Best Post of 2012

The last day ever...ever of this year...

2012, for us, has been a good one.  In the UK we have celebrated some momentus occcasions and overall I think we have felt proud to be British.

I am looking forward to 2013.  I want to enter it with gusto and keep that drive going throughout the year.  I hope that my summary post of 2013 will be as positive and packed as the one for 2012.

I have been pleased with how many posts I have written this year, given the limited time I have to sit and write.  But which has been my best one?  This was quite easy for me to choose.  It is the post that people often mention to me, and when I think of my blog, I immediately think of this particular post.

So, with drum roll and drama... MY BEST POST OF 2012 IS...

 

DREAMING OF RUNNING

 

Channel 4, the official broadcasters of the 2012 Paralympic Games, are running an advert at the moment. It asks three gentleman, all in wheelchairs what they dream about. One says he always walks again in his dream. I think the other says he never dreams of walking. The third laughs and says he doesn't know what they are dreaming about but in his dream he is just surrounded by wonderful women and doesn't take any notice if he can walk or not.

This really made me smile. Then it made me think. I have been doing that a lot lately. I have been in that sort of philosophical mood, which doesn't always make me seem very happy. But it isn't that I am not happy. It just means that I am thinking. About everything. About nothing. About stuff. Sometimes my mind just needs to do that. Maybe that is the writer in me.

It made me wonder about what J1 dreams about. I can ask J2 and he always answers the same thing - 'Lion ROOOOOAAAARRRRRR'. If that is true it may account for his truly erratic sleep behaviour! But whenever I ask J1 he pauses, says 'Errrrrrrrr', pauses again and then sets to his default question -'Where is Daddy's car?' This means you are not going to get an answer to your question.

So I am left wondering. I am left wondering if he dreams of walking and running. Does he dream of running around the playground, or competing able bodied in sports day? Does he bounce on the trampoline until he feels sick and sweaty? Does he run along the sea front running up and down the steps to the beach until we tell him not to do it anymore? Does he run up the steps to the cafe to buy his ice-cream?

I have a recurring dream. Not everyday but always the same. J1 walks into my bedroom and asks if he can wear his football shirt for school. As wonderful as that is, when I wake up I get the crashing reality of life. And that is painful. Like when people say after they have lost someone, for that first few seconds of the day when you wake up, everything is perfect. Then your memory comes to life and reminds you of days and events past.

No matter how many years fly by, and how much I come to terms with / adapt to life as we now know it, the actual reality of knowing my son has brain damage is still a bastard. It makes my heart ache with the longing to be able to change it. It must be the biggest frustration in life that you will ever encounter - someone you love suffering with something, be it a condition or illness, and no matter what you do to help, aid, alleviate you know that you can't change it or stop it.

Maybe that explains my overwhelming need to keep in control of all other aspects of my life and my complete annoyance when I feel that is not the case. My developing attitude that you must absolutely do what you want to do, if it is something that you have any control over being able to achieve. Some people call that positive thinking. I call it trying to make up for what I can't change or control. A defiance that fate won't fox me into thinking I 'can't' control what happens.

Can someone that has never walked a single step dream what it is like to do so? I like to think so - after all I dream of flying and I certainly can't do that.

So, run little boy. Run and laugh.



The Plan - January

In my last post I posed the question of whether expecting to have any 'non mummy / wife' time when you have a young (i.e babies not in school) family was in fact asking 'Too Much?', and was our cribbing about not having time to write / run / play golf etc was out of line. 


I had an unequivocal response that in fact 'No, it most certainly is not too much to ask'.  The general consensus was that if you didn't, you would drive yourself insane and to remember that we were individual people in our own right before we either had children or got married and we were entitled to keep a smidgen of that without feeling the 'parent / partner' guilt and that it was just a case of compromising and arranging suitable dates and times to do these 'extra curricular activities'.


Therefore I am moving forward with the idea of my '2012 Year Plan' and in fact am going to post a monthly plan that I am intending to work with in order to see as many of our 'Aims and Hope for 2012' as possible fulfilled.


Thus was born 'The Plan' posts and we shall start with January.  This is sort of, I feel, in line with the Grooving Mum's initiative and so I hope to be able to share these links with Kate On Thin Ice and I hope it gives others inspiration and motivation too.  I 'aim' to link the results of the previous months plan as the precursor to the next so that I can see at the end of the year how we / I have done.  My, this is the most thorough I have ever managed to get with 'New Year Resolutions' if that is what you want to call them!


So here we go, for January I am going to am to :


Personal


* Publish at least three blog posts per week, and if I can get really super good write extra and 'programme' (go me) them to publish themselves throughout the week


* Fit two runs a week in and see if I think I will be get up to standard for the half marathon I optimistically booked myself on to back in October (which is March - sorry just picking myself up laughing off the floor) but at least I will have tried


* Fit one afternoon spa session in - it's January, it's miserable and cold and a little indulgence might go a long way

Family

* Start reading with J1 again and try and find out the best way of helping him start to learn to read, rather than just remembering the whole story from memory, although that is pretty impressive too!

* Continue to encourage J2 to sit on the potty first thing in the morning and before and after bath time

* Cook at least '4' real meals a week

I think three aims on both the 'Personal' and 'Family' front is acceptable to try out for the first month.  Look out for 'The Plan - February' (...coming soon... cue over excitable music) to see how we / I get on.