Let Your Heart Sing

"Let Your Heart Sing"


:-) I'm very happy with the above digital piece which I created during the lessons week 4 & 5 for Digital Dreams. (You can still join if you like btw, if you want to learn how to make art like the above, just go here: http://www.willowing.org/artclasses-DD.html to sign up).

I've been feeling pretty exhausted lately though. I keep getting new viruses over and over and my back ache is still not gone. I often just want to take a week out and just sleep and sleep and sleep.

Baby number two is now 22 weeks gestation! I'm much less involved with this pregnancy than I was with Dylan, and I think the baby knows because it keeps trying to get my attention by kicking me! ha ha. It's a really active baby, much more active than Dylan ever was! It's nice though, it's like he's saying: oye, don't forget about me, I'm here too! Ha ha. In 2 weeks time the baby is officially viable which means that if he came early, there is a 50% chance he'll survive, amazing! I know it's early in the pregnancy to start wishing for him to be here already, but I do look fwd to him being out and healthy and happy and then I can kind of get my body back.

Dylan is a sort of up and down little toddler lately, he has days where he is very difficult to be around, he complains about everything and whatever you do, nothing is 'good enough' to appease him, and then on other day he is this hilarious, easy-going little boy who is just so delightful and funny! He's still not talking much, but unlike a while back when he was also not interested in trying, he's actually interested in trying now. It's quite funny though, because you'll go: 'Dylan can you say "monkey"'? And he goes: 'boobahf'. LOL. Something completely not even similar! Ha ha.

He's also lately learned to do 'thumbs up' and it does it to everything and everyone, lookit:



This is one of the most hilarious pictures I've ever taken of him!

But yes, it's tough sometimes, it's very up and down and the battle of wills can be exhausting, but in so many other ways it's also just so wonderful. A range of emotions on the spectrum.

Anyhoo, this is a short but sweet little bloggie post. Hope you are all well! <3

And the sex of our baby number 2 is ......

ANOTHER BOY!!!

it's a blueberry boy, not a girl!!

(all healthy btw too!)



I'll be honest, my initial response was disappointment. I had been bonding with and fantasising about a girl for months. And this person I had envisioned, this little girl I had been connecting with and bonded with suddenly vanished with a poof and the sight of a little willy on the sonogram screen!

I shed a few tears and connected with why I was so sad. And it was indeed just that: the person who I thought was coming, wasn't, so it felt like a loss of some sorts.

But now, after a few hours, I'm already loving the idea of bonding with a new boy and finding out all about what he's going to be like when he's here. I also really love the idea that this little one will have a big brother in Dylan and that there is -hopefully- going to be brotherly bonding and connecting with each other! Another positive about this is that rheumatism is much less prevalent in males than in females and seeing that we have RA in the family a lot, it's a good thing that this baby is a boy too.

So, I'm excited, but am also still getting used to the fact that I'll never have a daughter. (After this baby I cannot have another child as I need to get back onto my proper meds (which are lethal to a baby), I can't keep going on steroids for much longer you see. But maybe, when we're super rich and can live a leisurely life, we'll adopt a girl one day! :)

I know, this gender thing seems somehow minor, and I'm partly surprised by how much I'm affected by the fact that it's another boy, but hey, this is what's up for me at the moment, so there you have it.

I'm over the moon of course, that all body parts seem to be in order at this point!

:)

Hibernation

You are Love


Aloha lovely reader. :) How are you? I'm feeling quiet. Is that possible, to feel quiet? Like a silent sort of hibernation type thing? Just inwards stuff? Does that make sense? I wonder if it's related to the pregnancy. This pregnancy feels very different from Dylan. With Dylan I had no nausea and I had heaps of energy. With this one I want to sleep 12 hours each night and just sit quietly doing very little all day long and I'm only in week 10! I just feel like I want to sleep all the time. Sleep or sit and do minor tasks. Last pregnancy I only felt like this in the last trimester. Odd.

So yes. All feels quiet and introspective. And it seems to be the case around me as well. Even my inbox is quiet! Ha ha. It must be some planets aligning one way or another.

Anyhoo. Last weekend we did lots of fun things with Dylan. The weather was absolutely gorgeous! We went to the park and playground with him on Saturday. He had so much fun and he just wouldn't sit still. He goes exploring everywhere, including the bushes! Lookit:



We also put up his very first paddling pool which he loved:



And we went to Stanmer Park which is stunning:



I laid in the daisies blissing out!

And here are some daddy & Dylan piccies which make my heart leap and my face smile:





And lastly, pretty pics of nature:







So, I shall go back to my hibernation time and preparations for my digital art course.

Big hugs x

Carousel

You are love. You are what exists before all stories. ~Byron Katie



We went away for the weekend to Portsmouth which is near an awesome farm called Manor Farm which sits in an awesome foresty park. Manor farm had baby duckies (eeeee). There was 1 mummy ducky with 15 (seriously) baby duckies. My head dazzled at the thought of having 15 babies. Bow down to the mummy ducky. And Portsmouth had a pier with a carousel. I love carousels. Particularly this one as it had pretty horses and colours.




