2019 – Reflections and Resolutions

Happy New Year!!!! It’s that time where the everyone seems to look back on the past year, and tell the whole world what they are going to change about themselves, for all of 5 minutes.

So, this year, I’m going against the grain and I’m not going to make any resolutions on things I want to change about myself. Instead, I’m going to make resolutions about things i WON’T change.

Firstly, I’m going to look back at 2018 and reflect on the 365 days that have passed in what seems like a blur. The year started with a huge amount of excitement – this was the year we were FINALLY getting married!! It had been 3 years in the planning and we were officially in the bubble. I went shopping for my dress and found THE dress – my God was it perfect, I felt like a princess! We had the Big Freeze, which Elliott absolutely adored! It meant that mama and daddy were home from work and we suddenly had this massive white wonderland full of new experiences ready to explore, and boy did we explore them. I’m pretty sure that Elliott had us running up and down every inch of the fields across from our house. He was almost a little ice cube when we’d finished but he loved every second. I’m secretly hoping we have one again!

After the Big Freeze came the Big Heatwave! a welcome change from the brief 3 day summers we are used to! This brought loads of fun family days out to parks, beaches and lots of picnics. Elliott got lots and lots of time outside, exercise and we got some well needed family time. During this, our baby boy turned 2!! We had a brilliant weekend of celebrations at the wildlife park and Blackpool. It was the perfect way to spend his birthday.

The joy of the weather was dampened by troubles at my work. Seriously, you could not write the month and a half from the end of June to the middle of August at my company. Without going into too much detail, my company was bought out, a week later the entire executive team and other key members of staff walked out to work at another company, a week later my company was sold AGAIN to the company that the staff had gone to and a day later, I was made redundant. Seriously, it was the most stressful time of my working life, ever. My anxiety took and understandable spike into the stratosphere. Here I was, out of a job in 4 weeks, a 2 year old, a house and a wedding in less than 3 months. I had 4 weeks to find myself a job, and not just any job, the unicorn of all jobs – a part time Accounts Assistant position. Now, you might think that there are loads of those types of jobs out there, wrong. I was panicking. My husband was assuring me that if i was put of a job for a while, my redundancy package would keep us a float for a few months but I didn’t want that. I wanted to leave my job on Friday and walk into another the following Wednesday. So I threw myself into the job market. I updated my CV and sent it to pretty much every company within a 20 mile radius. Someone must’ve been looking down on me because within a week of getting the call that i was out of a job i had an interview, and a week after that I got the job!

Then it was party season!!! First I had a mini hen that my friend Danielle organised for me, the absolute gem that she is. I had a really good laugh, a good taste of my Hen a few weeks later. Then Chris had his Stag party in Benidorm. The photos and videos that i was sent from that weekend were the funniest I had been sent in a long while!! I was also a little jealous that my future husband looked THAT good in a cheerleader uniform!! How they survived those 4 days, I will never know. A week later it was my turn! I had an amazing day and night in Liverpool with my nearest and dearest, filled with memories I will never forget!

Finally, the big day was here. 3 years of planning, saving, deliberating, worrying, dieting, and more planning and this was it, we were getting married. The day went off without a hitch – aside from the fact I almost knocked over a lamp walking down the aisle – oops!! It was perfect. We went on our familymoon to Portugal and it was amazing! We’d never been to Portugal before and after the catastrophe that was our last holiday, we were dubious. But it was perfect. The hotel, the people, the weather, everything. We will definitely be returning.

This Christmas was even more magical than the previous two we had with Elliott, as he has started to have an idea about what was going off. He was getting involved in the hype leading up to the man in red’s appearance and it was amazing to see. He calls Santa, Christmas and was truly enamoured by him when we met him. I was worried that he’d be put off by a man dressed in a beard but he loved him. Christmas Day was a little bit of a wash out. A few days before, Elliott was hit with the vomiting bug, and of course a few days later came the diarrhea. Luckily he got over by Christmas Day, but it hit Chris hard Christmas Eve, and aside from getting up to watch Elliott open his presents (which took over an hour by the way, as he wanted to play with each toy as he opened it which was the cutest thing ever!) he spent the whole day in bed, as did my dad.

If you are still with me, thank you! I didn’t realise when i started this that it was going to be this long!! Anyway, that was my year! I think you’ll agree it has been pretty awesome, 2019 has got some big shoes to fill!!!

Now for the resolutions. As I said at the beginning (if you can remember that far back!) I said I wasn’t going to make any plans to change anything, but to keep them the same. So here they are

• Being a Mama. Obviously, I’m not going to stop being a mama, I’m not going to change how i’m being a mama. Elliott is thriving, his speech is coming on leaps and bounds, he is attentive, compassionate and loving. I know that its a whole nature/nurture thing but I like to think that I have a small part to play here. So, I’m thinking that what I’m doing and the approach I’m taking seems to be working. It’s about looking at your strengths as well as weaknesses. Do I lose my temper? Yes – I’m human! I’m not saying that I’m perfect, I’m far from it but at the moment the good outweighs the bad significantly
• Caring too much. I do, I care too much what people think, what they do and it can drive me crazy. But, it also makes me look at myself and think. Do I need to change or is it my perception? 9 times out of 10 it’s my perception and this is a good thing (I think)

It may not seem like its groundbreaking stuff, but to me it is. In a world that thinks , I need to stop and think that I am good enough. I don’t need to change. And I think more people need to think this way.

I’m going to leave you with a little challenge, you can leave the answers in the comments if you want to share or keep them to yourself, its up to you – but I want you to write down at least ONE thing about yourself, your life, your circumstances that you DON’T want to change. One thing that you think, you know what, I’m pretty damn good at this thing, or this part of me is amazing and I need to keep doing that.

Maybe, just maybe it will shift our thinking about ourselves from negative to positive.

Here’s to 2019 – a year of more positivity.