Chasing Butterflies Daily

To be honest we're still working out our traditions, the thing my husband and I agree on the most is that we need to try to avoid too many, especially on Christmas Eve & Day. We've figured out the key to enjoying it the most is to try to keep the plans to a minimum, keeping the expectations low means there's less stress and we ALL have a better time. I mean let's face it with small children about most plans get totally fucked anyway. We can't please everyone, but if everyone is willing to compromise a little and let go of wild expectations of what Christmas should or shouldn't be we both feel like everyone involved will have a better time. This will be our 7th Christmas together and they've all been fairly varied, from staying in hotels while visiting relatives in Scotland when we lived abroad, travelling to Sweden and bunking up in my mum's house to spending it in our own home. But I think we're slowly figuring what works for us and what t...

Our 2.5 year old still very much needs to take an afternoon nap, however being a toddler / a-hole means that she promptly refuses to go down for one. With three children about I don't have time for naptime fights or to sit with her in her room till she's fallen asleep. Some days I can't be bothered trying to make her sleep at all, something both my husband and I regret immensely once it's late afternoon. If I'm out in the car during the day I can usually convince her to shut her eyes and drift off for at least a cat nap to see her through the day. But on days we're at home it's a battle to say the least. I remember our eldest fighting naps at this age too but back then I usually had the time to be with her till she settled and so I didn't have to troubleshoot the problem. The way I get around it with our head strong middle child is giving her an option of where to sleep. To begin with she was happy with staying in her own room and just go...

One of the things I looked forward to the most before having children was getting them into books. I'm still hopeful, I mean they already love them... They're just really shit at listening to them. As a child I would definitely have classified as a bookworm, happily boasting about the great classics being my preferred reading material from my tweens and onward. English literature was one of my favourite classes at school and back when I had time and energy to read most books were read from start to finish within 24-48 hours. Yes I was that child hiding a torch in my bed, forever having my mum come and knock on the door to tell me it was lights out time. I LOVED reading and escaping into other worlds. To this day I refuse to throw out books and while I love lending others reading material I loathe it when I have to chase them. I'm even known to write my name in the front to avoid excuses these days & I warn people that I want my baby, sorry, I meant book, back when they...

Saturday the 15th of December I was FINALLY going to get to perform in a play again. The last time I was on stage was 5.5 years ago in a production of Antigone. We'd found out I was pregnant with our firstborn two days before the run started. My morning sickness (which turned out to be the less than charming hyperemesis gravidarum) had started, add to that I had quit smoking cold turkey and obviously couldn't enjoy a post performance drink, it wasn't the most enjoyable week of performances but it was still good fun. I started doing drama in my spare time at the age of 7, by the time I was 15 I was performing in a minimum of 4 plays a year (often many more). I was definitely what you'd call a "drama geek" and I was more than proud of the title. I had already done fewer plays in the year before Antigone as my (now) husband and I had moved to the countryside and there was no public transport running late enough to comfortably partake in rehearsals. I somehow man...

On Saturday the 15th of December 2018 most of Scotland had amber weather warnings (the Met Office issue yellow, amber & red warnings, red being the most serious with great risk to life if you go out in it) in place as snow and icy rain was forecast. I was meant to be performing in a play that evening ( a bit more about that HERE ) but by late afternoon the stormy weather we'd been promised kicked off and within two hours I could tell I wasn't getting up the hill by our house with my car, never mind successfully completing the drive to the venue. I wasn't the only one in that situation as we all live rurally so the show has been postponed. Most of the day it was windy but not much coming down from the skies, the only way you could tell the weather was truly bad was that our internet connection broke in the morning. We rely on satellite broadband as our telephone line out in the glen isn't strong enough to carry the signal to our house (it's barely strong en...

Today has been Saint Lucia's day in Sweden (there's a link to a post with more facts about the day at the end of the piece) along with Midsummer it is one of our biggest celebrations during the year so I went in to our eldest's nursery class during the afternoon to share with them some traditional snacks, music and stories about Swedish Christmas with her classmates. This morning I had asked if she wanted to wear her gingerbread dress (one of the common outfits for the younger children to wear for the Lucia procession - you'll see her younger sister happily donning her dress a bit further down) but she wanted to be "more beautiful" and picked another dress. She's a little girl who knows her will very clearly and so I let her pick what she wanted to wear, apparently she'll wear her gingerbread dress tomorrow... Last year her nursery teacher had made little clay candle holders with them for Lucia (I was in the midst of pregnancy sickness) and our e...

Saint Lucia is celebrated on the 13th of December across Scandinavia (and in Italy to some degree) however it's definitely a bigger tradition in Sweden than any of it's neighbouring countries. Although it has its roots in celebrating the Christian virgin & martyr, St Lucia, who is said to have brought food in the darkness to the poor, carrying a crown of candles on her head to light the way to leave her hands free to carry as much food as possible. There are of course, as is want with old tales, many varying versions of events. From being engaged to a pagan who then shunned her for giving her dowry money to the needy to the Church trying to kill her with a bonfire that failed before beheading her. What remains of her life in Italy doesn't matter or relate much to the celebration that is held in Sweden today. Both the Protestant and Catholic church hold Sankta Lucia processions, but as with a lot of Swedish traditions it is the pagan aspects that seem to sit stronger w...