Just Nicky

Another New Year’s Day January 29, 2008

I’ve always felt like the year doesn’t really start until after my birthday, since most thing don’t really get going again until the beginning of February. This is particularly so for us this year.

Today is the New Year’s Day of our ‘working’ year. Mark has gone back to work. Leila is back at childcare. Things are beginning to happen. The kids will begin swimming lessons later in the week. I need to enrol the in the first of my subject for this year.

This could all feel pretty daunting, but I’m looking forward to the ‘busyness’ of it all. One good thing about Finn’s kinder schedule (4 three hour sessions a week) is that it imposes a structure on the week and means that I will have to think about how best to use my time. With Leila’s 2 days at childcare, I have six child-free hours a week. Some of this is already taken up with seeing the shrink and I imagine the rest is likely to get pretty sucked up by study. I’m going to try not to use it doing housework or running meaningless errands. I need to learn to do the former with the kids around and they can tag along on the latter.

For now, though, things are off to a gentle start. I think today is the first day that Finn and I have been home alone since Leila was born. It’s caught us both a little off guard. He became a bit upset before we took Leila to childcare, although he was fine with leaving her there. And he keeps telling me that he wants to go everywhere that Dad goes - a sweet, if impractical, sentiment. I’m resisting the urge to buzz around like a bee in a bottle. There are things that could/should be done but they’re not going anywhere and I figure a slow day is not a bad thing for either of us. After lunch I’m think of taking Finn for a walk to the post box near his kinder as a practice run for actually going to kinder.

For now, though, I’ve just agreed to watch a Thomas episode.