november love

Disclaimer: I've been in the process of writing this post for about a month so it's all over the place, I guess it comes with being a new mum. Or I'm just really disorganised. Oh well, onward and upward!

My favourite time of the year has come and gone! The weather has started to warm up amidst rainy days, plans for christmas celebrations and gift giving are on my mind, and I've celebrated turning 25 years old as well as 9 years together with Adam (we started dating in 2001 & married last year).

I am so amazingly blessed to have such a wonderful husband and gorgeous little girl. Adam is such a great support and help to me, always loving and sweet and forgiving (yes, I do dumb stuff sometimes!) and supportive, that I could not imagine my life without him. And Nova is simply flourishing, smiling and giggling, cooing and blowing raspberries, and about to cut her second tooth already!

I loved the idea of having a list of things I'd like to do before my next birthday and was inspired by Elsie to do the same. Here's my list: 25 before 26 (work in progress).

Often I feel that if I don't have any pictures to post that I don't remember anything of importance to share here (or I just don't remember). I have definitely been taking photos though, some on my Diana Mini but most on my iPhone and posting them on instagram. If you're on there, please friend me! Username: owlette. Instagram is seriously the best photo app I've come across ever. I've been using it to take photos of Nova daily, I'm hoping I'll make it to 365!! I'm also posting them to my twitter and flickr accounts. Here's a few previews:

lomography

My sister gave me a Diana Mini as a belated baby shower gift. I finally got the first roll of film developed and was so excited to see how they turned out! They came out better than expected, I thought they might be horribly blurry or washed out but they are brightly coloured and I must say I love that it is a square photo!








I love being a stay-at-home-mum and get to enjoy spending time with our little girl, watching her grow and seeing each new sound and smile. It keeps me busy, I think I've become more efficient with my time (even though I do have my lazy days) but I do miss spending time with friends or going out to the movies. Tomorrow starts a class for new mothers at my local health centre. I'm not usually a social butterfly but I am definitely looking forward to spending time with some girls in the same stage of life as I am. I might make a friend?

Introducing Nova

I'm listening to the rain outside and our little girl breathing lightly as she sleeps. It is music to my ears. I think it's about time I introduce you to her:



November Rain
Wednesday 7 July 2010
at 12:52pm
weight 3.29kg, height 50cm


Now let me explain the name. During the pregnancy my husband and I decided we wouldn't find out the sex of the baby. We started making a list of both girls and boys names to have ready once our little baby was born, complete with middle names too. As for passing on a name, if we had a boy Adam wanted to pass his name on as a middle name like his father did with him. I didn't want to pass on my name, it was MY name! I didn't want to share. ;) But I did want to pass on something about me.

For as long as I can remember, November has been my favourite month in the year and for various reasons. My birthday falls on this month, it's close to the end of the year which is full of family and celebrating, the weather starts to warm up, and my husband and I started dating while back in highschool. And as for Rain, I also just love it! It makes everything look and smell fresh and new, it's relaxing to listen to and feels great on your skin, but most of all it's a blessing and brings life on a parched dry land. It such beautiful imagery!

I have to admit, much to the disbelief of most people who know us, we honestly didn't know that there was a song by Guns n Roses with the exact same name. Absolutely NO CLUE! It was only a few months before she was due that I thought to google her name to see what came up when I was directed to the music video on youtube. But we had already fallen in love with it, and figured that Nova would make for a great nickname anyways. And if she becomes famous she'll already have an awesome name :)

I just absolutely LOVE her! She is such a little blessing and has enriched our lives more than I could have imagined. I just love watching her spend time with her daddy, and all the little smiles she's started giving us are simply amazing.

realignment

I have become a mother. I went through the most physically painful and mentally hardest task I have ever gone through in my life (that being labour), and it was completely and overwhelmingly worth it. I have since been thrown into a new role, the job description which has till now been foreign to me, and it has been continuous 24/7 since it began. I had gone through emotional highs and lows as never before since giving birth, and feel that after three weeks of uncertainty and having to learn and relearn despite my insecurities (breastfeeding troubles) I am finally comfortable with the basic routine of this new life role on which I can now add all those which were pre-existing (home making, house maintenance, etc). I feel like I have been through a battle and have the scars to prove it, a battle well worth fighting.

In all this I am so thankful to have been blessed first of all with the grace and strength to carry this responsibility and honour, to be a mother. I am thankful that I've been blessed with an amazing husband that not only supported me through pregnancy, the pain of labour and the immense fear I had in being stitched up afterwards, but has been a loving servant, an amazing father, a comforter and leader when I felt lost, a true example of Christ. And I am thankful to have an adorable, amazing little daughter in my life.

Having become a mum, I don't want this to become my sole identity. I don't want to forget who I am at the core. I don't want to set aside my hobbies forever. I don't want to hide who I was created to be. This is who I am:

♥ I am a child of God, a daughter saved by grace, created to worship the Creator
♥ I am a wife to the most amazing man in the world (biased, I'm sure)
♥ I am a new mum an adorable little girl, I'm still learning but loving the journey
♥ I am a creative designer of many things: both digital and physical, and also edible
♥ I am a musician, a vocalist, a lyricist, and an amateur at all three
♥ I am a bibliophile, a film fanatic, a fashion muse, a sale-shopper, just to name a few

In this new stage of my life, I don't want to forget who I am, what I love and what I live for. I want to be content with where I am, what I believe and what I think, and I don't want to keep being afraid of others opinions of myself. I want to feel free from these insecurities. And yet, I know I am free. I just forget I am, sometimes.

After glimpsing through my bible yesterday and reading this I was reminded of that which my heart desires more than anything else, what makes me feel alive, what gives me strength when I feel I haven't any left. In the same way that my daughter will get crazy excited at the scent of me when she's hungry, I have again found myself craving more of Jesus after just a whiff of Him. And I think that's just plain awesome. :)