I know I have been keeping people in suspense by not posting, and I'm sorry for my silence - the seasonal snot monster has descended on FTC and currently I am spending most of my time wanting to cheese grate my nose to stop it itching, as is my boy.
My boy. My one year old boy.
I keep expecting that to be weird, but it's not. I keep expecting to get all misty eyed over his birth, but frankly I don't think there's ever going to be enough booze to make me go misty eyed over those few days.
On the run-up to his birthday I kept being told I would have a moment, but if it came, it was heavily disguised with a fake mustache and comedy glasses.
I think maybe I just measure Alfie's life against a different yardstick. Standing up, feeding himself, pointing, these are the things that hit me between the eyes and make me wonder where my wrinkly old man baby has gone.
Oooh speaking of which guess what? You'll never guess, Alfie has just developed his first rolls. His thighs now have creases, how cute it that?!? My skinny whupput of a son finally has little chunky thighs!!
So we had a party, it was ace.
You know those moments where you have this hope of how it will be and then it not only meets it, it totally blows that hope out of the water? Yeah that was the party.
Alfie and his baby friends all sat around a table and stuffed food into any mouths that were open. Meatballs, sometimes half chewed ones, were freely shared, and determined toddler shouting was done when anyone spotted something they had not been offered. It was really funny to watch.
We had cleared an entire room and filled it with toys (literally after the amazing gifts Alfie was given by his friends) and the babies climbed over each other like puppies to play with everything.
I won't say they were entirely sugar fuelled, but at one point I admit to being sat in the middle of the floor with one baby demanding jelly from me with a baby bird mouth while another stole fistfuls directly out of my bowl. Shocking behaviour.
It was an exhausting day for everyone though, especially the birthday boy who crashed about 30 seconds after we loaded him into the car.
Once we had just about got over being attacked by a marauding herd of ankle biters, I was hit with another surprise. The lovely chair of our NCT branch decided to step down, and asked me to take her place.
Me?! What do I know about running a branch? I've only been around for 5 minutes, surely there must be a more qualified ..... no? ..... wow, I didn't see that one coming.
So I seem to have somehow become chair of our local NCT branch. Our 600+ members, top 10 fundraising, CEO of the whole damn organisation comes to out AMM branch.
No pressure then.
I'm not entirely sure whether I'm more terrified, or excited. I have so many ideas about what I would love to do, but also I still feel like I'm on work experience and someone has accidentally mistaken me for the boss because they caught me sitting behind the desk with my feet up.
I know it's going to be hard work but also the most amazing opportunity to keep working with the best group of mums I could have imagined getting to know. Between them they are like the village of old, so supportive, so friendly, so knowledgeable.
Mostly I just feel in awe of them and so lucky to have them around.
