51/52 2016

A portrait of my babes once a week in 2016 (3 years, 4 months)

Our family at Human and Honor's birthday celebration. You are my everything.

46/52 2016

A portrait of my babes once a week in 2016 (3 years, 3 months)

All the girls and Jack at his christening.

"The circles of women around us weave invisible nets of love that carry us when we're weak, and sing with us when we're strong." Sark

42/52 2016

A portrait of my babes once a week in 2016 (3 years, 2 months)

Five little cousins at Jack's first birthday. How lucky you are to have each other. 

38/52 2016

A portrait of my babes once a week in 2016 (3 years, 1 month)

I can't easily put into words the relationship you have with my mom, and what it means to me. I chose this picture because even though it's blurred and you can't really see your faces it clearly, the way your arms are wrapped around her says more about the love between you than I could describe. 

16/52 2016

A portrait of my babes once a week in 2016 ( 2 years 8 months)

Birthdays, more specifically birthday cakes and teh surrounding ritual of blowing out candles and singing happy birthday, are one of your favourite things. You often play "birthday" and we have to sing to the fairies or whichever family member you selected to celebrated. Most of your baths are taken up with making cakes (from soap and sponges) and then singing happy birthday. You have two English versions of the song, an Afrikaans version, and a Zulu version, so these games can take up quite some time. You often call me to be included in the celebration and we all have to stand and sing around whatever object is the "cake" in that game.

Francie Sugar's first birthday party was this week. And I think the cake ritual was your favourite part. In fact, you thought it was as much your celebration as it was the birthday girl's. It is so special to see you and your cousins all growing up and attending each other's parties, blurring the lines between between party guest and birthday girl. Cutting cakes for each other and singing at the top of your lungs. 

51/52

A portrait of my babes once a week in 2015 (27 months), pre Christmas Eve sparklers at Cheska's home

Me: What do you want for Christmas?

A: (without hesitation) a star!

F: me also want a star!

Happy Christmas baby girls. You make it so special.

18/52

A portrait of my babes once a week in 2015 (21 months), celebrating Bear's 60th at Sibon

We celebrated Bear's 60th birthday while we were at Sibon. He was happy to be celebrating in a place he loves with the people he loves. You were most happy to taste a lick of icing. Old and young and everything in between. It's quite emotional to see your parents age, an acute realisation that even your rock succumbs to the passing of time. I've learnt a lot from my dad which I hope to teach you - the importance of family, a love of the bush, standing up for what I believe, and believing I can do any thing I put my mind to.

Summer goodnight

We take a walk in our garden every evening after dinner. By the chill on our skin you can feel the seasons are changing.

yellow the bracken

golden the sheaves

rosy the apples

crimson the leaves

mist on the hillsides

clouds grey and white

autumn good morning

summer goodnight

8/52

A portrait of my babes once a week in 2015 (18 months), Cheska's babyshower

Here are all the women in your family: your great grandmother, Granny Nanny, your gran, Kimmy, your mama, your aunts, Cheska and Hugolyne, and your cousin, Honor. These portraits are usually just of you, but these women are so part of you and who you are and the world in which you exist so I wanted to include this. You can count yourself blessed because they are a pretty formidable, loving and special bunch of ladies which I am proud to call my own, my closest friends and my inspiration for what it is to be a woman and a mother. You are already so part of this womanhood, this sisterhood, this family of so many girls which gets more wonderful with every new addition.

happy birthday to the best little 3 year old!

It's Honor Elizabeth's birthday today! Thank you beautiful little girl for making our hearts smile, entertaining us no end, playing hairdresser-hairdresser and listening to our stories. Thanks for lovely bath times and long walks that feel too short. Thanks for laughing and giggling uncontrollably. Thanks for believing in magic, fairytales and all things wonderful. Thanks for being a shining light in our family. We love you! 

Capturing their littleness

When the babes were seven weeks we had some pictures taken of our new family. My mom surprised us with this gift by organising for our wedding photographer, Christopher Munton, to come and take some snaps of us in our apartment one Sunday morning. Don't under estimate the challenge of this seemingly simple task. It entailed not only getting two tinies up and fed at the right time, and mama and papa showered and dressed but we then had to keep the tinies happy and fed during the session. Needless to say things went a bit haywire towards the end of the hour as the above mentioned tinies got a bit fed up. However, I love how the photographs turned out - a little glimpse into our nest and life with twin babes.

 My gran was in town so I asked her to come come along so we could get a few pictures of the four generations. 

The twins are now 14 weeks, double the age they were then (!!). I specifically wanted to capture them as young as possible in order to savour that moment in our lives when we were still spinning with new babes, when their bodies were still an arm's length, when we were giddy with happiness and marked with signs of long nights.

guest post: happy birthday bailey!

