Singing sunshine and sundays

What wonderful weather we have been blessed with this weekend. It truly feels like spring has sprung!

I love spring, it's such a joyful season. Is there another time of the year when we are surrounded by new life bursting into bloom all around us? I think not. Of course summer is wonderful, long hours spent in the garden with a hot sun beating down on your skin but spring is something else. It always reminds me to be grateful to live in such a beautiful part of the world (something I am very aware I take advantage of).

We live just 2 miles from the sea and went to 'see the sea' Saturday and Sunday this weekend. Amelia-Rose had her first paddle in the water which she was thrilled about. Of course she got absolutely soaked but three things that never bother me as a parent are water, mud and paint.

Water dries, paint washes off as does mud. Obviously I wouldn't be thrilled if Amelia-Rose walked mud or paint all over the carpet and through the house but if it's on her it's fine by me! I love that I have a daughter who loves getting messy and isn't precious about staying neat and tidy. The way I see it she has the rest of her life to be neat and tidy (if she so desires!) these are the messy years.

I have some wonderful photos of her absolutely plastered in paint when she was three. I left her alone whilst I went to the loo and she decided she was going to 'do her make up' with the paints. The outcome was hilarious!

So lent is upon us once more and as always rather then giving something up I have taken something on. For me personally the battle is allowing myself time to do things that make me feel good.

Like almost every mother on the face of the planet I always put my free time into playing with Amelia-Rose but when she's at school I tend to fill the day with non essential 'stuff' or if I'm having a bad flare up I take the time to physically rest.

This lent I have set myself three goals. Two are reading on is practical.

My eye sight makes it very hard to concentrate on reading which is tough because I adore reading. We aren't 100% sure what is going on with my vision but everything is always slightly out of focus and it gets a lot worse when I am tired (to the point that I literally can't see straight, I couldn't read a word on the page even if I tried really hard to focus on it.)

 I am waiting to see a specialist as the optician said it wasn't actually my vision as such so it can't be corrected with glasses, in his opinion it is a muscular problem which of course would link in directly with the hypermobility syndrome.

Anyway to get any reading done I have to do it during the day so I am going to make sure I make time to do it.

I have chosen two books that I both think have something to offer me at the moment. 'Raising your spirited child' which discusses children that are 'more'. More sensitive to taste, touch, sound and emotions, mature for their age, very creative and intelligent. They can all be great personality traits but they do have a downside for the child that just feels 'more'.  The author refers to them as a  spirited child. For example, if Amelia-Rose is done wrong by another child and the other child won't say sorry she gets more upset about the injustice of not getting an apology then whatever was done to her. It's 'more' !

The other book is the prayer studying guide to the book 'The power of the praying parent'. Amelia-Rose is suffering with a bit of separation anxiety when she's dropped off to school at the minute and I'm doing everything I can to reassure her in a practical sense but it dawned on me that I haven't actually prayed about it. I thought if I did the work book it would discipline me enough to really think about the areas where Amelia-Rose might need prayer in her life at the moment.

The third and final up take is to try to do a bit of sewing everyday on my machine, or at least a couple of days a week for the simple fact that it makes me really happy! I bought some fabulous fabrics last year and I still haven't used it. I make Amelia-Rose skirts and with summer coming I would like to make some new ones. She has grown so much since last summer anything I made last year is going to look like a mini skirt!

I made myself an awesome camper van skirt last year and would like to make myself a few new skirts too. With the HMS induced trouble I am having with my digestion I have lost over stone since this time last year so will need a new summer wardrobe myself. I can't remember if I wrote about what's going on with my tummy at the minute? Around June last year certain foods started making me be sick but before Christmas I started being sick after most meals. There isn't an obvious pattern to it, I thought at first maybe I had developed a food intolerance but it didn't matter what I took out of my diet it didn't stop.

I did some research and it turns out that this kind of thing can happen to HMS sufferers. The consultant explained it to me that when you swallow (which is now very uncomfortable at best and very painful at worst) there comes a point when your muscles aren't strong enough anymore to keep pulling the food down so it comes back up. On very bad days just drinking water can feel like I have swallowed a whole apple and sometimes it feels like it has got stuck, that I hate. It's quite frightening. I have figured out 'safe foods' such as a bagel dipped in oat milk or tea and soy yoghurt. Cracker bread goes down and stays down too but things like potatoes, pasta and rice are really sporadic, sometimes they do sometimes they don't.

It's the reason I am juicing at home. It's the best way to get maximum nutrition into my body! Plus they taste amazing! My husband makes the best juices! We use the same ingredients but his always taste that bit better!

We are off to London again this week at the end of the week. We're going to take Amelia-Rose with us this time. I think it will do her a lot of good to see what actually happens on a day that we go to London. I wonder if in her head she is making it much bigger then it actually is which is maybe the reason she is getting upset going into school at the moment. I think we need to normalise it for her. Of course it will also help her to see the hospital before I go in for my operation in May.

Steve and I did an open air set at a event to celebrate International World Woman's day yesterday. It was absolutely brilliant! The sun was shining, the crowd were great and two of the musicians that played on the album and performed for us at the album launch spontaneously joined us! I will be posting some videos on YouTube this week sometime hopefully. If you want to hear some tracks off the album now though go check out  https://soundcloud.com/songbird-unexpected. Singing and performing makes me soul shine. It made me feel so good yesterday!

Right, that's it! I am off to bed. It's been a wonderful weekend and a good night sleep tonight would just be the cherry on top!