Reboot...

It's easy to think it's all for nothing some days. She won't eat her veg... Well she's hardly malnourished. She's a bit too grabby with the other babies... Well that doesn't make her a serial killer. I haven't read to her in a few days... Well that won't exactly be impacting her GCSE results just yet. I don't think I repeat enough words to encourage her speech... Well I'm sure she'll learn to talk anyway. I say on Facebook all through her lunchtime yesterday...

Do little things matter? Define little things... Label the insignificant. 

It's easy to think none of it matters. That children have survived before baby led weaning and super-nannys and the Ginas and the article I read last week about empowering vocabularies to use around babies. Much simpler to think if it was alight for them...

Thing is it's not about Mrs Rapley and her crinkle cut food. It's not about THE ROUTINE or naughty step or changing our "good girls" to "clever/loving/brave girls". It's not that. It can't be, babies grew up wonderfully for generations before it all.

I was thinking there are two parts of what motivates us towards our parenting fads that do matter... Firstly it matters we're trying, that we're doing our best, that we cared enough to pick up the books and get some intentions. Not all of it will work, not all of it will be right or good advice and none of it will apply to all children so there is no definitive anything anyone can offer us. But our babies will see us trying and they will know they are important. They'll see us trying and know they're loved.

Secondly I think seeing flexibility in the generation above us is important. Seeing trial and error in practice. Also once you have your own home, job, money, spouse and family it's safe to say you could keep doing and knowing exactly what you do and know and you'd survive just fine. But to still be expanding your mind beyond what is necessary is inspiring to young people. 

Really I'm just writing myself into some motivation. That's the thing with being a Mum, none of it on its own is hard. Just all of it all the time is. The everydayness of it. We do it once and it's fun. We do it a dozen times and we hit our stride. We do it 50 times and we find easier ways to do it until we realise we're not really doing it well... Then we do whatever it takes to reboot back to fun. This is what it takes. 

It's all important. She may look like she's just smearing snot in to her carrot and sweet potato mash but really she's sitting there seeing I'm trying and feeling the love. She is. 

She is. She is. She is. ;)

Meanwhile... Oh! Has it sprung? No... It's still freezing, infact it snowed again today... But it looks warmer. The rest will follow right?