Day 105: Never leave the house without a raincoat...

April showers have finally arrived. Twice in the last week I've been caught out by glorious weather in the morning, and blizzard conditions by lunchtime. Of course I was out in only my gilet, and no raincover for the buggy. Still, it needed a good clean.

Today it was thankfully only light drizzle, and the smell of spring finally emerging from the parched ground. The creek outside our house is almost dry in places, and just as the place is starting too look more green, the lack of snowfall this winter suggests it may be brown and yellow again in a month.

It made me think, though, of all the things one should have in their handbag (or rucksack if I'm including my raincoat), and an article in one of the broadsheet supplements detailing the contents of a celebrity's purse. Of course it is supposed to give away their beauty secrets via well placed advertorial, and we are supposed to rush out and buy these overpriced cosmetics.

For my own part, my tastes are much more simple. Instead of the various receipts, expired coupons, leaky biros and suspect crumbs of Charlie's snacks, my handbag would be more suited to the yummy-mummy, ex-English teacher, aspiring writer I imagine myself to be. Apart from the obvious (notebook for important thoughts, fully charged camera for impressive photos of offspring, pad, healthy snack, bottle of water, lip balm, hair bobble, mirror, brush) I'd have space to put stuff. I never seem to have that in my handbag, just an endless chasm filled with detritus.

For Charlie's part, hers would be full of stones. No matter where we go, she seems to come back with pockets full of rocks; I'll have to be extra zealous when we pack to return, and make sure she isn't exceeding the weight limit with her own souvenirs. If she could, she probably would have brought half the zoo back with her last week. She amused several strangers with her cries of, "hold it," and, "stroke it," at pretty much every enclosure. Thankfully she made do with a handfull if grit.

It's scary how fast she is growing up. She now swims off round the pool with a noodle or armbands, no care for where I am, climbs walls to jump off, chooses her own clothes and is adept at finding things in drawers which she probably shouldn't touch. Diva in training.

Still, it's nice to have a snuggly baby back at nap time, who thinks that my lap is the most comfortable place to be.

Day 88: Sick day

Safe to say I failed Lent miserably. As I watched myself wobbling around in the mirror of the fitness studio during yoga last Thursday, I realised that I'm not just unfit (and unbalanced), but overweight too. So I decided that rather than setting myself unachieveable goals, as for Lent, I would try a tick chart of smaller ones, as in The Happiness Project, and aim to hit half of them each day in April.

My husband has been helping me by eating all the cake in the house, and I went for my first run in the Rockies. More of a walk really, due to not having run for 4 months, and the elevation. Of course, one day in, and my plans to go skiing are thwarted by Charlie. She was up through the night with a soaring temperature, and cried for an hour, refusing medicine. She has spent much of the morning snuggled up on the sofa, only venturing off to rearrange the lego bricks on her castle. I managed to catch up on some lost hours of sleep too, interrupted only by the jarring cartoon voices which she insists upon watching. Of course the second Daddy walked in, she leapt up from the sofa, said, "you play with me!" And off they went.

I went for a run. The mountains are stunning to run around (albeit on the flat plain in the middle), and I managed to run further than I walked and pace myself, admitedly with the dance music programmed into the ipodnano. However mapmyrun reckons I'm doing 16 min/mile, so some way to go yet.

So, missing Thursday's day off, Charlie has driven me mad for a few days, as I don't think she should push herself or go swimming, and she does. Resulting in her scribbling crayon all over the TV, and grinding yet more un-nameable substances into the red velour sofa. I obviously went bonkers (turns out baby wipes are better than brillo pads in this circumstance), and screamed at her. She retreated to the sofa shouting, "I want my Daddy," (well he's buggered off skiing again) and fell asleep until he came in. I evntually got the TV clean, God knows what we'll do about the sofa, and felt guilty about losing my rag with her yet again.

It seems cabin fever is a truth. And with so much time in our own company, Charlie and I are incredibly good at finding each other's weakness and exploiting it. I need to remember I am the adult and that mimicing her whining, and stropping and lying on the floor is not really appropriate. She apologised for shouting at me; clever reverse psychology on her part, as I say, "No, no, no, Charlie, mummy is sorry for shouting at you!" Only to realise that she has got away with drawing on the rented TV, and with the state of the sofa we'll probably lose our deposit. She's clever.

Yet as I watch the twilight over the mountains, and face the next two nights of girls alone, I realise how lucky we are: Charlie is incredibly healthy, bouncing back from her night of fever in an few hours, she went to sleep after her three books, and we had a lovely day wandering around in the snow and looking at the birds. Tomorrow, I will be a better parent, and we will enjiy the beauty of our surroundings  as weare half way through our escape, and we haven't enjoyed it as much as we clould.