Oh, how I have missed sharing these episodes with you. I am afraid I haven’t had much time to cut these little videos together lately 
All that aside, please enjoy this little episode about our family trip to the place where Errol first confessed he loved me. Woodfordia holds so many wonderful memories for us and I am so glad I can share a few of them with you!
Shawni says
You’re work is so incredibly beautiful, both visually and literarily (is that a word?)! How’d ya get that way? Did you go to school to learn how to take such stunning pictures? Did you learn to write or are these just natural talents? The keyboard and cameras just do your bidding?
First of all, thank you for such a kind compliment!
I am pleased to know that not only is literarily a word, it’s the BEST word! I want to keep saying it, it sounds so lovely and rolly (<this isn’t a word but it SHOULD be!).
To your main question – I did not go to school to learn photography nor have I taken classes to learn to write (unless you count middle school?).
I don’t think of myself as a particularly great writer but I do try to flow with a certain cadence to my text; so that it comes out as I hope I would say it in person (in reality I talk too fast and never express myself quite so succinctly).
Likewise, I don’t think I am a sensational photographer – but I do know I can capture things or record them as I see them and I think people are always at their most beautiful when doing things with their own style. I am just really lucky that my parents have always fostered creativity and uniqueness so I’ve never felt I have to write like someone else or take pictures that are ‘in style’.
Claire asks
What is the one childhood memory you hope your children carry with them?
The feeling of being loved.
Favourite movie ever?
Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain
And finally, I love ALL the music you use for your films, so this might be hard… - What is the one song that best connects to who you are as a person, right now?
This is a great question Claire and one I’ve really struggled to find the ‘right’ answer to. ONE song!? Ah.
I could not pick this so I went to itunes and found my top played song.
I figured it would be a good reflection of where I am at lately given I obviously keep listening to it.
I love song, Lykke Li makes my heart rush!
My little sister Bene asks
Top 5 favourite actresses? Top 5 favourite musicians? top 1 sibling? 
Actresses:
Shirley Temple
Drew Barrymore
Audrey Tautou
Ellen Page
Megan Follows
Musicians:
Ennio Morricone
Lykke Li
David Gray
Kimbra
Yann Tiersen
Sibling:
Um? My favourite younger sibling is… YOU!
Hi Georgia! My question is: what does “gregarious peach” mean for you?
Gregarious Peach has always been my online alias or ‘handle’ if you will. It is a play on my name and the fact that I am quite gregarious
Did you had some idea of what you wanted to do in the future when you were a child?
Yes, I very much wanted to a be a school teacher. I was in love with two of my school teachers and had thoroughly romanticized the notion of keeping classroom having read Anne of Green Gables and the ‘Christie’ series one too many times. This dream did carry through till I was an adult - I actually met Errol at university studying Education.
Have you ever had some penpal?
Yes, I did. She was from Germany, her name was Nathalie, she sent me postcards. My mum was paranoid she was actually a middle aged man. We exchanged little letters and presents from each others country. I sent her gum leaves and I received postcards from her holidays at the sea. I eventually forgot to write back to her :/
Besides photography, do you have some other passion, hobbie or frequent pastime?
Yes! I love sewing. LOVE it. It is something I never feel I have enough time to do and could definitely waste an entire week stitching this or that. I actually spent an entire YEAR off school and creating little dresses, quilts and outfits for my niece when I was 15. What a good year that was!
If I had more time to sew I would. It makes me feel unusually happy. Sewing requires lots of patience and focus and attention to detail NONE of which I exercise well so I am always surprised when I start a project and I just feel so content. I haven’t had much time to sew since the kids but here are a few of my projects.
Peach’s ‘family tree’ rug. Errol’s family intertwined with mine creating a tree. This came to me like a brainwave one night and while I was very passionate about it doesn’t exactly look like how I imagined it – haha.
Theo’s baby rug – one thing I was grateful for every month of his pregnancy.
Positive pregnancy text, his heart starting to beat, naps with Peach, growing, our new family of four, our new home, still being able to see my toes, nesting and A BABY!
I have made a few little outfits for Peach but this was my favourite:
A yellow summer romper.
I designed it myself (I never sew with patterns!) and was pleased as punch when it actually worked out because I was expecting it to fail big time.
I would love, love, LOVE to make Peach another of these rompers for this summer but I can’t justify buying any more fabric (We’re budgeting and being very strict about it! Sigh)
Unless someone here wants to buy the fabric and I will make one for your daughter too… anyone, anyone? haha.
Here is P looking very pleased in her romper with my cousin Minti in the ‘Mini Minti Mod’ dress I sewed her for her third birthday.
Sometime over the next year I magically want to find time to make a quilt for our bed and a single bed quilt for each of the children (they don’t yet have beds but I’d like to start now and be done in time for them to leave home )
I can’t find the photos of the final product but here is a photo of the squares from a quilt I made for our best friends wedding present – I’d really like to make something similar for our bed. But where would I find the months it took me to make the last one? Oh my poor sewing career, you are so bitterly neglected!
Phew! That is almost ALL of my questions answered – only one more set to go so I apologise for the interruption to things around here!
Anna asked a bunch of lovely questions and here are my answers
With all the beautiful pictures you’ve taken, which ones are on display in your house? (Er… old house?) If any are blown up/over-sized, are they more significant to you personally or just … prettier? Why did you choose those specific pictures?
I need to make two terrible confessions before answering this first question.
1) I have never, ever, EVER printed a single photo I have taken for ourselves.
2) I have NO pictures up in my house at all at the moment as we are living with my in-laws.
