Remember when I mentioned, last post, that we had a busy weekend ahead with visiting family. Well, the weekend was busy, and although it’s behind me now, it’s going to take me a bit to return to full strength. Or what passes for that these days. . . It was lovely watching the cousins together and so sweet bringing a toddler into our bed in the morning (our last experience with this after so many such mornings over the decades. Bittersweet). Reading new books to the Four, who insists on having them read three or four times in a row so that she can eventually recite all the words along with you. . . Spreading the art supplies all over the dining table. Watching the grand piano transformed into a Wendy house! Hearing both the Four and the Eleven (11??!!) play their piano pieces. Wonderful all the noise, the crowding ’round the dinner table stretched to its full length on Sunday evening.
But in a 1000 square feet, with four visiting bodies accommodated, all the escape nooks that usually serve to replenish no longer offer respite. And given that I had a week of waking for several hours 2AM to 4 or 5AM-ish. . . . I’m doddering a bit at the moment.
So the post I began writing this morning, which has already hoovered up 90 minutes of my day, will wait for completion and posting tomorrow. Instead, I offer this glimpse in the form of a page from my travel sketchbook. These images were scribbled in Institut du Monde Arabe on our last day in Paris this past June. I’m including them in a post about that last day — and thinking about last days of trips, last days in Paris, as I prepare to head there again without that charming fellow who accompanied me last time. I promise you that post will deliver a grand view, some art, delicious food, and a possible celebrity sighting.
I just need a smidgen more time. . .
Okay?
We’ll meet here tomorrow? I’m looking forward to it.
xo,
f
Hope that you can carve out some time to rest and recharge. Can you sleep during the day?
Have you tried taking magnesium an hour before bedtime? It has helped me so much. My REM sleep has doubled and if I wake in the night I go right back to sleep. I use 200 mg of a Canadian brand called Can Prev
I am very excited to get started on that sweater pattern that you kindly shared…I love how you styled it in your recent post.
I need to go to the Beehive Wool shop and decide on a colour of yarn…
I remember my parents looking forward to my kid crawling into their bed early in the morning when we'd visit. They wouldn't get up–they'd just cuddle there and talk and read books (which my mom cleverly took to the bedside). Their house, where I grew up with three siblings, was not 1000 square feet. And my grandma's house was smaller, but she somehow managed to have us four plus our four cousins, all sleeping higgledy piggledy everywhere. How did she do it? She lived to be 100 years old, so she was a tough one.
You are making magical memories that they will treasure their entire lives.
There's a new movie out here with some of my favorite actors–"Joyeuse Retraite" with Thierry Lhermite and Michèle Laroque, in which, after careers in dentistry, they think they're going to live their best (retired) lives in Portugal, but their daughter has other ideas, namely for them to be babysitters. I haven't seen it; it's the kind of thing I would happily watch on TV but not pay to see in a theater.
I hope you'll get some proper sleep before your trip.
A lot of everything,even when it is beautiful and adorable and once-and-only experience, could be exhausting,too
Dottoressa
That tempo of weekend sounds like it needs a particular personal training regime. Perhaps there's a niche in the market for PTs…
Re-reading is so important for children, to say nothing of the very special memories. My childhood memories of cuddling in to bed with my grandparents in the morning in pre-central heating days is of the stone hot water bottles (pigs) in the bed, and my grandmother's corset, brought in to the bed to warm up the steel hooks and eyes which would have been glacial against the skin otherwise!
Taste of France's "Joyeuse Retraite" sounds ideal entertainment – which sadly will never make it to this side of the channel.
Wishing you more sleep xx
Ah, the 2, 3, 4 am wake-up. I've been filling in my too-early wake-up time by listening to an audio-book on my tablet (has a cover so emits no light). I have earbuds plugged into it and use only one earbud (other ear on the pillow). If I manage to fall back asleep, I only have to go back to the part of the story I last remember. Beats staring up at the ceiling in aggravation or having my mind wander all over the map.
We had additional bodies crammed into a relatively small space over the Thanksgiving weekend as well, and it never fails to make me feel bad about not moving to a bigger condo or finishing off the basement area. We had eldest daughter and son-in-law in a queen bed in the guest room, with the three-year-old on a full-size airbed next to them. He loved his new bed! But after 2 days of washing morning-after-not-dry-nights bedding (Nana doing the washing and remaking the bed to give the kids a break), the parents decided that overnight training is best done at home for a while…………and our youngest daughter slept on the comfy sofa in the family room, all the while bemoaning the fact that she didn't have us all to herself.
My middle-of-the night wakings these past several days have been fueled by fever-induced crazy thoughts (bad side effects of the 2nd dose of shingles vaccine), during which time I recall every wrong thing I've ever done, said, thought or everything I should have done/said and didn't. Thank goodness for yoga breathing exercises!
Did I post? Did I forget to post? In any case, see you here soon! I try to just stay calm for middle of the night wakings, as I think they are here to say.
Hostess: I do nap in the afternoon when I can (although then I worry I won't be able to sleep through the night 😉 I've never tried magnesium; probably should consider that. Yoga nidra helps sometimes. . . You've chosen a great yarn colour for your sweater — go you!
Taste of France: It's surprising how well we can manage with 1000 sq ft, when we're encouraged to think we need so much more. My grandparents in England raised their ten children in a three-bedroom house, the exact layout of the house in the film Billy Elliott. . .
I saw the Bande-Annonce for Joyeuse Retraite — it obviously covers some territory I'm familiar with!
Dottoressa: This is what I find, increasingly. Even the fun things are tiring! I don't think that was so much the case even a few years ago.
Linda B: Yes! I should get my trainer to develop a circuit or two to ready me for a weekend with grandkids! Your grandma had to warm up her corset? I'm imagining the discomfort, ooh. I have a couple of those stoneware/ceramic pigs — my dad found them at secondhand shops, recognized them from his Yorkshire childhood, and he used to sneak one into my guest bed when I visited them, a toasty bed such a delightful surprise on a cold winter night. . . .
Mary: That's probably something I should try. I'd have to get the earbud set up but it would be worth it. As it is, I sometimes listen to a guided Yoga Nidra which at least calms me and restores deep breathing. . .
Adele: There's so much out there to make us think it's our duty to have homes that facilitate a certain kind of family life, room for everyone, expansive, etc. etc. But living that way, we've been overwhelming the planet. I remind myself, when I feel guilty occasionally, as you do, that so many families in so many cultures, now, and in our own past generations, have made do with much less and still found contentment. And I believe it's a more sustainable lifestyle. . . . My English aunties chuckled fondly about taking their young families from London up to visit my grandma and grandpa, especially during the War, and the kids all squished into a big bed,"all tops and tails." . . . I'm very sympathetic re your wee-hours anxiety. Yes, I've done that: "recall every wrong thing I've ever done, said, thought. . . . " Thank goodness most of it evaporates by morning. Hope you're sleeping better soon.
Lisa: I have the hardest time staying calm when I wake in the middle of the night. Usually bounce straight into something close to panic mode, but then can calm myself through Yoga Nidra or something like. But that's the goal. Get calm, stay calm, 'cause yep, they don't seem to be going away. . .