Five years ago today we were on our way to Guildford to have some lunch, in a state of not really knowing what had hit us. I can’t remember the name of the cafe but I’ve still got the sachet of sugar with the silly message on it. If someone had sat down at the table with us while we were eating our paninis, and told us that one day we would have a house and a car and a son, I think I might have believed them. No-one has ever felt as right to me as you do. If they had told me that in five years’ time, I would still find something new to love about you every single day, I would certainly have believed it. If they had told me how much strength and resilience you have, and how cool you are in a crisis, and how tolerant and patient you can be, I would have been pleasantly surprised, because I didn’t know you that well at that point. If they had mentioned that you were hot, I would have given them a knowing wink.

Happy anniversary sweetheart.

This year’s chocolate stash was the biggest haul yet, now that we have a ringer on the team. Bernard will almost certainly never eat more than 1% of the chocolate he was given for easter by kindly grandparents (who obviously are excluded from the no-sweets rule – apparently) and his childminder (who gave him a toy for a 6 month old for christmas, and a chocolate selection pack for a 3 year old for easter).

Note that despite the family’s stubborn refusal to take any interest whatsoever in our try-to-be-green lifestyle, there is actually a decent quantity of minimally packaged chocolate here (and four fairtrade eggs!). Maybe next year we will move even further away from the mainstream egg and more towards the better quality organic chocolate.

Easter was very highly family-orientated, but not unpleasantly so, apart from the high mileage involved and the poor sleep on the part of the child, and therefore on the part of the mother too. Three different beds in five nights and meeting people almost every day was never going to produce a contented and settled little boy, on top of which there is a copious quantity of snot and a lot of finger-chewing, suggesting that teeth are, as usual, an issue.

One good thing about being up north for the long weekend was that Bernard got to make his first snowman (for some reason he calls these mi-maw) with one enthusiastic grandmother; and for the first time in his life, he was awake as we crossed the Humber Bridge on Easter Sunday, craning to look out of the window and saying wowww!

This year I made some sort of vague promise to myself about getting various jobs done around the place. I made a schedule and everything. By the beginning of February, I had overseen the kitchen fridge project, and yesterday’s work in the garden was the second item on the list.

My next project, to be completed by the end of May, is to replace the glass in the internal doors with safety glass, and get a new front door. The current front door is draughty, and it sticks. Doors, however, are expensive, and I think we probably need someone to install it for us. I did have a quote somewhere, so I suppose the first step is to dig that out of the file.

It’s cool to have two ticks on my list already.

In a more serious attempt to cut down on some of my commitments and make my life easier, I made a list of everything I do and why I can’t or don’t want to do any less of it. The end result, I suppose, was the realisation that actually I am managing fine, and just need a bit more sleep, and no amount of re-arranging is going to help with that.

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