Fun in the garden

Our garden - which I secretly want to be beautiful (and weeded) - is a very child friendly place. We have lots of garden toys in our garden (which at least helps distract from the weeds).

We have this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

We even have a rather beautiful paddling pool, with straddling ladybird arch ( not shown today, as it was getting late when we went out to play).

But of course the very very best thing is this....

resulting in a very happy Ellie...

(of course the real challenge was getting her from the garden to the upstairs shower!)

Merry Christmas

I'm having a lovely time- eating chocolate, playing board/card games and generally feeling content and happy (aided of course, by having a happily sleeping child!).

Hoping you are all having an equally lovely time!

A good day!

Today has been a good day! Our cat, Kitty, who has been missing since Friday has returned - a very lovely couple took her in when she was looking scared out near the main road on Sunday evening, and rang us when they saw the posters we'd put up. Also, a nice plumber has come and made our central heating work downstairs (since we'd turned on the heating, it had only been working upstairs!) . And I managed to make the deadline of end of today, (set Monday) to write a new job description, put together a business case for recruiting to said job, and complete an advertising form for it too - which should hopefully mean that I get a team of 3 instead of 2 which will make a huge difference to my workload. (until someone realises that and gives me considerably more projects to work on... )

I'm applying for the job I've been doing for the last 11 months on a permanent basis - application form (as yet not finished) to be in by Friday so fingers crossed that my good luck holds!

Little mermaid

We rejoined the rather expensive, but rather nice, and very nearby gym recently. In a determined effort to 'get our monies worth' (well we do live in Yorkshire!) we've been swimming at least twice a week with Ellie. She's always been very confident in water, and has been happily swimming (with her own variation of legs and arms) for nearly 2 years now. But in the last couple of weeks she's been determined to swim without armbands. She's not very keen on fighting to stay above water though. She's more of a put your head in, and get on with it kind of swimmer (whereas I'm a 'stiff neck' head out of water type).

Anyway, this style clearly works for her. If Paul and I stand about 10 - 12 feet apart in the pool, she can now happily swim between us. All in one big breath. I'm reluctant to encourage her try much further, until she has learnt to come up for air!

It really reminds me of when she first started walking - watching her toddle between us. I held my breath then, waiting until she made if safely into our arms. And I hold it now whilst she is swimming - even though it's not me under the water! So wierd!

posting

I was going to post properly tonight. I'd half composed the post - but it relied on photos. I've tried 3 times and my computer, Blogger and Photobucket are jointly and separately conspiring in various ways to prevent me...

I will post it soon. But for now, I just wanted to let you know that the thought was there. Now, I'm off to bed with a glass of wine and a book. Technology - hah!

Lost in the Real World

Oh - it's been a long time since I posted. Some of that was due to going away to the Lake District and having so much to post about that I didn't know where to start (Ellie fed giraffes and penguins and lemurs by hand - will post the pictures some time soon!). And then by freak of nature, about 3 weeks ago, we had the most amazing thunderstorm. Incredible - lasting 2 hours with the mid afternoon sky turning black, then illuminated by several simultaneous streaks of lighting in different sections of the sky (only I missed it because I was at work in Wakefield, where it just drizzled a bit). However, apparently the thunderstorm made a surge come down our telephone line and 'fried' (talktalk technical term) our modem. They sent us another one, but the Royal Mail managed to lose it, and the replacement only turned up today.

It's not that I've been completely removed from the internet - I use it daily at work (but at work I struggle to make time to eat my sandwich, I can't imagine finding time to write a post - although I've stolen a couple of minutes to read other blogs whilst munching my lunch).

It's made me realise though, how much I take for granted access to friends through blogs and email, how often I use the 'net to look up a phone number or address for a business, or to find out more about something.

I'd to reflect on my netless time and realise that I have rediscovered face to face social contact, opportunties and time to take up new crafts - but actually, I already did that, and being netless hasn't really altered it....

But anyway, I'm back now. And I realised that I missed posting. So often, I thought I want to post about that (partly to share with you all, and partly just to record and capture something for my own benefit). So maybe my posts will be a little more regular from now on.

Illogical Language

Ellie has started to learn to straighten her duvet when she gets out of bed in the morning. She call this 'making her bed pretty'. In a 'perfect parent' attempt at gentle, non-corrective, instruction, everytime she told me this I said would say "well done Ellie - you've made your bed'.

The conversation would run thus;
"Ellie, are you coming downstairs"
"One minute Mummy, I'm just making my bed pretty"
"Well done Ellie, you've made you bed"
"Yes I've made it pretty, haven't I?"
"Yes you've made it very well Ellie"
"Very pretty, Mummy"

You know - she's right. She's not made the bed - some carpenter employed by Mothercare did that and Daddy assembled it. She's transformed it from being covered with rumbled duvet and made it pretty.

