I am *hilarious*

We've had a lovely family day today, playing in the snow, doing a much-need grocery shop, and finding new games to play. Top of the list were sliding around the living room floor in an accidentally stolen Sainsbury's basket, and putting a ball in my mouth (really, I can't think of any other way to phrase that), spitting it out and saying 'Pop'. Days like this, I feel like the best mother ever.

And yes, that means I haven't done anything off the list. I don't care anymore. I've done far more than I would have done if I hadn't started this project, and I'll keep trying to catch up. But I won't beat myself up if I can't do it, and I'll enjoy days like today, guilt-free, because this time is so precious.

Difficulties (reprise)

My plan for this weekend was to catch up on my list by working on all the garden items. Having Jamie at home to provide baby-wrangling duties would provide me with plenty of opportunity.

I got up this morning to find my plans scuppered in the most unexpected of ways...

59. Start baby book

I had an unexpected 3 hour break this morning, as J-cub was up before 6 and was therefore tired enough to go to bed again at 9am. Great, I thought, that'll give me time to get ready for Baby Group at 10am, and we'll have a nice time for once as he won't be overtired or jonesing for a nap.

Baby group finishes at 12. What time did J-cub deign to wake up? 11.45. Oh well, at least I had almost 3 hours to myself, which pretty much never happens.

After kicking my heels around on the internet for a while, I thought I'd do something useful, and get going on the Baby Book.

We were given one proper baby book, with important milestones and dates to fill in, and places for pictures to be stuck. We also bought a lovely spiral-bound blank book from Paperchase, for us to fill with all the nonsense we think is important, and a matching shoebox-type box in which to keep things like his first bodysuit, his first shoes, shells and starfish from his first trip to the beach, that sort of thing.

It's been the spiral-bound book that's put me off doing this list item, as I didn't really know where to start, or what to put it in, or how to organise it. Yesterday, I unwrapped the proper baby book and had a look through what Marks and Spencers consider to be important information from a baby's first 3 years. And actually, it seemed quite easy and gave me some ideas of how to organise the blank book.

But for now, I just want to get stuff recorded before I forget. During this morning's mammoth nap, I took a nice pen, practised my best writing, and started filling in the blanks. I've handily kept records of J-cub's 'firsts', by noting them on the calendar, so it was fairly easy to fill in. Some information is missing though, and I'll have to search back through emails or text messages to see if I can find when he got his first, second, third, fourth and fifth teeth (really? Why do we need to remember that?!) and other bits and bobs.

The best thing is that the book runs from birth to 3 years, so I'm under no pressure to actually finish the darn thing.

Which, I think you'll all agree, is a very Good Thing.

Day 60: Mission complete.

88. Spend a day on my own (without J-cub)

A slight amendment to today's list item - I spent the day away from the house, and away from J-cub. As I said in my difficulties post, it's practically impossibly for me to spend a whole day entirely on my own.

Although I miss him terribly when we're apart, a day away from J-cub is as much of a break and a rest as I'm going to get, and to be honest, it was much needed.

I left the house this morning for a workshop - which is a kind of training/consultancy day for my job which we have 3 times a year. Workshops are very mentally stimulating, and hard work, but I get a massive sense of achievement from them and start getting excited about what we're going to work on during the months ahead.

I'm obviously out of the loop at the moment, and going through the notes for the last year today I've started to realise just how much I have to catch up on, how much I need to do to get things back on track when I start back, and how hard and tiring it is making my brain work again.

I am really excited about going back to work now though, although my overwhelming feeling is of pain at being separated from J-cub. I'm also having a bit of difficulty marrying my feelings of loving my job and wanting to carry on doing it, with the fact that I don't get paid very much money, certainly no more than I did when I started working straight out of University, and nowhere near as much as I kind of think I should be able to. Money isn't everything: I'm not a terribly materialistic person, but we are really struggling with having another mouth to feed at the moment, and I'm also getting quite broody again. I'd love to be able to have another child without a thought as to how I'd cope with less maternity pay (because I was working full time before, but going back part time now), more childcare costs, and the sheer cost of raising more than one child.

So this is just something I'm struggling with at the moment. Do I stay in my job, which I love, but which has no prospects and will definitely end in 2 and a bit years, or do I try and carve out some sort of career which is going to bring in a bit more money, and thus satisfy me that way? 2 days after I found out I was pregnant, I received a letter telling me I was accepted to do a Masters degree. I had to defer, and have since deferred again as I couldn't imagine doing it with J-cub in tow. That degree would have qualified me to take a step up, to work in the same field but at the next level.

I'm just not sure I could cope with the intensity of the degree now, on top of working and raising a baby. Plus it's located in Bangor, North Wales, so would have meant weekly flights from Cardiff to Anglesey.

I'm really just thinking aloud here (aloud? In print. Whatever, you know what I mean). I'm sure I'll figure something out.

Back to today ... so Jamie was staying at home, looking after the boy. He was due for his swine flu jab this afternoon, so Jamie managed to get the buggy onto the bus (first bus ride for J-cub - wooo!), ride it to the next town, hang around waiting for the appointment, get called in, and get asked 3 questions. One of which is: "Is he allergic to eggs?". The answer, of course, is yes. So no jab for J-cub, and why they couldn't have told me that when I booked the appointment, I don't know.

