It’s been a while since I last wrote on here. Quite a bit has changed, or rather, not a lot has changed – which is the biggest change of all! I realise that makes no sense, but a few months ago I was worrying about going back to work; after all that worry I am now a Stay At Home Mum (SAHM for regular forum goers like myself). I worked in a hotel as a Duty Manager and part of my role was that I was in control of the hotel while no other senior manager was on site. This meant a typical shift was starting at 06:45 or finishing at 23:00. For a ‘regular’ couple, who do ‘regular’ jobs this wouldn’t be so much of a problem because one parent would be able to either take the child to childcare or pick up from childcare, but as we both work random, ridiculous hours it was completely unrealistic for us. I am very lucky in that just before this problem arose my partner had changed jobs and is now earning much more than he was – in fact his previous salary plus the salary I’d have earned on 3 days per week is less than the salary he will be getting when he signs the contract (he’s currently freelance). Therefore we are actually much better off with me at home as obviously we aren’t paying out childcare costs.
So, now that I’m a SAHM I am trying to find out what to do with myself, and how I can keep my life as fulfilling as possible. I’ve always hated not using my brain and the thought of it turning in to complete mush so I have contemplated taking a course when Oliver is a little older, for the moment I am putting my energy in to trying to organise my flat so that life will be more efficient. Efficiency is another thing I am trying to learn, I’ve never needed to be efficient with house work before Oliver came along. I am trying to engage myself in learning crafts too, I want to learn how to decorate cakes to a professional standard and also learn papercraft to make my own cards etc. I started out at Christmas with plain brown luggage tags and a rubber stamp saying “Do not open until 25 December”, very simple but effective and we got comments about how nice the tags were. At Christmas I also created a fondant Santa for our Christmas cake, I have always not really bothered doing anything artistic because I am not a very creative, artistic person; I am much better with words, however I was very pleased with how he turned out!
When we brought it out he even managed to steal a ball of yellow icing and eat it! Though I don’t think he’d do it again in a hurry, as he didn’t seem to want the cake when offered it a little later!
