Before I had kids...

Before I had kids I used to hear people say "before I had kids I used to ... [insert activity of choice, e.g. dive, windsurf, snorkel, travel, read a lot of books, go camping, have friends over for dinner etc.]"

I always took this to mean that you have to give up your passions when you have children because its inconvenient, difficult to organise, hard to do without babysitters, there are too many other more mundane things to be done.

I thought this was a really sad state of affairs and I was determined to figure out ways to keep my passions alive post-children, including, getting a boat-sized sailboard so my kids could learn to sail on it (not because I'm a rubbish windsurfer and need a large board for stability. That wasn't the reason at all. Although it is convenient to be able to drop your sail and sit down for a little rest when it all gets too much.)

What I didn't realise was that whilst occasionally you might see a photo of you doing said activity (case in point: photo of me and Toby windsurfing just popped up on my digital photo frame) and think, "wow, I miss doing that, that was fun". And you might then go on to think about how you might do that activity over the coming weeks. And you might very soon ditch the thought because it is an organisational nightmare and it is hard to do without babysitters (and it's especially difficult when you have to wait for the weather to do the right thing too). Despite all that you don't actually really miss said activity. And it's not just because you're so busy doing all the other mundane things that you never had to do. Although you are. It's because your life is full of other things. I mean really full. Full to bursting. Windsurfing, diving, travelling, they're all really nice things but personally I'm happy to put it all on hold to spend every evening singing Old MacDonald with Phoebe at bathtime.