“28 Days”

Mama Atzi / / No Comments

February might only have 28 days in it but I can honestly say that February 2017 has been the longest (and one of the most painful) of my life.

It actually started out quite full of hope. A positive job interview, Little M seemingly excited about starting Kindergarten and this Exhausted Mama believing that she might get to have a little bit of a recoup before being thrown into the world of work! Sadly it was not meant to be.

When it comes to childcare and children’s classes I have always been a ‘rip the band aid’ kind of person. I don’t believe it helps the child (or parent) to prolong the agony and after countless situations as a dance teacher where I have watched and seen firsthand as parents coddle and pander to their child instead of letting them take it in their own stride and just get on with it, ultimately making it much harder for the child to settle and enjoy themselves, I feel my ‘professional’ opinion atleast is justified.

If they’re not ready they’re not ready but if they are you have to let them go.

With that in mind I have always respected and trusted that other professionals (i.e childcare providers) know what they’re doing. So with LJ, when we were told the Kindergarten settling in period in London would be around 3 days I was skeptical but stayed positive and decided to go with it.

And it worked. Sure there were tears when I left for a while, but a few minutes outside the door proved it was (mostly) for show and all in all the transition was smooth and calm.

So when it came to starting our way more independent, second child, I just did not envision that it would go so badly!!! Or take so long!

As a Mama and a teacher I know that not every child is the same. They develop at different rates; talk, walk, skip and plie in their own time at their own speed. I know you have to choose your teaching style to suit the child’s personality. I know some children take longer to settle than others.

While I believe in ‘ripping the band aid’ I do also know that some children will find that harder than others. That there is always an exception to the rule. I just never thought my child would be that exception.

I’m forever telling people not to stress over their sleep deprivation (even though that’s all I ever do!), reminding them that “some babies just don’t sleep”. I wasn’t surprised that my second baby was also a non-sleeper but I didn’t expect him to be one of “those babies that just don’t settle” as well. Of course I hadn’t had such a Mama’s boy before either!

3 weeks later and I was still only able to leave for 30 mins – an hour if I was lucky. 3 weeks of downing McDonalds coffees (all I had time for). 3 weeks of sad little points at the door to the exit or LJ’s grouproom. 3 weeks of not understanding why I was sitting there but not really playing with him. 3 weeks of stress, tears, tantrums, clinging and worry. 3 weeks of heartbreak.

We had the feeling that Little M would probably settle better if he could join the older group where his big brother was but as Principal of a dance school, where you are constantly second guessed by parents (if you give them the chance) who supposedly know better than you and your 20 years worth of training and experience, I didn’t want to be “that” parent.

I was grateful when after a meeting the Kindergarten team, of their own accord, came to the same conclusion as us (see, Mummies and Daddies we do know what we’re doing, will always listen and appreciate your parental instincts and opinions but ultimately will make the right decision without you so please don’t push! Ok, sometimes you need to, your baby comes first, but just be nice about it!)

And hey presto, 3 days later he was already more settled than he had after 3 weeks in the baby group (so maybe us parents do know something too)! By day 5 there were no tears and I was able to leave him for most of the morning. Day 6 and he’s staying there for lunch – which since I don’t have a regular job here yet is all I was asking for anyway!!

So my faith in the ‘ripping the band aid’ philosophy does work – under the right circumstances or Kindergarten group anyway!

Finally, there was a light at the end of a very long tunnel.

Sadly though another light was starting to fade and on February 26th my world got a little dimmer when I received the worst FaceTime call of my life so far.

I knew as soon as the words ‘Mum and Dad Would Like to FaceTime’ flashed up on my screen at 10.30pm what was about to happen and with a deep breath I clicked ‘Accept’, a complete juxtaposition of what I was feeling, and prepared to hear the words that I had been preparing myself to hear for the last 2 weeks. I ripped that stupid bandaid and listened quietly as my Mum very calmly told me my darling Grandad was gone forever.

You may remember from my “Somewhere Slow” post that I wasn’t sure if I would get to see him again. I am grateful to be able to say that I did manage to fly over at the beginning of February and even more grateful that I was able to get that last goodbye kiss. I can’t honestly say it’s given me any more comfort but in time I hope it will.

Right now I still keep going over everything I should have said or could have done differently. Like one extra hug or trying to fit in one more visit before I flew home. If I’d said my usual ‘see you soon’ would he still be with us? But in the end none of it makes a difference and the only thing that is important is that Grandad is at peace.

