A Day in the Sun

I always find that it doesn't matter how bad I am feeling, how tired I am, how caught up I am in my negative thinking, as soon as I go outside and potter around the garden,  or go for a walk on a sunny day, I just feel great.

Today we had a long day out, we drove to our nearest town, parked and began strolling through the park down to the town centre.  We went to the health food shop and bought some freshly cooked spanacotas (I cannot spell it - spinach in filo!)  and lentil flan, and with babies in slings still walked to the Buddist cafe. I am so astonished at far one of my babies walked today, she was unstoppable!

I have been reading Deborah Jackson's book "Letting go as children grow" and while I am not even halfway through, it has really illustrated that as far as I have come, I am still trying to control my children. She explains that children, when left to explore naturally, do so safely. (Of course not in front of cars or with chemicals! But within nature they explore and understand their limits). So I have had tolet go because constantly trying to limit one's child can decrease their confidence and   actually hamper their development, making situations less safe for them. She also claims that you can make exploration more dangerous for your child by introducing fear and expectations that can then occur because of the seed of doubt - i.e. if a child is happily balancing on a wall and you say "arghhhhhhh! Look at you, you'll fall!" then knowing that, they'll be thinking about falling and thence fall, when not knowing that they may not have.  Roll on today when my baby is climbing everywhere  and I am having to not look at having to let go. She is climbing onto our dining chairs, then onto the dining table and crawling around eating fruit and then clmbimg back onto the chair and onto the floor. I watched as she once, twice tried to climb down from the table top where there was no chair.. she quickly pulled her legs back up and located the chair andsafely got herself down... on our walktoday Ihad to trust she knew how far she could walk and tried torespect her will and it was enjoyablebut notsomething I can do without support. Two babies need two adult hands!

Okay the kangaroo has nothing to do with a walk in England, I took it in Australia but this kangaroo illustrates the heat of the day and my sense of being in the moment!

Head shake moment of the day: Watching my husband watch the "four candles" sketch on uTube... again.