Dear Elliot, You probably thought to yourself that you were not going to get a birthday letter, seeing that you are the second child and much of what we did for and with your brother passed you by in the chaos of a 2-child household.
There a pros and cons to being the second child dear Elbie, yes, your life is documented less, you didn't get a grand birthday party for your first year, but we as parents are also a lot more chilled about child-rearing which means you get a lot more freedom to explore and be who you need to be. Relaxed parents, means relaxed and happy baby. :)
And no matter how much less time I have to video your every move, the love I feel for you is the same as I feel for your brother. The love Elliot, it's so big, it's like 3 galaxies x a million rainbows with fairy dust, magic rainbows, baby bunnies, chocolate fountains spewing glitter and daisy petals. Something like that, but than bigger. The love for you and your brother: it can't be contained.
So, let me tell you about you beautiful boy. You are kind of a miracle, I don't say that as most parents do. I mean to say that conceiving you naturally (as we did) was highly unlikely! Your brother came to us through IVF and when we were planning on getting him a sibling, we went to the IVF clinic discussing another embryo transfer and you were apparently already making a little house inside my uterus! The chances of that were so small dear Ellie, so imagine that: you are truly a miracle! :)
Your first year, well now; you. are. a. riot. Not sure why, but for some reason you have wanted to do everything fast, soon, sooner, early on. At the tender age of 3 months old, you were fed up of 'just lying about' and started -with great frustration- to try and roll over. By 4 months you had the rolling over thing down pat. But merely 'rolling over' was boring, so crawling came soon after by 5/6 months you were crawling and at 7 months you were pulling yourself up already. By 9 months you walked. What's going on with you that you are in such a hurry? ;) You even started growing teeth early (well, earlier than your brother, that is)! Your first tooth arrived around 7 months! Oh also: your first actual smile - I swear - lit up the room at like 3/4 weeks old! They all say that those smiles are not 'real' but I'm sure they were social.
You have the most gorgeous smile and twinkle in your eye, you are headstrong, you know what you want and you want it NOW or better yet: yesterday!
Awesomely, your first word with any kind of meaning was 'heeya' from 'Old MacDonald'. Your brother's first word was 'heeya' too and it's now making me think that we either sing that song too often, or you both will pursue a career in farming. You are now able to say the full phrase from the song like so "heeya, heeya hoooo". When you say 'hoooo' you purse your lips into a perfect little 'o' pulling the funniest face. You've also starting 'baby talking'. You'll point at something and then say something to the effect of: 'daddaaa wadindoooow?' With proper intonation and everything. You are so ready to talk and you think you're already actually talking, it's just not our language quite yet. It's magical though, the sounds you make. Like bells.
Dude, I love you so much, but you have got to sort out your sleep behaviour. I thought your brother was an atrocious sleeper in his early days, but you, you are a disaster. You've had nights where you slowly drove me to the edge of insanity by waking up between 12-15 times. Seriously; not funny. You've reduced it down to about 5 to 7 times at the moment which is a great improvement but still considered a legitimate form of torture so please: stop. I don't want to go down the super-nanny road.
The weird thing, my little love, is that, though your sleeping behaviour drives me utterly bonkers, when you've woken up again for the umpteenth time and you latch onto the breast once more and my lips touch your soft little hairs and I look at the blissful little look on your face I am irrevocably sold on you. It's impossible not to love you, no matter how often you wake up.
You have a slightly unhealthy attachment to my electric toothbrush. When it's bath time and we both go into the bath room, you'll see it standing there. You start pointing at it and baby-telling me that you want it and then (baladaaabuddhaa blad da da?), when I give it to you, your little fist grips it like it's the holy grail. You then sit in the bath with it for the entirety of the session (still with iron fist around the toothbrush) and then, when it's time for bed and I take it off you: all crazy hell breaks loose. You are both devastated and inconsolable at having to give up the toothbrush. I've been meaning to talk to you about the perils of life and the terrible things that can befall all of us human beings, but parting with a toothbrush wasn't one of them my sweetheart. ;)
Elliot, you are perceptive beyond your age, have a great sense of humour, a strong will and a beautiful energy about you. You have a big love for your big brother, you call him 'daa-daa' :-) and you too love being with and dancing with your daddy too! I am devoted to you little man, I'm so honoured to be your mama. You make our little family complete.
