Anthony John ~ My pillar of strength

I have talked often, albeit briefly, of the man in my life Anthony - the Father to my two very beautiful Daughters. He is such an integral and important member of my family, of my life, and so I have had a strong desire to capture him in words. 

Anthony is so much more than just the Father of my children. He is the man who changed my life from one of distrust and loneliness to fulfilment, joy and trust. Prior to meeting Anthony I had not had the best experiences with men. I had been abused, taken advantage of, controlled and disrespected. I had very little faith in men and nearly no hope in finding one worth my time or respect. That was until I met Anthony, who saved me from a very controlling and uneasy relationship. Before we were ever together he convinced me, without being truly aware of what he was doing, to have the courage and strength to leave an unhappy and unhealthy environment.

With him by my side, I found an inner peace. I found the strength that I forgot I had and I found trust. Trust that not all men are bad and trust that this one was particularly special. I was to be his "goddess" and he to be my saviour.

Together we have created a beautiful and loving home and a healthy and happy environment for us both to grow, evolve and love. Over the past four and a half years we have had many absolute lows and hundreds of pure highs. The two of us are an unimaginable pair, yet we seem to be able to walk this life hand in hand with smiles on our faces and love in our hearts.

Anthony is calm, kind, gentle and even tempered. He has little to no need for materialistic belongings (other than his surf, snow and cricket apparel), he is very rarely sentimental. He is active, energetic and fun. He has a strong need to be outside and active in order to be happy. He is encouraging. He is thoughtful and loving, although sometimes lacks the right words to portray his hearts thoughts. He is quiet and some times shy. We are similar in so many areas - our sense of humour, our humanitarian beliefs, our goals in life. Yet we are so very different in others.

We have created two of the most beautiful and perfect little baby girls and together we will raise them to be strong willed, compassionate, gentle, kind and loving young girls and women. As co-parents we have many opposing views on how to raise our girls, but mostly we both want the same things for our children. For them to know what love is, to know that they always have a home with us and that they are safe to be whoever they want to be.

Anthony is one of the best Fathers I know. He plays an active part in our children's lives. Always making sure he see's them before he leaves in the morning and kisses them good night. He can be strict in areas, but only when their safety is in danger. He always plays a main role in their life and is fun and loving towards them both, equally. When I watche him, watching them, I know that my Daughters will never grow up to feel the distrust in men that I did. He is a great role model and the perfect Father that will teach them what a real man, a gentleman, is. 

We are equals, within our relationship, our parenting and our household. He is always willing to stand up and help me with the girls or the cooking or the household chores. He is a pillar in our family, he stands up and covers me when I have been unable. He never complains, just gets on with being the best man who know's how. He is always learning and always willing.

He works hard, loves hard and plays hard.

Anthony fills this home with smiles and encouragement. With love and gentleness. Together we have grown and we are forever learning how to better ourselves, for one another and for ourselves. He has filled my life with a joy that I never knew you could have. 

I am his goddess and he is my saviour
I love you, Anthony John, home is where your heart is.
xx

29/52

Evelyn: You were made for the water, never a fear of the waves, nor a fear of the cold. You find your happiness when your feet are planted in the ocean

Zalia: You have eyes only for your Mama. They follow me where ever I go and I see my reflection looking back at me in your big brown, love filled eyes.

You are FOUR months old

You have grown faster than I what I was prepared for. I have not been ready to say goodbye to your baby face, your complete dependent-ness, your baby clothes and yet here we are, with you able to hold your head up high, laugh and talk, completely alert and interactive and no longer in teeny tiny baby clothes. 

Your 7kg body is full to the brim with Mama's milk chubbiness. Your cheeks are full and totally squish-able. You hair is thick and growing fast. Your smile is as big and bright as the sun. Your personality is forming. Your baby days are over and we are welcoming your infant days, hard and fast. 

I think back to when Evelyn was this age and she seemed to feel a lot older than how I perceive you to be. I am certain that it is me who is just attached to your newborn stage and not willing to let you grow up yet, rather than you actually being younger. 

You adore your older sister and she is just about ready to love you to death. I often find that two of you talking and laughing. I walk in to find you wide eyed and doe eyed, besotted by her. Your big brown eyes follow her from length to length, with a whisper of a smile always on your face. 

You have smoothly transitioned into our little family and have become the most beautiful fourth member that we could ever have asked for. We honestly could not have ever imagined a better you. You are wonderful and beautiful and perfect.

You have had a hard entry into the world, as I have talked about before, with your reflux but you have risen above with true grace. You are gentle, a little serious, and extremely loving. Every time you look at me I can see you pupils dilate, swelling with love for me. Every time I look at you, mine do the same. 

