Last week I did something I still can't quite get my head around... I managed to delete all of my camera photos off of my phone. Surprisingly, this is extremely easy to do on an android phone and although you might think I would be angry or upset, I was neither. I was numb, I had absolutely nothing going on in my head at that moment. Thankfully, on plugging it into a desktop there was an option called "Import all photos and videos" so I promptly did this and I think it found them. I do have to sort through all 4,300 files it managed to find though! I do need to learn to use less haste and more speed sometimes, but this was a step too far. I could have lost tons of precious photos and videos of my son saying things he no longer says. An example of this was when he was 14 months and he first said "ma-ma" but the way he said it was almost like he was proud to say it and it was long and drawn out and the sweetest thing ever... a mere 2 months later he was calling me "mummy" and "mum". So sad. There is also the cute way he says teapot ("peatot") but that's for another time.
I am so precious about backing photos and videos up (we have a copy on the desktop and a copy on two different hard drives) but I definitely don't upload phone photos enough. The last time I had uploaded before this incident was the end of June. Any mother of a toddler knows how much they can change in that small space of time. There is of course another lifeline, the fact I am an ardent user of Whatsapp and that they save all media you send out as standard. I am so happy that I sent so many photos to family members as at least those were a fall back if I couldn't retrieve anything else.
That aside, I have been trying to keep myself busy and my mind ticking over as I try and decide what it is I want from my working life. I appreciate I am a mother now first and foremost but this has always been a difficult subject to address for me. People know what they want to do with their lives, some people don't care as long as they're challenged/learning/interacting with people and so on, I do not. I know I want to be challenged in a role, I also know what my strengths and weaknesses are and what interests me. What I cannot seem to do is translate any of those into a career. Like any person who is bored in a job, I have job hopped hoping my next move would be my last move and I would be happy. This is still not the case. From speaking to other people I have had a range of suggestions but they are all complete changes of field for me. To be honest, these suggestions were options I had definitely considered but had ruled out as I don't have the experience and starting from the lower echelons and working my way up like I would have done a decade ago is not financially viable for me with a family. They also bring up another range of questions - would the grass be greener if I were able to find a way into these areas of work? How would I sell myself without the experience for someone to give me the opportunity? Would I be able to have a work/life balance?
I have mentioned previously that I am studying with Shaw Academy. To date I have completed the foundation in Graphic Design, foundation in Photography and am currently in the process of studying for a certificate in Child Nutrition (purely out of interest) and a certificate in Career Development (you can see where I'm going with this obviously). I'm hoping that maybe this course will help me adapt my CV to be able to show my skills are transferable - so many recruiters are lazy and/or short-sighted so I need my CV to be as appealing as possible to draw them in. Only time will tell if people will be interested in recruiting me or not but one thing is for sure, I need to be using my adult brain while I still have one. Although my job-hopping may look unreliable, if I just had the opportunity to do something I loved I could easily prove I have loyalty, I just need to be given the chance to grow and develop and to feel part of the team.
~AB~
Thursday 25 August 2016
Tuesday 9 August 2016
Summer holidays
I'm not sure what it's like around the world (except Italy as I know they close down everything over August) but here in England the world seems to slow down over the summer holidays. The summer holidays here refer to schools breaking up usually around the second or third week in July and then starting up again mid-week through the first or second week of September. It is about a 6-7 week period where the trains and buses are quiet and you may be lucky enough to get a seat. The pub outside areas are generally full all day because it's sunny and what is a sunny day without a trip to a beer garden for a shandy (half beer, half lemonade)? But all child related locations are full of desperate parents and their bored children.
All classes bar a small handful close down for the summer period. I only have one toddler who does not go to school (thankfully his nursery doesn't close for the summer) so this leaves me with no classes to take him to to keep him occupied during the day. I also feel that by closing the classes for the whole holiday they are losing the routine which goes against what a lot of these classes are trying to achieve, I get that the teachers need to take a break too but a couple of weeks is more realistic surely, not the whole summer? Anyway, that's another rant for another time. Last week I had a playdate with some mums from the playgroup my son usually goes to on a Wednesday, as per usual in England it was raining so a picnic was out of the question so we went to a soft play centre. It was awful. It was packed to the rafters with children and their parents trying to keep them busy and my son was so small compared to many of the other kids. You couldn't really hear yourself think and I think in the end even my son was overwhelmed with the sheer number of children but strangely, the limit hadn't been met on numbers so they were still letting people in! Never, ever again.
Since then I have been searching for things to do with my son that don't involve being in such a small but crowded place, but where he can roam and enjoy himself obviously. For the next at least 4 weeks that will be very difficult but as he is an early riser and other families don't seem to be, I have been taking advantage of the quietness and we have been exploring places when they open at 9am then leaving as the crowd come in at 11. We went to Lloyd Park in Walthamstow a couple of weeks ago on a Tuesday morning at 9.30am and it was dead! There were barely any children and parents around and my son got to play in their massive sand pit area practically on his own. I've been scouring the local mum groups on Facebook to try and get some more outdoor toys so we can have our own playspace here till the summer holidays are over. I know it sounds anti-social of me but we do meet mums for picnics and we have kids over, it's just that I'm not willing to have my son bombarded and surrounded by a bunch of older kids just for the sake of something for him to do. That and the fact that aside from soft play and parks, everything else costs so much money. My son is still under 2 so is mostly affordable but when I start having to pay at least £10 for myself to come with him, it starts to add up.
