Great Great Nanna's Blanket

My friend Tia has been crocheting a beautiful blanket for her little boy. It reminded me that when I was a baby my Great Nanna (my Mum's Dad's Mum!) had crocheted a blanket for me. Now I have been using it to cover my own baby girl at night and the first time I used it I was overwhelmed by a sense of its history and the love that had gone into making it. It felt as though I was blanketing my little baby in generations of love. My Great Nanna was very artistic and made lots of things that we still have in our family. Although I have photos of her holding me, I was too young to remember her. Now I have her blanket out again I wonder what she would be like if she were living in this generation - the things she would make and the conversations we would have...

The Best Things in Life are Free

We took our little ones down to the beach a few weeks back. It was a sunny Winter day and crowded with lots of people thinking that Summer had arrived already. What I saw that day reminded me of something important. What I saw that day was the happiest little face and the biggest smile on my little boy. It was the first time he had seen such a large congregation of sea gulls. He had such a good time playing amongst them and didn't want to leave. It reminded me that indeed often the best things in life are free

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its a girl!

here i sit, looking down at our sweet little girl. unbelievably she is already almost 7 weeks old. time goes so quickly in the first weeks and i am trying desperately to appreciate every minute of it - to hold on tightly to these precious moments. i feel incredibly lucky and priveleged to be a mother to two children now and know i am incredibly blessed.
for now i know there will be little time to blog and little time to create but my job for now is to be the best mother i can be. i keep storing ideas and images in my head for a time when my little ones no longer need me quite so much. i know it will happen all too quickly. how wonderful life can be.

Leaving Japan and Coming Home

The last few weeks have been a blur. Packing up the apartment was exhausting and I was certainly glad for once that we only had a tiny apartment to clean out and not a huge house. I thought I would feel more sentimental about leaving Villa Bianca which had been our home for the last 6 years but in the end, when it was empty, it was no longer my home; it was just an empty space. I have taken with me some of the happiest memories of my life from my time spent there and will build a new home with my little family when we find a new empty space to inhabit.

Coming back to Adelaide always brings mixed feelings now. It is incredibly warm and comfortable and familiar but there is also much to miss about Japan. I guess I will always have two home countries now.

Recently one of my favourite Etsy artists, Cathy Nichols, published one of her paintings on her blog that struck a chord with me. It is titled, "Coming Home".

7 More Nights on a Futon!

I must have been young when I first came to Japan. The idea of sleeping on a futon seemed novel and somewhat exciting at the time. I saw the space saving benefits of being able to fold up the futon in the morning and use the whole room during the day. Apart from maybe the first night I seem to recall it being quite a comfortable sleep option which lasted about four years.

Now our lovely mattress has been packed and shipped off to Oz I find myself back on a futon once again for a few weeks. I used to look forward to bed time but now I find myself counting down the number of sleeps left before I will be back on a bed again! I guess being 6 and a half months pregnant is not helping the issue but my back is killing me and I wake up constantly to roll over and relieve the pain of my bones on the hard floor!

I realise how spoiled I am and I guess the experience will make me appreciate our lovely mattress even more when we eventually get to see it again. I'm sure the next week will be a blurr anyway and a night on an airplane will probably have me wishing for the futon again!

Blossom

Finally we have packed all our things to be shipped and they were collected this week. I'm enjoying the extra space in the apartment but when I look around I know there is still a lot of things we need to clear out. Now my time in Japan is coming to an end I'm really starting to think about all the things I will miss here. Since Spring is just around the corner I guess the first thing I am going to miss will be cherry blossom season. It truly is beautiful and something to celebrate and I'm sure this year will be great for many 'hanami' parties (cherry blossom viewing parties under the cherry trees) since the weather has been quite mild. I have been very fortunate to live a street away from a big park that is a famous cherry blossom spot here in Nagoya. This is a photo from last year that I took in the next street.

There is a circle of trees that surrounds an old burial mound and I love walking through here every year. It is so beautiful when the wind blows the petals from the trees and we get a shower of pink confetti that covers the ground.

I guess the blossoms are so special because they are so short lived - another reminder in life to get out there and enjoy it while it lasts.

I was so happy to find a little bonsai blossom tree out the front of a house around the corner from our apartment when I was walking to the post office the other morning. I took a quick snap on my phone camera. I won't be here for the the major blooms this year but I am content that I have been given this early gift of spring.

My Life in a Box

Packing has begun! The boxes arrived from the shipping company last week so now it's time to get serious. Fortunately we are paying by total volume and not weight as well so I am doing my best to squeeze as much as I can into every tiny crevice - I'm not paying to ship air all the way to Australia!

But now also comes the time to be ruthless - there is no room for sentiment. But how do you fit eight years of your life into a few cardboard boxes? I really try hard not to be attached to things as afterall they are just objects and the important things in my life will be on the plane beside me not in the boxes. Luckily I have lived in tiny apartments over the last eight years so I haven't really had the chance to accumulate too much stuff. But as I sift through my cupboards I find my self holding on to little pieces of paper, cards and letters remembering all the things that have happened in my life. Parting with these little treasures would be like parting with my memories and so I find myself making space for one more shoe box full of my life here.

And amongst all the sorting and packing is my little helper - well he thinks he is helping!