What a lovely update! Well done on the packed lunch thing, that's a hard habit to break!
As mothers we get GUILTED so much by society about so many different things, it's tough to get past that and acknowledge that you're doing your best with where you are. Once I had a school teacher ring me because she'd done an audit of lunch boxes and she was concerned that ds2 wasn't getting enough in his lunch. She said 'he's only got small roll with nothing on it and a packet of apple crisps in there, that's not enough calories' and I said 'it's a home-made wholemeal roll and he would have peanut butter on it but you don't let them, and he packed it himself so obviously he thinks it's enough, plus he had two large crumpets and peanut butter for breakfast, why don't you let him judge how hungry he is?' I think he was 11 at the time and had been doing his own lunch for YEARS! I was sooooo angry at this woman ringing me up to tell me I was an inadequate mother. I also noticed she wasn't ringing his dad...
Hooray for decent sleep and enjoying alone time! I'm mostly ok unless I feel unsteady, last week being somewhere really crowded and feeling sad and sleep deprived made me feel actually desperately lonely, far more than being at home. I got over it by chatting to new people and learning new things, but it was a real pang. Enjoy your reading and focus on how good having done the life admin will feel. Sometimes I set aside a whole day to do stuff like this, I think Gretchen Rubin calls it something like 'an ugly day' because you do ALL the horrible things at once and it makes it easier and you feel so accomplished
