ARRRGGGGRRRRRR! Moving!

...But the kids always seem to make everything worthwhile and put a smile on your face!

Labeling boxes and herself- Genius child...

Monty's 'Seriously you're making me climb into a box AND taking a photo of me? AND I am Eight-years-old, AS IF?!' face. Actually, the truth is, he was sulking because Mitzi bagsied the big box, by throwing herself into it like a small determined bat out of the fires of hell. Monty- you got beaten by a girl, dude!

Dear Alex, advancing...it's no small feat...

A goat pen, a baby Lola and a little Monty...WHITBY, our home of 5 years....

May 18^th 2012

Dear Alex,

Evening bird song drowns the noise of the continually turning washing machine as I sit and write to you now.

The days are long, the mornings early, a bombardment of porridge cooking ensues the minute I open my eyes. I count my five things to be grateful for and give thanks to the Most High before I answer the ‘mum, we’re hungry’ cries from our four little loved beings.

It is cheating, I know, but the first one always on my list every morning is ‘thanks for these kids’. The privilege to bring them up, share in their growth and exploration of their world. It never fails to draw a smile, even at 5 am!

Facing a move next week, paperwork, another ‘You’ project with a meeting on Wednesday for this, I find my evenings straining my eyes at a computer screen, until late every night. I sip fruit teas and eat custard creams (another joy of England!) and run up and downstairs to the occasional crying child, thriving on the fact that their dependency and comfort is reached.

I calm their cries, listen to the sobs of yet another ear infection, a lost dou-dou, and ‘but it was supposed to my turn in your bed, mum’ assorted cries…

You ate nearly half a chocolate yoghurt yesterday! The physios (in your physio sessions) support your middle in a big walking frame (3 people at a time) and you managed 60 metres the other day! Left leg dragging, but right leg powering! It is all essential training, re-education, and you seem to be advancing slowly but advancing nonetheless. (One day we'll burn that wheel chair baby!)

You have your good and you have your bad days. Days you’re too tired, it’s all too much, you’re distressed and cry when I arrive and when I leave. These are the most difficult days. Your good days, you see you are improving, as miniscule as it may seem, you are able to grasp this.

My life flashes by, the weeks clock up, but the days feel like a time warp, dragging like years, decades, and each evening as I sit to write to you, I try and qualm the thoughts of ‘how long will we be here for?’ the feelings of being utterly lost, tackling all I do with no you by my side.

I even tried going out, well staying at a friend’s house with the kids, the other night, and as I was far from my comfort zone of doing ‘this’ ‘you’ just this and you and the kids, I wobbled. I felt foolish as I suddenly cried over the curry the other guests had prepared (I cooked the popadoms!) but I had no way of stopping it, it’s like tidal waves of sadness as I just drift off into a world missing you, your love, your support.

Normal life is just so alien to me, I guess! I will never sit around whinging, swallowing self-pity pills, I will always put that smile on, push on through, but I find days where I cry over choosing tea in a supermarket, seeing dads on their bikes with their kids riding along…But I have come to accept this is all part of it…

It’s been nearly 8 months, and oh what a journey this has been, and it’s not finished yet! There’s no way I could have been prepared for any of this-nor you. No way of preparing for the future-there’s no road map, we don’t know where we’re going, no one’s there to give directions either, as there are none…it’s a world unknown, a lonely one, despite friends and family, without you. Because who can replace you???

I am always occupied with something, moving next week with my amazing French friends coming over coincidentally the week I really will require help!They were there too to help move me back in such a rush to England...

It goes without saying all I really want is you, but I throw myself into the world I am in at the moment-determined to make all I can with it…

Slow, and arduous and painful this is all that…let’s keep looking to the Light, for the light, trusting in the Most High, and that with love, prayer and support, we will conquer this all…

Well I had better pack some more boxes before it turns midnight! And you will see the kids on (almighty form as always) tomorrow!  Oh for an ounce of their energy!!

