Pads is just 2 days away from hitting the massive 20 month old mark. My little acorn is now a tiny oak tree. Time seems to be flying faster now my boy is a proper little toddle pod and the baby days are becoming blurrier and seeming much further away, and with that, the parenting game has most definitely changed. Pads is into everything in a much bigger way now, with more speed, more energy, more sneakiness, and more bravado or confidence; whether it’s climbing onto things, trying to wriggle under furniture, wanting to pick everything that isn’t nailed down up (and he is freakishly strong for such a wee one!), to wanting to run up every hill he sees – molehiles are a new discovery and one cannot be passed by without climbing onto and getting mud all over his bum/knees/hands when he inevitably tumbles down the other side. Ah mud. That’s our new best buddy too.
With this lovely Welsh weather that we have been having, every day seems to involve puddles, muddy boots, splattered mud and therefore my clothes always a little bit covered in mud at some point each day, when he inevitably wants to be picked up mid-walk, usually just after a fresh mud splattering or puddle splash. We took a lovely post rain walk around Llangorse Lake the other day, where there were some spectacular puddles, which we both enjoyed wading through, however, Pads got a little over-excited and ran a bit too fast through the biggest one and of course, fell front first into the murky cold waters, then fell backwards into it trying to get himself up, which turned into a comedy sketch of both of us ending up completely soaked, and having to do a change of clothes at the car door right out in the open fresh air! He loved every minute of it though, so that’s the main thing, and luckily, I always keep spare clothes in the car and in his change bag for times like this.
The obsession with brushes, brooms and cleaning is still going strong and has gone up a level. His word play is excellent with new words coming every week and one of his favourite pastimes now is to list all of the words he knows at once in random orders over and over, so we often get something like this early in the morning or whenever he feels chatty (which is often!): ‘mummy’, ‘car’, ’cat’ (news flash: we now have a cat, aptly named Katniss, as every country cottage needs a good mouser and we wanted Pads to grow up around pets to learnt to respect and love animals from an early age, and apart from a bit of over excited chasing around the house and the occasional too tempting to resist tail pulling, he is learning to gently stroke the cat and tries to give her a kiss at every opportunity which is very cute and gratifying!);
‘daddy’, ‘nam nam’ (which is his word for grandma!), ‘nanny’, ‘cardy’ (that’s grandad- obviously!), ‘duck’, ‘quack’, ‘knock’ (he learnt that from the Postman Pat theme tune, legend), ‘man’ (which means He-man, his favourite tv show – what can I say, the boy has taste!), ‘snacks’ (my bad), ‘chicky’ (that’s Pads for chicken and is totally adorable when he says it), ‘cheese’ and ‘cheers’ (those 2 words are often hard to differentiate to be honest but become clearer with the accompanying action!), ‘cacka’ (the boy LOVES cake for some reason…no idea where he has got that from at all..ahem), ‘na-na’ (his favourite food of all time: bananas) and ‘biccies’ and so on. Some very important first words there that will see him through life I think!
He’s moved up a room at nursery, no longer a caterpillar but now a boisterous bossy little butterfly! He’s the chief of his room too, growing in confidence (or possibly cockiness) each week there which is lovely to see, and I am really loving the colourful artwork that he comes home with each week – our kitchen is covered in hand print paintings of sunflowers, footprints and colouring in samples!
Other big boy events since we last spoke are that he has dropped down to just one nap a day, which makes a big difference to our days, and generally he is easier to get to nap now taking between 1-3 hours of sleep depending on where he is and what he has been doing to tire him out. We still boob to sleep and he still wants ‘baboo’ as he calls it, in the day when I am not working and every morning. And it’s still one of my favourite parts of our days together. So many of our baby pals have finished their breastfeeding journeys around about this age or earlier, and he did refuse the boob one evening which I thought might be the beginning of the end as that’s how it seems to have started with so many other mum and baby teams. I felt really sad and really emotional that evening and came down the stairs with a heavy heart and burst into tears at the bottom when Jon asked me if I was ok. I clearly wasn’t ready to stop what has been such a huge part of mine and Pads parenting journey together. Luckily, neither was Pads as the next eve he wanted ‘baboo’ again and so we are still going strong, and feeling blessed to be able to say that. It’s on his terms but I am secretly very pleased that we get to continue and so proud of how far we have come.
