Inner West Dads, where are you hiding?

One thing I love about living in the Inner West is watching how hands-on you Dads are with your kids.

I see you at school, pre-school, daycare pick up and drop off.

I see you at the park.  Swinging your kids from the monkey bars in the playgrounds. Wiping boogies, changing nappies.

In fact, last year most of my social circle at school were Dads!

There are thousands of you out there.  

But where are you hiding online?  I know you're here somewhere...

Does the online community relating to anything within the realm of 'parenting' make you cringe?

Do us Mums, who tend to gravitate to one another for support, advice and friendship appear to 'clicky', or 'pack-like' to you?  Do you feel like we lock you out of the 'online parenting' world?

Is it just not your thing to connect and interact with stuff like this online?

Or do you just not know about us?

A Dad once said to me, "When I hear the word 'Parenting' or 'Advice' I feel like I'm going to be given a lecture on how to raise my kids, or be told I'm doing it wrong.  But when I hear 'Family', 'Life', 'Kids', I'm all ears.  I can relate."

Well, all we can say is if you want to be part of our community, we created KIDsize Living. Sydney's Inner West with both Mums AND Dads in mind!

We're not here to lecture you (eeek...or was that just a lecture??), and of course, we don't want you to lecture us.  But we do want you to know that you are wholeheartedly welcome and we'll be a better online community with you in it.

So, when you're ready, we'd like to invite you to get amongst our Online Hub for Inner West Mums and Dads - test it out, see if it fits, say G'Day on our FB Page and maybe even sign up for our KIDsize living Weekly News, and we'll do everything we can to make your experience as a Dad living in Sydney's Inner West all the better for it.

We're in this together fellas.

Do you know a Dad who would benefit from being a part of our online hub? Send them over, we'd be stoked to see them.

Cheers,

Kath (& Eileen)
(Co-creators of KIDsize Living, lovers of the inner west)

Eileen and Kathrine

Living with your eyes wide open...

A realisation hit me today, something big...

You see, I'm a very keen 'amateur photographer of life'. I practically live behind my iphone 5 camera. I readily snap just about everything I see that's vaguely interesting. My kids (of course), my food, events, the outdoors, even funny looking fruit. You name it, I've shot it, dowloaded it, then backed it up so I can look at again later.

But yesterday, while going through my photo albums, I realised that I had very few photographs from one of the most important periods of my life.

8 years ago on the 23rd of April, was the last day of the last year of my Mother's life. Cancer took her.

And from diagnosis to death, we had been given around 18 months of precious time.

It was also the same time my first child was born. A year of reconnecting with family. The year my first niece was born. And the year we took that 'once in a lifetime' family holiday overseas.

I have the most vivid recollections of that time. Colourful, joyful, agonizingly painful, breathtakingly beautiful.

Deep set memories etched into my brain.

I remember...

The conversations we had, the outings we went on. The smell of the hand cream Mum used in the weeks before her death, the scent of her favourite flowers that filled the vases throughout her home. The way I felt when I tried to hug and massage her pain away after a miserable, draining, chemo session.

I can still hear her laugh, see her smile. And if I close my eyes, I can almost count the laugh lines around her eyes and the freckles on her sweet, loving, happy face.

The look in my son's eyes when she gave him his first lick of ice cream. The sound of his giggles when I gave him his first bubble bath.

The feeling I got when Mum looked at me, hugged me, and said "It has made me so happy watching you become a Mother to your own beautiful child. Cherish each day. I'm so proud of you". The tears in her eyes as she said this.

Then I realised.

The reason I remembered everything so clearly, in such exquisite detail was because 9 years ago I was truly living in the moment.

I had been given a window of borrowed time. Time where I could make certain that I spent each and every day in a meaningful and memorable way. I had a reason to clear my schedule, and gave myself permission to 'just be'.

That year wasn't about making sure that everyone was smiling, capturing the picture, and placing a filter over the top of it so it looked great on my fb page.

It was about sucking in every moment like a deep, lung filled breath, holding it in, letting it hurt, feeling giddy and light headed, and making sure it was in deep enough so I could still feel it later.  Years later.

I lived like there was no tomorrow.  I lived with my eyes wide open.

But, somewhere along the line I stopped living in the moment. I stopped creating those unfiltered memories.

Did life just get too busy?  Did I become so distracted that I forgot to take it in?  Has technology and the ease of having an instant visual memory I can 'check out later' brainwashed me?  Or was 'that year' just so much to take in, so much to process, that I needed 8 years to recover from it?

Anyway, as I share this with you, starting from right now, I'm going to slow down and start taking it all in again. My eyes, mind and heart are all wide open.

Don't we all owe that to ourselves?

love,

Kath D {Inner West Mum} X

One of my favourite photos from that year.  It's about quality, not quantity, right?

Do you live or forget to live in the moment? What's your story?