Little Yellow Gumboots

In amongst all the packing, cleaning up, chucking out etc, I came across this photo of Lilly (AKA Daughter E) again.  A few of you would remember when this photo was taken.  It was not long after the childrens' father and I went in different directions.  The children and I moved to a little house in Bird Street, Burnie, not far from their school. Lil was only about 4 in this photo.  I reckon they are actually her sisters boots :)

I am not entirely sure what the occasion was that prompted this photo, it may have been that she just looked so darned cute in those yellow gumboots.  It may have been her 4th birthday photo. A new Care Bear perhaps? 

We had some great times in that little house; we also had some heart breakers.

What I also remember so well from those months, was the beautiful support that my elder sister, Julie, was to me. At times I was quite overwhelmed with what "singlemotherhood" brought with it on a daily basis. For a 30 year old with three children under 10, at times the circumstances were daunting, scary, lonely and downright unfair - but as I have always said to the kids, "Life is unfair, get used to it!" So practice what you preach is the next cliche that springs to mind :) Buckle up and get down to it.

Julie would often call and say "Kathryn, what are you doing?" And so off we would go on some little jaunt.  One morning we had organised to go nursery shopping, (as in garden variety, not baby variety)  and I dropped Emily off to kindergarten with Danika. When Julie and I returned at lunch time to pick up Emily, the teacher informed me that actually there was no kinder that morning as they had had an excursion earlier in the week and so Emily was in fact the only kid in kinder that morning!  Ooops - she had spent the morning with her big sister in Grade 2! Quite happily apparently.

That sort of common sense, empathic response would not occur now - they would report you to Welfare and put the kid straight into foster care. Okay slight exaggeration but after I got over the enormous embarrassment, and the funny side was realised, I also appreciated the fact that Mrs French could see what sort of emotionally fragile state I was in and a mistake like this was overlooked as a normal stress response, not a "losing her mind" type response. 

Back to the daily grind at present, I have nearly finished all the packing, maybe one box of bits and bobs to go and then the suit cases with clothes etc to take on the boat/plane.

Chris' bad back still prevents him from doing anything much, although we have been to the pool the last two days (finally got him there!) and he thinks it is helping - thank you God!
Even though we have a decent size house, with 7 adults, three dogs and a cat, it is pushed to the seams a bit at the moment - but that's OK, soon we will be two adults and 1 cat less (unfortunately, but they need to go back to Sydney and get themselves ready to move States as well). That will make one of the dogs happier anyway. LOL!

I am to the stage now, where I just want to go. All the planning, preparations, plan changing and frustrations are wearing thin. It seems like we have been on this treadmill of moving for so long and my brain is stuck on rewind a bit.  What to do, what to pack, what to organise, etc etc. So many things to remember!

But then if I look back at the photo of the cutest little girl in her yellow gumboots, clutching her Care Bear in a blue suede dress, then I can remember that we have been through challenging times before and with a fair amount of humour and family love, we got through it then and we will again.