Sunday 21 December 2014

Oh Xmas tree


Some pics of our Xmas tree... a tree we very nearly didn't have, seeing as we've had a broken down car for the last few weeks and no way of going to pick one up. But we got one in the end, just one week before Xmas (which may be the perfect amount actually). Arlo had a LOT of initial interest in the baubles, which soon subsided after he realised they don't do much that's fun, and now he is very non-plussed by the tree. Which is fine with me because I am the opposite - I am VERY plussed by it. Pride of place is Arlo's hand-made tree decoration that he made on his last day with his childminder for the year (I suspect he may have had help). First of many homemade decs that will be added each year I hope.



Friday 12 December 2014

Friday I'm in love... with feeling impulsive


I've been feeling a little flighty lately. Like I want to do something different, try something new, break the routine. Not that we have much of one! A few ideas that have crossed my mind this week, fleetingly or otherwise, include:
  1. having pink hair. Because why not?
  2. getting a kitten. Because we've been doing a lot of sofa snuggling lately and a kitten would fit right in very nicely. And because Arlo has got a lot of kitten love to give.
  3. or maybe getting a whole box of kittens?
  4. painting our ceilings blue, like this dreamy bathroom I spotted.
  5. buying more fresh flowers. An under-rated joy in my opinion.
  6. painting again. Something for Arlo's bedroom wall like this lovely alphabet print.
Time will tell how many of these things actually happen, but for now it's nice to daydream. Mostly about pink hair.



Saturday 6 December 2014

Front room before and after


This afternoon we played Wuthering Heights really loudly on the record player, put up Xmas decorations and lit a fire. It was a pretty magical combination. I took a few snaps (taken while it was dark outside, so a little fuzzy round the edges!) and it made me think of how far this house has come since we've lived here. It's been just over a year since we bought it, and lots has changed.

Looking at these quick photographs of the front room reminded of what it was like the day we moved in. Not great. I managed to dig out a couple of pics I took at the time. The main wall was orange. The worst kind of orange. It was one of the first things we changed, and it took about four coats of brilliant white to get rid of it. then last weekend I fancied a change so we painted it soft grey, to match the rest of the walls in the front room. Only a few shades away from white, but TOTAL transformation, it's so much cosier now. The snaps below make for a little 'before, during, and after', so you can appreciate the horror of the orange that came before. And look out for teeny tiny Arlo in the bottom of the first pic, the day we moved in - only four months old! Does anything feel more homely than white fairy lights? I think not.





Wednesday 3 December 2014

Time off


I've just had a day off work. As I work part time, and it ran into a weekend, it actually ended up being more like the best part of a week off work all in all. It was nice. I tried to fill it with all the normal kind of fun things that I always would have done when I lived in London and had a day off - Xmas shopping, seeing friends, catching up on rubbish TV. Arlo and I spent a lot of time at home hunkering down because he had a cold and had teeth popping through and lost all sense of whether it was day or night and thought 2am was an acceptable time to get up and demand cartoons. So we spent some nights awake and some mornings snoozing on the sofa together and it all merged into one a bit.

So last night, the night before I went back to work after a bit of time off, I suppose usually I would've felt a bit glum, have a bit of the 'work blues' and wish for just one more day off to relax. And I suppose this morning as I settled in at my desk with a cuppa and the radio on, I would've felt refreshed after the break. I didn't feel either. I felt knackered. I felt happy to be back at my desk. I felt like today was my day off. 

I don't know if it's 'wrong' to admit this but I love being at work. It's what I've always done. It's for me. It's structured and it's a known entity that I have control over so I always know where I am with it. Being a parent is not really any of those things. I think I'm meant to want to devote every minute of every day and every ounce of my being to my child. But I don't really want to. I want to give my absolute everything to him when I'm with him, but I want sometimes not to be with him. I need the times without him to make the times I am as brilliant as they are. To appreciate every bit of them like I do. He's amazing and has changed me in many good ways and I miss him when he's not right next to me (that includes literally as soon as he falls asleep each night and I miss him so much I want to go into his room and wake him up just so we can play) but I really need the separate times too.  Is that Ok to say?