Finding inspiration

We have started the countdown! Although the actual date of meeting LO keeps changing, in roughly two weeks tomorrow we will meet him... This fills me with the most delicious anticipation I have ever experienced, each morning waking like a child at Christmas. And, just like a child at Christmas (how long were the days then?!), every day seems 100x longer than it used to. Our lives are about to change. Completely and forever. And we just can't wait.

I have been making the most of the opportunity to read, well aware that this kind of time will be a bit thin on the ground when he comes home. This week I have been reading Alfie Kohn's inspirational book 'Unconditional Parenting' and re-reading an old favourite, Liedloff's 'Continuum Concept', about attachment parenting. I read a lot of books on parenting for my work, but it's exciting to re-read these books now with an idea of how I might actually put them into practice.

I also write a column on our off-grid life for a local paper and recently wrote about my addiction to quotes. A good quote acts as a catalyst to change, to introspection, to inspiration. Now I am - finally - the owner of a posh phone, I have downloaded an app (still can't quite believe techno-phobe me is writing that!) with daily inspirational quotes. Today I received this: 'The greatest prayer is patience.' That's from the big guy, Buddha, who obviously knew what he was talking about (perhaps he even adopted?!).

And another quote I love, and turn to again and again in the preparation to parenthood comes from a beautiful and thought-provoking little book called 'The Prophet' by Kahlil Gibran:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.