When I was 25 weeks pregnant with Ethan I started writing this blog, initially as a pregnancy diary - somewhere to record how happy I felt at that particular time in my life. I'd just got married to Adam and a few weeks before that had found out I was pregnant - I wanted somewhere to record the happiness I was feeling. My blog soon turned in to my hobby, it was sort of the first hobby I'd ever had separately to Adam. As a result of blogging, I've started to get more and more into photography and though I don't aim to take the more traditional professional looking photos, instead focusing more on my own sort of style, it's something I really enjoy and I suppose now class as a hobby.
Adam also took up another hobby just before Ethan was born, he decided to start collecting and building Lego sets. Being a huge fan of the movies, he'd taken a particular interest in The Lord of The Rings Lego sets that had just been released. What neither of us knew at the time of starting up these hobbies was that they'd one day turn in to something that would enable us to make a little extra income.
The great thing is, is that despite how hard we both have to work to make our hobbies profitable, we both genuinely still have so much passion for what we do, me with my blogging and Adam with his Lego (he now makes and sells custom Lego minifigures based on popular television and film characters). It can sometimes seem that as parents, free time is non-existent, it can almost feel like there's never enough time for personal hobbies. But I believe that it's just about finding something that can work around the children's nap and bed time or nursery and school time. Perhaps it might just be that a change of hobby is needed - something that is a little less time consuming (which is why we gave up playing World of Warcraft). A lot of parents these days seem to opt for taking up hobbies such as scrapbooking, blogging, photography and even trying their luck with things such as entering online competitions and playing online games. Whatever you do - personal time or 'me time' as a parent is healthy. It give parents a chance to reset and to recharge. It's really great being either 'Mum' or 'Dad', but it's also okay to sometimes just be you or in my case 'Alex'.What do you like to do in your spare time? Do you still have the same hobbies that you had prior to becoming a parent?
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