Working girl.

I went to work yesterday. Or, not to work, but to a restaurant on the river, for a planning day... the kind of day that used to make me weep with boredom when my life was all 9-5. The only good thing about them was the free food. But yesterday was great. Interesting. Stimulating. Invigorating. Didn't make me decide to change the date of my re-entry to the workforce next year, but definitely made me feel like there are things I want to do apart from singing 'Open, shut them' five hundred times in an afternoon.

The Boy took a day off school and hung out with the kid, and brought him over for a quick visit for the 3 o'clock feed. It was strange. I thought about him constantly, in the back of my mind, and I was definitely watching the clock most of the day, but I don't think I actually missed him. Perhaps if he was with my mum, or someone that he hadn't spent quite so much time with, I might have been more worried about it. But he's had plenty of man-time with his dad while I've been off doing other things, so I wasn't concerned about how he'd be doing. I just... I don't know. He wasn't there. I made a cup of tea without him on my hip. I expressed the 11 o'clock feed in the disabled toilets. I fed him when he arrived, and he smiled at my workmates and gave me a wriggly, kicking cuddle when I said 'hug for mama!' before I handed him back to The Boy. So strange. The real world is out there, and he's in it too.

Meanwhile, it's my brother's son's first birthday today. He's supposed to have him for a couple of hours this afternoon, so I've baked cupcakes and wrapped presents and we're driving to the end of the earth when the kid wakes up from his nap so we can celebrate in a shopping centre. That whole situation is such a mess. I don't even know what to say about it. So I'll say nothing, and stick a picture of the kid up here instead.

My sunhat baby. (Hi Rosie.)

Six months.

Happy half-birthday, boy-o.

Walking with bebe...

Foggy morning at the farm.

Smells like school camp.

I thought I would have hours to sit and muse and write long posts last week, but it turns out being a single mother is exhausting. That wasn't exactly surprising, but it does mean it's been a while between drinks here.

The Boy was on school camp all week, and somehow it was ok that we went up for a conjugal visit on Tuesday night. We drove and drove through awful outer suburbs until we hit the little road leading to the camp site, and suddenly there was rolling beauty around every corner. I remembered the general store of a little town my dad took us canoeing through one time, the river quietly speeding along beside the road. Winter sunshine streamed through the trees and the kid slept through the whole thing. I should have stopped and taken a photo, but it was past feeding time and I was worried I'd have a screamer on my hands for the last 15 minutes of the journey. Driving through the tiny village before the campsite, with nothing but green and blue mountains ahead, I felt like I was on the edge of an untouched world. Just me and my quiet kid and our little blue car zooming along. I think it was the happiest I have been in months.

Turns out things don't change. School camp is still big halls. Green cordial. Apple crumble. High ropes and mountain bikes and canoes.

Also thirty smelly teenage boys, who are hilariously unfamiliar with small children. But they held him and giggled and marvelled at his tiny fingers. And in the morning, we turned around and on tiny country roads with no other cars we followed the river back home.