Happy 2019

I am starting this blog coincidentally with the start of the new year. This definitely wasn’t a, ‘new year new hobby’ idea, although I do like my New Years resolutions. However this wasn’t one of them, I got some inspiration from reading another blog/book and stupidly thought that it would be easy and I can do better! Ha – it is a lot harder than it looks but I still think I can do better, eventually! So this is me trying to make a start.

Our New Years Eve celebrations have always been quiet, we’re not believers of the hype and don’t like to go out at the best of times, but NYE is even quieter these days with a one year old in tow. The only problem is NYE is not a quiet festivity. The first fireworks started at around 6pm, just in time for baby’s wind down time, great! It’s not until you have a baby that you notice that EVERYTHING makes a noise, the stairs creak, the doors squeak, the takeaway guy rings the doorbell exceptionally loudly! And holidays like Diwali, Guy Fawkes and NYE are not so joyous but become known in our house as ‘oh great some idiot is doing fireworks again’. By some miracle he goes to sleep okay (he’s not the best sleeper) and he sleeps through the fireworks for the evening. At about 11pm after the hubby and I watch a good few episodes of People Just Do Nothing – oh the irony – and a movie, I suggested we move to the bedroom….to watch more tv (yes we’re very exciting, we have been together for 13 years this year and the romance has definitely gone out the window) in bed as it was already past our bedtime and so I was a bit tired. We decided we had to stay up until midnight at least and tried our best to stifle our yawns. We had a loft conversion last year and the views of the city’s skyline from the 2nd floor are pretty good so it’s becoming a tradition to go and watch the fireworks across London from up there. At exactly 11.45 Saran wakes up, but I’m secretly pleased as it means cuddles and getting to welcome the New Year as a family! So we all toddle upstairs and Saran gets to see the fireworks too. We can’t see the London Eye display but we are pretty sure we could see the glow from it in the clouds. Overall a perfect start to the year, including all three in our bed – Resolution number one over before it started.

Resolutions

I am definitely a resolution maker (not so much a keeper unfortunately) but since having a baby I have not a lot of me time and very little time to think about what I want to change about myself this year let alone implement those changes. So this year I didn’t actually make any real resolutions, other than the usual airy fairly thoughts that I will become a size zero (I’m a size 10 and have never been close to a size zero, other than the time I stood next to a girl on the tube who was probably Britain’s Next Top Model) or at least lose the baby weight by my cousin’s wedding, less than 12 weeks to go…okay that’s going to be fail number two.

However, we have collectively decided that we will have more veggie food and less meat this month. I don’t know exactly why we decided to do this, probably a bit of guilt from the over indulgence at Xmas and the cost of meat these days, but it could be subliminal messaging that we have obviously been subjected to as since we have decided to do this I keep seeing ‘Veganuary’ adverts everywhere I go. What is Veganuary and when did this become a thing?! I am definitely not becoming a vegan this month, I haven’t even fully committed to giving up meat but I have had some exposure to the multitude of vegan alternatives available these days since I gave up dairy, wheat and gluten a couple of years ago to see if it would help my adult acne which had flared up particularly badly to the point where

even my father in law asked me what happened to my face (oh the embarrassment). I can’t say the vegan alternatives beat the real thing but they do make it easier but becoming vegan seems to be a pretty quick way to spend money, who knew coconut yoghurt would cost £5, I’ll stick to the Sainsbury’s basics cow milk yoghurt at 50p thank you very much. It’s also true that you know when someone is a vegan as they will tell you. We once had a temp PA for a day at work and I couldn’t tell you anything about her other than the fact that she was a vegan! And I’m definitely not doing dry January, I’m writing this with a glass of Rioja in hand. I don’t drink a lot and was teetotal during 9 months of pregnancy, 6 months of breastfeeding and 1 dry January trying to conceive, so I am not going to deny myself the odd glass (or bottle) here or there when I fancy it, even if it is a Monday and it’s not my birthday.

So far the part time veggie thing is working out quite nicely, I’m actually enjoying it and could see this one sticking a bit longer.

One out of three is not so bad, an improvement on last year in any event.