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I think so many mums can relate to fewer photos with each subsequent pregnancy…I’m fine with it, but then I have flashes of yearning and nostalgia when I realize that very soon I won’t be pregnant, so I made a little bit of an effort over the past few days, to snap some images.

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Horus got a haircut, which was partly prompted by his genuine desire, and also his unwillingness to brush or groom his wild mane, and also the fact that on a recent walk with Lee, he smeared pitch through it…So I chopped it all off, and his first reaction was “You have Ruined Me!!!!”, and I felt terrible (although he wasn’t shorn under any particular duress, for the record).

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Treva’s hair too has been bobbed, and then Felix didn’t want to be left out, although he was wiggly, so the results are a bit funny, but that’s ok.

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Birth-work has been keeping me extremely busy lately, and it’s wonderful–I don’t mind not paying any attention to this pregnancy.  Despite the little ones running around, I do feel that I am in such a different stage of mothering than when my first two were born.  It is a huge privilege to be supporting other mothers.  Always exploring ways of emphasizing how much I understand the hardness and softness of new motherhood…and also wanting to impart that it does get easier.  There is a shockingly simple, powerful magic in being able to remind a woman that she doesn’t need anyone’s permission to give birth under her own authority.

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My little sister is a teacher, and has three small dogs.  She has astounding clarity and insight when it comes to the myriad specific ways in which my life is dysfunctional (and why).  I love her, and she’s very funny, and also very smart, but clueless, as is everyone who doesn’t have children, about what it’s really like to have children.  During a phone conversation a couple of months ago, she asked me quite seriously (for once) if I miss being “free” to just move about the world, untethered.  Without hesitation, I don’t miss being childless in the least.  I think I feel much freer, more productive, more purposeful, more love-and-life-filled that I ever would have…although who can really say?  I am lucky, I know that.  And what about our lives isn’t entirely dependent on our own perceptions, the stories we tell ourselves…

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Life at home is still in flux, and that, I can truly count on.  I am still hoping that we may be home in Queenstown before this baby arrives, but I have a feeling I’ll be painting empty rooms at 10 months pregnant, or something equally ridiculous, as usual.  I have put my foot down and forbidden myself from succumbing to the temptation to try for an anagama firing in either May or June…no more stoking with babies on my back, or laying bricks the days before and after giving birth.  I hear my mother saying “Well, you have always enjoyed extreme performance, Yolande, you really do seem to thrive on the drama…” and then I get deeply irritated with her, and we spar for a bit, but maybe I can be done with that, and just shut up and realize the tragedy that we are *all* right about each other, which is both terrifying and liberating, isn’t it… Anyway.  I have been tempted to show “before” pictures of Queenstown, but maybe not until the “after” are ready.

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The most challenging part of my life, by far, is taking my three (spirited, opinionated, articulate, adventuresome, fearless) children out into the world, along with my massively pregnant self.  It’s no secret that our culture is pretty sanitized and strange and uptight and sometimes cruel.  I don’t want to live in a society where, in a crowded grocery store, people–five, six, seven, thirteen–walk around  and over a heavily pregnant woman while she scrambles on her hands and knees to pick up the pound of blueberries that one of her kids accidentally dropped on the floor.  Let’s help her with that.  Let’s not even consider walking by.  That’s my vow, anyway.

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I am happy to be able to announce that Horus is developing what seems to be a conscience.  For a while there, I wondered.  No, that’s not really true, not really fair, but there were moments when I wondered.  After one horrendous trip to the grocery store (I should just clarify that I hardly ever take my kids to the grocery store, because 98% of my less-than-fantastic life experiences happen there, with my kids in tow…anyway.)  We were sitting in the car, finished shopping, just breathing and realizing that we had survived.  Felix and Tree were almost asleep already, and Horus and I were debriefing a little bit (“That felt really really hard to me.  I guess we should have stayed home instead”) when Horus and I both looked up and saw a woman struggling with her cart for a few moments (this is in the parking lot) before the cart tipped right over, and *all* of her bags when flying out, items everywhere, all over the gray-muck-sludge of half-melting snow from the onslaught of the past six months.  Without hesitation, Horus looked at me and said “I have to help her”, and without further ado, he jumped out of the car and strode out into the middle of the road where the woman was gathering herself.  I am very very careful about parking lots, but I just watched as he waded through the slush towards her, looking both ways, and it was clear that he was fine; in command of the situation.  I cry at everything now, it is part of my normal pregnant-self, and I cried quiet buckets then, watching Horus being so profoundly himself, and the person I know him to be: generous, capable, honourable, kind.

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This is it, isn’t it? Recognizing that all of the behaviours that our children exhibit, are manifestations of qualities that can be so very very powerfully good.  And that even when the behaviours are abhorrent, there are strengths and positives that underly these behaviours.  We have to tease these out, hold them to the light, remind our children that we see them, we know who they are.  I have been reading about cells and genes, and I tend to believe more and more in agency, and energy, and in our ability to shape the expression of our cells, and our selves.  No excuses.

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We had errands to run today.  After going to the Farmer’s market in Woodstock, we tried to hike into the children’s park, but there is still an obscene amount of snow, and I decided that was prohibitive (for me, in that moment).  So instead, we took a little walk into a vacant parking lot, vacant on account of the construction happening to the adjacent building.  I have been mostly successful in my attempts not to complain about the weather during the hideous, hateful, harrowing, repellent winter we have just lived through (ha).  We had to exalt in the sun today, there was no option.  Treva took her coat off immediately, Felix refused to take his off (he’s very particular about his attire), and Horus had worn his one good white shirt, despite my request for that to not happen, so I had already given up on that one.  Even with the backdrop of a half-finished industrial building, we had a glorious time.   And one of the nicest things about it was that we had the whole paradise to ourselves: no one to give me dirty looks, or to tell me my children shouldn’t be climbing there, that way, on this day.  It was nice.

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Anyway.  I hope everyone is well, and enjoying the sun wherever you happen to be.