He has also started displaying real affection through giving lots of kisses to us, his grandparents, Uncle Dave and cousin Nosey who is visiting us from Australia this week. He absolutely loves his cousin and seeing them together holding hands, playing and laughing is just gorgeous. We have just come back from a lovely family holiday at Bluestone National Park in Pembrokeshire, where the cousins got to swim, explore nature trails, lakes, woods and extreme adventure play lands together and had a whale of a time, as did the adults, all being together in a fun and family friendly environment.
Pads is super cuddly at the moment and loves to hold hands and swing or sit and cwtch with his head nestled into my neck. It’s one of my favourite things to do in the whole world and boy does he give excellent hug! (He will always hug his mum like this, right?!)
We have also started very loose potty training, not that its something I want to rush into but I wanted to at least get him used to what the potty was for before we start toilet training properly, whenever he is ready. I took the potty out of storage and put it next to our loo just to get him used to it and on that first day I talked him through the basics of toilet usage as I did what I had to do on the loo. He listened and watched very closely and then I took his nappy off so he could get used to sitting on the potty bare-bottomed and explained the basics of wee wees out of the front and poo poos out of the back etc… He was a captive audience, really concentrating and repeating those words over and over as if he really liked the sound of them.
I left him to keep sitting on the potty and practicing getting off it which is quite tricky for a wee one actually, while I cleaned the rest of the bathroom and after about 2 mins of him sitting and standing in repetition, he suddenly said ‘poo’, sat down confidently on the potty and did his do like a pro. I was overly excited by this display of professional potty usage and messaged Jon immediately informing him of how genius his son was. Never before has a poo received such joy, applause and pride (well, not from me anyway! Am sure I am not the first parent to delight in a turd being deposited in the actual potty!).
I would like to say that our boy continued this genius quick learning toilet habit with no accidents…however, we have quickly realised that marvellous poo was a fluke. The next day, we did nappy off, sit on potty etc..and nothing happened. Until he started walking around the bathroom and squatted on the nice clean fluffy bath mat…yup and promptly soiled it. Followed by the next day doing a lovely number 2 on the polished antique wooden floorboards and so on…not one more poo has hit the potty from the source of whence it came. Nope. Not quite ready to be toilet trained then, as we suspected, but at least he likes the potty and now tells us when he has had a poo or wee, so that’s something!
Our Food Assembly is going really well, thanks for asking!, and Pads is the star attraction, delighting our food producers and members alike – he is especially fond of the giant teacakes our baker brings for him as a treat each week, and walks around the village hall where we hold the pop-up food market each week, like he owns the place, which to be fair, for that night, he pretty much does! It is so lovely to see him interacting so confidently and humorously with other adults and kids, and he has some excellent social and communication skills blooming which makes me incredibly proud.
I also started teaching Daisy Birthing active antenatal classes, after qualifying as a Birth Educator at the end of last year, and am now half way through my first 6 week term, teaching some really lovely local mums-to-be, and I am loving it.
I find it a very calming and inspirational experience, and am surprised by how much of the antenatal education I remember each week. I always drive to classes thinking I won’t remember that week’s topic and doubting whether I will recall the moves or techniques properly, but by the time I get there, I have usually run the class over in my head twice and then its show time! Yes, I do get a bit nervous when we first start the class and just before I go into the education segment I can feel my heart beating faster, my mouth helpfully start to dry up and my cheeks flush a little redder, but once I get into it, I really enjoy it and think I am starting to find my flow now I am 3 classes in. I feel honoured to be (hopefully!) helping my lovely mummies to relax, release and feel informed and empowered about their pregnancies and up-coming births. I certainly wish I had experience Daisy Birthing before having Pads, as the breathing techniques are so relaxing, calming and positivity inducing, and its definitely something I will be calling upon if we go for baby number 2! Not quite yet though…!
