The 31st January 2014 marks Jelly Bean’s First Birthday which means that he will no longer be ‘a baby’. He is getting bigger and stronger every day and whilst I don’t think he will follow in his siblings’ footsteps by taking his ‘first steps’ before his first birthday. He seems quite happy crawling his way around the house and when the mood takes him he will try his hand at cruising around the furniture but that’s fine by me. I have never been in a hurry for my babies to walk because that’s when the trouble begins.
Beanie Boy now attends pre-school three full days a week which means that I no longer have to disturb Jelly Bean’s daytime naps to fit in a school pick-up/drop-off so he is getting much better naps of 2-3 hours meaning I get a decent stretch of time where I can sit down in the quiet and get work done.
As most of you are now aware, my husband was made redundant just before Christmas so it’s important that I do as much as I can to earn money to help with the family finances and this is “The Year I Make It Happen”. I have been self-employed for a couple of years now doing what I can when I can but going forward I want to try to carve a ‘work from home’ career for myself. It’s not that I don’t like the idea of returning to a workplace or working for someone else. On the contrary, sometimes I really miss that contact with other adults but I also need to remind myself that things would never be how they were before. My old jobs have moved on, I have moved on and this is the way forward for me. My role first and foremost is as a wife to Hubby and mum to my children. I want to be here for them whenever they need me and working from home enables me to do all of that. It is by no stretch of the imagination an easy task and I am sure that actually returning to paid ‘employment’ would be far easier but as I have always said, I like a challenge.
I like that I am able to do the school runs myself and can attend school functions without having to rearrange my schedule first. I don’t want to hand my children over to childcare on a regular basis (although I do this once or twice a month either when the children ask to go or when something comes up that I can’t be here for them). I like to be at home to keep my house in some kind of order (I didn’t say ‘showhome’ standards!).
Last year I paid to do an online course in Web Design which is something I am very keen on learning more about along with my photography so this year I am plan on getting more structure into my ‘working’ environment and setting an allotted time to one side to make a start on this course and hopefully one day I might even be able to make a living from it. Whilst Jelly Bean is still very young he is obviously my number 1 priority but whilst he is sleeping, I intend on forging ahead with my plans.
It’s good to have a goal, something to aim for as it gives you purpose. If I don’t set myself daily goals it’s too easy to forget what needs doing and waste the time that I do have just jumping from one task to another and completely missing those that were important. It’s the same in life, if you don’t set yourself a few goals you risk wasting days, weeks, months or even years when you could be doing something worthwhile, something to make you feel proud of yourself where you can say “I did that”. Lloyds TSB want to help make those goals a reality and have created a campaign on Facebook called ‘Make it happen in 2014’. If you pop on over and record your goal for your home, your life or your money, Lloyds Bank will provide you with the tips and ideas to help me it a reality.