Are you perfect?

Are you a perfectionist?  Do you have the discipline the master a craft, profession or hobby, to play a musical instrument?  Do you spend hours...days...weeks... practising? working at your passion? learning everything you can about something you love to do?

I am.

I am a perfectionist.

But I am not your standard run-of-the-mill perfectionist. I am not the perfectionist who spends hours, days months and years in disciplined activity desperately trying to better my skills.

I am the anti-perfectionist.  The kind of perfectionist who is so afraid of failure, so paralysed by the idea of not being perfect straight away, that I give up on things before I have a chance to fail.

This most annoying attitude applies to many many things... like playing piano, singing lessons, writing stories, academic study, keeping my house clean (or just generally being the "perfect housewife"), playing sport of any kind, controlling a class, cooking...

It is a frustrating trait.  For me, for my husband (who would totally love it if I took up further study, or became the domestic goddess that he sometimes wishes I was...). I would totally love to excel at everything I love instead of feeling mediocre at everything.

I would be able to say "Yes I play flute and oboe and piano", instead of saying "well I played flute for a few years, and my piano teacher fired me because I wouldn't practice".  I would be able to say (like a friend of mine) "Sure, I love cooking.  I cook every meal my kids eat; breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday", instead of saying "No I don't cook.  My husband does all the cooking in our house.  But I bake" in a please-don't-judge-me tone.

Some people would laugh at me.  Some would say "work harder at doing better".  And they would both be right.  It is comical to be the anti-perfectionist.  But it would be more godly to say "Screw my tendencies towards failure avoidance.  I am going to work harder to perfect the skills and knowledge that God has given me the capacity to achieve".  For once I could stop being extremely intelligent and capable in my own mind, and actually be that way.

Lions and Tigers and Bears...

It is an amazing thing watching a small person learn to communicate.  From first coos to full sentences, it is quite a journey.  It is a journey in which you can often see the wheels turning in the head of the small person as they try to find the words for what they wish to convey.

For a long time, true language is intelligible to only the parents of the small person, and only part of the time.  Half-pronounced syllables standing for things desired, needs to be met (usually related to sustenance). One word demands for comfort, or a special someone.

And so it goes.

Sometimes it may take a few days before a new word or phrase can be added to the list of "understood words".  Sometimes words don't sound anything like they are meant to, but if consistently used, will make the cut.

Eventually other people begin to understand the burgeoning vocabulary of the small person.  Other people can also begin to influence the content of the vocabulary.  The small person may appear to have different sets of words for different care-givers. He or she may begin to imitate the mannerisms or catch phrases of certain people.

My small boy is now almost entirely intelligible to us, and intelligible to others most of the time.  But watching him grow in his knowledge of language and how to manipulate it in order to get what he wants and to manipulate those around him has been a most fascinating journey.  Watching his growing ability to use language to speak to his Father in Heaven in prayer each night is truly humbling.

This journey is only just beginning with small girl, and we will watch with interest the differences between them, and how they express their individuality through language as they grow.  Will she be more verbal sooner?  Will she say different words first?  I would think so...Mr Bede's first words were 'car', 'cat', and 'cake' in that order!!

What did your child say first? Do they have any favourite phrases or strange mannerisms picked up from you or a close family member?

Literary Questions...

I am a big reader.

 No.  

Strike that.  

I am a HUMONGOUS reader.  I have no idea how many books I own.  I don't want to think about how much money I have spent on books in my lifetime.

As mentioned before I do not only read books once.  I read them over and over and over again.  I consider books to be personal friends, and favourite characters to be members of my family.  I have a pile of books next to my bed that is level with my bedside table.  I am a compulsive bibliophile.  I do not own a kindle.  I understand why people may buy them...easier to carry than a book etc.  But to me, reading a book is a sensory experience.  The feel and sound of the paper as I turn the pages.  The smell of the book as I hold it. The pictures in my head as I follow the action.  I even have soundtracks to some books that some back to me years after I carelessly read the book whilst listening to music.  

I cannot imagine not enjoying reading.  I cannot imagine finding reading a chore.  But I know people for whom books are mere words on a page.  People who do not like reading, who do not see the action as they read about it...who essentially do not enjoy the act of reading.  I have taught a few of these people.  

I found that there were a couple of series in the last 10 years or so that made non-readers or reluctant readers take up a tome or two.  Harry Potter was one, Twilight was another.  The literary merits of both series are disputed, but was is undisputed is the effect on adolescent reading habits.  

Teens are reading more.  They are trying new authors.  They are even reading their school English texts.  This can only be good.  It broadens their cultural horizons...gives them a larger sense of the "other"...a greater ability to engage with different kinds of people.  It helps them to communicate with each other, with people of other backgrounds and generations.  There are so many benefits from reading.

