What I've Learned from Being in a Long Term Relationship

Tomorrow is mine and my husband's two year wedding anniversary and in August we will have been together for fourteen years. We have been together for such a huge chunk of my life that I can't imagine what my adult life would look like without him. Without being too vomit inducing, I have to say that I feel really really lucky that I found someone that I love so much that I want to have by my side for the rest of my days.

To mark the occasion, I thought I would share fourteen relationship lessons I have learned along the way. I am not saying we are perfect and I don't know what our futures hold, but at this moment in time we are pretty bloody happy together and have been for the fourteen years we have had together so far. We can get on each others nerves and we do fall out sometimes but we love each other a lot and have had a pretty solid relationship for long time. We've ridden the waves that life has thrown at us and we've done it together, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Everything in this list applies to both people in the relationship!

Trust
Trust is a big part of a relationship and if you don't trust each other then I believe that you need to address and fix it asap or there is no relationship.

Honesty
Trust is a two way street and as well as trusting your partner, they need to be able to trust you too. Be as honest with them as you expect them to be with you.

Appreciation
Sometimes it can be easy to take your other half for granted, don't forget to let your partner know you appreciate the nice things they do for you. A 'thank you' goes a long way (as does making someone a brew).

Dear Ruby (a Letter to my Little Girl)

People tell you so many things when you are going to be a parent and I knew you'd change my life. But I could never have imagined that it would be so instant, such a thick line between my life before and my life now. The moment I saw you I knew. When I held you close, felt your skin next to mine, I knew I'd do anything for you as long as I live. And at the same time I was terrified at how much you would need me. I didn't know if I could ever be enough for you.

Those first few weeks are a bit foggy in detail but our little family began its story. Your dad and me learning as we went along. Changing nappies, making bottles, pacing around at 3am trying to soothe the discomfort of colic, wondering if we'd ever sleep again. Even when you were asleep I lay there listening to make sure you were breathing. I agonised over every single decision I made, no matter how big or small. In late night moments of weakness I consulted Google to see how I was doing (bad idea).

The days flew by and turned into weeks and then months. Your first smile, your first Christmas, your first laugh, your first trip to the hospital (not fun). They're all happening so quickly. I try and drink the moments in, engrave the memory in my brain. You're now rolling over and almost sitting without help! I'm frightened to blink in case I miss anything. I take a million photographs and videos of you, scared in a year's time I will forget the important moments.

Your funny gummy grin always makes me smile and your giggles are the best noise I have ever heard. When you fall asleep in my arms I enjoy every second, the world just stops and the 'to do' lists can wait. The dog is still not sure about you, but I know once you learn to play fetch your adventures will be many and will make my hair turn grey.

Sure the day to day can be hard and tiring. I'm not going to lie little one, you have a set on lungs on you and you can scream for England, a good night's sleep is an abstract construct, the house is a mess and time is at a premium. I don't always have time to do things for myself. Let's face it, my Goodreads challenge this year is not going to happen and my Netflix list is getting bigger each week. If I hear one more toy that plays that song about having a dog named 'Bingo' I am going to go nuts.

It is all totally worth it though, you are totally worth it. Watching you grow and explore the world around you makes my heart swell, even if there is a part of me wants to keep you a tiny baby for just that bit longer. Every day you do something new (sometimes it's that you can make a very loud noise) and I am amazed. The teeny 'poppy seed' that was in my stomach this time last year is a gorgeous, funny, happy (and sometimes grumpy) amazing human.

You have brought out the best in me, made me more patient and showed me I can be strong. You've made me more vulnerable because I love you so much. You have filled our lives with joy, our hearts with love (and our living room with toys).

Nikki Lou Writes Re-Launch

I haven't been writing for a while as I took a short break to work on some other bits and pieces, which turned into a long break when I found out I was pregnant! 

Watch this space for my re-launched blog which will focus on my new life as a (clueless) mummy and other home and life stuff. You can also catch me over at Leopard Print Specs which is a collaborative project with my lovely pal Sarah. 

