Bring It On.

2016 - a brand new year!

Blogging has understandably gone pretty low down on my long list of things to do, but as it's the New Year, it would frankly be rude not to sit back, put my feet up and reflect on the last 12 months. 

It should probably be pointed out at this stage that as I am suffering from a comically bad memory, so who knows what I'll actually be able to remember. It may be fact. It may have been a dream. It may been a psychotic episode. But hey. It's all good fun!

So 2015. The quickest of all the years. Seriously. It flew by. 

Of course, the big event was little Teddy Tumpkin being born. He arrived safely and heroically, on the crest of a wave in a pool last May. I didn't think it was possible to have a second child that is as good as the first (I was preparing myself for the opposite of Lib!) but he is fantastic - a beautiful big softie. Our family is complete, and every day I thank my lucky stars for all the happiness in our home. 

With pregnancy, of course, came bad health, and more bad health and....yeah....you guessed it, rubbishy bad health. If being 'a bit run down' is a thing, I was 'steamrollered'. Once my body had healed from the birth, it was one cold after another, flu, pneumonia, and on top of that I had bad side-effects from having the coil fitted (probably too much information, I confess. However, consider yourselves lucky I'm not giving you a full picture of how awful it was!!! ;)  

It was incredibly hard work, but we got through it. We learnt that if I am in a bad way health wise, proper rest can work absolute wonders. It's difficult to rest if the kids are here in the house because they are always on my mind, but after the pneumonia Si and Sheila took the kids away to give me time to recover. I had nothing to do except concentrate on what my body was telling me, and resting whenever I needed. I switched off mentally too, and felt like a new person afterwards. I guess that's the joy of respite for you. It had always seemed an extreme thing to do, but for me, I think doing something like that once a year would be a good way to keep things ticking over. It's nice to know there's something we can do though, when things look bleak. 

Before Christmas, we had the joy of picking schools for Lib, which was surprisingly stressful. That's all sorted now though and she'll hopefully be a happy bunny starting school in September. She grew up and matured so much last year, and has dealt with everything amazingly. Lib is an incredible little girl, and I'm so so proud of her. 

Then of course, we had Ed's first Christmas. Despite being very organised I still got pretty stressed out by it, but we had a great time, and Lib was overjoyed by the whole thing. It was the first year that she had been properly excited by it. 

But what of 2016? It's all shiny, with that new car smell, and I'm really feeling positive about it!

I'm going to get the ball rolling on Tecfidera (disease modifying drug) next week, so fingers crossed that will suit me and then I'll have piece of mind that hopefully it will slow down the progression of my MS. Alongside that I'm also starting to plan a small business I can run from home - so that'll certainly keep me quiet. I still love the thought of doing voice-over work, but I'm not ashamed to say that I'm scared of trying to get into that at the moment. It's too far out of my comfort zone! For now, I'm going to stick with what I know, and for once don't put added pressure on myself. See...it's 2016 and I'm blossoming :D

                        Happy New Year to you all!