Bucket list...

In two months I am going back to work.

As you can imagine, this is a bit of a wrench, so in order to feel like I am making the most of that time, I thought I would write a maternity leave 'bucket list'.

A common-or-garden bucket list is a list of things to do before you 'kick the bucket' or pop your clogs - Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson starred in a film about two old duffers who escape from hospital and go on a road trip to do everything on their bucket lists. They were terminally ill though. I don't intend to kick the bucket and my imminent return to work is not on a par with death, but this is helping me get my mind around the whole thing. And it gives me a chance to write a really good list - I like a list!

Now I sit down to think about what I want to do, I am slowly realising that I have done quite a lot already. I have mastered feeding a baby again, and changing him and putting the buggy up and down. When I had mastered these pretty essential tasks, I joined some baby groups. This may sound fairly run-of-the-mill, but even as a relatively confident person, I found it a bit daunting. Walking in to a room full of mums and dads is intimidating. They all seem to know each other and I am the new kid to be inspected. At one point, I was hanging around outside a community centre, waiting for a friend to go into the toddler group with. When she turned up she pointed out that I run a team of people in my real life, so I should be ok going in to have coffee and cake with a group of mums. Oh my, if only that were the case. But, I went through the door and have conquered that particular wobble now and I feel really proud of myself. Looking back, I don't know what I was worrying about. His dad and I have taken the baby swimming. Now I want us all to go. Maybe we can go on holiday to one of those swanky family water parks in a Europe were there a loads of slides. Mmmm, maybe we need to win the lottery first. I have learnt a bit of baby sign language. By a bit, I have learnt three signs, but it is a start. I have done lots of exercises with the baby and lots of 'Tummy Time'. I didn't encounter Tummy Time with the last one, so that's another box to tick. I have taken the baby to Cornwall and to Norfolk and managed to get him to sleep in a travel cot. I have even started using Twitter and I am writing a blog!

I feel as if we have achieved quite a lot, but I want to see what else is out there. I feel like this is the last time I will have a big block of time to spend with my children before I retire and I want to do new things with my boys. Not go abseiling or that kind of thing just yet, but enough so that when I go back to work, I can look back on what we did and it will keep me going until I get home or until the weekend or until we go on holiday.

Maybe, I just need to keep doing what I am doing. Meeting up with my friends and family, spending time taking my big boy swimming and taking my little boy to watch, drinking wine and eating take away with my biggest boy, planning our holiday to a water park, watching the buds burst....

Oh no.

This is going to turn out like a chicky-flicky-rom-commy-soppy-happy-ever-after blog where I realise that all I really need is right in front of me and I just needed to see how lucky I really am. Forget the bucket list, pass the sick bucket.

(Look, I am writing this in tiny writing and saying it really, really quietly, and despite the bit inside me which cringes at all that soppy stuff....I suppose it's true, isn't it?)