I had the most amazing, special Grandad in my life for nearly 36 years. He got to know both my boys and LJ got to know him. Little M will have our photos, memories and stories.

So yes it’s been a very long, very tough month. There’s been a lot of tears and a lot of tantrums – and not all from the baby.

But the kindergarten team have been patient and kind and I’m confident Little M will soon be running into Kiga without a backward glance.

The NHS staff at the Norfolk and Norwich were phenomenal with my Grandad and their efforts and professionalism allowed him to fall asleep peacefully and with dignity. The way he deserved.

Right now I don’t know how to accept a reality where my Grandad no longer exists. Every time I think about it I get punched. The time between hits slowly increases but for the rest of my life they’ll be there.

At the end of the day, whether you rip the band aid or slowly peel it away the pain is still there. You don’t get over it any quicker, it just affects you differently.

Sometimes you just have to let the professionals choose the best course of action and pray that they are right.

So, sleep tight Grandad. It’ll be hard without you but you taught us well and we’ll carry you and your lessons in our hearts forever:

“I’ll love you forever. I’ll like you for always. As long as I’m living my Grandad you’ll be”*

Love always – your Katy xxx

To my lovely readers;

Sweet Dreams,

Mama Atzi x

*Words taken and adapted from the Robert Munsch book ‘Love you forever’ www.robertmunsch.com

“Somewhere Slow” (New Year, New Start)

Mama Atzi / / No Comments

 

I have only a handful of New Year’s intentions, several more New Year’s hopes and wishes but only 1 real New Year’s resolution for 2017.

Like all good intentions – drink less, eat better, workout more – I am not off to a very good start. I could give you a load of excuses as to why – Little M isn’t sleeping well so I am exhausted and deserve a little tipple of an evening, I’ve had a chest infection and who wants to workout when they’re ill? But truthfully I just don’t care enough. Bad attitude I know but I am of the mind that (for example) if you’re gonna quit smoking, you have to really ‘want’ to quit smoking. Hence these were ‘intentions’ not proper resolutions – somehow I feel better about breaking intentions than resolutions. I know, I know. Excuses, excuses. As I said I don’t care!

The hopes and wishes, like most Mamas, are for health and happiness for my family and friends, and maybe a bit less stress, a bit more money and a focus on the good stuff rather than the bad so much. A nice holiday somewhere sunny wouldn’t go a miss either! Ooh and dance lessons. I’d really like to take some dance lessons this year…..sorry getting off point now! And on a grand scale of course I also agree with Miss America and hope for world peace…………………………………………………………………………….. oops – sorry my finger froze. Must have gone into a Trump trance. Well, as I said, one can dream.

So, to the resolution. I decided that for this year I really only want one thing. For myself and most importantly for my children. All I really want to try and do is ‘slow down’. I just want to slow down.

Every morning I hear myself shouting ‘hurry up LJ. Come on M. We’re late’ Ok, sure. It is important that we are on time but it is also important to take the time to get ready properly. We start every day with stress. And for no real reason. We are still one of the first families at Kindergarten in the morning. My husband one of the first into the office. I am one of the earliest shoppers and probably, to my neighbours annoyance, one of the first to get the hoover out. So why can’t we just slow down a little bit……

Everywhere we go I feel like I am rushing. In museums we rush from one exhibit to the other. When I pick LJ up I am always trying to get him to hurry up so we can get home. I hear myself say the words “come on!” about a hundred times a day. We seem to have to be on lightning speed all the time. Always in a hurry to get out the door. To get home. To get dinner. To get in the bath. To get to bed. And then we wake up and it all starts again!

I don’t want to do that anymore. I want my children to be able to enjoy their days. Take the time to really see things and appreciate them. To be able to eat their meals or enjoy their baths without being rushed into the next activity. I want to let them learn in their own time. I want to not feel impatient because they are being ‘too slow’.

I want to let my children lead.

And with that in mind I need to ‘slow down’. I need to go at their pace. After all, they only have little legs!

Sometimes what is slow to us is lightning speed to them and I need to stop and remember that they won’t be little for much longer. Soon their legs will outgrow mine and I will be the one playing catch up.

My Grandparents turned 90 this Winter. 90 years seems so long, yet somehow it has just gone in the blink of an eye. And it just really made me stop and think.

It feels like we have forever and so much time on our hands that we rush through our days believing that we can do everything tomorrow. But at some point there won’t be a tomorrow.

I have been lucky enough to have every one of my Grandparents in my life for every major event so far.