You have rolled over from tummy to back this month. You smile, all the time. You are sleeping better, and finally in your bed rather than the swing. You are laughing. You love being tickled, you love stories.

Four months, I truly just cannot believe you have been with us for that long. Every day has been an absolute pleasure and a joy. Watching you grow is a blessing and being your Mother is my calling. This journey was destined for you and me, Darling girl.... are you ready?

I love you, with all my heart, to the moon and back

Be Present

Three weeks ago I wrote a post about how I need to escape the negativity in my life and try and focus on all the positives. I was finding that my life was so full of information that was not even related to my own life. I was allowing others to dump in to my circle and I was carrying their luggage around with me in my day to day life.

I had this grand plan of checking in every day to try and remind myself of leaving their rubbish at their door and focusing all of my time and energy on my own life. However, midway through week 1 of this great idea of filling my positive jar up, I came down with an awful bout of mastitis and I stopped writing. I then got carried away with living life that I just didn't make the time to check in.

That is not to say I wasn't refocusing my energy into the right areas of my life like I had originally planned. I have made a huge, conscious effort every morning to remind myself to block out the dark and let in the light. I have put in a lot of effort to ignore the text messages, or the comments or the phone calls that are full of bitching, whinging and whining.  

Whenever my girls have become irritable, instead of falling victim and becoming irritable with them, I have taken us all outside into the sunshine and gone for a walk. Resetting my mind and my attitude in the right direction. 

I have chosen, in most situations, to be happy, friendly and open. I have noticed that in doing so I am being greeted with more smiling faces and more conversations with strangers. I said in my original post that happiness is a choice. These last few weeks have proved this to me. You can wake up in the morning and just not feel right, but you can choose to put that mood back to bed and move on with your day with an open heart. More often then not, you will find that the day will progressively become more enjoyable... if you let it.

My tips for staying positive and avoiding those negative traps have been to have the conversation with the people that you are in the habit of bitching with. Tell them you cannot talk about those damaging topics. Get out into the sunshine as much as possible. Exercise little but often, to maintain motivation. And stretch! On the mornings that I have woken up feeling particularly glum I lay on my bedroom floor and I stretch as many muscles as I have the time for. I take my time and slowly but purposefully breathe and stretch. At the end I always feel so rejuvenated.

The last three weeks, even with that terrible illness, have been full of sunshine, calm and peace. Rather than just have this as a 31 day task, I will be maintaining this line of thought and making this my new way of life. Walk away from the people who bring you down and open up your hearts to the areas of your life that encourage smiles and laughter and love.

Be present... and enjoy

Hair pulling, be gone!

For the past 12 months I had been slowing watching Evelyn pull out her hair. I first started to really notice a difference in the appearance of her hair at 18 months old. Every morning her bald spots were a little bigger and every morning I felt a little more devastated. 

While I was away in hospital giving birth to Zalia it became so very bad that the only option we had left was to shave her hair off. I was irrationally upset about this, sobbing my way through that hair cut (and every other buzz cut afterwards). Evelyn did have some of the most beautiful golden blonde curls that I would run my fingers through all the time. To see them fall to the ground was just devastating.

After about 7 weeks of having it short we thought that we had broken the habit and started to let it grow out again. But within a couple of weeks of it being that little bit longer I started to notice new thinning spots beginning. So, we buzz cut it again.

Then, one day Evelyn was so very naughty. She kicked Zalia and the continued to kick me and Zalia after I had tried to tell her to stop. I lost my temper and sent her to her room without her Dummy. I went back in after a couple of minutes and asked her to apologise, to which she yelled at me and refused. So I left her again. After which she actually fell asleep, without the dummy.

So I decided that I would try and take the dummy away from her again. This was my fourth attempt at doing this and I was so very nervous. In the past when I have tried it has completely changed her personality. For the worse. This particular night I put her back to bed and told her the dummy doesn't work anymore. She was asleep in 10 minutes.

The next day I gave her the dummy and showed her that it was broken* and that it doesn't work anymore. She promptly through the dummy in the bin. That has basically been the last we have spoken about it! She doesn't fall asleep as easily anymore but she does go to sleep, without tantrums and without asking. She sleeps the night through (mostly) and I have even found that she appears to be a lot happier.

Since the removal of the dummy, coupled with the short hair, it has now been growing in thick and fast! You can barely tell there was any bald spots at all and I am now able to let it all grow out! I am hanging for her to have enough length to be able to put in a pretty clip, a piggy tail and run my fingers through her curls.

I know hair pulling really is no serious illness or health concern so it never should have bothered me at all. But if I can be perfectly honest, it really has upset me so very much over the past 12 months. Now that it is over I can breathe a sigh of relief and it can just be a thing of the past!