God Bless you baby, as you sleep tonight, dream of our bed and a house where we can all be together again one day…

Me xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Dear Alex, Reason # 377...

Reason 377:  Nurturing cuddles with my distraught girl who can't get her pony tail right!

Walking around, getting on with life, mourning a life, a happiness, a path, a best friend, a protector and being SO aware that our little souls of joy-our kids, we as parents have just one chance to get their childhood right, to get the rhythm of their inner beings right, it's a responsibility and a half!

How, how in this life full of haste, ingratitude on such a level we feel justified in wanting or feel have the right to, do we achieve this?

It's funny, when I first moved back to England, everything I saw, I saw in a negative light-I hated the place I was in, unfamiliar, grey rainy England, no mountains, no eagles to watch! flat country side, road kill because there's too many of us on the roads... I resented all, I just wanted my life as I knew it back...

Then I realised, I was being wrung dry by the practice of basic ingratitude, determinedly closing my eyes to what I really did have.

I decided to take charge! I tried changing my vision, externally, to tilt the looking glass, and how I saw things from within...

I started literally 'counting my blessings'...naming them, not allowing myself out of bed (still don't) until I had found 5 things to be grateful and thankful for.

Whether it be sticky hand prints on the mirror- they grow so fast, I won't be cleaaning these off forever.

Whether it be the porridge they've made a mountain out of on the middle of the carpeted floor- thankful for their imagination, sense of adventure, fun, that I have porridge in the cupboard (well not any more!) for them to play with, a hoover!

It starts freefalling, blessings are everything we have, and as we chose to open our eyes to them, the world grows, we grow...

Now on my Birthday I was given a book- It is this:

And reading it affirmed the path I was on, it gave me a reason deeper for doing what I was doing, and it has changed my life.

The mourning and grief I feel is laced with thanks and gratitude and JOY for what I do have...Who'd have thought I could smile a real smile under the circumstances? But I do, and plenty...

The challenge is to get to 1000 gifts, hence the title! I have put up my 377th reason above, and I carry on, determined to get to 1000 and beyond!


I SO recommend this book...










disclaimer: I was not paid for doing this post.

HAIR CUT....me, this time, not Ezza...

Well @Superamazingmum, here it is!!


A hair cut- short hair for the first time in my life...well, it'll grow back...

Dear Alex, well, what a week!!!!

What a week!!!

May 9^th 2012,

Dear Alex,

This has been one HELL of a week babes…I have been tested very thoroughly and MADE IT. I have no idea how, I have no idea whether or not I am in fact really here, but I apparently am, so are you, and four whole children…

Last Tuesday I was facing three weeks very sudden notice to vacate my present house…I frantically began looking, coming up against dead ends, facing being placed in ‘emergency housing’ which could have been a long way from you, a change of schools, and do you know what, I am not even going to go into all the rest, but suffice to say, at the moment, and for the past 7 months or so I have been doing 16 (sometimes longer if you count Mitzi and Esmie waking loads certain nights) hour days, seven days a week…I was teetering…that corner to rock in was looking all too inviting. But I crawled my way out and began fighting. Just as you would do, and do on a daily basis.

Cooking meals, washing, folding clothes, school runs, homework achieved a whole week in advance (!) actually only as I didn't read the hand in date and we did it the morning before it was not due in, that'll teach me! I even had four black pairs of school shoes polished, lined up in the hallway ready to go this morning after a sleepless night with Mitzi and another nasty ear infection. I gave up and got up at 2 am, going back to bed at 5…

BUT, I have a phone call on Monday-there’s potentially a miracle house popped up!!! I go immediately to have a look, my lovely friend Clare looked after the kids so I could go without making a ‘WE'RE HERE!!!!!’ impression, a slightly more subdued, ‘oh, the kids are good and quiet’ straight up lying, approach.

