babies suck

What Are Weekends For?

2010-07-02T18:36:00.002+01:00

Can someone tell me what the secret is? I mean, has anyone got the hang of enjoying weekends?

Twas not always thus. From the cobweb-drenched depths of my memory, something stirs. It's something we use to call That Friday Feeling. Chris Evans even had a TV show about it.

Ah yes, it's slowly coming back to me. That feeling that the week's toil was over and two days of relaxation, respite, sleep and Doing What You Feel Like lay ahead of you.

Nowadays it's the housework, children and ManChild constantly crying out for my attention. If I'm not cleaning and cooking I feel guilty. If I'm not playing with/reading to/helping the GirlChild with her homework or overseeing educational games on the internet, I feel guitly. Whatever I do, there's that constant niggling sense that no one's quite satisfied. There's no escape. No respite. By Sunday, I'm done in.

These days, a slow feeling of dread creeps up on me from Thursday onwards. What are we doing over the weekend? Other people seem to have plans - visiting friends, going to or inviting people for lunch/barbeques, days out at theme parks or museums. Not us. We wing it. This is not my choice. The ManChild is notoriously difficult to pin down when it comes to making arrangements. Advance booking jars with his penchant for spontaneity. Usually we don't do much. It pretty much boils down to the park and the supermarket. And watching the ManChild nurture his pond. So much for spontaneity.

But have you ever noticed how happy the parents look when you see them dropping their sprogs off at school on a Monday morning? Give me that Monday feeling every time.

Life in Brief

2010-06-20T21:24:00.002+01:00

Weeks passed since last post: 2 and a bit

Job applications completed: 2

New jobs acquired: 1

Coursework assignments completed: 4 (out of 5)

Coursework portfolios assembled: 0

Childcare disasters caused by dippy childminders averted: 1

Sports Days attended: 1

Rooms in house in serious need of dusting: all

To-do lists compiled: lost count

Blog Posts written: 0

If you call it a 'life'...

Living With a Greek - the LWAGs fight back!

2010-06-04T16:02:00.008+01:00

Recently announced to the ManChild that I was going to start a support group for people who live with Greeks (must check if URL livingwithagreek.com is available) - LWAGs everywhere, you know what I'm talking about. The challenges of having a Greek in you life - where do we start? Greeks are like Marmite...

The main issues I have encountered include:

1. Always knowing a better way of doing something than your way. If you've ever stopped a local in a Greek village to ask for directions, you'll have come across the phenomenon that resurrects Harry Enfield's Mr You Don't Want to Do it Like That character. Greek A will be directing you up the road and left, when up will pitch Greek B who will disagree, sending you down the hill and right. The ManChild (even though born in London and therefore more Greek Lite than the full-blown indigenous version) can't help his genes, 'advising' me to brush my teeth before I floss, even though I prefer the other way round, telling me I'm cutting a tomato incorrectly ("you don't want to do it like that!"), querying my ironing technique (er, excuse me, when did YOU ever actually use an iron?) and on and on it goes. Greeks know better. Apparently.

2. The volume control is set at 'deafening' - if the ManChild is in a temper and I tell him to stop shouting, he shouts all the louder in frustration: "I'M NOT SHOUTING!". He actually gets very cross when I speak quietly. Greek don't do quiet. Apparently, it's to do with passion. They use that excuse a lot...

3. The tendency to supersize everything. Send the ManChild shopping and he'll return with 24 loo rolls, a crate of baked beans, a 10kg bag of rice. It's all very well until you try to find room for his haul. 10kg bags of rice don't fit into any cupboard we own. To the Greek this is not a problem, since the floor is considered a perfectly usable storage area. That the ManChild has serious hoarding tendencies could be just a quirk of his personality, a feature of his star sign, rather than a national characteristic. But when you come to think about it, have you ever been in a Greek shop that wasn't packed to the rafters with piles of dusty stock?

LWAGs the world over, let us unite in a common purpose, smoothing the path of Living With a Greek for all those in this challenging position. Anyone?

Picture by Watanga http://www.flickr.com/photos/7473854@N05/2260105377/sizes/s/

What are Weekends For?

2010-05-23T23:01:00.005+01:00

It's Still a Con

2010-05-23T21:48:00.005+01:00

So, you give in to this nagging feeling of neglect and head for your blog, only to discover that, in the weeks since you last posted, you have actually LOST a follower! Whoever you are, I'm very sad to see you go. I have few enough of you and need all the encouragement I can get! Of course, my lament is pointless since you are no longer reading my rubbishy ramblings... can't say I blame you. (See, you are now to blame for my low self-esteem).

