Thomas has reached the grand old age of one year. He accomplished this a few two weeks ago now. Two days after that I switched him to drinking his morning and evening milk from a cup instead of a bottle.

Along with this switch and the gradual phasing out of his baby formula over the previous three weeks, came the removal of one of my daily chores from the last year.

Over the last twelve months I have spent approximately ten days - yes, full twenty four hour days, ie 240 hours - of my time preparing baby bottles ready for Thomas to drink formula milk.

This time has been spent repeating the same steriliser cleaning, bottle dismantling, washing, sterilising, reconstructing cycle every day (except a few where Liz took on the chore instead).

Ten full days, thirty four working days, one and a half working months; that's a lot of time washing bottles.

While I think it's safe to say that I've quite strongly disliked having this chore form a part of my daily life, the one redeeming factor has been the provision of time each day to listen to podcasts and audio books. I fear I may now need to take up running again to feed my listening habit!