Looking Back

I missed the anniversary of my blog again! If I was my blog I'd consider breaking up with me.

When I started this blog 3 years ago, Cherub was a happy little 2 year old, still sleeping in a cot and just moving on from saying lots of words and little sentences to having proper conversations. Climber had just started school and was performing in his first school concert as well as doing his first ever school holiday program - soccer, it was. I only had the one Kiddy Tap Class and a couple of Grown-ups' ones and Fixit was still a Motorbike Mechanic.

One year in to this blogging malarkey and 6 year old Climber had been losing his baby teeth, performed in another school concert and done some more soccer clinics. Cherub was a 3yo, going to creche a couple of times a week but pretty much my constant companion, and a delightful one he was too. I'd started a second Kiddy Tap class, and Fixit was still on the Bikes, but wanting out.

Two years in and Bertie Wooster had joined the family (although he's currently been AWOL for 2 nights and we are missing him, send Go Home Vibes to him, won't you please), Cherub was a big 4 year old Kinder Kid who could ride a bike with trainer wheels, Climber was 7 and in Grade 2, learning to manage his distractability in class and playing soccer all winter instead of just in the holidays. My Tap School was growing nicely and Fixit had changed careers from the Bikes to the Planes, and at this stage it was not going too badly...

This year, Fixit is trying to steer his course through the disaster that is his aircraft apprenticeship and holding out for a transfer in the near future. Meanwhile my Tap School is doing pretty well and the Kiddy Classes are now my best earner instead of the little side project I started so that my boys could learn! My children are 5 and 8, in Prep and Grade 3 respectively, and this feels like the Golden Age! Nappies are a dim, distant memory, and when I look back on the days when they were both small I feel slightly staggered by how much work it used to be: all that cleaning and feeding and wiping and tending and lifting and carrying and soothing, all the live-long day. Someone should tell all those parents with young 'uns that it actually DOES get easier! It really does. Have I told you about how we can sleep-in on Sundays because the children can just look after themselves for a couple of hours? Or how if I need a lemon for dinner I can send one or both of the kids out to the lemon tree to get it for me? How Cherub will always put my pyjamas and slippers away if I ask him? How Climber took on listening to Cherub do his home reader in the car on the way to school because we forgot the night before and wrote the comment in the little book and everything? It's bloody great, I tells ya.





It was funny looking back to the past three July-posts. In one sense things haven't changed much: school concerts, trivia nights, school holidays -and school holiday programs & haircuts. Here it is July again and I am just recovering from the school holidays and about to belatedly get the boys' hair cut (having mucked up their usual school holiday appointment), I'm helping Cherub's class prepare for their first ever school concert, and casting about for people to join the team for the forthcoming Trivia Night, etc etc. But on the other hand, the boys have grown so much and come so far since the day I posted my first blog entry. The changes in them continue to astonish and delight me. Every time I wish I could bottle them now, right now! because they're so lovely, they grow and become even more wonderful. I'm very glad I started this blog, because in a way, I have bottled them.

Vive Blogging! Joyeux Bloggiversaire a moi!