Climbing Frame

Not the most inspired of titles, but I'm a little overwhelmed and amazed at the moment (in a very good way)!

On Thursday, we were contacted out of the blue by Ellie's godfather's parents. (And if that sounds a bit of a tenous connection, it is.) They said that they had been asked by a neighbour to help take down a climbing frame and slide as it was not longer needed. It was in good condition and it upset them to think it would just be thrown away. Then they thought of their son's goddaughter and that she might like it, and so they rang us.

Not only did they dismantle the frame, and bring it round to us, they even spend 2 hours today ( a miserable cold day, with rain threatening) helping Paul assemble it for us - along with the kind of assistance only an excited 3 year old can provide.

It's wonderful when good things happen - and it's even better when you weren't expecting them!

Do you want to see what an excited 3 year old on a climbing frame with slide looks like?

Here's Ellie at the very top. I was convinced she would take a little while to build up the courage, as it's quite high - but as you can see I was wrong.

Approaching the descent - (it really is as high as it looks!)



And coming down the slide...


She went down it 3 times in the 5 minutes immediately after it was built - and were it not for the heavy rain which appeared as soon as it was finished, she'd probably still be on it now.

Social Etiquette of Parenting

I had a strange, fantastical idea early on that as I adjusted to parenting that it would become easier as time went on.
(I'll wait a moment whilst any other parents who might read this, pick themselves up from rolling around on the floor laughing).

I was, of course, wrong. It's not exactly that it gets harder and harder, it's more that everytime you find a solution to a difficulty, another one (or two, or ten) quandries appear to replace it!
We live on a relatively quiet cul-de-sac. There is a small group of approx 4 children who regularly play out on the street without visible parental supervision (although I am sure that they are being kept an eye on, but mum/dad isn't sat in the front garden). They are all at least 2 or 3 years older than Ellie, and live near each other at the other end of the street. It's a nice street - everyone says hi to each other, and smiles on passing, but you don't really have conversations with people other than your next door neighbour. (unless there is some big 'crisis' occuring). Ellie's friend Evie also lives on a cul-de-sac, but the grown ups there appear to be more sociable, and I get the impression that they chat together, or take turns to be 'supervising adult' whilst the children play.
I'd quite like Ellie to be able to play out on the street with the others, but a) I think she's a little young to be out on the road yet and b) we've not made friends with the other children yet. So, I put this problem to one side until she is older.
However, recently a 9 yr old, who I do not recognise from the street has been coming round to see our cat (ie we keep finding her sat/standing in our front garden stroking or holding our cat). This has developed quite rapidly into her coming into our back garden when we are there (I hope not, when we are not) and even into our house - chasing after our poor cat, encouraged by Ellie. I had hoped that she might play with Ellie, but if we point out that the cat is now hiding and looking very stressed and perhaps should be left alone, then she gets on her bike (literally) and heads off. Conscious that our back garden is very private, I make a point of asking if her parents know where she is when she comes into our garden. To which, she says 'yes' - although I doubt the accuracy of this.
Short of insisting that she takes me back to her house to meet her parents, I am unsure what do about her prescence in our garden, and what her parents might make of her being hidden out of sight in our back garden. And, I'm not even sure I want her round at all, if she is going to upset Ellie by dashing off as soon as the cat is unavailable without even saying goodbye, when Ellie was really enjoying spending time with the 'big girl'.

Hmmm.

Inspiration

Maybe it's because I stayed away in a hotel last night and had eight and a half hours unbroken sleep (!!),
maybe it's because I swam in the hotel pool late yesterday evening and also again early this morning (and I love the virtue of exercise combined with the rhythmic mediative quality of gently swimming)
maybe it's because I spent the day at a conference on housing options for people with learning disabilities (and I was able to drop some of my prejudices and concerns about what was achievable)
But, today, I feel switched on and excited about my role at work. I see possibilities and opportunities to make a difference - to how we work and to people's lives. I am glad that I work in the industry that I do - and whether it is in my current role as project manager or in my substantive role as community team manager, I can see how I can make a difference.

(I hope I still feel like this tomorrrow!)

Hard at Work

It's almost 6 months since I was seconded to my new (current) post as Project Manager. The change of role was hard in moving away from the team that I had worked hard to pull together, and also provided a steep learning curve as it was a very different role.

The last couple of months there has been a major restructure going on at work - an occupational hazard of working in local government I now realise. Because my current secondment is the result of a domino effect of people moving around and acting up to cover vacancies, some of which may have been filled in the reshuffled and some deleted, it was not very clear how secure my post might be. Several of the projects I was working on had reached 'sticky' bits - which needed some complex problem solving with specialist knowledge, or a few risks to be taken, or close working with people who were quite resistant to the project - and with my feeling of 'newness' I didn't feel very confident about my skills in tackling them which dented my confidence overall. Given that during the same period Paul was having his work contract terminated, and my main post is only a jobshare, none of this helped me feel particularly secure at work.

