming for Freddie, I just felt he had something wrong we couldn’t see. I feel, in my bones, that he’d have been weak and poorly and a simple little boy for whom life was trickier than most. My gut feeling wasn’t cataclysmic physical disability. And meeting someone who had a child with low grade CP – well, of course I start wondering if we should have fought harder, given him longer….

Blah. Stanwick was lovely. Seeing the Monkeys was lovely too.

Wednesday we had Auntie Kate and Little Moo to visit. More waffle. Another person who met Freddie. One who can really keep me grounded over it all. Oh, but it would be so much easier to accept if I really knew. I was looking the little tiny clips of video I have on him. In 2, he does look sleepy and disabled but in two he moves to look at me, his eyes follow me and there is an absolute look of recognition and interest in his eyes. And yet, 48 hours later, he was dead 🙁

It must have been Thursday then that I did more art and writing with the girls. Not planning on altering that pair of topics all summer really – both are therapeutic, though I would like to find them some nice journals to draw and handwrite in. Hard to find.

Lots of these are Fran’s, she’s really started to get the hang of these pastels and is trying hard to follow lessons in a book. She’s also added a picture study to her blog, learning about linking and adding photos along the way. i suspect that unless they want to be coders (I doubt it!), WYSIWYG HTML skill will be adequate.

I’m quite proud of my Van Bluff in the middle 😉

Think Thursday also included a music lesson and practises and doing some writing and then I think I went to work and Max entertained them with something mathsy in the afternoon.

Friday I was at work and the Puddle, Bean and CielRouge daddy’s got together to do kite making. Hopefully Max will blog it, but this photo is at least evidence of learning and success. When I got home, they had clearly all had a really great time.

Saturday was mental. Amelie at gym at 8.30 (cough… woke up at 8.30!), Fran at gym for 10, Josie at Auntie Sue for 10 (hand me the tardis), Maddy at TKD for 12, 2.30 and 3.30 9the latter two for displays locally), Amelie back from gym at 12, Fran back from gym at 1.30 and Josie back from Auntie Sue at 4, having failed to stay at LF’s party because it was too scary 🙁 (Balloons popping). Then Max took them all up to see my mum while I stayed at home and tried to make a start on reorganising my beloved Hama Beads on CraftMerrily. Also went on a bike ride.

Maddy had been chuffed to bits to do the displays; like all their most successful classes, the teachers actively take part and they did some very clever leaps, kicks, tumbles etc which awed Maddy. She now wants to go back to gym (I did TELL her when she left there that gym would be good for TKD…)

Sunday we lounged and flopped after frankly several ridiculously busy weeks. I went to the garden centre and spent the voucher my lovely Mumszone friends gave me in memory of Freddie.

I had wanted a red rose but they didn’t seem to have any, but this one was called Tess of the D’Ubervilles which seemed somewhat appropriate in terms of emotion anyway. It looks beautiful and fills the space left by a rose bought for another baby and which died over the winter. Also, oddly appropriate.

The stake is lovely too. I’d not have done anything like this myself because I’m too inhibited about such things, but I like having it there.

Angela, the Charlotte’s are just to one side. I think, in honour of some of the bloggers who have kept me together with their own babyloss journeys over the last few months, I’ll add irises and violets to that spot sometime. If those mummy’s don’t object. Roses, Irises, Charlottes & Violets to keep each other company.

This is the MuddlePuddle and Fluff tree.

It has been suffering in the heat a bit but I think it is okay really, just objecting to being cooked. We water it lots.

The tree from the Old Manors.

Climbers waiting to climb from the Monkeys.

I need to retake my pic of the lovely shrub from our close local friends. The one I have doesn’t do it justice.

Some of our late, but hopefully not too late, vegetable planting.

Tidying up the garden took into the evening. We strung some solar panel fairy lights around the structure that is over the rabbits and would have climbers climbing it if only the damn things would climb. (Plants, not rabbits.) I can only assume Button, Fiver and Clover thought aliens were landing last night 😆

When I was pregnant with Freddie I became slightly obsessed with counting Magpies; I’m hopeless at this sort of thing, or used to be. I had stopped seeing signs in everything. But the Magpies did seem to come in 1’s (for sorrow) or 4’s (for a boy) the whole blooming time. When I opened the window this morning, there were two Magpies sitting above the rabbits, nibbling on the bird feeder. I could use a little “two for joy”. There are two babies due in the next few days and i think a little bit of my heart with break, however happy I am about them and goodness knows both people deserve their happy endings, when they both arrive, hopefully safely. I wouldn’t say no to just a little bit of my own joy too, if it would be okay?