Loving all 29 of them!

I love celebrating my birthday. I even love the build up to it, counting the days, the anticipation of what the day holds for me. Everyone and anyone who crosses my path prior to my birthday gets informed in one way or another that I am having a birthday soon. For me, celebrating my birthday is all about the great gift of life that was given to me; that by God's Grace I was born.

So, every now and again, you will hear how much time before my birthday. However, today someone very special and dear to me celebrates his, and celebrating this birthday is even better than celebrating my own. Just after nine o'clock on a Sunday morning, 29 years ago, my first-born, shortly after taking his first breath, was placed in my arms. Just as many mothers before me, and many mothers still to come will tell you, nothing can compare with that moment.

On that cold morning, in my arms I held the things to come. Many diaper changes and many more feeding times, bath times, grazed knees and bruises; lost teeth and school clothes, height charts, certificates, progress reports and medals; sport seasons, sport equipment and many sport days; friends, girlfriends, hamsters and bicycles; and much, much more!

I held future laughter and tears, joy and sadness, victories and defeats, milestones and possibilities. Nestled in my arms was a 4.1kg baby boy with 'still a lot of awesomeness to come, still to bring great pride and joy, still to bring a lot of love'.

As I sit here vividly remembering that day, I can't help wondering who gave you permission to grow up so quick. (It was probably me when I wished the 'teenage phase' would pass). Today, physically you are much taller than 55cm and you weigh a bit more than then, so as everyday, but especially today, I can only hold ALL of you in my heart; with my arms I can hug and hold you close; in my voice and in my eyes you will hear and see my love for you. Brendon, you are everything and much more than I held in that nursing home way back then.

 May this day be as special to you as what it is to me, may your year be filled with love as you have filled mine, and may you always know how special and loved you are.

  

Just do it!

So this is my first blog post. On Thursday's, Lumka my charlady is here, which means it's the weekly "big cleaning day" and that relates to not being the best day in my eyes to start a blog. However, according to Penelope Trunk's blog post http://blog.penelopetrunk.com on How to Blog, her advice struck a chord. "Post, post, post," she says, "don't tell yourself you'll do it tomorrow, practice, no one is reading your blog, ignore that, sit down and post on a regular basis".

Having kept journals for most of my life means that writing, and writing on a regular basis comes quite easy, and having no readers is very much in line with journaling. So how difficult or different can this be?

After numerous hours spent educating myself on templates and backgrounds, weighing up the pros and con's of a 2 or 3 column layout, gadgets, colours, followers, RSS, SEO, HTML, choices of software and after many boo-hoo, a-ha and what happened now moments, this is my progress.

Journaling for me has a very distinct process to it. Its not only about putting your thoughts onto paper or expressing your emotions, it starts way before that. Many of my journals have been regular exercise books, covered and decorated; some were bought with beautiful images on them; handmade journals; those with collage covers and my favourite right now is the mixed media art covers. It's about the feeling the journal cover evokes in me, it's the tactile feel of the paper, the sound my pen makes as my thoughts become a living testimony to who I am. Many hours are spent creating the cover, sometimes even more than the amount of time it takes to journal.

On many levels, starting a blog hasn't been more difficult or different than journaling. Both are a creative process that I enjoy and find rewarding. Where blogging will take me is something I will have to wait out and see. So far it has been great. I have become more acquainted with a lot of "buzz words", and although I have seen many that I cannot for the life of me comprehend - I have my own blog!