How did I become such a big reader?  How did I become someone who could devour a Harry Potter book in a single sitting?  

Well it wasn't an easy road for those who helped me to get there.  It involved (and still involves) copious hours of reading aloud for my mother, father, grandparents and (now) Luke.  I LOVE being read to.  It was one of the highlights of my day when Dad would come and read to me before bed each night.  I used to beg for the same stories over and over again.  My grandmother could probably recite "The Enchanted Wood" by the end of my childhood.  Luke and I read to each other all the time (it's part of our bonding time).

But there is more to it than that.  It comes back to losing an older sibling at a very young age.  The silences were deafening for my mother.  So she read to me for hours each day to fill up the silences that used to be filled by chatter and laughter and games.  It was such a feature of my childhood existence that I cannot imagine not loving being read to, and loving stories and language and characters. 

 But if I had not lost her, who would I be?  I may not have been read to nearly as much.  I may have grown up not loving being read to...not loving stories and the closeness that sharing them with someone else brings.  Who would I be then?  I may not have loved English so much that I chose teaching as a career.  I may not have had so much in common with Luke...  Scary thoughts.

Many books and authors shaped my childhood and literary path.  

Enid Blyton was a favourite author. I still re-read the Famous Five series every so often, and still love the unedited versions of the Faraway Tree books.  

L.M. Montgomery introduced me to two literary heroines: Anne Shirley and Emily Byrd Starr.  These fiery women taught me to chase ambitions and not take no for an answer.  The language in these novels gave me a true love of a great descriptive passage.

David Eddings introduced me to the world of fantasy writing; to wizards and knights and swords and writing in High Style.  Through him I came to find dozens of other authors, other worlds to explore.

Mary Grant Bruce is the only Australian author I truly enjoy reading.  But I can revisit Norah Linton frequently, learning about graceful womanhood and true mateship. 

Dylan Thomas introduced me to the amazing world of radio plays.  I carry a debt to my HSC English teacher who insisted that our class study "Under Milk Wood" instead of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead".  It became one of my all time favourite plays and opened me up to a whole world of sounds.  Words don't even have to be true words to be intelligible and evocative.

That should about cover it.  But again the question remains... Would I have loved these books and authors if not for those deafening silences that were crying out to be filled?

Confusion

I used to like what I wore…then I had kids and everything is always dirty so I never really pay much attention to it and don’t fit into it very well anymore. I need to do a massive clothes cull because I have stuff from 15 years ago still hanging around that I can’t face throwing out and lots of pre-baby things that I still like but can’t see myself fitting into again…I think my style has changed but I’m not sure what it is now so I don’t know what to buy, and because baby T is still so little there is no point in getting new clothes (apart from pjs…which I’m totally doing very soon) til my body shape changes again…advice anyone?

What's in a name Pt 2

Life is one of those things that happens while we are thinking about writing a blog post.   Since the last time we met I finished gestating and given birth to the wonderful Miss T.  Last time we met I was bemoaning the difficulty of choosing a girl's name for a baby.  Well as you can tell we chose one...but not without much searching and compromise.

I may or may not post about the actual birth of Miss T...some bloggers like to, but for me the birth was somewhat traumatic...I am happy enough to talk about it, but hesitate to write about it...

The naming of Miss T was problematic for many reasons (mostly covered in the previous post), but mainly because our name list had so many awesome names on it...we simply could not settle on one... So we waited until we saw her...and that didn't help us much!  For a large part of her first day Miss T was nameless and beautiful... and didn't really look like any of the names on our list (in my opinion anyway...).  Luke decided to take charge...he argued that I essentially got to choose Mr B's name and therefore it was he turn to choose...the name he picked was not my first choice to be honest but it has grown on me with time, and I got to choose the middle name (after one of my grandmothers) so I was happy.  The bonus is that both names are Biblical but not obviously so (each only mentioned once each), so we can share that with her when she is older.

There are many joys that come with a new baby: a tiny body to cuddle, milestones to watch out for...that first smile (many sleeping ones, but not a true one until her one month birthday)...but one never associates better sleep with having a newborn.  Well we do.  Since her arrival at home Miss T has never slept less than 7 hours straight in one night, and often closer to 9 hours.  Her first night home, we both woke up at 4 and checked that she was still breathing...when she woke at 6.15 (after going to sleep following a 10.30 feed) we looked at each other and said "it must be a fluke"...after the second night we thought we were lucky but did not expect her to keep doing it...but by the end of the first week at home and no 2 am (or 4 am) feeding calls we started to think that we may have a keeper.  I am very lucky to have good milk supply so I am not technically required to wake her to feed through the night...and now after 5 weeks of life, Miss T has only woken us to eat once...and I thank God for every night of sleep I get because I still do not expect this wonderful thing to continue...