The awesome Dawn Devries Sokol has a new book out called 'Art Doodle Love'. It's a wonderful book which is created to inspire and encourage you to create! It's filled with colourful pages and inspiring prompts. You can make art and doodle on all the pages. I'm completely in love with the book and Gracie (my fabulous assistant) saw it too and has already ordered two, one for herself and the other for her 11 year old daughter.
It's a really great book for delving deeper into yourself and connect with yourself through the prompts and the art making. I highly recommend this book! :) Watch me play in it, I am drawing bunnies lately:
Want to see what other fabulous artists are doing with the book, take a look at this blog-hop list:
PS. Dawn will also be teaching on Life Book this year! Did you know you can still join? It's not too late! Come join us and learn from an amazing group of talented teachers!
Hello my amigos. It's been a while! Let me summarise the past couple of weeks in short; We moved to an awesome house out in the country side. I hired a fantastic assistant to take some of the pressure off good old me. My little art business is esploding and making people's lives happier. And the babies continue to be a handful! Life Book 2013 is thriving, people are buzzing with creativity and I'm bursting with new ideas for courses, projects, paintings and psssst; retreats! :D Life is awesome and I've also been down, struggling with my usual demons which I won't go into right now as it will take some time. :) Anyhoo, let me share with you what happened today, I was brave! I received an unpleasant email and felt really triggered. As much as I know and have the tools to process feelings healthily and properly, my default response to unpleasant feelings is to grab a bag of cookies. It requires energy, awakeness and courage (in my case) to take a moment, stand still, feel my feelings and then process them, instead of just defaulting to cookies. So that is what I did today (feel them, not default them, ha!). It's a much healthier way to deal with stuff this way. I always endeavour to use this method more than the cookie one (but often fail dismally, ahem, but nevermind, today I didn't which is what I'm focusing on! ;)) This is how I do it, hope it's helpful for you too!
STEP 1. First, sit down, notice your body, start internally naming how you are feeling eg: 'anxious, worried, sad' and/or 'a heavy feeling in my stomach' etc.
STEP 2. Take any kind of pen and your art journal. Start writing down the same feelings. Don't worry about making it legible, in fact, scribble and write your feelings over the other scribbles/ writings too, this way the writing becomes an interesting texture layer later. I forgot to take a pic of this stage, but under the gelli plate print layer you can see the writing:
STEP 3. If you have a gelli plate (which are awesome) do a few prints over your writing. Draw patterns onto your gelli plate after you've added the paint, then print.
STEP 4. With an old credit card apply some more bright colours in desired areas.
STEP 5. I wanted to include a face. Drawing is a bit easier over gesso and I wanted a bit more white on my page, so I added some gesso with the same card to the page.
STEP 6. I sketched my portrait.
STEP 7. I added more details and built up the shading.
STEP 8. With a white posca pen, I wrote down the needs underneath the feelings I was feeling earlier (ask yourself: 'why am I feeling this way?' In my case: I needed acceptance, love, care, compassion and ease). I scribbled the writing down deliberately so that the writing wasn't very legible. I like for the writing to be part of the texture and art rather than it being something to read.
STEP 9. I added a photo of myself that conveyed the feelings/ mood I was in and collaged some papers under and around it. I also added some washi tape on the page (loooooove washi tape).
STEP 10. Lastly, I doodled on and around the photo and added the word "compassion" several times on the photo.
And done! Here are some more shots taken with the more professional camera:
It was a a healing/ nurturing page to make. :)
Hope you enjoyed this post! If you do something similar, leave a link to your blog post below! I'd love to see it!