The last couple of weeks have been really hard. There is still no clear news about the security of my post. Unconsciously, I had taken my 'eye off the ball' on a few projects, and suddenly there is a backlog of work - people demanding answers and progress, and I haven't even written up the minutes of the last meeting let alone acted on most of them! Several of the risk issues came to a head, and I could only really wait with sweaty palms to see if they turned out OK. I still have so much to learn, but people cut me less slack now because, after all, I have been in post since before Christmas. And on top of it all, I finally have an (long awaited) assistant who will take a lot of the pressure off my workload but, of course, at the start I need to invest time and energy in skilling her up on her role and the projects we are working on and I had precious little of either of those things!

This week though I turned a corner. I realised that I can't just put things on hold whilst I wait to find out about my post. After all, it's been 7 weeks now. (I knew this, I'd advised other people to do this early on, I just had failed to act on it myself). The only solution is to take a pragmatic approach of getting on with it until someone tells me any different. Getting on with things I had been putting off, and feeling that I am starting to catchup with myself, and suddenly the workload is still hard and heavy, but maybe it might become manageable. I realised that the tasks which felt like they were taking all my time, in fact needed very little time. I actually needed to do very little work, but was expending enormous amounts of mental energy being anxious about doing them. Hardly a productive use of time! I spoke with my supervisor (and mentor). She pointed out that I had skills and knowledge; that I was capable of doing the job. She told me that it is a difficult job; the things I struggle with, I struggle with because they are difficult. The bit that I am not getting right is around having enough confidence. Which leads to a paradox for me. My confidence comes from getting things (at least approximately) right, from feeling capable in a task. So, I need to feel I am doing better at work, to increase my confidence. But, now I've been told, increasing my confidence is the way to get better at what I am doing. Hmm.

But the only real way though this is just to get on with it. So I'm going to. It's a relatively small decision, so how surprising that my shoulders feel so much lighter now that I have made it!

Gulp!

When I last posted - drawing attention to our lack of expertise with fish - I knew it was a possibility that George might not last. I didn't really expect him to die after only 5 days though.

Here's a picture of happier times....

And a very blurry picture of George himself... (It's hard to get a goldfish to pose!)

Ellie has taken it all rather well. He was clearly ill the night before, gasping and floating listlessly. We mentioned that George looked ill to Ellie, who said "When I get back from nursery tomorrow George will be dead". She stroked George's lifeless body goodbye before going to nursery the next morning. Paul buried George as he could not face the traditional toilet cremation.

On the positive side, we have found some excellent fish care websites, which includes one who will email a helpful and sympathetic response as to why your fish has probably died and what you can do to avoid it next time. So, the future George 2 (or princess tinkerbell as Ellie is suggesting) may do much better....

Ellie is three!

No posts for a while, but now I'm here, should I tell you about the joys of a Wacky Warehouse birthday party for 10 toddlers? (somebody else clears up!) Should I tell you about the uncontainable exicitement of a 3 year old unwrapping birthday presents? (stopping to run round and round the dining table). Shall I write a moving and articulate post about how quickly time has past, how this is the first year I have not fully relived the birth experience, how unutterably pround I am of my daughter, and how gorgeous she is....?

No instead, I shall introduce you to George the goldfish. (and maybe in the future I'll post some pictures of the birthday girl....)

Ellie's nana has given a fish tank (a stylish biorb) to Ellie for her birthday. We set it up, waited the absolute minimum of 24 hours and then went to buy a goldfish... Pets at home's fish expert was very very helpful, and gave us lots of advice about, for example, putting the plastic bag with the fish in the tank so it can adjust temperature before letting the fish into the bowl. On the drive home, I wondered aloud whether the bag would float. "It does in Nemo" said Paul. We clearly have so much expertise in goldfish between us!!!! Hm.

Welcome to your new home George the goldfish (and Good Luck - you might need it!)

Lighter

We've hardly had a winter here - a couple of weekends with sprinkles of snow, but rarely the biting cold in which you wish you'd put on your gloves or scarf. And yet, today it feels even warmer. With the clocks changing it's light when I drive home and suddenly, unexpectedly a weight I'd not really noticed has lifted.

Yes, Spring must be here...

Personality Test

Your Personality is the Rarest (INFJ)

Your personality type is introspective, principled, self critical, and sensitive. Only about 2% of all people have your personality - including 3% of all women and around 1% of all men. You are Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Judging.

How Rare Is Your Personality?

