Great Expectations

How the past few weeks have flown....I’ve been house bound for part of the time unwell (which is no fun) and am finally glad to be off to work today!!

The biggest challenge for me in the past week has been managing people’s expectations of me. The responsibilities that come with this family are enormous but some people think that because they aren’t my kids biologically that they aren’t my responsibility. I didn’t go into this half heartedly, when the children are with us, we are a team and my partner and I are both responsible. Don’t get me wrong, I still have plenty of time with my friends (I would go crazy without it) but it’s certainly not like being single and having no children. Unless you are in this situation I think it would be hard to understand how hard it is to adapt to the responsibilities of an instant family. But that is just my view.

We’ve been talking a lot recently about family and how families can be made up of many different people; but at the end of the day as a family we look after each other. So in the typical black and white world of Miss 4 she says we all have one person to look after!! But she did say that she was someone I had to look after along with her mummy and daddy J. That made me feel good about the role I play in her life.

Miss 4 and I had a girls night out last weekend and it was great fun. She needed to be on her best behaviour all day otherwise girls night was not going ahead! It was nice to spend some time alone together and just chat about what’s going on and all sorts of random things. I am amazed at times with her maturity and how well she handles things. However we still have the occasional incident of crying in the middle of the night which makes me question what’s going on in the head of hers.

So the next few days are child free and then we are lucky to have them for a few weeks over Easter. We’ve picked a cake to make for the Easter bunny and will make baskets to go on an Easter Egg hunt! I just hope I’m allowed to participate even though I’m an adult!!