Sorrow and Joy, And This Business Of Life.

You know those times when your feet don't touch the ground, when Life is too big and too fast for you to even draw breath, and everything whirls past in a flurry until whatever song it is dancing to finally runs out and you slow down to a gentle sway for a while, and so you can begin to absorb all that has just gone by.

We have been busy, with Splendid Adventures (which I will post about here soon), and crazy weather, and only a week left before we get the key to our new house, so Chaos Reigns.

And in the midst of it all, we lost a little friend. Our little furry friend, India, who was born here not even two years ago. 

Little hearts are broken.

We think it was poison, though we cannot be sure, but an awful end it was. One I am glad the children did not witness, but which I will never forget.  

This image at our bedroom window is a familiar one. I'm sure any pet owners among you know that look: 'Hey, can you let me in....so I can go back out?'
His favourite was to stand on his hind legs and pound the window, at four am, while yowling in a voice that can only be described as akin to Marge Simpson. Honestly, I actually kind of miss that!

He was the best cat. Just sweet and cuddly and friendly and chilled out, and so handsome and so fluffy you just couldn't help but love him.
And even though he drove her mad, and she loved when he went off a-wandering and she had us all to herself, his mama, Sparrow, is a little bit lost without him.

So, we are just coming out of the what if's and maybes phase, of wondering would he still be alive if we had done anything differently. But the truth of it is, sadly, I don't think so.

But let me finish this post with the Joy part of this title.

This week, Our Smallest turned six! And although I find myself looking back at pictures like the one below, of my baby, and my heart squeezes painfully with that Loss, I marvel, too, at how this little flower of ours has taken his time to reveal himself to us, and how enthralled I am by it.

For so very long it seemed as though some part of him stayed, or strayed, in some Other World, some dreamy place that he had come from. A Very New Person. A tender, sweet presence, and one we all cannot help but love, and love to be around. One who cries when trees are felled, and who asks why we are here, and the How of things, and wonders about God and volcanos and love, and dreams of dinosaurs and dragons.

And now, as the first of his baby teeth have fallen, and his feet are more on the ground than ever, I am savouring what is left to me of these days. Days of magic and wonder and yes, mischief. Days of small boys and the joy they bring. Days that, as I look at our eldest, now a young man of almost seventeen, seem to have a number, and I want to hold onto with all my heart.

The only things that you should keep in rowsAre your perfect teeth and the rest you knowIts own sweet way will always go

Add your footsteps to the wearFor a tiny dent in every stairWill let them know that you've been there

And I am put in mind of the above song by Vashti Bunyan, called 'Lately', a song about this very thing, and it is a comfort to know that most of you reading this have known, or will know, this exact feeling. 

The comfort is, that this Business Of Life is just that, and we are all in it together. 

The sorrow and the joy. The loving and the letting go. 

We can reach out a hand, and it will, at once, find another that understands.

What's Cooking In The Milkmoon Kitchen.

After years of struggling with food intolerances, I finally feel like I have something of a handle on it, albeit no closer to finding a 'solution', if such thing exists. But over the years, my interest in the topic of food, and how it behaves in our bodies, has led me down many a rabbit hole of intrigue on the subject, and I have come across many fascinating people, articles, books, and films, which I immediately want to share with the world. I have written here before about the many different hats I wear, and I have struggled to find a way to fit all these together here on Milkmoon, and I must admit, it's just not working for me. Milkmoon is more about photographs, musings, stitchery, and all those little things that take place in the regular workings of my life, and I've come to realise that the food element is just too big to incorporate into it. It would change Milkmoon too much, and I don't want that to happen, and so I haven't been blogging about it here, as I had intended. I like this dreamy place as it is, and once I get onto the topic of food, a whole devil of reality rears it's head, and sometimes it's not that pretty! But mostly, it's delicious and inspiring and wholesome, but in a very different realm to this.

Our week in pictures.
In between this....

So what to do?

I have gone from being a prolific blogger, with four or five blogs on the go at once, to struggling to keep one afloat, let lone two, and so, even though I have a burning desire to share all that I have found, I am now wary of undertaking another blog. So I have decided to try another tactic; a Facebook Page, which I reckon will tie in with the usual Facebooking that goes on, on a daily basis.

....and this,

For the first time in what seems like a lifetime, after almost seventeen years of coasting happily along through Mother-land, in this magic place that we were so blessed to find ourselves land in as new parents, my life is now veering off into a vast, unknown territory, and boy am I ready for it!
By this time next year, I doubt I will recognise my life. So many things are falling ever so neatly into lines of such Serendipitous-ness, that I can barely catch my breath.

we had this!
Bizarre weather, altogether.

