I was beating myself up for being late on this (again) but it turns out I’m earlier than I was last year! That’s the ethos at the moment - eat the elephant (one bite at a time), do the hard things.

The end of financial year came in a bit of a flump for me - June started well with me running a half-marathon and achieving a 13 minute PB, but after that I got sick… and then sick again… and now I’m just coming good, and I’ve been sick for over a month.

But of course, the main reason you’re all here is to see photos of Chooky - she’s grown up so much this year, as the title suggests! I haven’t included many photos from July-August of last year, not least because we had one of those ‘formative childhood accidents’ where she went face-first into a plate glass TV cabinet and her photos all have some facial stitches front and centre. She’s healed up incredibly well though, and I did find a couple of photos for a little side by side! The legs are much more ‘leggy’, the hair is much more ‘hairy’, and on the down-low, we’re out of nappies now (except at bedtime).

Last weekend I had a 'shower thought’ and I asked her if she wanted to ‘run a race’ with me. She said ‘YEAAAHH!’ so we went down to the local wetlands with our race numbers on and we ran a 720m loop. She was so strong and tough and resilient, she worked really hard!

Chooky is now in pre-Kindy, absolutely in love with her teacher Miss Daisy, and has some very strong opinions on everything from music to movies. She also loves to play pretend and assign roles - ‘I’m a baby tiger, you a daddy tiger and mummy a mummy tiger!’ or ‘I’m Marshall, mama is Skye, and you’re RUBBLE!’. There’s a high chance we’ll be doing Halloween this year dressed up as Spidey, Ghost Spider and Spin.

She’s continued with her ballet classes all year, including the special annual Show Day in December, and she’s about to graduate into the first ‘big kids’ class without parents in the room. In January she also graduated to ‘big kid swimming lessons’!

Gran (our behind the scenes tax contractor) took a big trip to Europe a couple of months ago and brought us back a very Spanish black and red spotted flamenco dress (which led to various hilarities, not least being told very confidently ‘It’s not a fla-MIN-go, it’s a LADY BEETLE!’).

Kate has continued in Crossfit and I’ve continued running (as well as playing some social slow-pitch baseball). The implosion of the tech/coding industry due to AI has resulted in me pulling out of my studies there, but I do feel like I’ve learned a lot of skills that I can apply in my work in future (both practical in terms of coding/languages, and also theoretical in terms of logic flow etc).

Kate and I also both got diagnosed with ADHD this year! It’s the new ‘cusp of 40’ trend right? We present in very different ways, though. I’m hopeful that a steadier, somewhat medicated life will really help with my work focus, task initiation and all of those things that can be a struggle for the self-employed.

To sign off, there’s the usual gallery of pictures below (including some of me, Kate and Gran - magic admin Jacqui appears in an Easter shot also)!