Good news! I do still have a personality! Frustratingly, I did this test in a more detailed way a few years ago, but cannot remember how I came out in that one - I don't recall them being graded on 'rarity' though!

Families

Two random thoughts about families:

1) Since Ellie was born nearly 3 years ago, I have spent 1 night away from home (when Paul and I went to a wedding. Last night, I stayed in a hotel near Newcastle so I could be bright eyed and bushy tailed for a training course today. Alone. No Ellie. No Paul. Kingsize bed all to myself. Very strange. And I missed them both - dreadfully. That's not to say I wouldn't stay away again if I needed to... but... it was much much harder than I'd expected.

2) Today, Paul needed to get yet another sicknote from the GP - to tie up the loose ends of his job termination, and so that he can get on with sorting out some incapacity benefit to replace his work (statutory) sick pay. He ended up with a phone appt with the GP, who not only gave Paul a thorough verbal check over, but also asked how Paul's illness was affecting family life, myself and Ellie - on the grounds that we were all registered with the practice. Clearly the days of 'family doctors' are not gone!

Observation

I found this on someone else's blog - so I'm hoping it's not copyright! Look at the picture below, and see how long it takes you to see the man hiding amongst the beans. Once you see him, you'll be amazed that you didn't spot him straight away. (Unless of course, your brain works in some incredible way which means that you do see him instantly - in which case I'm most impressed!)

Poetry?

Tides turning
Waves crashing
Relentlessly battering

Tossed, turned
Shaken, thrown
Set all in a spin

But You -
My anchor
Hold me
Firm and safe

Blogiversary - Random thoughts

It is exactly a year since I first posted. Incredible!

I re-read my first post (and a few subsequent ones) and it made me realise just how much things have changed in the last year. Oh there's all the stuff I've already posted about Paul's illness and job, there's all the bits about my changing job - which you probably got fed up of reading about at the time. Then there are the things I'd not thought about much - how when I went with Ellie to Wacky Warehouse a year ago, I used to lift her up between the sections, and come down the slides with her. Now she does it all by herself (once we've taken her there!).

I'm not sure that I've used this blog as much as I'd hoped as a reflective or creative space - although there have been elements of that. I've veered between posting frequently (NaBloPoMo in November certainly contributed significantly to my year's total of 78 posts) and posting occasionally.

The blog also quickly became valuable as a way of sharing pictures of Ellie with family and friends, and with updating people on my/our situation when I was too busy, or events had left me too bruised to want to keep discussing them - but needed and wanted to let people know what was happening.

What I hadn't expected was that my blog would open the way to reading other blogs - stranger's blogs - with whom I would find an shared interest, an affinity if you will. Checking bloglines and realising that someone has posted - it's almost as good as getting a real letter (not a bill!) through the post.

So, having made it to here - my next goal is to reach my 100th post, to make a little more time in my day to think about what to post, and to actually post it (at least semi-regularly!) and to make a little more time occasionally to visit those other blogs out there. To meet more of those strangers who might yet become cyber-friends.

Side Effects

A potentially humorous post - which never lived up to its potential (sorry)

I mentioned in my last post that generally I don't think of Paul being ill. I know that Paul has momentary absences, memory loss (currently about 50%) from one day to the next, and functioning/processing difficulties which make it difficult for him to absorb and apply new information.

But, on the whole, we have found coping mechanisms for most of the difficulties; little systems which you might do anyway, but which have added use when memories aren't going to be carried from one day to the next. Having a shopping list which you add to as things are used up or about to run out, for example. And these systems allow us to maintain that screen of 'alrightness' because we rarely have to directly face the fact that parts of his brain, at the moment, simply don't work as they are supposed to do.

But sometimes this fails us, because our lovely screen means we miss the obvious!

We're on a fairly tight budget for our food shopping, but on a 'good' week (not too many impulse buys) it's easily sufficient. We also have our wonderful weekly organic food box which we pay for separately. However, for several weeks in a row we just kept overspending...

I should also add that we went up to using a second freezer at Christmas time, but by mid February both freezers were packed with food...

And, that the fridge was always crammed full of food too - with some of it reaching use by dates and going off....

Hmmm...

Eventually it struck me - could this have anything to do with the fact that Paul, since he was doing the bulk of the cooking, had also by default been left in charge of shopping lists and menu planning? Erm, that would be tasks which really relied upon remembering what food is left half open in the back of the fridge (or hiding in the freezer) and processing information about what food needed using up most urgently, and planning combinations of food to cook/buy using these bits of information. Not to mention remembering to defrost food we needed

In fact, expecting Paul to do all the tasks he was least able to do, every day. And then wondering why things weren't running quite as smoothly as they might!

Maybe it's not just Paul's brain that isn't working properly!!!