What Mothers Do

Having been to a La Leche League meeting today in which people were kind enough to compliment my mothering skills and my children, and remembering from What Mothers Do: Especially When it Looks Like Nothing how easy it is to underestimate all the stuff you do as a parent, I thought I'd revisit the goals I set for our family life in January and see how we're doing.

• Succeeding at making at least 80% of the family's bread, cakes, biscuits and other such products.
• Succeeding in keeping the Home Education Group I helped set up last summer going from strength to strength.
• Succeeding in keeping on top of our allotment plot and garden - and have in fact planted 3 varieties of potatoes, carrots, parsnips, beetroots, leeks and Jerusalem Artichokes at the allotment, and strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, herbs, apples, pears, cobnuts, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes and French beans at home.
• Succeeding in keeping my part-time work going and contributing a useful amount to the household income.
• Succeeding in supporting my husband through his career change and re-training.
• Still attempting to decide on what I want to re-train as.
• Currently sorting out some submissions to agents of my recently-completed novel.
• My daughter is now reading fluently, my son starting to read and we're keeping up making special times of the day to read longer books to them both.
• Succeeding in branching out in our day-trips out to further afield and longer days - even though my son is slightly struggling with this as it really tires him out.
• Succeeding in cutting the food and household budget while still providing nutritious meals mainly cooked from scratch.

The trouble is that as soon as you achieve a goal it becomes the normal thing you do, so you end up doing more and more without realising how much you do, and then wonder why you feel tired, have no spare time, and haven't added any new goals in a while. So this is a totally boastful post to remind myself of how much I actually do! Hurray for mum everywhere!