Back from a weekend camping. Elfi’s first time in a tent! She loved it, as she does anything that’s outside – definitely an outdoors baby.
Quite the haul of chanterelles!
Family portraits don’t come much cuter than this.
Somehow, today was Auri’s first day at school. Already.
As I did when Elfi started nursery earlier this month, I spent half the day flinching, thinking I’d misplaced a child somewhere.
Euan and I dropped Auri off in the morning, then went for a very civilised coffee and breakfast pastry in a mildly shell-shocked daze. Later, there was lunch.
I have noticed (note-iced?!) these last few days, since I have had time to think (Auri-juggling, though exhausting and challenging at times, is nowhere near as constantly intensive as looking after Elfi every minute of the day), that my notebook is becoming more and more full of fresh ideas and scattered with observations. Previously, though I used a notebook almost daily, the content would be leaning towards lists: things to do, things I hope to do. Now it has a different flavour.
It’s strange how easy it becomes to assume, when you’re lost in the midst of the parenting jungle, that certain energies and abilities to process certain ideas might be lost forever when, really, they’re just lying dormant, like plants waiting for spring.
Today, we had one of those lazy family walks which turned into a two-hour ramble. Auri kept saying, “I’m having too much fun!” and Elfi kept laughing and chattering away. The promised showers hadn’t really come to anything, and it was still, warm and calm. We are in peak mushroom season right now, with several varieties popping up in different parts of the woods. Auri knows not to touch any, as I’m not confident enough in my identification, but keeps reminding me that our friend Daša knows which ones we can collect and eat so she’ll be doing that with her one of these days.
And it’s all change for August! A beautiful day, and a walk filled with pale, dappled sunshine in The Pinewood. Elfi has now started nursery, Auri has two weeks left before starting school, and I’m officially on annual leave rather than maternity leave now.
The recent rain (three afternoons of thunderstorms, two accompanied by deluges, breaking the heat) has turned the first of the paths through the woods into a broom jungle, the sheer weight of all the water pushing down the whips and closing off the way forward. We picked our way through yesterday, and pruned a few lost branches today.
Auri loves the broom. Whenever we go for a walk, she presents Elfi and me with handfuls of the petals.
Resurfacing after a mad two months, half of which hasn’t been spent at home. Catching up with messages and somehow wondering how Elfi is six months already this week.
Current status: the house is a mess, the garden’s a jungle, and the children are feral.
We are just catching our breath from a busy last fortnight, just in time to rush into another busy month.
Last week, we were all up at Stempster. Euan spent a happy two or three days (mostly) in the Wild Wood, taking down fifty-two and a half trees (the half being some serious surgery to a victim of lightning). Auri spent many a delighted hour on the swing and generally wreaking havoc outside, Elfi was her usual cheerful self, and Scapa got in some much-loved beach walks.
There are several photographs to share, which I suspect will crop up at odd times over the coming few days. But enough of us. How are you all?!
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