The weekend was intended to relax and unwind me, but that was easier said than done as things like temperature, noise, type of mattress and Dylan all influenced my nightly rest and so I came home pretty much less relaxed, but definitely having had fun. :-)



Dylan had fun too. He particularly loved swimming in the hotel pool and exploring trees near the farm, also, picking up stones, attempting to walk through puddles and befriending all the 'oofs' that came his way. He also loves sitting in the front of the car, on daddy's seat, pretending to 'drive' the car. A real boy's boy, apparently. I find it fascinating that 'boy qualities' appear so early in children even though their parents don't tend to enforce any particular gender behaviour upon them. He just likes cars, already. Mh.

I've been feeling sick. I was nauseous before due to the noro virus, but the sickie feeling has lingered on and I'm now thinking it's proper pregnancy sickness, which is weird as I didn't have any pregnancy sickness with Dylan at all and there was none of it before the noro virus either, so I think it's weird that I should now all of a sudden have pregnancy sickness, but it also can't still be the noro virus either. It's like the noro virus 'kick-started' the nausea and then my stomach went: oh yeaeahah, we're pregnant so we should be sickie. I'm not enjoying it. I'm not full on 'needing to vomit' sick all the time, but no food seems attractive or interesting and it's important to get all the right nutrients in the first trimester, of course. So I'm force-feeding myself, but I often end up eating 'crap food' which I think I can 'keep in'. Like potato wedges or something.

Anyhoo. Other than that. Things are still up and down with Dylbee. I have wonderfully amazing moments with him as well as totally exhausting ones.

Andy and I were musing on why I find it so difficult when Dylan is 'difficult' as Andy doesn't enjoy it, but it doesn't zap him from energy like it does me.

Well, of course there is the fact that

1. I am pregnant in first trimester so I'm already totally exhausted anyway
2. I have rheumatoid arthritis. One of the major symptoms of this disease is fatigue.
3. I am still fighting off 2 or 3 viruses over the last month.
4. I generally don't sleep well as I attend to Dylbee (though he hardly wakes in the night anymore)

So those factors are there anyway. But, if you look at how I've always run my life, I have always wanted ease and comfort in my life. If something doesn't go 'my way' and it's causing me undue extra effort, I figure out a way to sort it. I remember as a child (probably being 10 or something) I used to sleep in a high sleeper and if I wanted to read in bed before sleeping I only had the main light that was on. It started to bug me that I had to actually get up out of the high sleeper to switch off the light every night so I devised this system which included a piece of string and little nails in the wall which basically enabled me to remain in bed and simply pull the string and switch off the light without getting out of bed. Ease, comfort and efficiency. I've always loved that in life.

When I can't sort out a problem that makes me really uncomfortable and uneasy I get really down about it and it drains me.

And this is what is happening with Dylbee at the moment. There are several things he wants to or does not want to do like: he does not want to sit in the car seat for instance, yet we have to go home, he then screams and arches his back etc. And it's real high energy and there is very little I can do about it, OR I have to give it all of my energy to sort it out. And so because there isn't an easy solution (well there can be in the form or shouting/ hitting but of course we don't do that) it makes me tired and down.

But it's odd. Within the span of 1 day there'll be 3/4 high energy annoying moments and then we came home this afternoon and Dylan was an absolute lovely delight. So delightful in fact that I'd have another 3 of him.

So it's jumping from one end of the spectrum to the other. Like a seesaw. Ha. But through all of that, there is an undeniable force of love for the little man. A fire which I know will never burn out. Never.

I am loving how Andy is seeing and taking all this, he's saying that this baby experience, having Dylan, is making him feel more connected to humanity. He keeps saying 'this is what all the people before us have gone through' and it makes him feel connected. He's pretty amazing, my husband. :)



In other news. I had the first appointment with my new midwife for baby nr 2 last week and she was super lovely. Last time round I was pushed from one midwife to the next so none of them really committed to me, but this one is sticking with me throughout. I love that. According to her my due date is November 9th. :) I have the official dating scan on the 4th May. :)

It feels kinda strange to do all the maternity stuff and pregnancy stuff again. But also exciting. :)

Of course, it also feels daunting. If one can be this difficult, what is 2 going to do to me? Ha ha. Ah well, we shall see!

On the course front, 21 secrets has started and it's going so wonderfully. There is such a wealth of information on this course, it's super cool. You can still sign up if you haven't already. (Thank you all so much to those who have already signed up through my link, it means LOADS to me! :D).

Also, my M3 course is now available on DVD/ self study and that is going well as well! Check out HERE, if you're interested in signing up.

I am working on a new digital course which will include basics on photoshop and PDF making. People have been asking me for a while now to teach photoshop and digital art so that will be my first next course, though there are other courses in the pipeline too! More on those soon.

Oh, if you want to keep up to date with my art and products, you can sign up to my newsletter HERE.

And I am on facebook HERE and my tweetsies are over HERE.

Alright lovelies. Thank you for reading and commenting, though I can't always reply individually know that I relish in your comments and love and that I love you. <3

The secret is out! :D

Eeeeee! We're pregnant again! Crazy right? And this time round it happened aux naturale! (Some of you may know/ remember that Dylbee is an IVF baby). I never thought we'd manage naturally although no particular major problem was ever detected for us, we just didn't conceive!