I'd already left work to come back and pick them up, thinking that J-cub might be all sore and upset after his jab, and would rather not wait an hour for the bus back. I picked them up, brought them home, had a little cuddle with J-cub (because I missed him, okay, I couldn't actually spend the whole day apart from him) and went back to bed. I had a blissful sleep, and Jamie woke me up as he was putting J-cub to bed.

All in all, it was a confusing, but happy and satisfying day. And I hope you, dear readers, accept it as counting for this list item, albeit with a little artistic license.

And just to rub in how much I love my job, I've tried to find a photo of the amazing view. I can't, so have a photo of some of the wild ponies in the field (they jump in and can't get out until we open the gate and shoo them away), right outside the window. Yes, that's the sea you can see in the background. It really is the most beautiful place.

Day 58: Mission complete.

85. Water, repot and tidy houseplants

Woo hoo! I got off my arse and got something done.

I'm generally pretty rubbish at houseplants, I buy them with happy anticipation of how nice they'll look, then every time I see they're looking a bit droopy, I think "Oh, I should water that", and keep on walking. Every day. Until they die.

A while back I hit on the idea of keeping them all on the kitchen windowsill, right above the sink, so I have no excuse for not watering them. The only exception is one in the bathroom, for the same reason. The poor houseplants in the kitchen have been shouting at me for months; they were overcrowded, dropping babies all over the place and getting pot-bound faster than you could imagine.

Having rounded up all the available bigger pots, I set to cleaning them up, re-potting, propagating and generally making them feel healthier.

Before (taken a while ago, before they got quite so out of hand):

After:

And 17 new baby plants breathing sighs of relief in their own pots (and a knackered old Flaming

Katie who I'm giving a second chance to):I LOVE gardening. Does that count?!

Day 57: Mission complete.

Difficulties

Way way back on Day 4, a comment appeared on my blog, written by Glovecat, who has become one of my most regular commenters. She worried: "I'm anxious that you will leave all the big things 'til last though, ha ha! :)".

Sadly, she's turned out to be very prescient. I didn't do it through design, but I wrote the list in a rush as I'd forgotten when the hundred days was going to start, so just walked round the house looking at what needed doing, and writing it down. Some of the list items were quick and easy, and some are much harder. I tried to factor in some fun things, but even some of those have proved impossible.

For example, #88 - Spend a day on my own. How am I supposed to do that? If Jamie is off work and available to look after J-cub, then I kind of want to spend the day with them too. If I had something to do, or somewhere to go, that would be different. But of all the people I know, I can't think of any of them who'd want to see me without wanting to see J-cub. And certainly not for a whole day. I've toyed with the idea of going to the beach, and if it was the middle of summer, I'd be off like a shot with my MP3 player and a stack of new books. But a beach in South Wales in January? Fine for a quick walk, not so much for the sitting and relaxing.

So I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to substitute that one.

And then there are others like #73 - Decorate hallway. That's going to take ages, plus we can't decide on any paint (or indeed narrow it down to any colour) we like. By 'hallway', I mean downstairs hall, stairs, and upstairs landing. So it's by no means an easy feat.

Really, I want to rewrite the remainder of the list, although a) that would feel like cheating and b) I would still be aware of all those things which need doing, so I wouldn't really be accomplishing anything.

The upshot of this post is, really, that I'm struggling. I didn't do anything yesterday (again) and the gap between days elapsed and list items crossed off is widening rather than narrowing.

I don't really know what to do about that. I think maybe I should accept that I will finish, but it's not going to be by the official date of March 10th. But there's part of me which (uncharacteristically) is screaming "No! You can do it!".

I'm going to persevere, I think. But I'm spending a larger and larger part of each day worrying about not having done something off my list, and wondering what I can do, and how I can do it, and all that is taking away from time I should be spending enjoying J-cub.

After all, I've only got 4 weeks until I go back to work (and how the hell am I going to cope with the list then?!). We'll see what happens, anyway, I just wanted to keep you updated.

67. Take all other unused stuff from garage to tip

I honestly thought I'd written a blog post yesterday, although evidently I didn't.

We managed to get all the rest of the old junk and clutter from the garage in the car, and took it to the tip. The wood recycling bin was full though, so we had to bring back home part of a broken dresser and some old bits of wood, but we've left them in the car for a repeat trip next weekend.

It still counts though, right? The effort was there, anyway.

We had a fun day watching J-cub develop his pulling-himself-up and cruising skills, he's brilliant at both now and can even stand up just using a flat wall to balance against. It's caused some sleeping problems though, as he stands up as soon as you put him in the cot (even in his grobag), and often wakes himself up by standing up in his sleep. It's lovely seeing him change so much though, he's almost a toddler now.

(Sorry I've been a bit lax with updating photos, particularly the list number photos. It's in my head, I'm on the case and I'll get it done ASAP. The blog feels incomplete without them.)

Day 55: Mission complete.