I’ve written about Bing before. Or at least in the style of him. Today it was Lola and Charlie that got me thinking. Lola was upset because it was Autumn and everything was changing. It made me think, though, as cheesy as it is. Autumn is a season of change, and this year it feels like there is more change then normal.
After a summer of running around with both smalls, in unusually scorching hot weather, I realise that they have changed. The Boy is no longer a baby, but a full-blown toddler, not speaking as such but trying very hard and making himself understood very successfully! And running everywhere! The Girl, meanwhile, is a proper little girl and no longer a toddler. Her language has come on in leaps and bounds over the summer and her understanding of concepts bigger then she has ever understood before has increased so much I lose track!
Meanwhile, since the 1st September, I have been officially unemployed. Not that it means I have nothing to do, but technically, I’m unemployed. Has it made me a better mum? No! Of course not, but it hasn’t made me a worse one yet! It does make me a little unsure of my own identity and of what my future holds for me in terms of my own career. I have no answers yet.
There is a change to our routine as well. As it gets darker in the morning and darker in the evening, sleep routines have changed. The Boy still doesn’t sleep very well, but he tries for longer now. Our windows are no longer permanently wedged open, we can no longer leave walking The Dog until the last minute as the evenings draw in, and the blackberries are pretty much done for the year.
The Girl starts a new pre-school next week and we re-shuffle our routine again, bringing new opportunities for all of us. She is ready for it but we are all a little apprehensive at this stage about it. Both children will start with a childminder as well, giving me a little space to try my hand at something to earn a living, but I am not sure quite what that will look like yet.
As a teacher, I have always worked in terms of an acedemic year rarther than a calendar one, and I think it works that way. January 1st being new year is incidental, most of the major changes in my life have often happened around September time. New students appear in your life, there is new stationary to be purchased and new classrooms and offices to organise. New classes to teach and new children to plan for. By January they no longer feel new, and by July they are old hands, and we look with curiosity at the what the next September may bring. The seasons reflect this, working hard under cover of the cold and the dark to create new life and new ideas, new learning and new understandings...which pop up here and there in February and are positively gushing out by May. By the summer they are bedded in and worn with comfort and September comes round to shake it all up again, challenge it, test to see if the ideas will stick, and grow new ones.
By that philosophy, the time has come to consider the immediate future of my blog. It has changed since the early days of weekly, sometimes daily updates (because: breastfeeding) but my reasons for writing are still the same. If it helps others to know they are not alone in the madness, that everyone feels like a failure at this parenting sometimes, and that they can still be a good parent despite that, then it’s worth doing. The reasons have grown, too, I enjoy writing it (despite not getting as much time as I like to write it) and the online community of bloggers and entrepreneurs I have come into contact with via the blog work has introduced me to ideas I might not have thought of before. Avon, Beachbody, (more in that later) amongst other things.
So, I plan to commit to it for another year at least. To try and blog more often then the summer has allowed me too (pre-school may just allow me this luxury) and to see what becomes of it another year on. To be honest, I can’t believe it’s been a year, and I can’t believe it’s only been a year...it feels like forever ago I started writing. So much has happened and so much has changed.
Some things haven’t changed.
The Boy still hardly sleeps.
The Girl is still very active.
The Dog still lives in hope of dropped food and loves a good sofa snuggle.
The Husband will still guest blog (I have one waiting from him to publish) and still laughs at my regular ridiculous new ideas to earn an income around the smalls.
Things have changed. But things have stayed the same. I wonder what another year will bring?