Like with most things in Mrs Lighty’s life, I am slightly late to the Liked and Loved party I think. But when I saw this idea for the first time the other day, I thought, “what a lovely way to detail the Lightys’ lives!”. It’s something that was started by Stevie of A Cornish Mum Blog, and is simply a way of chronicling all of your positives from that month. A sort of happy diary!

I’m the first to admit that once the Christmas decorations are down, and the twinkly lights are packed away, January is a bit of a bleak month. Last year didn’t feel so bad, with Brother Hatchy’s 30th birthday party in mid-January to look forward to, but this year we’ve literally had no concrete plans set in stone for this month, and I must admit to having felt the January blues a bit. But then I saw the whole idea of Liked and Loved, and I thought that actually, we’ve not had too bad a month.

So, in the interests of keeping a note of all of the positives in life, here goes with January 2017’s Mrs Lighty’s Liked and Loved:

• Our New Year trip to Holland.

So I suppose technically our New Year trip to Holland mostly took place in December, but as two days of it were in January, I’ve decided that it’s going in the liked and loved! With soft play, trampolining and swimming for Baby Lighty, good food and drink, and plenty of laughs with family, what’s not to like and love?!

• Snow!!!

Yep we actually had some snow, the first snow that Baby Lighty had seen. Ok, so it only hung around for about 12 hours, but we made the most of it with a dash into our garden for a quick play before dinner.

• Erm, I was on that tellybox thingy..

Yes it’s true! Mrs Lighty made her TV debut on Sky News this month! And I’m pretty sure that that will be the one and only time that I’ll ever be on the telly (not counting, of course, the time when Mr Lighty and I unexpectedly turned up on the coverage of the London 2012 Paralympics Swimming. So unexpectedly in fact that Mrs Lighty was wearing her GLASSES, gaaahhh!). I was soooo nervous going into the interview, but do you know what?! I’m actually really proud of myself for having done it.

• Wonderful Winter Walks and Outings

We’ve enjoyed two great outings as a family this month. Firstly to Hornchurch Country Park, which is just lovely with its newly renovated visitor centre and café, and secondly to Colchester Zoo. We haven’t been to the zoo since Baby Lighty’s first birthday, and now at 19 months he’s got a much better understanding of what was going on. He was completely fascinated by the elephants when we fed them, and kept saying “nose”; I think he was questioning what their trunks were all about!

• Babywearing Blog Success

I know that this will only be a small win for most bloggers, but my Babywearing Myths Busted blog last week went, if not quite viral, slightly mad. With some of my highest stats to date, it was on the back of the comments in the Daily Mail and on Loose Women about the rise of the ‘pack pony parent’, and it was lovely to have so many fellow babywearing parents agree with me, as well as some parents that hadn’t tried babywearing say that it had given them a fresh perspective on it to the extent that they were going to give it a go.

• Painting Fun!

It amazes me how much Baby Lighty is changing at the moment. From that tiny 5 month old that I took to messy play which he hated, to the 19 month old that he is now who has all of a sudden started to get a little curious about crafts. Twice since Christmas he has asked to do the crafts on offer at our Monday babygroup, and we also did some painting at home last weekend. Considering Mrs Lighty loves crafts but is not very good a them, this is an excellent way to indulge my crafting interests!

So that’s us for January. I was drawn to the liked and loved idea because it shows off the positive in any given month, and considering what I said earlier about always thinking that January is a little bit bleak and bleary, I don’t think we’ve done too badly! Looking forward to seeing what I’ve liked and loved in February!

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