This Week #21

I took Marianna into work with me on Monday because Anthony was full up with a cold. She was really good, but the seminar was on childhood obesity so I felt more guilty than usual about letting her have a biscuit to munch on! Tuesday saw me struck down with the cold myself, so after shopping, etc, I spent the day on the sofa, bundled up in my duvet. Wednesday was back to normal, and in the evening we went to the Northville Community Group meeting at Maendy Primary. It's so nice to see people wanting to improve the area. Marianna was quite miserable so I kept having to get up to show her a picture of Floppy the seal, the school's mascot. She really loves Floppy for some reason!

Thursday was quite busy; I had healthier communities scrutiny committee in the morning, looking at social services, then a meeting with the Wales Audit Office who had come in to see where the council is in its preparation for the Well-being of Future Generations Act. It will be a really useful framework, in my opinion, but the official guidance sounds like the most wishy-washy load of old tosh I've ever heard. I don't know why they can't write guidance with an audience other than overpaid think tanks in mind. Anyway, after that we had a Labour group meeting but when I got home about 7pm Anthony had put Marianna to bed and made my tea ready, like a proper 1950s housewife!

On Friday my cold amped itself up to 11, probably because it knew it was my day off and it wanted to ruin the occasion. Saturday morning was councillor advice surgery, and in the afternoon I took Marianna to my mum's for tea and TV. :)

Marianna ready to get up and play again after her nap. Also in shot, our super chic cot bumper alternative...

☆ READING: Jigsaw Parenting's Blogger Spotlight series - you can check out my turn HERE.

☆ WRITING: I wrote up my birth story for the Quite Frankly She Said blog.

☆ WATCHING: The late 80s / early 90s BBC drama Making Out. My mum bought the DVD and I was dubious given the last series we watched together (Watching), but I actually really enjoyed this one.

☆ LISTENING: To the sound of my own coughing. :(

☆ WEARING: Clothes slightly less cringy than the ones in my vintage 'Photos of Cornwall' post for A Cornish Mum.

☆ EATING: Cough drops.

☆ REVIEWING: All the stuff I read last month. Check out the post, I'm holding a book giveaway there too.

As I've felt so ill this week I've been relying pretty heavily on my stockpile of pre-written posts. We've had my January comping wins, how to get a custom favicon for your blog, and a short story I wrote for the Yuletide exchange back in 2012. I did write a post about setting up a custom domain email address - you can now reach me at jess@babiafi.co.uk - and one on my top ten video games.

Quite a few of my guest posts for other blogs went live this week too. In addition to the ones already mentioned, I did the working mums interview at Mummascribbles blog. ETA: The new Tots100 scores are out! It's all a numbers game, I know, but I'm so pleased - I've gone up 177 places to #191.