Stinky Cold!

Poor Alex has a streaming cold and a very nasty cough and he is really suffering poor little chap. For the most part he is very good and is playing fairly well, but he needs more attention than normal (and who can blame him), wanting to be picked up and cuddled or read to a lot of the time. He also hates being ‘messed’ with i.e. having nappy/clothes changed etc when he is like this and screams the place down unless we can distract him. Sadly he can’t sleep or breast feed either because of his nose and his cough and so over the past few days we have had very little sleep and he hasn’t eaten properly. His three favourite things to do at the moment are to play in the bath (hence the rather cute ‘swimming’ photo), to have me read to him and to sit on my lap at my desk and draw. More recently I have stopped giving him pens to draw with as it takes so long to clean him up and have given him pastels instead (I don’t have any crayons at the moment), which he likes as he can draw with either end!
You would think that going back to work after a break would be a gentle easing back in…well not a bit of it. I have been up to my eyeballs in things and feel like I am barely keeping my head above water. Since coming back I have edited a thesis and completely re-worked my ideas for the next grant application. This one is the biggest I have ever written and will keep me fully occupied for the next month. However, as well as that I have numerous other things that I need to do including editing a and so I think stress is inevitably going to be present until after 8th Feb. Not the ideal start to the year.
On a different note I have made three New Years Resolutions and they are all to do with photographs and crafting. The first one is to tidy my craft space immediately after each session, the second one is to get and keep the family photograph albums up to date (including an album for our wedding photographs from 6.5 years ago!), and to do at least one scrapbook layout a week. I have got ahead on that one by completing two layouts in the past two days. This first one entitled ‘Sleepyhead’ is of Alex at about 6 weeks old having fallen asleep on my chest after feeding and the text reads ‘Mummy makes a comfy bed for a quick snooze’. The layout is based on Pencil Lines sketch #61 by Shimelle Laine, a scraper that I deeply admire so I hope I have done justice to her original sketch.
This second one entitled ‘Computer Whizz’ is from when Alex was about 4 weeks old and follows sketch #65 from Pencil Lines. The papers are all from the Junkitz Dad collection and really work well with the subject matter of the computers. The text reads 'Tim and Alex share Tim's love of computers'. It has been great to do some scrapbooking after so long and I am looking forward to doing more over the coming weeks. More soon,

Love,

Caro

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