Ruby came into our lives 12.11.16 💗

Finding out I was Pregnant

Original post from Leopard Print Specs

I always imagined that the day I found out that I was pregnant I would have an explosion of emotions and it would play out like a scene from a TV show or film. I'm a ridiculously emotional person and always have been (my Mum still hasn't lifted the ban she put on me watching Watership Down despite me now being 32). So you can imagine the amount of ugly happy crying I expected to do on the day I had such huge news.

Image Source

Learning to Write Like a Grrrl

On 4^th July I attended The Write Like A Grrrl one day workshop in Liverpool Central Library ran by For Book’s Sake.

For Book’s Sake are an organisation formed in 2010, who champion women writers of all backgrounds and career levels. Their aim is to create a community that centres, supports and champions’ women and girls, with focus on writing.

Image - For Book's Sake

I’ve followed them on twitter for a while and when I saw they had tweeted about a workshop they were running, I debated for a while as to whether I should go or not. I had a whole list of reasons why I shouldn’t (What if I make a show of myself? What if it’s full of people who are better writers/better educated/better read then I am etc..). With a gentle nudge from my husband, I decided to just go for it and booked my place.

The Write Like A Grrrl course is dedicated to encouraging and teaching women who want to write (or are already writing), and is open to self-identifying women of all ages. It runs as a six week course, and also as one day intensive workshops.

10 Things I Learned Planning My Wedding

Although we’ve been engaged for about eight years, we made the decision to get married at New Year and we planned everything between January and May. In terms of wedding planning, five months is not a lot of time, but we didn’t want it to drag on and on and take over our lives.

I’m not an expert in the slightest, but as we managed to pull it off I thought I would share some things I learned along the way...

1. Write everything down from the beginning 

When me and Mr decided to get married, my mum bought me a gorgeous planner as a present and it became our handbook. I used it to keep everything in one place, contact numbers, quotes, ideas and lists galore. Thanks to the planner I knew what needed paying and when, and what we needed to get done. If everything is in one place, it makes things much easier.

2. Pinterest is your new best friend

Pinterest is a great source of inspiration, and a great place to keep ideas together. We had a secret pinboard that we both used to share ideas with each other and keep them all in one place. Just make sure you don’t get too caught up in pinning and not actually getting anything done!

Honesty is the Best Policy?

I was pretty shocked by the recent story in the press about the woman who’s ‘friends’ wrote her a letter calling her out on her Facebook habits. The content of the letter itself wasn't shocking but the fact that they decided to do things in this way made me uncomfortable.

What major crime had this woman committed? Sharing her enthusiasm about her child a little bit too much for their liking.

It’s common for people to over share on Facebook these days. I imagine most of us have annoyed friends, family or colleagues without even knowing about it and I bet most of us have been annoyed by things we've seen on Facebook (my personal irritant is people sharing Britain First posts). But I don’t think it’s right to call someone out on it under the umbrella of ‘honesty’.

Learning to Love Myself

Imagine having someone follow you around all day long telling you how crap you are. Every time you eat something they tell you you’re a pig, every time you make a small mistake they tell you you’re a giant fuck up, no matter what you do it’s wrong. That is basically how I lived my life for a long time except there weren’t two people in the scenario, it was just me.

I had this idea of perfection in my mind that I was constantly grasping at and anything that fell short of that felt like devastating failure. I hated the way I looked, I felt like I wasn’t a good enough person, I was a bad friend and a disappointing daughter, I never felt good enough at my job, my blog was rubbish, my house was mess…the list goes on.

Not surprisingly, beating myself up mentally every single day took its toll. I lacked confidence in every aspect of my life and it was making me miserable. I knew I had so many good things in my life but I couldn’t fully enjoy them because there was part of me that felt I didn’t deserve it. And eventually I cracked and suffered a really bad period of depression.

Image - Lindsay gypsydancer12 Flicker  

Keeping My Cool About Getting Married

I am getting married in two months’ time and I am pretty laid back about the whole thing. People keep asking me if I am stressed about the planning and in all honesty, I am not at all.

We have been together for eleven and a half years and engaged for about eight and we haven’t really been in a rush to get married (clearly with an engagement that long) because we always knew it would happen one day and we had pretty much decided we were for life.

Image - Tumblr