For the last 35 years they have been there for me in one way or another – physically, emotionally, financially. They have shared in every life event that has happened to me – my birth, my Christening, my first tooth, my first steps, when I had the main role in the school play, my dance shows, my graduation, my wedding and so far for every moment of my children’s lives too.

I took it for granted they would always be there.

Then on Boxing Day my Grandad left our house because he couldn’t breathe properly and that night was admitted to hospital with a chest infection (as well as underlying conditions). I was too busy helping my Nanny get her coat on to even kiss him goodbye. I could only wave as they drove away. On his 90th birthday we flew back to Austria with the knowledge that Boxing Day 2016 may be the last time we will ever see him. My Grandad. My hero.

He’s still with us but remains in hospital and things will never be the same again. Suddenly I feel like I rushed through every moment of my time with my Grandad and whilst I know we had amazing times together I worry that I missed things because I was always in a rush to get to ‘the next thing on my list’. Always believing there would be another day, another tomorrow, for the things I didn’t do or say.

The point is time goes too quickly as it is and I don’t want to rush my kids through the best bits anymore. So we are going to slow down this year. I am sure there will be days I still say ‘hurry up’ and ‘come on’ (probably more than I would like) but I am determined to live in the here and now as much as possible. Taking each day as it comes and enjoying each moment so I can help my children make memories they will cherish forever.

I don’t know if I will get to give my Grandad that last goodbye kiss but I will hold onto the memories of the thousands of other goodbye kisses we have had and be grateful for every moment we have shared in between.

I can’t control the past or the future (or the lack of sleep we get it seems!) but I can control the present and make sure my children get the opportunity to experience everything they can. In their own way and in their own time. As painful as not sleeping is, I need to try not to focus on getting to an age where he will sleep as quickly as possible because ultimately I am just wishing his life away. And it’s time to stop. (Well, try to anyway!)

So Happy New Year! I hope your intentions stay good. I pray that your hopes and wishes come true and that you manage to stay true to your resolutions. Who knows what 2017 will bring but I’m going to take it slowly. As the fable goes, it is the tortoise that wins in the end.

Sweet dreams –

Mama Atzi x

“Auf Wiedersehen, Pet”

Mama Atzi / / No Comments

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So this is a slightly different post to what I had planned for this week but I felt inspired by recent events. A little less baby this time and possibly a little bit philosophical so apologies in advance for that:

One of my favourite musicals of all time is Wicked (In the German version I believe it is called Die Hexen von Oz). If you haven’t seen it, you should, but not to ruin anything it is basically the untold story of the Witches of Oz (before Dorothy dropped in) and how the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good came to bare those titles. Ultimately though it is a tale of friendship and that good old lesson of never to judge a book by it’s cover.

The reason I mention it is because, thanks to the life I have led so far, the words of one of the songs always resonate with me: “It well may be that we will never meet again in this lifetime, So, let me say before we part; So much of me is made of what I learned from you. You’ll be with me like a handprint on my heart. And now whatever way our stories end I know you have rewritten mine by being my friend”

– lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (www.wickedthemusical.co.uk)

In essence it is a song about saying goodbye but what I love is that it truly sums up what their friendship meant and how they will remember it.

As someone that spent their dance career working contract to contract I’m used to the feeling of living on borrowed time. Meeting people from all over the world (some of whom became very good friends) I am used to goodbyes. It is never easy but some are harder than others.

Ship life is a crazy world. Something of a parallel universe. It is so intense that a week is like a year. You eat, sleep, drink and breathe with your cabin mates and it is a world where, as a dancer, you can spend a morning rehearsing, an afternoon on shore, an evening of performing and a whole night of drinking with your “work mates” before meeting each other for breakfast the next day when you will have no qualms about doing it all again and every other day for your entire 9 month contract. For better or worse, in sickness and in health, you get to know these people very well and pretty much everyone else onboard too – well the ones that visit the crew bar anyway! You might not like everyone and there is bound to be some you would never be friends with in ‘real-life’ who you may never actually speak to again afterwards but you will still remember them and they will always remain a part of your life because you shared a time with them that others in your life just can’t relate to.

Sometimes we meet people that we really connect with, who we love even. So as I say, saying goodbye is never easy. But that is the life. And the pain of one goodbye won’t put us off signing straight back up for another contract.

Thanks to Facebook, staying in touch and reconnecting with those we met on our travels has never been so easy but it can also be heartbreaking when you search for that person that left the ‘handprint on your heart’ and you can’t find them. It’s a bitter sweet world. Full of romance and adventure. Culture, excitement, parties, hard-work. All within a world that no-one can understand until they have lived it.

