first things first

The first of January.

The first day of the month, and also of a whole new year. Happy New Year to you all, and wishing you all a lovely 2017.

Today I did my first run of a total of 500 miles I plan to run over the year. Only 498 to go! It was very wet, and Millie was far more enthusiastic on the mile back towards home than she was on the way out. Although the first day of the year is obviously an added motivation for starting good habits, this has been a gradual rediscovery of running over the last few months.  My sister-in-law runs a facebook group where she organises virtual runs to raise money for charity, and she was kind enough to let me join in back in October even though I was doing more of a shuffle with the pram and the dog. Since then I've discovered that the promise of a medal has proved excellent motivation, and completed a marathon in October (not all at once, but over the month!), 11 miles in 11 days in November, and in December I did a minimum of a mile a day in the 12 days leading up to Christmas, ending with a 5k on Christmas Eve. I've now signed up to do 500 miles over the year, and 62 miles in January. I'm still pretty slow but I've gradually built up to a gentle jog, and The Husband kindly bought me a fancy running watch for Christmas which is a joy to use, having spent the last few months wafting my phone around in the air as I went, trying, and failing, to get it to accurately track my route.

I have also read my first book in months. The Husband bought me a few for Christmas, and while he was out with a friend on Friday, I found myself with a quiet hour, where the baby was asleep, the house was calm, and I made a cup of tea, and had a mince pie and got lost in a book. It is a really enjoyable read, and it is lovely to be engrossed in a story again.

We had a productive last day of the year, I did my traditional re-organising of my make up, making space for the Estee Lauder gift set my parents kindly gave me. I also happily did my annual update of my diary, putting the new pages in my filofax (I am old school and proud!) and throwing out last year's pages. Today I will start this diary for the fourth year. That isn't a sponsored link I just love that diary so much, and I think everyone should have one. It is the only diary I have managed to keep for a full year (now three years!) and it has been great to be able to read what was happening in our lives in previous years. It made the run up to Christmas extra special, remembering those first few weeks of pregnancy, the uncertainty, the worry, the hope and seeing in front of me our amazing little boy, here safe and well.

That, perhaps, has been the biggest thing I have learnt from being his mum. I spent the pregnancy so worried, so convinced something would go wrong. As the weeks went by my imagination lurched from one possible problem to another. Even in the delivery room I remember telling the midwife I still didn't believe he was going to get here safely, couldn't comprehend that all would be fine. And then there he was, beautiful eyes wide open, filling the room with noise, and life, no question that he was very definitely here, ready for this world, and entirely well. And I realised that life, sometimes, turns out exactly how you hope it will, that worrying had been for nothing, and that it doesn't do any harm to hope for the best instead of imagining the worst. So that is what I shall take into the New Year, as I see him grinning at me while he sits on his daddy's knee, that this little boy has shown me that good things, the best things, do happen.

In that spirit, having never shared a picture of myself before, convinced that being anything other than anonymous could somehow lead to problems and disaster, I'm changing that too. It has been a long time coming, and even longer when you try to find a nice picture of yourself when you've recently had a baby and are simultaneously trying to grow out a pixie haircut, but here we go, another first.

Lovely to meet you, I'm Katie!