Finally,

I have returned from my self-imposed exile. I am surprised when I get my stat reports that anyone comes at all given my lack of attention these last few weeks - so my apologies.

I blame work of course. I have been writing, a lot. At work. I am into 40plus pages of a document with more editing and re-writing to be completed over the next week. I have also actually had to be at work 5 days a week lately due to some attrition within our team. I felt as the sole senior team member I really should come in Fridays, which I have dutifully done the last 5-6 weeks.

Naturally this means I have less time for everything else in my life which are actually the more important things. Hopefully my work-life balance will come back soon.

Gabriella is still awake at this late time this evening having had a late afternoon sleep. Hopefully she will sleep through though I was up around 3am for about half an hour last night settling her. In an effort to encourage her to go back to sleep without our intervention, we had to move Elliot out of their bedroom and he has returned to the mattress which is pulled out from under our bed and returned each day. The more things change the more they stay the same. We had an 8 month reprieve from having a child in our bedroom. I don't know how much longer this will last but at least we are sleeping through the nights most evenings these days so it seems a small price to pay for some sleep and sanity.

In between writing I am also reading to her and dealing with her videos. Apart from the sleeping issues with Gabriella she is in a very whingey and annonying stage about 30% of the time I spend with her. If her favourite video finishes she cries until it is rewound and replayed. I call it the 'rewind' phase as we experienced much the same with Elliot. Whenever tape finished we had to wait till it was rewound which meant we spent much of our time saying "it's rewinding, it's rewinding.." like they know what we mean!

Gabriella and I are home alone this evening, P took Elliot to the Lion's game so no doubt they are having a great time. I can't complain as the last two Friday evenings I have stayed at work to have a drink with some colleagues I guess that comes with the territory when you start working Fridays you feel that you are entitled to that end of week drink which then turns into quite a few, although I was home by 9.30pm both times (we did start early though and didn't have dinner so I feel much worse for the wear when I do get here and somewhat guilty that I haven't seen the children for 12 hours).

I think I will have to do some posting on my food blog next I have a quite a few recipes to catch up on. We had a public holiday on Wednesday for the exhibition and all my plans to take the children to the park dissipated with some visiting to my mother-in-law and shopping and working in the yard and finally cooking and baking. I managed to make, sushi for lunch, 2 batches of cranberry, pecan and white chocolate cookies, one flourless orange and chocolate cake, minted pea soup and butter chicken in the afternoon.