So what's been happening? Well, the election happened and was duly declared null and void. No winner, all losers. Hah!

So what did we get? Well, it's what PC types might call the equivalent of a 'blended family' and what less PC types might call '****-up'. The Con-Lib hybrid is like the unwelcome product of a seedy one-night-stand. For the sake of creating a harmonious 'family' unit, David Cameron now has to spend quality time with Nick Clegg - someone who looked OK in the dusky half-light but a lot less attractive in the sober morning gloom. Like reluctant ex-lovers, they pose shoulder to shoulder for the cameras, trying desperately to hide the embarrassment of their grubby union being discovered.

And, like the automotive equivalent, this hybrid fails on all counts - neither looking desirable nor achieving the 'good' credentials it claims to champion.

Can't wait for the fan to get hit. It won't be long before Cloying Clegg is slamming doors and saying he never wants to see Dastardly Dave's PC Plum-alike face again. How long before they try a make-or-break weekend away (a love-in in Brussels perhaps?) and can you imagine the chaos of a family-bonding week in a French gite, complete with high maintenance wives and mega-brats?

There's still a 'con' in this marriage of convenience.

Reasons to be Cheerful

2010-04-21T09:39:00.005+01:00

Sometimes it's good to be poor.

If you'd had the money (and not been sick), you would definitely have been up for an Easter break somewhere warm and sunny.

Just think - you could still be on holiday.

Or rather stranded abroad with no clean laundry left.

With the kids.

And the ManChild.

On a family holiday that never seems to end.

Sometimes it's good to be poor.

Picture courtesy of martindaveyillustration

Be Careful What You Wish For... or There's Nothing Good About This Friday

2010-04-03T08:12:00.005+01:00

A couple of weeks ago, you remember thinking aloud: "Wouldn't it be great to spend the whole weekend in bed." What you had in mind was something along the lines of a John-and-Yoko: food, sex, papers, dozing, more food...

What you didn't have in mind was succumbing to some flu-type bug that laid you low in a sweaty heap under the duvet for two whole days. Shivery, feverish, throat like you'd swallowed two golfballs. Ha! That's wishful thinking for you...

But, typically, things had to get worse. The BoyChild crawled into bed with you, mumbling plaintively that he felt sick. That's OK, you reassured him, we can stay in bed together. But his illness was something entirely different, as it turned out, a stomach bug. Next thing you know, the bed's covered in vom and you're calling the ManChild because you don't have the strength to clean it up yourself.

Not only that, but the washing machine, the NEW washing machine that just arrived two days ago - DOESN'T WORK! Passed the test cycle with flying colours then gave up the ghost. Customer care tell you they can send an engineer on TUESDAY (it being bank holiday and all that...)

The BoyChild pukes five more times. The washing piles up. The ManChild scoops up the laundry and heads for the local launderette. Closed. Bank Holiday.

Because he's not well, he wets the bed (the boy, that is). Twice.

The house starts to resemble a slum. And stinks like one, too.

To rub salt in it, you were supposed to be going to friends for lunch today.

But it's never all bad news. You've lost a bit of weight. It's the ManChild who's the first to notice. "You look emaciated," he informs you.

Bless him.

Picture by AJ Nguyen

Thou Shalt Not Drink Beer

2010-03-31T10:35:00.005+01:00

At some stage during the 'becoming a parent' process, you must have inadvertently signed some contract or other barring you from ever again doing things you once enjoyed. Like going to a pub.

(It must have been shortly after you signed the nuptial contract, being equally careless to read the smallprint, you know, the clauses to do with becoming Chief Loader of Washing Machine and Getter Up in the Middle of the Night to Crying Babes etc.)

Anyway, there you are on a family day to the shopping metropolis (OK, we're talking Croydon) and for once you think: do you know what, let's NOT succumb to fast food emporia/pizzas/kiddie meals at adult prices in the usual haunts. Let's do what we would have done pre-kids - Go to the Pub! Yes, midday. In full view of everyone. In daylight. Is it possible?

You fall at the first hurdle. "No kids in here!" the friendly landlord growls at you as you cross the nearest pub's threshold. You try the one next door. Same story.

Someone directs you to the Wetherspoons round the corner. Yep, you can take kids there. If you like. If you like to breathe air thick with chip grease. If you like a patina of air-borne grime on your tables, chairs and carpets. There's something distinctly depressing about this place. It's dark and grim, like the Leaky Cauldron pub in Diagon Alley or that bar in Star Wars frequented by Wookies and weirdos. It's like a punishment for thinking you can take your kids into adult territory. You are the underclass, the undesirables, the untouchables. And don't you forget it.