I have had so many of you contact me with tips and advice, your personal experiences and questions. For that, I want to thank you all! It was really so encouraging and relieving to be able to talk to other people who were watching their children do the same thing and know that it wasn't a great concern. 

If you have any further questions I will be happy to answer them for you.

28/52

Evelyn: Even at the zoo, you find your beach

Zalia: Rolling over from tummy to back, for the very first time

27/52

Evelyn: A beautiful face to suit a beautiful soul

Zalia: Only happy when I am in your site, always watching over me, my angel

Day 2 of a present mind

Focusing on the positives and letting the negatives slide is a lot harder than I had prepared myself for. I have become so accustomed to focusing all of my energy on the negative moments of a day that I actually forget if the day had any highs. Today, there was plenty of disaster moments and I found myself dwelling on them, I found myself picking up my phone to tell someone about them. But... I am proud to say that each time I began to feel that way I was able to put a stop to it before it even started.

As I sit here to write I have found that my automatic reflex is to write about the things that went wrong, and then tell you about my reactions to those moments. But instead, I have opted to not give them any air. Because in the grand scheme of things, they don't matter and in a weeks time I wont even remember them.

Throughout the day I directed my energy into all the right places. If I found myself frowning, I would consciously chose to replace that with a smile. I chose to slow down and speak to anyone who served me throughout the day and I found that they were all much happier to me in return. I chose happiness, laughter and honesty today. 

I sit here tonight and I feel quite pleased with day 2 of a present mind. I will say, that today I have broken out with foot and mouth disease and even in this state I have made the effort to stay off the couch, active with my children and active in my life. I have given a lot of thought to the person I want to be and for the rest of the month I intend to find that person and keep her here. 

Today was a day of blue skies, drying clothes, cuddles with my girls and much laughter. I made an active choice to replace yelling and rousing on Evelyn with praise and affection and encouragement. I ate healthy, drank plenty of water and generally feel a lot better about myself and my life. 

Smile... and the whole world smiles with you.

31 days of a present mind

I have been noticing lately that my life is being drained of all positive energies and being filled up with negativity. I have been allowing the negative energy from other peoples life, leak into my own. I let my own life slip and it becomes full of other peoples attitudes and problems. I have been finding myself extremely unhappy, frustrated, anxious and stressed. Over what? Over the unhappiness, frustrations and stresses of another's life. My mind is full of all of this energy and it has begun to spill out of my body and into the way I tread on this earth. 

I have been snappy at Anthony, at my children and at myself. I haven't been feeling myself, not even in the slightest. My energy and attention is being exerted in all the wrong areas of life, of the world. I am not seeing the good in people, I am not stopping and smelling the roses or the feeling of the sand in my toes. I am focused on what is wrong, what I have done wrong, what others have done wrong. I am letting life slip me by while I am busy being shirty. I am letting my children's life slip by while I am busy being busy. 

This realisation came as a huge shock to me yesterday when I came home feeling frustrated and stressed after an incident where I did not feel well treated. I came home and I couldn't get the back door to unlock and I began to lose it. I started to curse at the door and then suddenly realised that I was allowing someone else's bad mood, cause my bad mood. I told Anthony that I need to clear my head before I lose the plot. I took a walk down to the beach where I took stock of my life. Slowed down and focused a little of that wasted energy back within myself. 

Life is messy and if I let it, it will get on top of me. Lately I have been letting it. I need to make a concerted effort to change that. To put up barriers between me and this negative energy. I need to pause the negative conversations, turn them around into positives. I need to redirect all that energy back into my life in a positive light. I cannot allow my life to fill with so much frustration, when the frustrations, mostly, are not even my own. 

I have decided that for the month of July, each night I am going to take a moment to sit and write about the things that make my life great. Every day I will find something to reflect on, something to be grateful for and allow my life to fill back up with light and love. My heart has been so heavy and dark for far too long. Rather than waiting for it to become lighter, I need to make it. Remove the weight, open the windows, let the air and the light flow through my soul. I have needed a mind makeover. Being sad is a choice, as is being happy. 

I choose happiness. 

I live a blessed life, but I have been too busy to even feel blessed. I live a simple and happy life and yet it has felt complicated and hard. I am full of motivation and ambition and desires and dreams, yet I have been living stagnant, waiting. Waiting for what? For life to begin? I have realised that life has already began and it is time to start living it. Start dreaming again, start doing, moving. 

Today I am grateful for being present of mind. 

Because in my presence yesterday I accepted that I am not being the best version of myself and it is time to start looking for the real me again. The happy, content, dreamy version of me. It is time to give myself the time and energy that I deserve. I have a lot to give when I am not letting the clouds hide my sunshine!