Beginnings :: and the end of maternity leave ::

Last Monday my blog reader and social media feeds came alive with bloggers joining in with A Playful Day's love your blog challenge. At the time I thought 'what a fabulous idea' and loved reading everyone's stories of community and interaction, as was the theme. What with birthdays to celebrate and school holidays to contend with, my desire to take part was thwarted by a lack of time, but when I saw this weeks theme, 'beginnings', it seemed so apt I knew I should join in.

Yesterday I went back to work. I've been on maternity leave since the end of July. I decided to start my leave almost 2 months before Effie was due because it gave me the chance to take the summer holidays off and spend some time concentrating on Milo before his world was changed significantly. As it stands Milo is unbelievably laid back about these things and has allowed his new sister to slip seamlessly into his life without any upheaval. But having that summer break was such a lovely thing.

My time, however, is now up and it's time to get back to it. I know how lucky I am to be self employed. Going back to work for me is simply changing the location I spend most the day within my own home, which as it stands is still in the same room even. I still get to see my little girl throughout the day, I'm there when she's hungry, I can watch her play and develop and I'm there to settle her to sleep at nap times. I worked hard through Milo's early years to be lucky enough to be in this position. Now I have two to tend though I wonder how much more difficult balancing work and childcare is going to be.

If you don't know I have two main streams of income, my Etsy shop, selling handmade items from polymer clay and knit and crochet design. Both are pretty time consuming endeavours in different ways, but as they're such varied jobs it's quite easy to fit different aspects of work in around my everyday.

I thought a lot about starting a new venture when I was on leave, but for now, with everything else going on in my life I think sticking to what I know best is the best option for me.
So with that in mind yesterday pulled out all my existing etsy stock and started getting ready to open up again. Today I'm planning on working on the crochet part of my business and getting some patterns ready for republishing. Fingers crossed for long nap times and a baby who remains immobile just a little bit longer!