For one, we have found a house. A Stepping Stone House, if you get my meaning, and as this is what happened the last time we moved house, it seems this is how we do things here. It ticks a lot of boxes, and it doesn't ticks some others, but the ones it does ticks are wonderful and exciting, and we just won't know ourselves! And so we will make the most of it, and when the time is right The Place We Are Seeking will present itself. I promise to have photos just as soon as we actually move.

My mantra of the season has been:
I Am Open To The Abundance of the Universe.
And once again it has provided.

So if Facebook is your thing, and you feel so inclined, do please come and peep in the door of the Milkmoon Kitchen, and stay for a chat. There will be recipes, and I have great hopes for threads of conversation that inspire and inform and bring together our wealth of experience and knowledge on the subject of health and vittles and sustenance.

And together we will change the world, one meal at a time.

Learning From The Trees.

We had a lovely week off school, and even though for a lot of it the clouds sat low over the mountains, a mizzling rain pressing up against the windows, keeping us mostly indoors, we really didn't mind at all. We had lots of pyjama days, with plenty of baking and cooking going on, and just as cabin fever began to set in, the days began with blue skies and there was that little whisper of spring in the air.

There, in the stretch of light in the morning sky, or stirred into the tenacious sting of the winter wind, a hint of warmth that was not there before, just a momentary tenderness against our skin, and all of a sudden there is a new softness, a slackening off, in the physical tension of winter, and our bodies somehow fathom, in some deep place, that instinct of the trees to begin to let go of that green they have held onto during the dark months, to allow it to begin to unfurl.

Our hunt for a new home continues apace.
We have all been dreaming strange, house-related dreams. Uncomfortable, insecure kind of dreams that leave us unsettled. We have never undertaken anything like this before, as a family, and while it really is unsettling, I think it may be no bad thing. Sometimes we need to shake things up, to force ourselves out of our comfort zone, in order to unfurl and reach for the sky and warm air, in order to grow.

And so, we wait patiently for Something Wonderful to come our way, and I am grateful for the time of year, for that sense of the rising sap, and I know that, like the trees, if we trust our instincts, we will know just what to do when the time comes.

These Friends Of Mine.

Well, this week has seen us struck down with an 'aul dose' as we say, four of us are at various stages of a stinker of a cold, and my ears pricked this morning as The Smallest headed out to school with a suspicious sniffling. It seems he will be the next to fall.
But next week is mid-term, thankfully, so I anticipate lots of lazy pyjama days, slow breakfasts, and maybe a walk or two, once we are all well. Though there has been a flurry of snow, and more to come, they say, so we shall see.

babaá - no.7 - Flame

Regular readers here know I love the seasons, I love weather of all kinds, and although, unusually for me, I am finding this winter particularly long, let me just ignore that and talk about something I love about winter, which is Winter Woolies! One of my great loves in life; all things knitted. It's the first thing I look for when browsing in shops.
With four children, we have gone through a lot of clothes, throughout their growing years especially, and I have found that it is often the hand knitted goodness that I fold away affectionately, into the box of Keepsakes, like tender memories I am afraid will disappear. And there they wait for the next child who will wear it, who will add their memories to it, as though knitted into the very fabric of it.
How many of you are lucky enough to have had items from your childhood to put on your own children, when the time came?
I love this weave of threads through our lives, the continuity, if we allow it.

babaá - shop

And so, this brings me to Something Lovely. Something new and lovely, and I hope, regular, here on Milkmoon. As I said in my last post, I am bringing back an old Milkmoon model of regular, themed posts, that somehow fell by the wayside over the last couple of years, but with a new spin on it.
To start, I have a lot of very talented family members, and friends, and I just can't help myself, I want to share their goodness and creativity with you. So, introducing a new tag, to sit side by side with my Something Lovely tag: These Friends Of Mine.

babaá - shop

Given the wintery weather we are having, I would like to begin with someone who, while is not officially my sister, is like a sister to me, whom I first met when she was the same age my daughter is now. She was 14, and I was 22, and unusually, in spite of the age difference, we became instant friends. And have remained so to this day.

