Reasons to be cheerful

POD’s vocabulary is quite incredible considering she only turned two on Christmas Day. Her sentences and the continual  “whatsiss?”, “whatsatt?”, “whosiss?” never cease to amaze me.

We had a magical moment this week. I’m not sure if that’s the right turn of phrase but we were definitely in the right place at the right time. POD was sponge painting and as each blob of purple paint appeared on paper, she counted it. POD’s counting usually consists of one and two followed by eight, nine and ten or something similar. Not today.

“One. Two”. A pause. “Three. Four. Five”. Another pause. “Six. Seven”. Another pause. “Eight. Nine. Ten”. She has never counted to ten before. Least of all on her own. It generated an almighty cheer from ‘The POD Father’ and I. This was without doubt the week’s top reason to be cheerful and utterly brilliant to witness.

Had I still been working full-time in London I probably would have missed it. Although it wasn’t planned that way, I only saw her 3-4 times a week during that period. We founded Paloma, a marketing and new business consultancy, in December 2012. Now I get to spend quality time with POD every day. It’s inevitable there will be challenges ahead and it’s not going to be easy but it’s well worth the risk. My second reason for being cheerful has to be working to achieve a better work/life balance. Here’s hoping.

My final reason to be cheerful really shouldn’t be. I’ve just had confirmation that I will have surgery next month. It will be the second operation on my wrist since I broke it in November 2011. Really I’m very lucky, I was told it would be 18 months before my wrist and hand operated as they should. Hearing that news spurred me into going completely OTT with the physio and achieving phenomenal movement in less than 6 months.

The radius bone is now fully healed and still happily housing some pretty impressive metalwork. The ulna bone was left to mend itself but it never did. It’s got progressively worse over the past few months. Whilst the prospect of more surgery, 3 months in plaster and 6 months physio doesn’t fill me with joy, I know I’ll be much better off in the medium term. So, my third reason for being cheerful is gaining a bionic wrist and playing tennis again.

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