Happy birthday Bailey, my dear sister, a loving daughter, my best friend, an brilliant wife and the most amazing mama! Wishing you a day of baby giggles and sleeping through nights, and a glass or two of Champagne!

I love this pic of my sisters, dressed the same!

PS. Some other Bailey birthday posts from the last couple years:
When Bailey turned 30 (loads of baby pics!)
Bailey's birthday dinner at The Leopard. 

x x x 

The most beautiful

"He found her most beautiful not when she was all fancied up, but when she wasn’t. When she was lying on the carpet, her hair all a mess, laughing about something that had happened years ago. When she wasn’t trying to impress anyone and taken down that wall that she had built for most people. That’s when he couldn’t take his eyes off of her." (via here)

{via here}

I love this. It is exactly when I find people the most beautiful - when you see their souls before you see their face or clothes or shoes. (Don't get me wrong, I certainly appreciate a pretty face, a beautiful piece of clothing, a a killer pair of heels. In fact, I used to joke that I judged a man on his hair before all else.)

As I watch my very-pregnant body change daily, I am hoping my non-fancied version is my side the husband finds most beautiful too! For the last 2 weeks, since I have been trying to stay at home as much as possible, the poor man has seen me in two outfits: pyjamas (which consist of basic underwear and any vest I can find that I can stretch over my giant dome of a bump), and comfy home clothes (which rival the pyjamas in the anti-glam factor). Fear not, I do not leave my apartment in either of these two get ups, and as such my ante natal appointments are my excuse to dress up!

But beside the clothing factor, this 37-week-pregnant-with-twins body of mine looks quite different from where we started 9 months ago. As a general rule, the measurement from the bottom off your bump, over your navel, to the top of your bump indicates how far you are in your pregnancy. My measurement is currently 45cm which basically means I am the same size as some one who was 45 weeks pregnant. While I love this big bump to bits (my sister says it makes my legs look skinnier - hee hee), it is almost like an extra body part has appeared in our relationship, making itself most noticeable when I side-hug the husband (front hugging ended a while ago), and when I have to do a sort of drop and roll when getting into our rather high bed and then over the multitude of cushions surrounding me like a fort to maximise comfort.

Last week I noticed faint stretch marks appearing around my belly button. Up until this point I thought escaped them but alas, even good genes (thanks mom!) and my endless application of jajoba oil were not enough for this twin belly. My linea nigra (a darker vertical line running vertically on the belly), on the other hand, appeared quite early on in my pregnancy but I love the look of this. And the fact that it is there to guide your baby to you once born is nothing short of miraculous. Less miraculous in the fine, light fluff that has appeared on one side of my face. I am not saying full beard here or anything, but its definitely there and particularly discernible when the sun (or bedside lamp) is providing some back lighting. 

Since the husband refers to this endearingly as my furry face, and stares in awe every time he sees this giant bump, I am taking it to mean he likes my non-fancy version too.

B is for babyshower

A few weeks ago, my sisters and mom threw me the most beautiful baby shower. Set set in my parents' garden on a perfect, sunny winter's afternoon, it was such a special day for me and I felt completely spoiled and loved.

Some pics of the women in my family - my gran, my mom, my sisters and my beautiful niece Honor. It is so funny to see pics of my belly then. I thought it was huge at the time but compared to now it looks (relatively) small! (PS. I always laugh at the heart on the belly pic so we jokingly took one and I admit I kind of like it - hee hee). 

A long table was set up under a giant oak tree with winter blooms in muted colours, vintage linen table clothes and a mixture of teacups.

My sisters and mom made all the food (!) and it was quite delicious. From delectable cakes, to dainty sandwiches, to a deconstructed cheesecake. Oh yum!

MY sisters are the queens of craft and in their eyes, no party is complete without activities. Perfect for a baby shower. Friends wrote on nappies so in the middle of the night when we are changing the babes we can get a little message of support. Build-a-bib entailed transforming plain white bibs into custom pieces with buttons and fabric and iron on pictures. And then there was an alphabet book and each guest had to illustrate a letter. I will have a wonderful time reading it to the twins, particularly letters like "C is for champagne" and "B is for Birkin."

Thanks to all my friends that came - your support and love mean so much to me, and the twinlets are lucky to have you as part of their lives. To my friends that could not make it, and those living in far away places, you were missed and I hope to introduce the babes to you sooner rather than later.

xoxo

mothers day

Today we honour mothers. It's a pretty special title which feels closer to home to me this year as I am about to embark on the journey of motherhood. In a way, I sit in limbo today, as I feel I am already a mother to these two tiny creatures inside me, although I know some monumental shift must occur inside of me when these babes actually enter the world and I truly become a mother. I am blessed to have such beautiful examples of mothers in my life - of course my own mother, but also my grandmother and my sister. It's empowering to think of all these women in my life who are already on this journey, and will be on this journey in the future.