The funny thing was that after wavering from yes to no to yes to no on the subject on 'shall we have another baby', Andy and I finally decided to have another and met with the IVF clinic on 2nd of March discussing another embryo transfer not knowing that we were actually pregnant already at that point! :) How cool is that?

We are both really pleased and excited, it also feels a bit unreal and we're in the very early stages yet. (We always tell instead of waiting 3 months as we figure we can use the support through the pain if something goes wrong). I keep forgetting that I'm pregnant again, ha ha! And, I've forgotten loads of things from the last pregnancy (like what you should avoid eating etc).

I am over the moon and I do hope it's a girl this time as I would like to experience both a boy and girl child, but if it does turn out to be a boy it'll be awesome too of course! :)

So, wish me luck with this new little one, my heart is full of love for him/her already. :D

Oh, been doing some digital uplifting creations! Here are they, hope they make you feel good about YOU today. Have a happy Sunday one and all. :) x

my love, strength and support go out to the people of japan

19 minutes, handmade journals, princesses & bird girls

"Can I write an engaging blog post in 19 minutes?" I think to myself. I have 19 minutes because -stupidly- I moved several of my mermaid movie files to another folder and now my iMovie project tells me in a surly voice when I try to continue editing the file: "sorry love, source files are missing". Aaaah - a low-level panic spreads from my nose down to my gut. Then I utilise my techie brain and think: 'hang on, if I re-create that earlier folder with the exact same name (frantically clicks on 'trash' click click click), and then copy and paste the other movie files back there: hopefully - pray god, goddess, cross fingers, toes and other limbs - iMovie should be happy to continue editing this project again as if nothing happened.' If not. I have to do the whole blooming thing again, having wasted precious precious hours.

Breathes.

You don't know yet why I have 19 minutes, do you? If often start a sentence and end up somewhere off track. Well, it's going to take 19 (although now 15 - ha, that paragraph took me 4 minutes!), to copy and paste the files to the new (old) folder. In those 19 minutes, I can't work on my project, so I thought: let's try and write a bloggie.

Et voila, here I am, writing a bloggie of which I want to do a lot more in future. I'm going to aim for 1 as a minimum a week after M3 is finished. I enjoy having a body of blog posts to look back on. I have a big archive on livejournal (back to 2002 can you believe!) and I love looking back on my posts once in while and giggle at the 'immature', highly 'un-enlightened' person I was then! (I jest, but yes, it's interesting to see how I approached things in 2003 compared to how I approach things now). I was also incredibly funny then, clearly, that hasn't changed! ;)

So, I now only have 4 minutes left, so let me leave you with the progress of my handmade art journal (eeeeh) which I'm trying to create in the few little hours after Dylbee has gone to bed. And some new messy mixed media art. The method in the ones below is painting OVER collage. I used to do it quite a bit, but have become re-obsessed with it, hope you enjoy and have a lovely Friday plus weekend mah babies. :) Hugs. x

***

OH HILARIOUS! I just closed and opened up iMovie only for it to tell me it needs another 40 minutes to process the new folder!! (Granted it does have almost 60 gigs worth of video in it, but come on, you are A MAC with a reputation for super speedy superior processing capabilities, why you need 40 minutes? Aaagh!

Oh well, some more time for me to blog, so, where was I? Oh yes, my handmade journal in which I'll be doing sacred awareness, getting-in-touch-with-my-feelings stuff. Here it is! (not finished yet) ->





(Rho if you're reading this, I know something is 'off' on the first stitching loop thing, but can't be bothered to do it all again! :))



Pretty no? :) I used watercolour paper, so it's going to be awesome to work in! I can't wait to start using it. It's very satisfying to create your own journal I must say! (Though a little time consuming).

BTW, if you want to learn it too, I took Rhomany's coptic binding workshop which you can take over here: www.mixedmediaworkshops.com/page/workshops-1 (scroll down to middle of the pages for Rho's video).

Ok, and here are the paint over collage pieces I was taking about:



I love the freedom this technique gives and the surreal, out of proportion style of it. Very much inspired by the lovely Misty Mawn, of course, but I think because I've been doing this stuff for a while (although have been taking a break with all the courses), I've found my own voice within the style.

Here's another one. The title Bird Guhl is from a song by Antony & the Johnsons who I adore adore adore adore.



In fact, here is the song for those interested, it is breath-taking.



Antony spells bird girl in a few ways on the album cover: bird gehrl and bird guhl. I think he himself struggled with dyslexia when younger (not sure if this is correct) and also dealt with gender 'confusion' which is a poignant topic on that album.

Last one of the paint over collage pieces:



I love the messy gray with black and white and the strong female figure in the middle. For those actually managing to read any of the small handwriting on the first piece and the last: they are around wanting another baby. :) We have talks with the IVF clinic early March. That's all I'll say for now. :)))

Ok, 2 minutes left now! Perfect to REALLY say byes now!


Sparkles!

PS. It worked! (the moving the files thing - I know, like you cared! ;)) xoxox