Me and Mine – A Portrait for February 2017

February feels like it has been a pretty slow and grey month, but it ended on a high with some down time for half term and a few days away visiting family and friends.

We packed our bags and went on a little road trip to the Wirral for the weekend, counting up that we packed in 11 different activities or visits between Friday and Sunday. Phew! It was good to get away though with Sam and Flo though, staying in a hotel one night which they loved and at my friend Karen’s for one night too.

Sam has been missing his old friends, his old house and his old routines so I wanted to make sure he had a good amount of time seeing people while we had chance. He was so excited to see everyone and the kids loved that we were going from one lunch/coffee date to the next play/wine for grown-ups date!

It’s hard and relentless being a single parent but making time to spend time as a three really is lovely and we can have lots of good times together in spite of the occasional sibling argument. Sam and Flo play really well together and both are confident kids who are pretty adaptable and fun. There is never a dull moment with these two, that’s for sure.

After spending January as a vegan, I enjoyed eating all the things I had been missing at the start of the year. That sounds awful I know, and I apologise to my vegan friends reading this, but I have been catching up on plenty of fish eating over the past few weeks. One night I think Flo and I just ate those delicious M&S garlic king prawns straight out of the packet for dinner! Like mother like daughter.

I think at the start of the month I had a real dip and felt like grief hit me all over again. Like people say, the sadness comes in waves and I’m not sure what triggered it but I felt absolutely awful. When it comes out of the blue like that it is so difficult, and I find it hard to just let myself wallow as I feel people around me might think I should be stronger by now.

A friend described grief to me this weekend as a pebble in your pocket. It starts off being like a heavy rock that you feel you can’t carry around with you, but over time, you get used to how it feels and day by day the weight feels lighter. It will always be there, but one day feeling it in your pocket will reassure you, not weigh you down.

I thought this was really beautiful and something I will call on in the future without doubt. I hope also it might be something to talk to Sam and Flo about, when the time is right for them to discuss things more deeply.

This blip maybe helped me make some important decisions in my life. Having these difficult life events really makes you reassess and that’s what I’ve been doing this month.

Looking forward to March, well not only are the days getting lighter, the weather getting warmer and our clothes getting brighter – it’s my birthday too! It’s a big one as I’ll be turning 40, so I’m planning quite a few celebrations around the end of the month. The start of a new decade/survival of the last deserves a party, right?

I’ll write more about my plans in a later post.

How was February for you?

x Julia

Check out the Me and Mine section of my blog if you fancy a look at what we’ve been up to in previous months. We’ve been documenting our family life in these photos for nearly two years now.

This post is linked up with the Me and Mine project – hosted by Dear Beautiful, Bump to Baby, Capture By Lucy, Let’s Talk Mommy, Mummy Daddy Me and Tigerlilly Quinn – where you take a photograph a month of your family all together.