Since, people have asked me about the house, and I could not tell them any details, as all I did was measure the front door to make sure you would be able to fit in the wheel chair, and get you into the lounge…which I reckon I can! I didn’t care about the rest-it could have been burned out for all I cared! Funny how your priorities change! So I have said ‘yes pleeeeeaaaase’ to it and waiting with baited breath to hear the landlady will accept us…

Your eyes, unseeing, light up and turn towards my voice direction whenever I come in. Delight, reassurance that I am by your side. It overwhelms me that light in your eyes…feeling my face, my hair, kissing me with kisses that now follow puckered lips and real-life kissing noises…speech, although still very unclear, you are trying some of the time, and the kids love this.

Our life was a different pursuit before, we had very, very different goals, and this has changed all of that. Our dream now is to one day be in the same house sleeping together one day…it’s a long way off, but I know we’ll get there…

I am in cahoots with a wonderful and very supportive friend, Veronica Guilfoyle, who is living and surviving her own experience like ours, after her son suffered a spinal chord injury, but it comes under the same bracket as a head injury due to the consequences. We’re compiling a booklet, website with information that we have had to blindly, frantically gather from knowing nothing about how all this works, whilst in the middle of living through the trauma. Including the finer details, the care involved, the physical and emotional trials daily, and we are determined to do something with this, getting a comprehensive booklet for starters on the go so anyone who suffers a similar incident will at least have a book of what to do and where to go- having not had this, we know how crucial this would be. So I spend the evenings collating, gathering information and trying to put a comprehensive booklet together for others who may have the same experience…who knows where that will lead?

Shattered, yes, I am, relentless, yes, this is that. Moments of ‘can I really do all this?’ are frequent, but the fight, determination kicks back in, and I keep going.

Missing you is consciously, subconsciously engrained on my every thought and act. But I am learning to deal with it, in hope, that this is just a ‘pause’, that one day, things won’t be quite like this, you will be nearly the same again one day…

I feel surrounded by friends and love. Buoyed up. I just know I need to say ‘help’ and they would all come running…it’s just taking that step without thinking it’ll all crash around my ears if I am not doing it all myself…

So a week it’s been, a week has gone, and good news looks to be on the horizon…

I thank God for all the richness of blessings from people, friends, family, out there. I am very blessed…

Here is to another positive week (but let’s maybe hold off another move if we can for a while hey??)

I LOVE you Alex Wood, more than I ever, ever imagined existed…

Me xxxxxxx

The day we met Camilla...from the freezing sidelines, and I did not manage to see my plan through of nicking her jewels and legging it...*gutted*

Camilla: 'You look like a plonker soldier' soldier: 'And you're just so diddy in real life Camilla...'

Monty waving his flag aimlessly in any direction for hours...

'Can't we go home yet? I am bored out of my tiny flag flying mind...'

Dear Alex, Esmie's hair.....DO not laugh, you'll only encourage her...

One way of getting your hair out...

So, I got drunk, then thought I'd take a pair of scissors to my hair....I didn't like the plaits mummy had done anyway...


OMG!!!


Yes, we're all doing fine thanks....Oh, Ezza....!!!!


disclaimer- Do NOT attempt this at home kids without parental supervision...Mummy will not be happy actually...Oh, and social workers out there, my child was not actually drunk, she's immune to the effects of alcohol now.

Dear Alex, we're on the move again...

getting ready to run for daddy....

We’re on the move again…

May 3^rd 2012

Dear Alex,

Full of encouragement for your slow but vital progress, I am uplifted by this. You struggle on becoming more oriented, more desperate, determined to communicate, sounds (although we do not hear them everyday, they’re inconsistent) push through, and are sometimes words. I ask you for a ‘hi’ when I come in today, and your face concentrates itself, the muscles twitch, you frown, and eventually with pursed lips a ‘hi’ emerges, I fall on you with kisses and cuddles and child-like delight…I am so proud of you…

Back at our house we have some news…We have till the 1^st June to move out as the owners who have very generously leant me their vacant home up until now want it back to start construction work on the first June. So I learned this just before your meeting…your meeting has given us till the 17^th July where you are, so you are safe till then. After this suitable re-education home will need to found for you to continue your vital rehabilitation and re-education…

There are, as yet, no houses out there, and I prepare to be moved into emergency accommodation which could be anywhere…the kids would have to move schools again.

