Ronja, aged five, summer of 2009.

Can you see it?

...Ronja could, and I instantly had to put this song on.

A little taste of spring.

It's amazing how much easier everything seems when the light starts coming back and the sun warms my face again! Having winter break this week isn't wrong either - oh, and exciting progress on the house has been made today. Joy!

Lately.

More or less important and/ or interesting things lately:
Yesterday, when driving home from work, I checked through the five different channels on our car radio searching for something interesting, and two out of five played a Def Lepard song. Norway, 2012.
The night before yesterday I dreamt that the keys on my laptop computer were replaced with rotten cherry tomatoes. Writing suddenly became more of a sensory, physical thing. And quite messy, too.
Two impulses at once: One, to sit on a Paris café. The other, sending butterflies around in my tummy: Our home is being created, it's within reach, and in only six weeks our boxes will be packed and we'll move up there. It will be beautiful.
OH-SO-PROUD of him: My wonderful, brave, strong, kind, heroic, patient and mysterious husband. He works so hard. I must spoil him.
And in love, always, with those three whom I share my life with. I never knew it could be like this.
Photos below from some of this evening's activities.

Oh, and lastly: Who are you, anyway? I seem to have readers all over the world, and it makes me really curious.
Feel free to leave a note below!

Today:

Woke up with a happy leap out of bed at 7 am (without the alarm going off or kids waking me!), looked out the window, noted to my great joy the daylight spreading on the hill, and started the chores of the day with a smile on my face.

Now, enjoying the quiet of the house as all have gone to work & school, having my day off.
Loads of stuff to sort out, but with a start like this, who can complain?

Me & my dad, ca. 1980.

I've always really loved this photo. It used to be in a little golden frame, always on a shelf or a dresser somewhere in my parents' house, and so many times I have stopped and picked it up, and really looked at it.
The kid is me, and the guy is my dad. He's probably around 30 years old at the time, so I'm older now than he is there. (Woah. Those words hit me like a bomb, actually.) And I, the child, am about two years old, like Freja is now. And he's pushing me on the swing, and I'm laughing, and my mum is probably laughing too, because she's the one taking the photo, I think.

In all the hustle and bustle of doing up a house, managing the every day, working, shopping, cooking and cleaning, there are two children growing in this family. And as they're growing, they're leaving some of what was them behind, and becoming something new. All the time. And we won't get it back, not ever. Only through our photos can we slightly smell or feel or subtly grasp what and who they used to be, a year ago, or a month ago, or even just last week.
For me, this is the most difficult thing of being a parent. I constantly have to let them go, and it makes me grieve a little, all the time. Who they are is so fleeting. It's like I cannot open my senses enough to thoroughly absorb them, to store them in my memory deeply enough.
So then, the camera helps me out. And even though it's a thin comfort, at least it makes me think I did my best, and that I can look them up when my memory fails me. Sometimes I even pretend that what they leave behind is in my photos, so all I have to do is take good enough pictures, and then it won't be lost after all.
Time is stored, memory is stored, love is stored, life is stored in the photos.

Little by little.

After a rough spell lately, we all feel somewhat drained here at the moment. Good then, that the sun climbs up over our hill earlier every morning, and that the snow has melted a little bit today, that Freja is better from a serious attack of the flu, and that we still are smart enough to go to bed early on most evenings, as the last weeks of winter hibernation unfold. So, so ready for spring now!
Greetings from the grey faces of the Payne family.

(Soundtrack to sitting with sick child for hours: This and this and this album.)

Again we find ourselves on the sofa for a few days.
♥

Today/ tonight:

Our castle, as of now.

In two months, we move in. Just a splash of paint and tidy up a bit, and we're good to go!

Paradoxes.

She's smiling, but you can see it in her eyes that she's been crying. Putting up a brave face, she shows her work of art to the camera, and I have to hurry up and take the picture. Because in the back, there's someone luring, and she's not even two years old, but still able to tear down the most wonderful of castles. And she's torn this one down maybe seven times before we managed to press the button.
And even though the big sister is the bigger sister, she still cries when it happens, and gets frustrated, but tries to live with it and be a big girl. And I see her every day trying to deal and to accept the craziness it sometimes is to have a little sister of this sort. A wonderfully cute, wonderfully funny, and wonderfully capable little sister. A wonderful creator of chaos.
Sisterhood isn't always easy, but how full of love it is. Freja is lucky to have a big sister like this one.

Mrs. Payne loves...

...Saturday mornings: Fires lit, fresh coffee in my cup, knitting at hand and pop quiz on the radio. Ah!

Food fiend.

You know your kid is over average interested in food when you pop in to check on her in the evening, she's sleeping soundly, and then you hear a little voice from the crib saying, in her sleep, nammenam. (English: yummy.)
Let's hope it sticks 'till she's big enough to cook us up some proper gourmet food!
Below: practising.
Happy Friday to all!