Joseph's Diets; This week we'll mostly be eating...

Nothing is ever quite as you remember it. Gold Bars, recently purchased from Home & Bargain, a Mecca for throwback chocolate, just aren’t as tasty as they were when I was a kid. (Pause for a quick aside. Despite what the sign says, I refuse to call it Home Bargains. I’m Scouse. It’s Home AND Bargain. Singular Bargain. Don’t even try and question me. I’m shutting down that conversation right now) Chesney Hawkes probably isn’t as fit as the 8-year-old me thought he was and I refuse to introduce my kids to the wonders of Thundercats, just in case it was, in fact, shit. Some things are best kept in the past, preserved by glory and nostalgia. Certain aspects of your child’s early years are also kept this way. It’s lovely to think you had a joyfully happy baby, who rarely cried and was a walking, talking, potty trained six-month-old child genius, even if, in reality, they were a squawking brat of fairly average intelligence.

To some extent, the sands of time do smear Vaseline over the lenses of our rose-coloured spectacles and everything is in soft focus, all warm and fuzzy. Unless something traumatic has happened, by the end of the toddler years, most people choose to remember mainly the yummy, cuddly sweet bits of those early days. Or maybe that is just me. I’m a bugger for nostalgia but I can’t help but think that, now baby number 2 is here, nostalgia is being a bit of a bugger for me, causing me more stress and anxiety than the present.

This week, we have embarked upon weaning our six-month-old. We have chosen to do it at the same time as potty training our two-and-a-half-year-old, so it’s literally all shits and giggles in our house right now. Except, in all honesty, there are a lot more shits going on and that is mainly on the potty-training side of things. For some unknown reason, Joe just doesn’t get solids. To the point that I am considering a DNA test because I’m just not sure how someone who is 50% me can be so disinterested in food. James, my eldest, took to solids straight away. And this is where I start to get all stressy.

Dick (head) Whittington Having It All

There is something about maternity leave that makes me want to reassess my existence. Having a baby is obviously earth shatteringly life changing, so I suppose it is to be expected that you stop for a second, wipe baby sick from your hair, remove the baby shit from the walls and wonder how the bloody hell you got to hate Eamon and Ruth so much and how soon you will need to arrange that christening to ensure your baby will get into the only outstanding school in the borough. (The answer to that last question is always Pretty Damn Quick, even if your baby is fresh from the uterus. It’s so bloody competitive and church schools always require for you to be on afternoon tea term with the vicar/priest. So cynical and so horribly true)

As the end of my maternity leave with James approached, in January 2015, I did enough naval gazing/night feeds to decide that life needed to change. Specifically, I decided it was a really great idea to learn to drive, join Slimming World (I was a monster chubster almost 12 months after giving birth) and look for a new job all at the same time. Because having a 1 year old and working clearly wasn’t enough to keep me busy/stressed to the max.

I absolutely hated the job I was doing and going back to work floored me. Not necessarily because I desperately wanted to be with my baby. Hell, I’m not Ma Walton! The job completely drained me and I was, quite frankly, shit at it. By the end of my first week back in work, I was applying for jobs internally. Within 6 weeks, I was starting a new, much less soul destroying job, which happily included more money. By the end of 2015, I had passed my driving test (Christ knows how. Google Maureen from Driving School and you will get the idea), lost two stone, changed jobs, sold the house and was pregnant again (and well on my way to piling that two stone back on and a bit more, besides. I don’t believe in doing things by half). Last year was pretty busy. This year has been a bit quieter, arrival of baby number 2 aside, but now I’ve adjusted to life as a mum of two (hahahaha! who the f@^k am I kidding?!), once again I am reviewing the last 33 years and 8 months and realising it’s high time I Got My Shit Together™. You know, like a proper adult.