I sit, pen in hand, gratitude journal open, and list, naming the things I have, daily discipline of giving thanks for all I see or find or have, the fact I have a roof over my head and food for the kids, a school for them to go to, that I live in a country where we will be rehoused, not on the streets. We will have running water, beds for the kids, a roof. How many thousands of people do not even have that as an option?

Pen writes, shaking hand appreciating and thanking the Most High for all I am privileged to have. Trying to reach beyond the overwhelming, panic moments. Controlling, calming my thoughts and the situation, and what it really is in the big scheme of things…

Easy, however, is not the word. Esmie tries hard for attention as I am glued to the phone making essential calls trying to find a home which does not exist, neither for the budget or just in the area where I can keep them in the same school. They NEED this security, have they not, are they not already going through enough?

Heart pounding, head spinning, I cannot turn it, I have the sensation I will fall, as I drive to you today, post-Esmie getting scissors (despite the fact I was making the calls sat down, painting pictures for you with her) and chopping so much hair off that its unsalvageable. She looks shocking, never have I seen any worse hair-catastrophe…Esmie, I hear your cries, your grizzles, your waking at night crying for ‘daddy to come back’. I hear your big eyes filled with tears, lost without you. Mummy trying to be normal, painting, cooking, turning the washing machine, folding clothes, school runs, homework in. I hear it all.

I hear Lola too, heaving with sobs at bedtime remembering when you were Ok, when you cuddled her, called her ‘your Bo-Bo’ and gave her kisses and cuddles. She wants these now. Her heart weeps a thousand tears craving this….needing this, knowing she cannot have it yet.

I let her cry, I console her, we do sweetie kebab sticks, each one of them blindfolded, pushing sweets onto a kebab stick (guided!) and discussing after what they had achieved despite the fact they couldn’t see. How they ‘saw’ by feeling, listening. I explain this is how you see now, it doesn’t make us any different, makes our feelings towards each other change, it just makes it more of a challenge, as we have to learn new ways of doing things.

I run a bath, bubble filled, and thank God for hot running water, I decide to have a night off from the computer, gathering information, house hunting frantically. I decided to switch off, I step into the bath, no hot water…I smile, a big, big smile. This is so ridiculous I have to laugh…may be bordering on hysteria, but a laugh and a smile none-the-less.

Digging deep is a disciplined practice, it does put a smile on your face, over the pain, the ‘can I really do this?’, it makes you take time, slows you down, the racing of the heart, the mind, life, the welfare of the kids, my welfare brought into the moment, soundly giving thanks for all I do have.

I have to trust. Let go. Hope. And I never knew I would be able to do this. That I am doing it. That the kids are excited about the move because I put it to them as an adventure; a privilege to be moving to another house. They’re not afraid; they are not worried or apprehensive because I can help them in this. I can guide them and teach them that home is being together, whether that be in a tent, a wigwam, a house somewhere we’ve never heard of before…because home is where the family love is, it’s not the place, it’s the stability in us.

The next move will be temporary, till a house we can all be together in, where you can visit, eventually live at under the same roof as us. Two more moves, then we’ll hopefully be there. Hopefully!

I knuckle down and do the seemingly impossible things and try, try, through it to remember thanks, there’s thousands out there far worse off than us, and just that you are here still to have this goal, that we have the wonderful, wonderful kids we do have, ultimately, this is where it’s at…

I hope to find a house soon, I pack in the meantime around kids excited to be moving.

One day baby, we’ll be all at home together, and my God we’ll be happy, happier than we could ever, ever have imagined we’d be, because we’ll know how we got there…

I love you ‘keep it together’…!

Me xxxxxxxxxxxx