Going Walkabout
As a stay at home mom of two, under two (I'm currently on maternity leave), I've found myself worrying that I don't have anything interesting to blog about. Needless to say this self esteem eroding attitude, is playing into the societal stereotype of, 'I'm just a mom,' which is, well- utter bollocks! Nobody, regardless of their job, should be pigeonholed into being 2 dimensional. I may be a mom right now, but before that I ran surf and yoga retreats, as a first time mom I started skateboarding and wrote my first novel, as a second time mom, I'm about to start travelling again and have launched a vintage clothes business. No-one, including your inner wanker, (that voice that tells you horrible things), should make you feel like you're boring and irrelevant. We are so much more than the sum of what we do.
So here I am blogging about a fairly normal day in the life.
One of the many reasons I decided to give you, dear reader, a slice of life, a la Soph, is because some of my favourite blog posts from fellow bloggers, are insights into their everyday. Whilst my favourite Vintage Vix, (read her awesome blog here) does travel frequently and sells vintage at festivals (she's that cool), some of my favourite reads of hers are when she, writes about normal weeks such as going swimming and sessions at Weatherspoons! I like seeing her dressed up in her hedonistic hippie gear, going around Walsall charity shops!
The lovely thing with blogging is that it also helps ground you in the present, makes you notice things you might not appreciate otherwise.
My days, more often that not, start around 5/5.30am, not because I'm woken up but because I set my alarm. I cherish starting my day with sacred time for myself, so I'll do 30 minutes of exercise (usually Popsugar fitness, Cat Meffan Yoga or a dance workout on YouTube). I then get myself ready, showering, make up, hair and done (I can do this in 30 minutes)! Honestly doing this before my girls wake up is how I feel the most 'me' I can be, otherwise I'd spend the entire day in sweatpants, (nothing wrong with this, in fact I'm wearing sweatpants now, but I found during covid that getting properly dressed was/is really good for my mental health).
On this day I was wearing my favourite All about Audrey Florence dress, I'm living in it at the moment, so much so I've had to sew it already as I tripped up and managed to rip it!
At the moment my toddler sleeps until 7am and my 13 week old is miraculously sleeping until 8am! My newborn for some wonderful reason is sleeping through the night so I'm enjoying the rest while I can. Once everyone is up, we usually have porridge for breakfast (I'll have had a coffee to myself before the girls are up), then we usually go for a walk with our tubby, but loveable French bulldog Oz!
He's particularly loving having a toddler in the house at the moment, as he's constantly helping himself to a carpet buffet of dropped food!
A fifteen minute drive in either direction from my house, gets me to some ancient woods. I'll often load everyone into the car and we'll have a walk around out in the sticks, as I find it a lot more relaxing letting them go feral in an endless landscape of woodland, than trying to navigate a pushchair, toddler and dog through the local town to the park (although I do that frequently too)!
Here's my attempt of trying to be arty, noticing some lovely fungi and plants on our walk.
Here I am wearing another All about Audrey dress (bought second hand off Depop) and with my thrifted Indian Elephant bag (bought from a charity shop in High Wycombe when I lived there). The necklace I have on is a mandala necklace that I also found in a charity shop this time in uber posh Marlow.
Once we've had our walk, if my toddler isn't in nursery, I try to take the girls to a playgroup or do a fun activity out the house like visiting soft play, or the library. On one of our walks around town, I started to really pay attention to some of the beautiful buildings surrounding us. We live near the river, in a gorgeous little town which has lots of very old cottages and churches. We've worked hard over the years, trying to balance, work, budget and desires to find a place where we felt home in, and honestly I'm the happiest I've ever been. We are further from family than we'd like to be, but I do enjoy the quality time I get when we make the effort to meet up. I've lived everywhere from Birmingham city centre to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and honestly I think you can find things to be grateful for wherever you are (I realise I'm a privileged, white woman saying this and of course there are circumstances which make it impossible for you to be happy about. I mean what I say in the context of if you're safe, housed, warm, fed and loved).
I love this church so much so, I took two pictures of it! This is the route I usually take when getting to the river, it has some of the oldest, most picturesque properties along it. I was tempted to take some photos of them but chickened out at the last minute in case I offended anyone!
Both the church above, and the castle gates below are incredibly old, whilst I can't remember exact dates I believe the castle gates date back to Medieval times.
You may be wondering why a photo of a mini and scaffolding?! If you look left in the picture you'll see the cutest little cottage, I couldn't resist!
After an outing, my girls come back for lunch and a nap, where I either try to write a blog post, work on a story I'm developing or nap myself! Afternoons tend to go by in a bit of a blur, if I haven't made plans to meet with a mom friend, I'll try to clean something or do a craft session with my girls, usually painting or something that requires me to be a bit more focused and present.
Dinners are usually Mediterranean as it's my favourite cuisine (basically because it can be anything from Italian, Greek, Spanish, French or Moroccan)! Lately I've been loving lentils, butternut squash and coconut milk as ingredients in a stew I make. In fact I might have that tonight!
All being well, my toddler gets story time and bed around 6.30pm, my baby will have her bath and then usually falls asleep with me and my husband. My husband and I love a catch up in the evenings and usually get most of our conversation done watching the latest episodes of something. We're currently loving the Serpent Queen starring Samantha Morton, I think it's absolutely brilliant! I've always like Samanthat Morton, she goes for 'weird' roles and I always thought she looked amazing with a shaved head in several of her films. I think she has four children too, which is incredible!
If hubby wants to watch something I'm not particularly interested in, I use it as motivation to get my reading in. At the moment I'm getting through The Nowhere place by Natasha Bell. Set in Dover it's a fascinating novel about the death of two girls who supposedly fall off a cliff. There's obviously more to the story than that and so far it's gripped me!
Well until next time!
Love Soph x
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