2013... Day 1...

The fresh air I got the other day wasn't enough. It was good, but I need more. 

Two weeks of carbs, chocolates and alcohol have left my body a few unwelcome pounds heavier and a torpid feeling that's clinging to every joint and muscle. 

I need to move. Outside. This January I am going to walk walk walk. I am going to be active everyday. I want to feel burning muscles. I want to run out of puff. I want to sweat!

Today, January 1st, I started. Even my champagne head couldn't stop me. Sun, camera, brisk air, mud underfoot, THE TRIKE. Here I went...

Lesson:

1. Need to get out.

2. I may need to start thinking about the D word...

Happy New Year Bloggers & Bloggees!

Dear 2012,

(I'm welling up just at the thought of writing this).

Firstly: thank you.

This time last year I was 30 weeks pregnant, with everything to fear. The zillion and one worries of a pregnant woman were flying around my head. I have no official faith. But still I prayed everyday that this baby would get here safely. That it would be healthy. That I would do good for it. That Steve would do good for it. That we would do good for each other. (I loved it already but) that I would love being a Mum.

Oh. She did. She is. I do. He does. We do. And I do. More than anything. So much more than I ever anticipated. So much so I don't really know how I hadn't lived my entire life before hand without feeling that gaping, vacuous hole that must have been there without her?

How can someone be so lucky? How? How can I be so lucky without being owed a millennia of plagues and misfortune?

So biggest, deepest and sincerest thank you.

Secondly: how did you change me so much?

In 2011 I was a dance teacher. I knew I loved education, I loved work, I saw job role and salary as almost my sole measure of success. I knew a lot of things.

2012! What did you do to me?! Why did I never miss my job? What are these new ambitions in photography I have? How have I been so contented at home? How has being the best Mum I can be knocked all my former priorities off the charts? AND WHAT THE HELL IS IT ABOUT THIS SMALL PERSON I LOVE SO MUCH THAT I EAT, BREATHE AND SLEEP HER?!?!!!

I'm not actually asking these questions. I don't want any answers. I am so happy to embrace every metamorphosis you have brought I have no reason to seek reasoning. Just... Wow!

Third and finally: now this is living.

2012, you have shown what can really happen if you follow your passions and love harder than you've ever loved before. Like if you imagined you were dying. Love like you're dying. Love that hard. Live that hard. If we could live and love that hard through 2013 what would we get done? If you looked back in a year's time where would you be? What would you have done?

So there we are. 2012, you have been wonderful. You are the year I became a Mum. I hope to live many wonderful years like you but I doubt anything could dull you into obscurity for that reason. I'll look back on you. The year I became a Mum and it all changed.

Yours wholly and sincerely appreciatively

Charlie

P.S. If you speak to 2013 before I do, tell it I'm ready.
NYE 2011...

7th March 2012...

 May... (Our first trip away...)

 June...

 First family holiday...

 Portugal...

 July...

Olympics...

August...

 The blessing, September...

October...

November...

Christmas...

Resolutions

1. No more swearing around the baby. Explained here...

2. TBC... My husband's suggestion of "get more interested in darts" is not making the list.

New Year's Resolution... No. 1

Stop swearing.

Steve and I are shamefully casual swearers.

So lax is our attitude towards bad words that conversation is easily blue before 9:00am. Our F's, B's, S's and (dare I admit it) even C's have lost all effect to us. They present so little impact to each other we litter our exchanges with them without a thought.

Shockingly, at work (as a teacher at a secondary school) I have only ever slipped out one rouge F within earshot of a student. (It was directed at my office door that wouldn't unlock and deserved a good telling, I didn't seen the year 7 behind me. It's a funny story... Unless that was your kid... Then you're probably less amused.) Otherwise I've confined myself quite successfully to "blooming"s, "flipping"s and "for the love of crunchie"s.

At home, however, this is not the case.

So, in an effort to ensure some of Euna's first words aren't littered with the same line of profanities, January 1st... We're going cold turkey and cleaning up our vocabulary.

New Year's Resolution 1: No more swearing.

Can you spot Euna's most recent First?

What about now?

Lesson:

Change is good. Lead by example. To get the things you want for your children, you have to start by looking at yourself.