Good morning all. I'm back. Now don't look at me like that! I know where you live. Obviously that's only true of the people I know. Those I don't know, you can look at me any way you want. I don't care.

Anyway, I know I said I would be posting more often this year and I still fully intend to. I've just come back from leave and I haven't been writing my blog while away. I have a very good reason for that. But now I will do as I said I would and write 100 blogs for the year (98 to go - after this one). Fortunately I did jot down a couple of things to mention while I was away.

This year started off pretty much like the last few. DW and I promised each other that we would do everything we could to try to have a good year, a positive year, a year of self exploration and fulfillment of goals. A year we could look back on and say ""We achieved something good and valuable this year" rather than "Holy crap! How did we get through that year?" As usual we looked at our previous year's goals and New Year resolutions and had a good laugh and decided what to set for ourselves this year. Pretty standard stuff. Having failed quite spectacularly to achieve all but two of my 2006 goals, I decided I needed to set the bar much higher this year. I'll let you know how that goes.

So far, we've had January. I'm lucky there are more than two months in a year or I'd be halfway to failing again. And I'd be a little over 385 years old. So, I now look to February to counter balance January and move forward from there.

On the family front, DW has resumed her quest for two world titles this year. WHTMF (Who Has The Most Fabric) and the more prestigious WHTMPOTGAAGM (Who Has The Most Projects On The Go At Any Given Moment). I don't think she is winning yet but I know she is trying her very best.

Princess starts kinder this week and we are all VERY happy about it. She is getting a little stir crazy at home and if there were a prize for that, Princess would not only win it, she would probably have the trophy named after her for all future generations. She has reached the stage of mental development where she tries to express every single thought in her head and is constantly thinking up ways of causing trouble and being able to talk her way out of it. Kind of like a short, blonde Houdini if Houdini were a verbal escape artist. And also not very good at it. You see, Princess believes the crap she spews out while trying to explain why Little Man is lying face down on the ground with her footprint on his back. She is committed to whatever story she dreams up and seems to believe that the more far-fetched (and therefore more unprovable) an explanation is, the more likely we are to accept it. So we are all looking forward to her going back to kinder.

Little Man is moving forward in his own way. No longer the quiet little boy of days gone by, he has decided that Princess' shadow is not for him. He knows he can hurt her and will stand his ground, though he seems to forget that she can also hurt him and usually does. That said, they have started to enjoy playing together, at least for a little while, and it warms the heart to see it. Unfortunately the game they like playing most together is who can squeal the loudest and a warm heart does nothing to protect your ears.

Anyway, there's a lot more to tell and 11 months to tell it so I will leave the rest until next time. Who knows, maybe I'll even be ready to talk about the event that has become known in our house as "The Poo Incident".

Ciao!

Thought for the Day: Always leave them wanting more.