For the first time in almost a year, my husban and I took our son swimming. We went to a pool my mum used to take my sister and I to when we were younger. It just had a refurbishment last year but it used to have two massive slides that went outside of the building and back in again, it was amazing! I didn't think they could top that but having a young child, they have put in a little water play area for babies and my son, despite the fact he can't swim and despises a pool... loved it! This is a picture of the space:
It is absolutely fantastic and the best thing I could have found for the holidays. I will definitely be taking my son back over and over to get him used to the water before our big (first) family holiday in November, the joy and excitement on his face was something I never thought I would see with him and swimming. There are other things on our to do list but this has trumped them all so they're not even worth a mention compared to this, I cannot wait to go back. What are you up to this holiday?
~AB~
All classes bar a small handful close down for the summer period. I only have one toddler who does not go to school (thankfully his nursery doesn't close for the summer) so this leaves me with no classes to take him to to keep him occupied during the day. I also feel that by closing the classes for the whole holiday they are losing the routine which goes against what a lot of these classes are trying to achieve, I get that the teachers need to take a break too but a couple of weeks is more realistic surely, not the whole summer? Anyway, that's another rant for another time. Last week I had a playdate with some mums from the playgroup my son usually goes to on a Wednesday, as per usual in England it was raining so a picnic was out of the question so we went to a soft play centre. It was awful. It was packed to the rafters with children and their parents trying to keep them busy and my son was so small compared to many of the other kids. You couldn't really hear yourself think and I think in the end even my son was overwhelmed with the sheer number of children but strangely, the limit hadn't been met on numbers so they were still letting people in! Never, ever again.
Since then I have been searching for things to do with my son that don't involve being in such a small but crowded place, but where he can roam and enjoy himself obviously. For the next at least 4 weeks that will be very difficult but as he is an early riser and other families don't seem to be, I have been taking advantage of the quietness and we have been exploring places when they open at 9am then leaving as the crowd come in at 11. We went to Lloyd Park in Walthamstow a couple of weeks ago on a Tuesday morning at 9.30am and it was dead! There were barely any children and parents around and my son got to play in their massive sand pit area practically on his own. I've been scouring the local mum groups on Facebook to try and get some more outdoor toys so we can have our own playspace here till the summer holidays are over. I know it sounds anti-social of me but we do meet mums for picnics and we have kids over, it's just that I'm not willing to have my son bombarded and surrounded by a bunch of older kids just for the sake of something for him to do. That and the fact that aside from soft play and parks, everything else costs so much money. My son is still under 2 so is mostly affordable but when I start having to pay at least £10 for myself to come with him, it starts to add up.
For the first time in almost a year, my husban and I took our son swimming. We went to a pool my mum used to take my sister and I to when we were younger. It just had a refurbishment last year but it used to have two massive slides that went outside of the building and back in again, it was amazing! I didn't think they could top that but having a young child, they have put in a little water play area for babies and my son, despite the fact he can't swim and despises a pool... loved it! This is a picture of the space:
 |
| Leyton Leisure Centre by Trebor Developments |
It is absolutely fantastic and the best thing I could have found for the holidays. I will definitely be taking my son back over and over to get him used to the water before our big (first) family holiday in November, the joy and excitement on his face was something I never thought I would see with him and swimming. There are other things on our to do list but this has trumped them all so they're not even worth a mention compared to this, I cannot wait to go back. What are you up to this holiday?
~AB~
Monday 1 August 2016
Phew!
The last month has been INTENSE and I'm not too sad to see it go. I feel like I have achieved so much but on the flip side one thing has taken a back seat while I hit deadlines and that's my health. My skin looks terrible and I have gained a fair amount of weight. That being said, the weight gain could be due to the fact that people feed me things (dairy filled things) despite me asking if it has dairy in it. I think I need to rephrase my question and ask what it is made of and not is there dairy in this so I can make the decision myself. I'm not asking for people to cater for me specifically, just don't hand me dairy because you can't be bothered to tell me whether it has it or not and you think I'm being difficult. People have actually implied that I have made up my dairy intolerance! Anyway... rant over!
So I did manage to get round to making both the flapjacks and the birthday cake for my sister. Unfortunately there is no picture of the flapjacks because it fell apart (possibly because I used dairy free butter) and also it tasted so good, I actually forgot to take one before my husband, son and I ate most of it.
The cake on the other hand I have taken a few pictures of because I'm so proud I managed to complete a recipe and not ruin it! In my last post I mentioned the recipe I would be using however, I decided to only use the icing recipe from this site to fill the cake and have used this recipe for the rest of it instead:
Whilst it shows a loaf on there, mine was a birthday cake and I don't think those should be shaped like loaves so without further ado here is mine:
The best part about this recipe, it is both dairy and egg free. I used flour with gluten in it but it was super easy and I will definitely be using this recipe again.
Here's to the end of July and the start of the true summer, may naps like the one I had last Monday be plentiful (well, till my son cuts out his midday naps).
~AB~
So I did manage to get round to making both the flapjacks and the birthday cake for my sister. Unfortunately there is no picture of the flapjacks because it fell apart (possibly because I used dairy free butter) and also it tasted so good, I actually forgot to take one before my husband, son and I ate most of it.
The cake on the other hand I have taken a few pictures of because I'm so proud I managed to complete a recipe and not ruin it! In my last post I mentioned the recipe I would be using however, I decided to only use the icing recipe from this site to fill the cake and have used this recipe for the rest of it instead:
 |
| https://redhotcentre.wordpress.com/2014/07/23/lime-coconut-cake-gluten-free-dairy-free/ |
The best part about this recipe, it is both dairy and egg free. I used flour with gluten in it but it was super easy and I will definitely be using this recipe again.
Here's to the end of July and the start of the true summer, may naps like the one I had last Monday be plentiful (well, till my son cuts out his midday naps).
~AB~
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)