It's a blogging birthday to me...

I managed to miss my blogger birthday by one day!!!!!!!!!!!!


As of yesterday, 3rd February, I have been officially blogging for one whole year! And I would like to say thanks to my family and friends for all their (reading) support and not minding the odd cameo appearance! 

I would also like to say thanks to all the people out there reading my blog who have no idea who I am, thanks to blogger stats I am now able to see that my little old blog has started to get a little following of it's own. People from as far as the US, Canada, Poland, Russia and lots of other places have been reading and it's great! I am truly amazed that anyone other than the people that have to read it because they love me (ha, ha) would be interested! So thanks to all of you and I am more than happy to return the favour if you have a blog to share...


But the biggest thanks goes to Emily for providing me with so much inspiration and potentially wonderful writing material! I think that our journey has only just begun!  


And finally to Gavin...who is yet to read a single entry...shame on you!!! No really he has never read a word, the world is weeping with me...well okay maybe not eh!! Ha, ha, ha. 


Happy blogger birthday to me and many more to come I hope x

P.S I love you...

In a week full of revelations and some startling realisations, we all have to re-evaluate our character at times... humbling as it might be. There was a moment, one of those lovely little milestones that become rarer and rarer the older your child gets. My daughter told me she loves me...well okay technically I asked her if she loves mummy and she smiled and said 'yes'! I still like to think that this counts though. Especially because upon asking the same questions before this morning I would be met with the same answer every time 'no'.


Up until recently this question was tied into a game of sorts. I would ask her if she loved me and she would laugh and say 'no' and then I would say 'What do you mean you don't love me?' and tickle her, then we would repeat the whole thing.


Love is one of those funny things thought isn't it?! My sister and I were discussing this earlier in the week, we expect love to be this huge realisation, this moment of clarity where you suddenly shriek 'Eureka...i've got it, this funny feeling i've been feeling well it must be LOVE'. But in reality that isn't really true. My sister had an interesting analogy. She said it's like all our other emotions, it's there all the time it's just we feel it stronger at certain times, like sadness or happiness, anger, grieve etc...I like to think that love creeps up on us, unexpected, until one day you can't keep the words in anymore. It's when you are not thinking about it that love will find you, it's when you want to say the words to someone without knowing why or how, it's when it becomes an involuntary action...almost like a freudian slip. 


So did my daughter just wake up this morning and suddenly realise a) what the meaning of the word love is and b) that these were the feelings she had for her mummy? No probably not but I like to think that one day she will understand, one day she will say it for real and until then I will take all the positive responses she is willing to give! Besides I don't say I love you very often, but that's because I think it loses it's meaning if you just throw it out there all the time. Afterall it's just three little words and the important people in my life know how I feel about them. When I say it I want it to be involuntary, for the words to just come out because in that moment... I just can't possibly hold them in!  

English as a foreign language

Emily is now 21 months old and her vocabulary is expanding with every day and whilst some of it is amusing, some cute, some confusing (for both of us), some however is...erm...well lets just say it's not suitable for pre-watershed.


Now I have been making valiant attempts to think about everything I say before I say it, which is truly exhausting at times! And I am constantly berating those around me everytime some one lets slip an obscenity. And I honestly never realised what a foul mouthed, obscenity uttering family I come from and my friends aren't much better! 


However what I did not account for are the words, that if pronounced incorrectly, could be portrayed rather badly. Especially if we were, for example, in a public place with lots of people within earshot! 


So the word 'Coat' my daughter has trouble pronouncing it properly. And I bet you can probably guess where I am going with this one. Yes in the middle of the pub on a Saturday lunch-time, post food and about to leave my daughter points and announces, rather loudly,


 "Look mama, dada's cock"! 

Embracing your inner child...

So post Christmas my house now resembles an aisle in Toys R Us, every shelf, surface and available space has toys of every nature rammed onto or into it! Emily now has two toys boxes, both full and yet somehow my lounge floor space has still strunk and I already removed the coffee table last year. Most of the lounge is taken up by a huge, pink, trampoline (kindly donated and I mean this most sincerely, by a family friend), numerous items that Emily will either push around or sits on while I push her around, books, building blocks, jigsaws, teddies, a pretend till that actually has a scanner that makes the bleeping noise (no...really!), a play kettle - one of two she received, the other living upstairs in her play kitchen with a play toaster, play washing machine, play ironing board, a dolly's cot, dressing up clothes, fairy costumes (x 2), a magnetic drawing board, more books, teddies, teddies, teddies, teddies, did I mention teddies? A Waybaloo Nok Tok, Tickle me Elmo and on and on and on. You get the idea. Do I really only have one child? I keep expecting at least another one or two to appear from somewhere.


