Season’s Greetings

Wishing all my readers a Merry Christmas (or belated Happy Chanukah or Divali, or a Festive Yuletide, or just Happy Holidays) and a Happy New Year.

I hope that 2010 brings you everything you could ask of it, whether that be a new baby, a new job, a new home, a parent blogging conference, a respite from poo, more time and energy, the trials of dealing with the terrible twos, some sleep, an extra 5 hours in the day, an incredibly long walk, the ability to continue with new ventures, a respite from chemotherapy, a huge reduction in household waste or un petit peu plus de temps. (Much of the above would apply to many of you! Sorry not to have managed to link to every which one of you, but Eleanor will probably wake up soon, and Rosemary might get bored with Disney videos. Maybe.)

2009 has been quite an eventful year for me. I started this blog, which brought me many new friends, an outlet for my writing that was a bit easier to keep up with than any of the many novels rattling around in my head, the opportunity to review toys and books other things, and some kind of small amount of fame – well, I’m in the Tots 100, at least – and a wealth of interesting and funny and heart-warming blogs to read (so many that I can’t keep up anymore). I spent much of the year pregnant, had our first holiday in a long time, gave birth and battled with breastfeeding. The business has continued well, despite the difficulties of fitting in work around a baby and a pre-schooler.

2010 is going to be a very busy year work-wise, which will provide us with even more challenge in terms of juggling children and work, but should help to put even more of a dent in the mountains (or molehills, depending on your point of view) of debt. It will see Rosemary starting school – either Uplands or Stroud Valleys, both of which are lovely, thankfully. It will see Chris turning 35 and me turning 37 – closer and closer to the big four oh. It will see Rosemary turning 4 and Eleanor reaching her first birthday. And it will be full of other firsts for Eleanor, of course – sitting up, crawling, maybe walking, maybe talking… that first year can be such fun, though so can the second, third, fourth… Hopefully, it will see me finding a bit more time to blog – the last couple of months have been a tad chaotic. And I’m thinking planning anything more than that would be silly. If we can keep on top of work, children, housework and fit a little bit of fun in there occasionally, then that will do me for 2010.

I hope you and your families have a wonderful happy time over the next couple of weeks. Oh, and if you’re wondering what to do in between Christmas and New Year, you should take a look into Twixtmas, which encourages you to make the most of that in-between time.