Yet another catch-up

Wow, what a year it's been! In February, we moved to a huge new house. It's been rented out for about 15 years, so it needs a bit of work, but nothing desperate. It will be a great long-term project over the next few years. The major change, of course, was this....

Which, three weeks later, turned into this...

And eight months later, here he is...

Daniel, born on 21 April 2012 - my grandfather's birthday. He is sociable, happy, chilled-out, and generally the light of my life. And yes, I did knit that jumper - it's a mini version of the one I made his dad a couple of years ago!

I made the decision before he was born that I wouldn't go back to work after maternity leave. From a purely financial point of view, it simply wasn't worth it - if I'd been paying for child care, my salary would have gone into negative figures! But quite aside from that, I've always wanted to be a stay-at-home mum. We have naturally fallen into an attachment parenting way of doing things - co-sleeping, babywearing (only me, but that's most of the time), cloth nappies, breastfeeding on demand, baby-led weaning, and generally just giving him the time and attention he needs, as and when he needs it. In return we have a happy, relaxed baby who is comfortable in most social situations and will sleep pretty much anywhere. 

The more time I spend with Daniel, the more I am sure about our preference for home education. There are so many reasons for our choice that it will need a whole post of its own at some point in the future, but we feel very strongly that HE will be the right fit for us as a family. Obviously, we'll see as Daniel gets older, but there's no harm in planning along those lines in the meantime. I'm very tentatively starting to get in touch with the local HE groups to see if I can get involved. Our NCT group has been very close, but as the babies get older and the others return to work, the differences in our choices and parenting styles is becoming more obvious, and I would really like to meet some like-minded parents who live locally. I'm comfortable with what we do, but it does get rather lonely sometimes.

In other news, it looks like I will soon be joining the Multifaith Chaplaincy Team at the University. There are two part-time, volunteer Jewish chaplains from the community, and one is giving up, so I am gradually taking over from her. I'm really looking forward to it - more on that another time. 

Tomorrow we will be introducing Daniel to my family's Christmas traditions, which I suspect will rather pass him by. The wrapping paper will go down well (probably literally), as will the Brussel sprouts, which were his first bit of solid food and remain his favourite. I have been unusually organised and sent lots of Christmas cards (albeit possibly too late to arrive before Christmas, but you never know), done all of the Christmas shopping and wrapping, made chutney and piccalilli, and plan to bake gingerbread and chocolate brownies in the morning to go into a couple of food packages for neighbours/extended family. You can just call me Supermum...

So having checked in here and updated things, it's time I headed off to bed for a reasonable amount of sleep before I have to be up doing my Mary Berry impersonation. Night night!