Those confessions aside I have several photos that my sister Hailey took and printed & mounted for us that used to hang in our home. Hailey asked me which ones I’d like printed and I chose a few that she had taken for us. I chose some from our wedding (to remind me of the fact that the best guy I’ve ever met chose ME!), one of each of the children’s births (to remind me of the fact that the terror running down the hallway with a roll of toilet paper was actually once that beautiful brand new creature) and a photo of Errol and I holding hands with Priya still in my belly (to remind me of that beautiful adventure we began when starting this family).
(I think this is my favourite photo ever).
When we have our own place again I will print some more photos for our walls and my priority will be photos that make my heart happy, so photos that are meaningful – like Theo’s first smile – over photos that are ‘pretty’ like a million photos I have of the kids on the beach.
-When you think of yourself as a person, does the word wife or mother come to mind first?
Neither!?
But if I had to pick out of those I would always be a mother first and foremost.
Plus I was technically a mother before I was a wife
-Before you had kids, if you could have picked one trait for your kids to have (sociable, beautiful, intelligent, etc,) what would it have been?
Um? I need to be really honest right now. This is embarrassing – I’d like to say I would have wanted loving, kind-hearted children but the reality is while I was pregnant with Peach I spent a long time hoping my baby would be cute.
It’s not that I didn’t want a sociable or intelligent child it’s just that pregnancy adversely affected my brain function and instead of investing time into productive research and planning for our new baby I wafted about sewing little things and eyeing off other peoples kids thinking “I hope mine is as cute as that!”.
Oh, shame, how I wish this wasn’t true!
What song(s) has been your go-to for singing your kids to sleep?
I don’t know how it came about but I’ve been singing ‘Down to the River to Pray’ from O’Brother Where Art Thou since they were tiny. Peach even requests it in times of distress.
Favourite books?
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery – these novels (in particular the first four) are truly the loveliest things I have ever read. I have read them time after time and would love nothing more than to live within their pages forever. If you have not read them you simply MUST!
All of Oscar Wildes plays but definitely not his novel ‘A picture of Dorian Gray’ (which I read last month and found very disturbing).
Stones From The River by Ursula Heigi
I’ll Love You Forever by Robert Munsch
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
(on weeing on the bed).
G: “Next time you have to stop it before it gets out”
P: [clutches her neck] Necks time? How will I stop it with my NECK!?”
***
P: “Hey Feo! Wanna jump on da bed wid me?”
No response from Theo.
“Well… PERSONALLY I am gonna jump on dis bed forever”.
***
While playing with fisher price people she throws one of the little men across the room
P: I can’t have a white dad! I need the YELLOW DAD
***
P: Mummy, can I tell you a very bad secret?
G: Um, okay?
P: Well. Daddy told me that when I grow up I am going to be a woman!
G: Oh really. Why is that a bad secret?
P: Because a woman is like snow white and then a man will chase you into the forest to get you. And den a lady will give you a big apple and you be all dead.
***
Said in her sleep (on different occasions)
“Noooooooo, I don’t want to share”
“Kimba. Kimbaaaaaaaaaa”
“oh dear, what a naughty crocodile”
***
P: Can you do me a fabour”
G: Sure baby
P: Can ya vaccum da floor, its alllll dirty?
***
G: You are old enough to wipe yourself on the toilet now Priya, try it.
P: (indignant and shocked) “NO I am not! I don’t even have boobs yet!”.
18 months
(posting this late, he’s 21 months now. His current photo coming next week)
Dear Theo,
I am sorry I haven’t written you a letter in a while or updated your monthly photo. You see, you and your sister are beyond cheeky and getting you to lay down for this photo is a near impossibility. My camera broke a while back so I wasn’t able to take the photos even if I had wanted to.
I want you to the first thing I did on the first day I got my new one was ask your aunty Bene to help me get this photo of you and your sister. I have missed watching you grow like this.
You are now 18 months old and the changes in you from the letter I wrote you at 11 months are remarkable. You are a handful of mischief and despite my notions that you were ‘easy-going’ boy you have shown us over the last few months that equal to your happy nature is a temper to be reckoned with. You amaze us all with your fits of rage when things do not go your way and I will admit to being wildly delighted by your tantrums. I remind myself I shouldn’t be pleased at your angry throw-downs and stomping feet but who couldn’t smile at your furrowed brows and cries of absolute despair over the nutella you aren’t allowed to have?
You sleep next to me and believe you should have unsparing access to your ‘mulk’ whenever you please. I fade in and out of groggy sleep and find you still nursing hours after you began. I moan about this and your daddy sharply replies “So wean him”. He calls my bluff, I LOVE nursing you, I love it even at 4 am. One night though last week after a hard night I asked your dad to take you so that I could sleep. You were completely and utterly enraged by the lack of boobies that you THREW yourself off the end of the bed (thank goodness it is 20cm from the floor). Instead of crying about falling to the ground you laid on the floor bashing your fists into the carpet and a screaming “MUUUUUUULK”. Again, I told myself I should be mortified at this sort of behaviour but the truth is, it filled my heart with compassion and love for my wild boy who hasn’t learned about night times without a buffet. Within minutes you were asleep at my breast and I didn’t feel one bit bad about ‘giving in’ to you.
You wake before me each morning and the first sight I see on waking is your little face looming above mine, your shorts breaths of excitement tickling my cheeks. As soon as my eyes open yours expand with obvious delight that your playmate is ready to join you. You waste no time, reaching your hand to mine and dragging me out of the bed. And so we go about our day, you pulling me here or there, stomping your feet when I refuse to follow and filling my heart with the greatest joy whenever I do. It is my greatest hope that you feel everything as passionately as you do now and with time and wisdom learn to reign that power into the incredible force I know you will be. I love you Theo bear.
x
