Category Archives: Family

Happy Anniversary!

November 12, 2012 By in Family, Harpenden Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 24 Comments

The Hoxton Hotel London

I’ve just realised that I never got round to writing about our wedding anniversary, which was at the end of September. DorkyDad did say at the time that he was going to write me a guest post about it, but to be quite honest I think he has been working hard to forget it…

It was our fifth anniversary. We haven’t had many any nights out together since we moved house, so when we chatted over the summer about celebrating such a big occasion, we thought we’d do something quite special. But as the date came closer and other commitments were scribbled in both our diaries, we had to scale down our ambitions. Dreams of a long weekend by ourselves in Paris turned into dreams of a weekend somewhere on the Kent coast, and then, eventually to a night in London, chaperoned by DorkySon.

Our anniversary was a Saturday. Friday night was the Mad Blog Awards. Before I left on Friday afternoon, DorkyDad and DorkySon followed a treasure hunt that I had created around the house, at the end of which was an envelope containing a restaurant menu, a hotel booking and a bag of jellybeans. That set the romantic tone of the weekend right there. Continue reading →

Gratitude

October 25, 2012 By in Family Tags: , , , , , , 39 Comments

I’ve wanted to write a post about my Mum – DorkyGranny – for months. I tried to write one for Mother’s Day, but it didn’t quite come together. I have heard it said before that stories become easier to tell the more often you tell them, and I’m realising that to be true. I’ve had to tell the ‘story’ of DorkyDad and me so often that I’m now completely comfortable with it, and it flows very easily. I have a fairly set vocabulary and phrases that I will always use when telling people about my marriage, but I haven’t yet found the language that feels right for talking about Mum. She is staying with us this week though, so it seemed like as good a time as any to try again.

The word that first comes to mind when I think about my Mum is gratitude.
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Scrapbooking

October 24, 2012 By in Family, Nostalgia Tags: , , , , , , 15 Comments

One of my earliest posts on DorkyMum was about DorkySon’s love of sticking things in his scrapbook. Or doing ‘Cut Stick Glue’ as he called it.

We used to spend hours going through magazines and newspapers, cutting out pictures then pasting them into his book. It was a great way of expanding his vocabulary and talking about the things he found interesting in the world.

Unfortunately, that passion seems to have waned. He still likes making the occasional collage for people by cutting out pictures and arranging them on a piece of card or paper, but these days he’s only interested in photos of cars and trucks. The extended DorkyFamily can all look forward to getting transport and building site themed Christmas cards this year…

Anyway. I’m wondering if I should maybe carry on DorkySon’s mantle and start scrapbooking myself.

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Time as Healer

October 22, 2012 By in Family Tags: , , , , 11 Comments

clock on marble fireplace

I have been reminded this week what an excellent healer time can be, and how much respect we ought to give it as something which can solve our problems.

I wrote up my birth story last week, and I was amazed at what a different perspective I was able to have writing it so long after the event.

I took copious notes shortly after giving birth to ensure that I would always have an accurate record of how things went chronologically, and also have a copy of all my medical notes, so it’s not that the hard facts have changed. It’s that something which traumatised me at the time and contributed massively to a year of postnatal depression is now something that I can genuinely laugh at in parts. I have not forgotten the difficult bits (of which there were many) but they don’t define me anymore. The passage of time means that I am no longer the woman who cries all the time while sitting on a doughnut cushion.

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Friendship

October 20, 2012 By in Family, Nostalgia Tags: , , 13 Comments

heart made of leaf

I’ve been pondering the notion of friendship a lot recently, and admitting to myself how hard it sometimes is to have your friends scattered all over the world as we do.

I had a lovely Skype chat with a friend in Australia the other day. I used to schedule those chats for a time when DorkySon was here, but now I wait and do it while he’s at nursery, otherwise the entire hour is taken up by him showing off all the cars in his toybox. We usually manage to catch up every couple of months, and it’s always great to hear how she is settling into her new life, how work is going and all the rest of it. But it’s not quite the same as when we used to sit and watch a chick flick together with a bottle of wine and a pizza. It’s especially hard when there are big things going on in each other’s lives. Celebrating good news (or commiserating about bad news) several weeks after the fact, via computer screen, doesn’t feel quite as effective as an in-person hug!
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