Its also a good time to celebrate this new venture as this week I am featured in Good Housekeeping magazine in a feature in their January issue giving readers some ideas/nudges to make changes to their lives for the better (today's top tip - I bought my copy of the mag in Tesco today for £2,99 instead of £3.99!). The irony that I have become a 'housewife' is not lost on me, just not sure I'm a good one yet!
I was interviewed at the end of September and went to London for a photoshoot at the start of October, so was still full of the joys of my new life. Happily I can still hold my head up high and agree with the sentiment I had then. I can't quite believe where the last year has gone and how much we, as a family have packed in, but here we are counting down to Christmas and the New Year. If what I am doing can 'inspire' (slightly uncomfortable with that word and me) then so be it - if you need a nudge to get on and take a leap into the unknown, then here I am nudging you. I can't quite believe I didn't agree to moving up here sooner. I'm still feeling blessed.
I wish my parenting was as blessed as the rest of my new life. With the change to a new year for my DD, she seemed to be replaced with a child I did not recognise. Not sure if this is a result of all the food colouring i had in her birthday cake. Not heard reports yet of the other kids being more of a handful since the party? But I'm quite sick of counting to three, of threatening that Santa/Father Christmas isn't going to visit us, of resorting to shouting. Ugh! And with no work to escape to, the rosy glow for this new life certainly got a bit tainted this week. So I'm seeing that there are benefits of being a working mother. I think that by having that 'escape' it gives you, as a mother, a good 'time out' to consider what's been going on at home. You can also discuss things with fairly impartial work colleagues and get a different take on how you can change the general high tension at home before bed time! But its about that balance that I just wasn't able to achieve.
As it is I'm not yet too ingrained into the local mum network to vent too greatly when at the various playgroups or church we attend and having DD in tow limits how much I can vent. This morning was a blinder. DD suddenly went from a fairly happy child to one determined to show us up. All because I drew a squiggle on the back of drawing DD had done in little church. On rejoining the main congregation and typically just as the priest got to the fairly serious, quiet part of mass, DD chose that time to tell me (and all the congregation) that she had "a sore botty"! As I struggled to get her under control (my hushes, hushed right back at me) I realised with some new clarity why most parents sit at the back of church with their kids. Unlike me, being fresh and new to the community I've chosen each week to sit near the front (more to do with my eyesight than anything else). Thankfully we managed to get to the end of the mass without me self combusting but as we left DD was handed a Christmas cone of chocolate treats from one of the other mums! Argh - more treats on top of all the ones she'd had for the last week due to birthday well wishers. She's never going to learn.
So I confiscated them! Up to the top shelf of the larder - away from little arms. But with the promise that she could have them back IF she showed some improvement in her behaviour for the rest of the day. 'Like mother like daughter' I think the saying goes - I'm a chocoholic and if someone confiscated MY chocolate, if killing that person wasn't an option, then doing whatever they ask would probably do it!
So for the first time in a week (I know that doesn't sound long - but I'm used to an angel child) DD said her pleases and thank you's, did what she was asked to do the first time she was asked, ate all her food, didn't fuss at bedtime and was altogether a delight. Is this what its going to take then? Holding back chocolate? We'll have to see how things progress.
I'm really looking forward to Christmas this year. We bought our first 'real' tree yesterday and I'm waiting to bring it in and put it up, but I still have three boxes of books to unpack to make room in the corner for the monster we bought. I have the lovely mental image of how the room will look especially now we have our new gorgeous sofas. However my mental image did not include a smelly mound of cat vomit right in the middle of this new purchase. Bloody animal. We've had leather sofas for the entirety of her life and she has never, ever vomited on them. But a few weeks into lovely, soft, cozy fabric sofas, and not only have we had the horrid vomit, but mud a plenty! A hazard of living in the countryside? Or just a hazard of having a half finished basement? Christmas is a time of traditions and it seems that we started one last Christmas in the form of 'painting'! Not some wonderous masterpiece, no I mean wall painting! It looks like the basement will, structurally, at least be finished in time for Christmas, allowing us the two week break (from what in my case?) to have the time to paint.
But that's not the bit of Christmas I'm looking forward to. No. I'm looking forward to two whole weeks with my dear husband. What a novelty - adult conversation for the majority of the day as opposed to just a few hours in the evening. And both of us on hand to deal with the no doubt over excited DD who totally 'gets' Christmas this year. That part of her age I love.
Now dear readers (or reader if it is actually just my mum hitting refresh) thank you for taking the time to get my blog to over 2000 page views. I hope some of what I write is of use or at the very least enjoyable and thanks for letting me air the clutter in my brain.
