A philosophical moment...

Over the past week or so I have had a number of conversations which have reminded me how important it is to live for the moment.

Firstly on our Sunday morning walk G Kisby and I went past a 'youth' of around 18 in a beaten up Fiesta dropping off his girlfriend (possibly?) who was still wearing clothes from the night before. We reminisced on how much we loved, and now missed that era of being in sixth form, free house parties, no responsibilities and plenty of drinking.
I then chatted to Fee over the weekend who described a similar moment of reflection she'd had but for a different era, the one which we are in right now. The one where her boys were little babies, commenting on how you don't appreciate the time when you are in it but only afterwards.

I suggested to G Kisby that should I have had that 18 year old era again I would have gone out more, drank more and generally enjoyed the time more. However, he reminded me that in the moment we were actually really happy going out as much as we did and besides which we absolutely would not have listened to anyone who told us so at the time.

This got me thinking. I imagine that throughout life you do look back and miss / reflect with fondness certain eras, that is pretty normal. The key thing though is to truly appreciate the moment whilst you are in it. Something which can be easy to forget as well as tricky at times (a day of constant crying being a good example).

So I decided to remember exactly what it is that I love doing and spend as much time as possible doing it. If I found out I had a year of life left what would I spend it doing...

So on Sunday night as I tackled the huge ironing pile I thought about how lucky I was not to be having that 'back to work' feeling that one normally has on the eve before returning to work after a weekend. And aside from my 'to do' list for the week including all the jobs like sorting car insurance / food shopping etc I also wrote down all the things I would like to do this week so that I appreciate every single day and can review everything I've achieved. G Kisby would say to check that I win. Whatever, as long as it works!

And so far the week has been lovely. We finally finished the curtains and they look great (I learnt how to use my sewing machine in the process) and yesterday we went for a lovely long walk with Amy & baby Imogen in the sunshine, followed by the obligatory stop at the farm shop for a bowl of mushroom soup and a hunk of homemade bread.

Operation, "regain control" has started to pay off. I think she was just probably starting to need more food so now she gets to feed on both sides, with a wind or change inbetween, so that I know she is properly full. Then where necessary we have used the dummy to prolong that stretch between feeds so I've been able to be strict all week on ensuring it is no less than 2 hours. I think, or hope, I am starting to break the assumption that with crying she will automatically be given a nipple dummy.
We are going to register her today, that's right, 5 weeks and a day prior to the 6 week deadline!