Ciara and Marta
Dublin - 1993

Marta is now living back in her native Madrid, and has recently launched her children's knitwear label; babaá, and yes, you can immediately see one reason why we get on so well! These are definitely Keepsakes. Timeless, but quirky, with just the perfect balance of functionality. (Is there anything more wonderful than someone you love creating something, and it turns out that you genuinely love it?) You can read here what babaá is all about, and you will see exactly why this gorgeous knitwear is destined to become family heirlooms. And while you are there, take a peek in her shop, (there is a sale on) especially if you have any small people in your life who are growing up before your eyes, and you long to hold onto a little longer, and items like these are perfect memory making additions to your Keepsake Box.
And all these babaá photographs are by the exceptionally talented Clíona O'Flaherty, my lovely sister-in-law, who will also be featured here over the next while.

babaá - jumper no.4 - Coral

I am making my order for one for my Smallest, as we speak, because almost all his keepsakes already have a history to them, and I want to have one that begins with him.

In Which The Milkmooners Go On An Adventure.

Has it really been more than two months since I peeked in here? Well, it's not like life has been uneventful, probably too eventful really, and therefore, where do I start? I won't recap, as it would not do justice to all the wonderful things that have been and gone, but instead I will just have to see which ones emerge over the next few posts here, as I actually have a number of marvelous things to share with you, in the style of The Early Days of Milkmoon, because that is where I have woken up on this side of the New Year, in a place of Blogging Rediscovery, which is quite exciting for me.

So, with photos from my archives (as I am still without a camera), of corners of our home, I will start with what is most currant for us here in the Milkmoon household: you may recall this post about our looming Leave-Taking.
But I have questions. For example, how does one begin to pack up a house? Accumulated belongings of more than sixteen years, times six people.... Let's just say I am somewhat overwhelmed by it.
Where does one start? Is there a system to it? We've never had to do it before. The last time we moved, we had a two roomed apartment, no furniture, and just ourselves and a four month old baby to pack up. It all fit into the back of a car.

We have become extremely adept at finding excuses to not do it. It's not that we don't want to move, although there is a reluctance to leave this beautiful place, of course, but it's more just the sheer enormity of this mountain we have to climb to get ourselves to the other side of it.
We are hoarders, of sorts, the waste-not-want-not kind of hoarders, the rainy-day kind, and while Jay would deny he is one in any way, I admit I am the worst of them. For example, what constitutes my 'studio' is a haphazard mountain of shoe-boxes, jars, bags, curvers, baskets, all stuffed with bits of fabric, ribbons, buttons, threads, haberdashery of all kinds, as well as postcards, photos, magazine cuttings, letters, and teetering piles of books... you get the picture. And four children means an accumulation of toys, partly because I have a penchant for antique/old-school toys, which are impossible to get rid of, right?

And books, oh my, the books. One of the things I valued most, growing up, was my Dad's extensive library, which I truly discovered in my late teens, early twenties, when I read as many classics as were there, poetry, plays, biographies, you name it. It truly was a significant part of my education, one which had a bigger impact on the adult I was to become than any other singular element. And so, without being conscious of it, I have since spent my adult years building a Library Of Significance for my own children. Add to that the fact that when we moved into this house the bookshelves were already full, full I tell you, of someone else's, very long, life's collection! I cannot begin to estimate just how many books we have, but I can say it runs to the thousands, with bags and bags of them stuffed into cupboards too. So you can imagine, can't you, the task in that department alone. Clearly I can't bring them all, so there will have to be a culling, won't there, something I am dreading.

I also love teacups, and saucers, and teapots, and jugs, and I adore antique furniture, the bigger the better, I hold on to clothes that one lad grows out of, so the next lad can wear them, even though there is three - five years age difference between them, baskets and cupboards full of every kind of art and craft materials for the children, oh I could go on...the list is random and endless.
Now don't get me wrong, I am actually really looking forward to a new, simplified,  pared (a bit, anyway) back, beginning in our new house, which no, we have not found yet, but are now wholeheartedly looking for.

However, first we have to get through the dismantling, sorting, packing, moving, bit. And that's after making a decision on whether or not to go after a house that ticks some very important boxes, but does not tick other very important ones. Is it possible to get everything you want when house hunting? We did last time. Literally. To such fine detail it would give you goosebumps and instant Faith In The Universe. And I want with all my heart to believe we can do it again, because to us our home is not just bricks and mortar, it is a beloved part of the family, and therefore must be something we can love. Oh! the responsibility! the expectations! the enormity! of it all. Plus the fact that there are now six of us, all with different needs and desires and hopes.
It's a very fine juggling act we are now involved in, and I hope we get it right.