It’s November and that means the year is almost at a close and Jack’s 2nd birthday isn’t that far off. Christmas will be coming and all the Santa visits arranged. This is a busy time for a Mum and, personally, being off work to spend all that quality time is a grateful reward for surviving this year. I returned to work after maternity leave during a pandemic as a key worker. I got my child who has only know his parents for the first year of his life, settled into nursery. My husband and I still enjoy one another’s company after being together most days through sickness and lack of funds and the world going mad while we couldn’t even go to walk the dog together. 

With that said, I wanted to write a post while I had the chance to put down some of the things that Jack’s been up to lately. 

Currently, he is enrolled in three Mummy and Me classes. We got to Little Movers, Baby Ballet, and swimming lessons. 

We were going to art class but Jack just wants to run and play, so sitting at stations to paint and do crafts just was not happening. He does that at other classes but they’re made for running about, so I’m less stressed about it when we go to those classes and he is off, circling the other kids. 

His language is getting better. The last time I spoke to his key worker about his language development, he wasn’t quite at 10 words. Now he’s putting things together so two words are getting more common. Oh no. Oh wow! Night night. My Mommy. My Daddy 

Hello, Daddy! Hello, Mommy! 

The dog is still “D.D.” 

Jack loves ketchup and if we put it on his food, most of the time, he just licks the ketchup off and won’t eat the fries or potato waffles. 

He does like peanut butter, obviously, because I give him pb&j most days. (This led to a theft of someone’s toast with pb at nursery during lunchtime.) 

Jack loves to climb. He watches tv a bit more intently now, so his attention span has grown. He holds our hand and brings us to his play pen so we can stack Duplo bricks with him. 

I’ve been trying to do some things for myself for a long time, even when Jack was first born. One is bullet journaling because I like the organisation of things. The other is writing. I know keeping a journal and an account of all the things going on with us in these first precious years. I wanted to write all about being a mother and work on the podcast to encourage other mothers to stick with it and know someone out there understands. 

But there’s the irony: I don’t have time to write about parenting because parenting keeps me insanely busy.  

But it’s a good busy and I am bored to tears on my days when I have off work and Jack is at nursery. 

That’s why another thing I’m going to keep a tally of is self care things I do for myself. 

The need for me to accept that the side projects won’t happen or at least won’t happen as easy and as often as they could for someone else is fine. I will accept that because my bigger number one task is to be a mother and that part is what fills my heart, soul, day, and time.  

But I’m still going to keep the dream of that work in process (book) alive though.