Because I teach on Friday evenings, Jon has taken over the bath and bed routine once a week, and Pads loves his one-on-one daddy time, and can’t get enough of bath time on his own now too – buying a set of inexpensive foam bath letters really helped as he loves to tip them all out, splash about with them, stick them to the side of the bath and then put them all back in the bag. (Tidying and putting things back is one of his favourite games of all time!).
At first I felt really torn not to be doing my ‘duty’ I suppose on a Friday eve as I have done bath and bed every single night, bar a handful, since Pads was born, and I did really miss doing it the first night. (Daft I know!) I felt a bit sad and as if the baby bubble of everything being down to me because I was the one on maternity leave, and I didn’t have work to go to, was coming to a real tangible end. Now I am juggling Daisy teaching , with freelance tv and festival work, working in a tea-room, and other bits and bobs so am working more days a week now than I have since Pads came along (and made our worlds a better place), and I am going up to full time next month for a while, to full-on 7 days a week during the actual Hay Festival event itself, and do you know what? Once the guilt and conflicted feelings of leaving Pads for more days with his grandparents and nursery settled down a bit, I realised that I am really enjoying the independence of working regularly again, using my brain in a different and freshly challenging way and taking on new, exciting roles that prove I still have skills, worthwhile experience and something meaningful to contribute, and in particular I am talking about a dream job of helping to co-ordinate the amazing Hay Festival which I started just last week and am loving!
Those tricksy mum guilt feelings definitely aren’t gone yet, oh no, they are still rearing their ugly heads throughout each week just when I think I have got this work/life/mum balance thing sussed, I then start wondering if I should be working at all as a mum and shouldn’t my job be just bringing up Pads and I should be happy enough with that right?! (This isn’t even a viable option, as I have to go back to work financially as well as personally and professionally).
These doubts are extremely frustrating as I don’t really believe them and do think its possible to be a great mum and be a valuable worker at the same time, doing something you enjoy that uses your skills and brings you career satisfaction. The tricky bit is not only balancing all of this and quashing those mum guilt feelings, but in finding the work in the first place, and the work that is right for you and your family commitments.
It is possible to have a life, a job and a happy baby/ies, and this is probably something I wasn’t giving myself the chance to realise before, perhaps because I wasn’t entirely ready to give up the baby bubble and also because I found it a huge struggle to find work in my rural area, with my varied and tv-centric CV that isn’t always easy to translate into transferable skills for other types of work I have discovered, so its been quite a journey of self-doubt, tears, feeling desperate, panicking, thinking I was just plain shit at everything other than being a parent anymore, re-evaluating what I want and don’t want out of work and life anymore, followed by more tears and a lot of soul searching, Cv re-writing and ridiculous job applications, whereby I literally cast the net as wide as possible going for everything and anything I could with a reasonable mile radius of our cottage.
Needless to say, this got me a lot of knock-backs, no replies and quite a few interviews ranging from the downright bizarre, slightly awkward, to really lovely and inspiring meetings of like-minds, so its been one heck of an experience getting back to meaningful and financially viable work again. And being freelance, I get to play this fun old job search game again in a few months – woohoo! For now though, I have found a job I am really enjoying, that fulfils my project-based work lust, working for and with lovely like-minded people in a relaxed and creative environment so I am so grateful to have found this work, and through it, my old work self and self-worth again.
Its all about balance isn’t it, and for now, I am feeling like I am getting there in finding that elusive work/life balance, but of course, being me, I have perhaps taken on a bit too much at once (as usual!) so am spinning quite a few plates, and have very high expectations of myself, but I am enjoying the challenges and variety of life at the moment, and am really excited about what I am doing and the in-roads I am making towards my new career path as a valuable working mum of an incredible, loving and infinite loveable little man. Pads, you are still my world, and my number one, I am just exploring a way of fitting other things in around you, and just trying to make things work as best as I can, and that feels good.
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