So last week I wrote my first blog of the year, all full of optimism… 2 weeks in and 2019 has already bitch slapped us in the face!

Wednesday morning Henry left early to go to the gym and the children and I had a cheeky lie in together before he called with bad news. He’d pranged the car. The description consists of the worlds slowest crash at a roundabout where he wrongly assumed the car in front was moving with the rest of the traffic, sadly he wasn’t. Both cars only suffered minor damage and the only thing Henry damaged was his pride. But sadly it has still meant a couple of hours dealing with insurance companies and we are still waiting for the garage to collect Siegfried and to see what surprise we get to drive for a few days.

Then a few hours after he’d returned home and we voted on a quiet family day watching Peter rabbit (at last!) we got an actual piece of bad news. My Grandma has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Even though it was something we were half expecting from the tests it’s still hard to hear that actual diagnosis. My Grandparents played a huge part in my childhood and teenage years and loosing my Grandad 8 years ago was extremely hard to deal with but undoubtably it hit my Grandma the worst. It breaks my heart now to think that this horrendous disease will likely rob her of not just herself but also of him. Their marriage was one that the overused #lifegoals tags would rightly belong next to and they will forever be a couple that inspire Henry and myself. I know he’s watching down on her as she enters this next stage in her life and I just hope that as a family we can pull together to make it as dignified as possible for her sake.

On a lighter note the year has given us a couple of amazing moments provided by our fabulous children. On Tuesday we popped into Exeter to wave off Auntie Georgia and Uncle Gyan as they head away from Exeter. This included a trip to the park where Seb had his first go on a swing… and he loved it! His little face lit up and Polly thought it was great fun when they got to swing next to each other.

So, the other night I was doing the washing up, Seb was chatting away next to me in the bouncy chair and Polly was playing in the living room with her toy Rocky from Paw Patrol. She came in and out the kitchen a couple of times and then I turned as she was taking the gravy off the shelf. I asked what she had planned for it before noticing she had brown all round her mouth- “did you find some chocolate?”- she promptly ran back into the living room and I followed. She then picked up Rocky and started saying “mmmm nom nom nom” while feeding him something… an oxo cube. A half eaten oxo cube. Oh and there was a second half eaten oxo cube at his feet. My brain took 2 seconds, very long seconds to connect the brown face to Rocky having his tea. Yup my child was eating oxo cubes. And the first thing she asked for was a glass of water to wash it down.

I do feed them real food, honestly!