Happy happy happy…

These were the words from my little girl this morning when she first got up and the first time she has said them. I really hope she is happy, happy! To be fair she is living her best life, spending unlimited time with mom and dad every day. Daily walks to the park for a chase after birds, and splashes in the paddling pool when it’s really hot. I’ve relaxed my stance a little on “no chocolate and no sugar” and have slowly introduced milky ice lollies when it’s really hot. I call them a treat, and the minute she sees me going to the freezer she knows what shes getting.

I’ve had my ups and downs with Isobel during the lockdown as most nights there is some level of disrupted sleep, mainly due to teething (will it ever stop!), ear infection, and potentially been cold. We stopped using the sleep suit a few weeks ago, as she was breaking out of it the minute she was put in the cot. It felt like she was timing herself on how quickly she could get out of it, as, as soon as I turned around she would have it neatly left draping over the cot. Since then we invested in some heavy big girls pyjamas and she wears a vest underneath. We had to not bother with socks as she spent all her time taking them off and trying to put back on instead of sleeping! We now use a heavy blanket which we put over her after she falls asleep, a lot of trial and error with blankets, as she tends to kick them off during the night. For the last few nights the blanket seems to have at least stayed over the lower halve of her body and we’ve had about 3 good nights of sleep. Not ready to celebrate just yet as I am sure this will turn at any moment!

I heard in a work presentation the other day that it takes 21-45 days for habits to form into a routine, so if this is the case we should all be in our new routines by now. I feel like we now have finally a good balance of who is doing what, and splitting childcare between us. But the monotony of the day does sometimes get to me. I really miss just leaving the house with my husband and going on a date. I would take just a walk around the park alone together at this stage. Don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely loving every minute with Isobel, but I do miss our couple time and we both feel so exhausted in evenings, it’s usually a quick programme on TV before we go to bed ourselves.

To be honest we both have said were not really sure how we could ever send Isobel to childcare again, it feels like another period of maternity leave again, apart from the working part obviously!!

I hope that when we do return to “normal” it allows us a lot more time with Isobel than what we had, and so maybe we could all be happy happy…