I bookmarked this poem by Pablo Nruda ages ago, before the twins were even a twinkling in their father's eye, as I was inspired by this idea of finding strength in all the women who have gone before me and entered into motherhood.

los nacimientos (births)

we will never have any memory of dying.
we were so patient
about our being,
noting down
numbers, days,
years and months,
hair, and the mouths we kiss,
and that moment of dying
we let pass without a note -
we leave it to others as memory,
or we leave it simply to water,
to water, to air, to time.
nor do we even keep
the memory of being born,
although to come into being was tumultuous and new;
and now you don’t remember a single detail
and haven’t kept even a trace
of your first light.
it’s well known that we are born.
it’s well known that in the room
or in the wood
or in the shelter in the fishermen’s quarter
or in the rustling canefields
there is a quite unusual silence,
a grave and wooden moment as
a woman prepares to give birth.
it’s well known that we were all born.
but if that abrupt translation
from not being to existing, to having hands,
to seeing, to having eyes,
to eating and weeping and overflowing
and loving and loving and suffering and suffering,
of that transition, that quivering
of an electric presence, raising up
one body more, like a living cup,
and of that woman left empty,
the mother who is left there in her blood
and her lacerated fullness,
and its end and its beginning, and disorder
tumbling the pulse, the floor, the covers
till everything comes together and adds
one knot more to the thread of life,
nothing, nothing remains in your memory
of the savage sea which summoned up a wave
and plucked a shrouded apple from the tree.
the only thing you remember is your life.

So happy Mothers Day to all my mother readers out there. Crazy for me to think that this time next Mother's Day I will have two babes sitting on my lap...


Ps. In case you missed it:
Cheska's great Mothers Day gift guide
Mothers Day 2012
Mothers Day 2011

May time

{via here}

Hello May indeed!
Hello new month
Hello public holiday to start the new month
Hello lovely in between season of Autumn
Hello start of hibernation, icy mornings, sunny welcome mid days
Hello 6 months of pregnancy
Hello time to build the twinlets' cots and start ante natal classes
Hello time to channel some creative juices
And hello to all my lovely readers - working on a whole new look for B&D and can't wait to show you!

And of course, being the first day of May, a huge happy birthday to my wonderful dad - my rock, my guide, and the best grizzly grey bear to all his girls.

Guest Post: Happy Birthday Mum!

Happy birthday to the most wonderful woman in the world.

Mum, pictured her with her brother (our uncle) Dale, at my wedding.

(see past mamma birthday posts here and here)

A sister thing

 {source}

"A sister smiles when one tells one's stories - for she knows where the decoration has been added." ~Chris Montaigne

Two tiny bits of news

{via here}

Tiny bit of news1: Three and a bit months of keeping this wonderful little secret, I can finally tell you that I am pregnant.

Tiny bit of news 2: With twins.

!!!

For over two months I thought it was just one, but then we went for our first scan...

I had tears in my eyes as we heard the heart beat for the first time and saw this tiny creature (I think it was a little lime at that stage) - it is very moving hearing that sound. Of life inside of you.

Dr: "So there's the heart beat"

Me: Teary eyed staring wistfully at this hard-to-make-for-anyone-but-the-parents-blob

Dr: "And whose heart beat do we have here?"

Me: Thinking "Oh that must be mine"

Dr: "There's a second heart beat"

Husband: "Are you joking?" (Thinking "He probably does this to everyone on their first visit")

Me: " Doctors don't joke"

...And the rest is kind of a blur. A sudden new wave of excitement and fear and emotion. It is quite overwhelming to find out your simple family of two will become four in six months.

I phoned my mom as soon as we left the doctors room to tell her she was getting two more grand babies. Silence followed. And then elation. However I was still on the phone with her when we were trying to exit the parking and counting out loose change to make out R5. My mother, upon hearing me say to the husband "I have three" thought for a moment it was triplets. So more silence ensued until I reassured her it was two heart beats but I had three rand. 

And that was pretty much the start of my journey, as far as I was aware, with these two little tiny blessings.

happy birthday to my love

"If you knew you were going to meet the love of your life in one year, how different would that year be?"

Would you want to know?

I think I knew that I was going to meet the love of my life the year that I met him. I didn't know who, I just had a feeling the stars were aligned. Although that could be the romantic memory of retrospect....

The husband (then the boyfriend) in 2008, date #3