The Parent Project: Month 12 (or is it Month 1?)

On 5 February we celebrated Jack’s first birthday. He was most excited by the gift of a push-along car, although it took him a couple of days to work out how to press the small button to get the music to play. Currently he’s lifting up the seat, putting plastic bricks in the recess under it and then taking them out again.

He did get another present – about 6am that morning I gave birth to Oliver, the latest addition to our family. He was a little early, and certainly wasn’t expected on that particular day. Luckily we had planned to have him at home so we were able to handle the family coming round later that day for tea, presents and birthday cake. The fact the two boys share a birthday makes me feel slightly odd, although they won’t know any different and I hope that they will come to appreciate sharing their celebrations with each other.

So at the moment the house is full of birthday and new baby cards, a sea of blue congratulations. We don’t have the surface space for them all, so I’ve strung them up from picture hooks. The next big project task is writing thank you notes for all the gifts the boys received, and again people have been very generous with their presents and we’ve received things from people we never expected anything from.

Having two babies in the house means I have to be even more organised than usual. If it isn’t on the calendar it doesn’t get done. We have a structured meal planner (although at the moment it’s mainly eating up food from the freezer that was prepared and cooked in advance as I knew I wouldn’t get much kitchen time when the new baby arrived). We have a lot of help from family, and we are coping on very little sleep, but that’s normal.

In terms of blogging, you’ll see a few more articles from people other than me, as I’ve called on the wider project management community to help me out with content over the next couple of months as I take a bit of time off to get to know my new family and rest up. Thanks for sticking with me over the last year as we adjusted to parenthood, and look out for more parenting stories as this year goes on!