Baby mine

For the entirety of their lives I have used songs to calm down my babies (admittedly not a very long time - but still)

Yesterday while we were playing with playdoh (well the Angel was playing while I tried to keep the Samurai from eating it) my two year old started to sing to the baby a song that I used to sing to him every night (and still sing a few times a week, and whenever he cries)

He mumbled words and sang off tune (I probably do too) but in my grumpy and sick mood it made me surprisingly emotional.

I am exhausted from looking after a tiny restless baby who can't breathe properly through a stuffy nose, but it gives me hope to know that they are sometimes listening. Even if it's only when I communicate via song.
 
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This week has been busy with commissions and sick babies at doctors offices and next week looks like it will be similarly busy.
When I get the chance I sit down and play with photoshop. I love doing my sketches in ps because I can just layer and layer and then delete it all... it's not the same as the sketchbooks that I keep, but it helps me to feel arty without making an epic mess.

Seriously

I often feel like one of those plate spinners from some cheap carnival or cheesy talent show.
I have so many things going on at once that I don't feel like I can do any of them with any real degree of excellence. So I rush about like a lunatic, smiling in a sequin encrusted outfit acting like I know what I'm doing, hoping that if I can fool you, then maybe I can fool myself - spinning these plates until I lose concentration and one falls and breaks... and while I'm crying about broken crockery another one falls, and then I am so overwhelmed that none of them are being maintained and I am surrounded by broken plates.

This week the boys are sick.
The bank account is empty.
Next week is the Samurai's specialist appointment.
My mind is full of dreams for future endeavour - so much so that it is making it difficult to focus on the things that I have in front of me to do.

My brain is such a busy (and unproductive!) place to live in sometimes.

Trying to remain positive and constructive I have been drawing and working on some commissions and I need to say - everyone should draw.
I don't think that it is very important to draw super well - I don't think that I am very skilled at recreating things exactly as I see them - but when you draw things you have to look very closely at them. Even more than you would if you were just taking a photo. You really observe how things are put together, how the pieces interact, textures, and light. Drawing teaches you how to see things.

So in all the chaos of my noisy mind, I am grateful for the time I have been able to enjoy just sitting down to stare at the delightful faces of lovely people, the glass wings of insects, the iridescence of beetle shells, and all the other things that fill up my eyes and try to make their way through my hands onto paper.
Even when my drawings are unsuccessful (which frustratingly, is most of the time) I enjoy just sitting and watching.

This is my note book where I scribble things and keep notes. Where I write down nice things that help me out even on days like today when I look like a reject from Nirvana in a plaid shirt and lank bleachy hair... (seriously grunge - am I showing my age? I'm not even old!!) The letters are from a Frankie magazine... I don't remember the name of the artist who designed the alphabet (boo Eleanor) so if anyone knows it - do share.

Oh how my wondering mind wanders...

Some days stress just smashes me.

Like today.

The Bear Prince.

I am still doing art.
You can follow my instagram updates @eleanormccomb

If you want to get a hold of this fellow you can sign up for a subscription to my art here. He'll be posted out with the June lot. 

Otherwise - if you can name what fairy tale this beary prince comes from I will send you a print of it for free. (obviously this is only for the first person who knows... after that its just silly)


PS. I don't like putting watermarks on my work because I think they look nicer without them and I just kind of trust you. Selling these drawings and paintings is how I make money to support my family and I would really really appreciate your honesty. Don't print out my work. Just buy it. My printers have better quality paper in any case...

On the visibility of pain

On Thursday night the angel (behaving very unangelic) was holding a mug and in his goat like climbing all over the counters in the kitchen, he fell. The mug smashed in his hand and left him with small cut.

He cried and cried when he saw the blood. I washed it off, and put some gauze on it. Taped it up and then I cut the toe out of a baby sock, made a thumb hole and pulled it over his hand so he couldn't see any of it anymore.

The next day it was a clean pink line of sealed over skin. But taking the gauze off prompted another round of wailing. He cried and cried until a plaster was stuck over it and the sock replaced. For the record, he dropped a framed picture and wooden bowl on his head later in the weekend and has some nice big bumps and a scratch on his forehead that looks nastier than the healed cut on his hand, but we didn't even need to do anything about those but give him a kiss. Why? because he can't see them!

I thought I was some kind of parenting genius until I realised that the sock had become a problem in and of itself.

 

He wore that sock all weekend until I made him take it off to have a proper bath. (He cried again)

Our hurts change as we get older, but I think we still do this. Cry over our nothings just because we can see them. Maybe there is some deep meaning there, but mostly this is a lesson to me. About making sure that my first aid kit is always present and prepared, because I am the mother of my own children - and that means that they are going to be naturally accident prone for most of their lives and combined with Kyle's adventurous daring that equals constantly bruised legs, arms and skulls.

I have been interstate visiting family, and now I have a cold, but I do have some art coming so this blog will get back to business soon - with less of my general ramblings and more of my arty ramblings - promise.