And thanks to falling in love with one of those people I connected with I am now living the life of an expat which has also led me to a situation where friendships, in the physical sense atleast, have uncertain expiration dates. I am so lucky to have connected with a fantastic group of ladies and babies thanks to the Vienna Babies Club (www.viennababiesclub.com) but as is normal in the expat world, just like onboard, contracts end, people move on, and once again it’s sad to say goodbye. As we discovered recently.

What both these scenarios have in common is that we meet people during these journeys that will stay with us. Some people that effect us more than we even realise at the time. I often find myself smiling because I remember someone or something that happened on a contract. Every time I hear a Spanish person I think of my conversation with a lovely bar guy called Juan from my first contract. We had the same conversation every night in the crew bar: Como estas? Bien. Y tu? Yo soy cansada. Cansada? Siempre (apologies for the bad Spanish!)

Every time I see a Hard Rock Cafe I think of my Atalante girls.

Every time I see a white dress I remember the Pas de Deux I performed with my dance partner Steve.

Certain songs remind me of shows, crew parties or karaoke in the crew bar. When I first moved to Austria and had to order a cola light instead of a diet coke it reminded me of the time we tried to order a coke in some strange little bar and no matter how we said it we could not get the waiter to understand until our friend came along with his accented English and the guy understood immediately. Every time I order a cola light it makes me smile. And I’m pretty sure I put on a fake accent when I order one just in case!

I have so many wonderful memories of that time all triggered by a photo or a song or a saying or a smell….

I don’t speak to my school, uni or ship friends half as much as I would like, let alone see them, but they are always there. As are the people I grew up with and those I have worked with over the years. Even the strangers I have sat and talked to on trains and aeroplanes. People that helped carry my suitcase, or didn’t as the case may be, past pupils and parents, they have all helped shape who I am in some way.

Everyday a memory comes up and everyday I am shaped into a different person because of what I remember and took from those experiences. How different I would be if I had not met them. If I had not enjoyed ship life so much I never would have ended up on the M/S Astor and never would have met my future husband and the father of my children. So it is sad that I may never see some of those friends again but I am thankful to them for rewriting my story.

And now my experiences have led me here. Living in Vienna, Austria with my husband and 2 children. I miss my former lives a lot but I am so grateful to be sharing my adventures of Motherhood with these other fabulous expats. Some I hope will be here for the long term but others who are already leaving us for the next part of their story. It has been such a pleasure to share the experiences of the first 10 months of our babies lives with each other. All of us have different experiences yet somehow we all have the same. It is very special bond and nice to know I am not alone, not only in Motherhood but in this country that is not my own and not yet quite my home.

I am so sad to already have to say goodbye to some of these people that have helped me so much as I adapt to life as an expat Mama. I know we will still have stories to share in our Facebook group and it’s so good to know we have that space to write feely and be there for each other because having other people go through exactly what you are is the best support system there is. Especially when your baby doesn’t sleep!

I feel so grateful for these ladies and babies and find myself wondering how different my expat life would be, how different a Mother I would be, had I never joined them or had my baby been born a month later. I am a little bit of a believer in everything happens for a reason and so whilst the most recent and most sudden goodbye may not seem to have one yet I hope one day it will.

In the meantime we have to learn to enjoy what we have and appreciate the time we have shared.

As I put my boys to bed this evening I watched each of them sleep for a bit and as always I was overwhelmed by how much I love them and how quickly the time with them has gone. But I could see every past moment in their faces and felt grateful for everything we have shared so far. Life really is short, too short, just like those contracts. It is all over so quickly and before we know it we are saying the hardest goodbyes of all. It’s not always easy to follow a ‘live everyday day like it’s your last’ attitude but I do believe we should learn to take the time to appreciate each moment in life, no matter how insignificant it seems at the time, because as Kurt Vonnegut aptly said “Enjoy the little things in life because one day you’ll look back and realise they were the big things”.

People need to understand that for good or bad their actions have consequences and moments can stay with people for a lifetime. Just as we need to endure our babies falling so we can help teach them how to get up we too have to suffer the downs to benefit from the highs. At the end of it all every moment counts and every person you meet will effect you. So let the bad things make you stronger and learn to soak up the good stuff because in the end “the best things in life are the people we meet, the places we go and the memories we make along the way” (Author unknown). We can’t stop the world from moving and goodbyes are inevitable but the in between is up to us.

Sweet Dreams –

Mama Atzi x