Another Year...

With my birthday coming up I have found myself reminiscing tonight about the last year. Looking back at photos with H and having a good giggle. There is something really lovely about knowing that I have captured all of these moments on film and that we will be able to look back on them in years to come. I am looking forward to making a lot more memories this year, and of course, taking a lot more photographs.

Lots of Spots, and Their Effects on Running

We have Chicken Pox, or at least H does, however it feels like a family illness as we are all effected in one way or another. If I am honest I think H is handling it better than the rest of us. Her Dad returned home from work 10 minutes after I had made the shocking discovery, and swamped with flashbacks to his own youth when he had Chicken Pox aged 13 he reeled in horror. I have been cuddling and fussing over her so much that I think she may be thankful when she can return to nursery and have a break from me!

As a direct result I have been skipping my training sessions for the past week so by way of extra motivation I have been trying to come up with a running playlist for my amazing new iPod touch

A very thoughtful present from the girls’ Daddy a few weeks ago, complete with sports arm band. It is a real step up from my old fifth generation classic, I love that it can also access the Internet, and take photographs. I have been getting to grips with the world of Instagram and it has been a great help so far in keeping me motivated and distracting me from the pain when I am running. I intend to buy some new headphones for it as the ones that were included have a habit of falling out my ears – I tell myself it is because I am running so fast, however, passers by may tell you differently.

In my own moment of self indulgence I decided to buy myself a hand held water bottle for a couple of quid, it is so nice to no longer have a baby bottle bouncing around in my pocket and it has saved me from any more embarrassing apple juice moments. All in all the running itself is getting easier, I managed 5K in 28mins 1second on my last run week and I upped my distance today and I managed 6.5K in 37 minutes 34 seconds. While I am still a long way off of my 10K target, I am blown away by how much I have improved since starting this mission just 2 months ago. This weekend I am planning to buy myself some running clothes so I can return my Mums to her and hopefully prevent any MORE people from mistaking me for her.

F has also had a lot of measurable success this month with her crawling coming along nicely, her ability to cruise the furniture with ease, her first tooth through and her new found power to shout “Mummy” and “Daddy” rather loudly, she is very proud of herself, and rightly so.

The past couple of weeks have been a bit hectic. Hannah has been helping out in the kitchen loads, much to her delight as cooking is one of her very favourite past times and as Kelkoo are currently on the search for a new child cooking star I made a couple of videos of her in action.

Jam and Cucumber...

I guess I was asking for trouble when the words "What would you like?" passed my lips. This must be the reason my parents never gave me a choice. In retrospect I suppose it could have been worse? I wonder what other unusual combinations she will come up with

Beer? In a baby bottle?!!

There is chicken pox doing the rounds at my daughter nursery, and whilst so far we seem to have escaped it, myself and the baby have both been unwell with the cold the past few days. Today, more out of a sense of duty than anything else, I decided I should go training regardless. On my schedule today was a 2.5K run, and then a 2.5K walk back home. Knowing how thirsty I get when I run, I decided to take a drink with me. After I stopped running I produced my drink, which I had cleverly (or so I thought) carried in my pocket in a baby bottle. I guess if I am honest I can’t blame the guy who passed me STARING at what looked distinctly like beer, as I so desperately drank from my bottle while my jelly legs made me stagger and sway slightly. NOTE TO SELF: Next time DON’T take apple juice.

Messy Kids

H has had a LOT of practise at being messy, so I guess it should come as no surprise to me that now she is 3 she is really pretty good at it (somewhere in my head I had imagined that she would become cleaner as time went on – I dread to think what her teenage years are going to be like!)

Until the 6th of February the lovely people at Appliances Online and Mothers Always Right are running a competition to win £75 of Amazon vouchers. Here is my entry to the Appliances Online messiest kid competition at Mothers Always Right. If you have a messy child too, why not enter as well.

I'm trying to make up my mind what I will buy if we win. Really I should probably buy something boring like carpet cleaner :P But most likely I can see it being a crate full of paint. Hopefully when she is as famous as Banksy she will pay me back by taking me out for a nice meal or something :) Or at least paying to have my greying hair dyed back to a nice shade of blonde.

Catch up

The past fortnight has been a crazy busy mixture of training, being “WOW”ed by H’s recognition of letters and words, creating a massive map of Italy (which I am yet to finish), arguing with the ‘designer’ about our new kitchen and encouraging F as she verges on the edges of independence and learning to crawl.

I’ve been remembering (a little too late) lessons about allowing the baby to chew my phone and wearing my favourite jumpers when said baby is learning to eat and throwing food around the kitchen with such ferocity that everything in it’s path comes to resemble a Jackson Pollock painting.

Training is getting better. I say that, but following last Saturdays attempt – it really couldn’t get much worse. As if the fact that I accidentally wore my running trousers inside out wasn’t bad enough, my Dad decided to join me to asses my progress. So there we were running around in MATCHING yellow jackets, as my running gear is a load of stuff that my Mum lent to me. On the up side it was blowing a gale and hail stoning so there weren’t many people out and about who saw us, and hopefully no-one who saw me run straight into a tree as I passed my parents house. It really is fortunate that I don’t drive!