This week was the first week in the New Year that I am officially a working mum and Gareth is back to his day job.  We knew that my squeezing in 24 hours of work into an already busy week and only gaining 8 hours of total child free time was going to be somewhat of a challenge.  We warned ourselves that it would take a month of seeing what I needed to hand over to Gareth to find those productive hours at home and this week gave us the first glimpse of where I lack in available hours!  Thankfully it is halfway through January and the majority of Christchurch don’t go back to work until Monday or even later so it’s only me (and our bank balance) that’s noticed how few hours I’ve worked. I love working from home and working on a freelance basis.  I know it will be the best option for our family once I have work established and we’ve all got ourselves into the rhythm.  Gareth let me have the …

One of the very many things that changes when you have children is your experience, and therefore expectation, of holidays.  I categorise it in the list of changes that you hadn’t 100% signed up for when you decided to have children.  Sure you knew from friends who had gone before you that holidays wouldn’t be the indulgent luxuries they had once been but I hadn’t realised just how much holidays with children looks almost exactly like normal weeks with children! There are some subtle, and very welcome differences though…you get a sleep in until 8.30am every other day, which in turn gives you freedom to stay up past 10pm a few nights in a row.  When one or both of your children have their daily tantrum on your local supermarket floor there is another with you to share the humiliation and in fact will carry out said child so you can finish your shop in peace.  You get to be more imaginative with what you do in the day and can pack it out with …