So you would have thought with all this to amuse her she would embrace hours of fun filled entertainment. However being, as yet, an only child (despite my suspicions that there may be more children around here somewhere), mummy becomes play mate to her doting daughter. So my days are now filled with not just real domestic chores but pretend ones also. I mean really, trust me ironing is still ironing even when it's pretend!


However I have to say that it's hard not to embrace your inner child, when decked out in fairy wings, sitting in the middle of your little girls bedroom being served imaginary food on plastic plates and drinking imaginary tea out of cups that smell suspiciously like apple juice. Even I have to admit that maybe it's just better to 'go with it' sometimes. Besides it beats the hell out of tackling the real piles of washing up waiting for you downstairs.


And I know I am not alone. Come on hands up, how many of you stood imaging yourself playing with your children's toys before purchasing them? Yes, yes you know who you are! And why not, we all need an excuse to behave like the children we still are, on occasion. Otherwise life just gets a little bit too serious.


Although I do have just one question;


"How come I still get left with the imaginary washing up??!" 

To a new year and another chance for us to get it right.

So we are officially into a new decade and the beginning of 2011. Whilst all that is great, I am just happy to have survived my first term at College, my first family Christmas at the new, owned not rented, family home, my first cooking of the Christmas dinner and my first proper full year as a mum.

It has been a year full of firsts actually, first birthday party, first steps, first duvet, first words and now we even have full sentences on occasion and Emily is also doing very well in learning to talk...ha, ha, ho, ho. First full nights sleep...again... and you all know how much I like my sleep! 

It has also been a year to see the end of many things, the end of sterilising, the end of formula, the end of dummies, the end of having to carry my daughter everywhere because she is 10 months old and still cannot crawl!! And let it be known that Emily is a lot heavier than most children her age...trust me I have held other children to test this theory (children I know of course I don't just go about randomly picking up other peoples children because...well that would be strange and would probably get me arrested...anyway). Yes we have discovered the joys of walking and running and movement in general and now she never stops, moving I mean. Emily has two settings, on and off! The only time she doesn't move is when she's asleep and even then she is quite the wriggler at times.  

So, I am not one for resolutions, they seem so obviously fallible and I just set myself up for failure, instead I look to the new year with hope in my heart and a spring in my step. Courage renewed and the will to fight another day. I welcome the changes that are around the corner. I will endeavour to put right what went wrong this year.  I look forward to all the new challenges we will face. I embrace the terrible twos that are creeping ever closer, day by day, like a little cloud looming somewhere on the horizon and I even welcome the prospect of turning 30 in February and the little lines that are starting to permanently creep across my forehead...well okay I am working on those last two!

My life...according to Facebook!

A very nifty little app that was brought to my attention by a fellow blogger and Twitter fan. A collection of some of my best statuses from 2010 and trust me there were a few too many to choose from. My new years resolution may be to spend a little less time social networking and a little more time just actually socialising or networking!

Have a go yourself and share with the rest of us:

http://apps.facebook.com/my-year-in-status/show.php?i=08413d40230375666ad68b1587e7f9fc16de0f&from=feed_desc&ref=mf

Let it snow, let it snow, let it sss....hmmm on second thoughts!

For many the prospect of snow is a welcome one, the chance to kick back and re-connect with your childhood, sledging, snowman building, snowball fighting and possibly, if you are really lucky, a day off work!

For a mother with very young, pram bound children, the prospect of snow is most definitely not a welcome one! It means you are confined to your house and a very limited area immediately surrounding it. Luckily for me, well guess it actually depends on how you look at it, maybe fortunately for me (with last weeks snow) I live across the road from a major supermarket with built in cafe facilities. So at least had slightly less limited options when it came to entertaining my toddler because dragging the pram through snow, ice and blizzards, puffing and panting and sweating like...well a very sweaty person, is not my idea of fun in the snow! Our local council worked extremely hard this time to make sure that they kept the roads as snow-free and passable as possible. However what they failed to remember was that us mothers cannot 'drive' our prams down the road! Well we could but am not sure you would do it more than once, if you catch my drift (ohh look an unintentional snow pun, how clever of me). 

This is my second year as a snow mum and I have to say I am not yet convinced that the world is a better place just because it's covered in a blanket of white!