Down but not Out

I've been such a sporadic blogger that no one will notice, but I will definately be taking Indefinate Leave from Friday.

I will be awash with sleep deprivation, a haywire of hormones and post-operative trauma (if the C-section goes to plan).

But at some point, I hope to be able to announce some happy news. Just bear with me. It might take me a while to surface.

I am experiencing the end of life as we know it. Our cosy threesome, fine-tuned by so much strain and stress, is about to tip over the edge. This summer I proudly managed to produce dinner for us all in the evenings while M bathed Sofia. Weather-permitting, we ate altogether on the patio watching the sun setting in the trees along the railway at the bottom of the garden. Then I read Sofia's stories and put her to bed. There was a sticky bedtime patch when the hiccups with her new toddler bed (falling out in the night, discovering she could climb out of it at will) converged with the maturing of her 2-year old temper tantrums ("I will not go to bed"). But I think (hope) we're over the worst of that. Then I had an hour or so of grown-up time before going to sleep myself. I finally got around to tackling the mountain of neglected photos from her birth onwards and arranging them in a photo album. So when her baby sister arrives she can see that she was a cherished baby too.

All that hard-won harmony, like the occasional snatched indulgence of writing this blog, will disappear. Evenings will become a war zone with M and I scarcely remembering to mutter goodnight to each other. Daytimes will be a blur. Keeping up with personal emails a remote luxury. Yet we will emerge one day, transformed, and I'm sure to goodness we won't look back.

I hope you'll still be there! Thank you for reading.