Still, you're going to have a beer, dammit. You down it quickly and slope off.

What is it with the English obsession with not letting children into pubs? It's not even as though you're worried about second hand smoke any more. Why does being a parent mean you are suddenly a second class citizen?

Humph!

Star Chart Hostage

2010-03-19T13:40:00.008Z

The BoyChild's behaviour has taken a turn for the worse lately. There has been shouting, answering back, kicking, hitting and a flat refusal to co-operate (and for once it's not the ManChild you're talking about!). He comes out of nursery and throws his book bag on the ground and his teacher calls him back to pick it up. Reluctantly, he shuffles along, picks it up and practically throws it at you. His teacher tuts, muttering something about him being 'out of sorts' (talk about putting it politely). Then he whines for ice-cream, like you're going to reward him with a treat. He undoes his seat-belt mid-journey. Then refuses to get out of the car while you stand in the drizzle laden with shopping bags, threatening to lock him in the car* if he doesn't move on the count of three (the neighbours must be loving the daily floor-show).

They're all little things. But annoying. And threatening to become a big thing - the makings of a BRAT! You are determined to nip this in the bud. We've been here before. You know what to do.

It's time for a new STAR CHART. Kids love these. It's all about the carrot and stick, incentive and reward, see? If he gets 10 stars, he gets to choose a toy. He just doesn't know it's gonna be from the pound shop. But, we digress..

Day one goes well. Get dressed. Brush your teeth. Remember, you want to get a star, don't you? Great, well done, you! Keep it up. You're well on your way to the magic ten.

Then it's:

I put my shoes on. Can I have a star?

I walked to school. Can I get a star?

I didn't throw my book bag on the ground when I came out of school - can I get a star?

On and on it goes, and by gawd you're wondering why you ever started this Star Chart lark.

Next day, you're in the GirlChild's classroom, helping out with Arts Week (Alpha Mum style!) and you spot a Star Chart on the wall. On closer inspection, you see the GirlChild is way ahead with more stars than anyone else. You look up at the title of the chart - We Follow the Golden Rules. These stars are awarded for conformity, not for doing anything special. Something about this makes you feel uncomfortable. The GirlChild is already extremely meek and compliant, at least at school. You secretly wonder when she's going to get in touch with her inner rebel.

And aren't you doing just the same with the BoyChild? Rewarding obedience and conformity? And there's something else happening, too. He now wants stars for the slightest of 'achievements'. To the extent that he now wants to be rewarded for doing things like brushing his teeth and using his legs occasionally. He's constantly on your case. It's like he's punishing you for constantly being on his.

Of course he is. They're clever, these pesky kids. They always get you in the end.

*In case anyone is thinking of reporting me to the SS (Social Services), I would like to say in my defence that I had already tried the softly-softly approach.

The Golden Olden Days

2010-03-09T14:09:00.001Z

There seem to be so many rules kids are bound by these days, it sometimes makes you long for the Olden Days when you were a kid yourself.

It struck me today as I happened to be passing the GirlChild's school at lunchtime (on way back from library, change of buses, long story). Anyway, I had a mind to pop my head through the gates (Cuckoo's Nest style, natch) and say a quick 'Hello'.

But something stopped me. The teachers probably wouldn't approve. The next newsletter would be sure to feature a notice about parents "not hanging around the school gates at inappropriate times" or along those lines.

Occasionaly, no, rarely, my mum would pass sweets (or once, on a very hot day, ice cream) to me through the chicken wire around my school playground. It would lift my entire day, make me feel special and loved. It didn't happen much and was admittedly a pain when it was someone else who was getting the sweets. I clearly remember my best 'frenemy' Sarah eating a whole bag of sweets in my face and refusing to share a single one.

But you can't do that any more (slip kids sweets, that is, not be a greedy selfish cow!). Schools have their Healthy Eating Policy and anyway, someone would be sure to complain that you were introducing life-threatening allergens into the hermetically-sealed school environment (quel horreur!).

There are other things we've lost:

stuffing half a dozen kids into a Tiny Fiat (one sitting on the handbrake)
handmade balaclavas
dripping
jumpers for goalposts
blancmange

and, of course,

Playing Outdoors.

Oh, all right then.

And Rotten Teeth.

Belt Up, Stupid!

2010-03-07T17:34:00.002Z

My brother sent me this link from CNN - it shows a new (arty) advert for wearing seatbelts. Click here to view: Not Your Everyday Road Safety Video.

What was not said was the director, Daniel Cox, lost his pregnant partner in a car crash – she was not wearing a seatbelt.

Apparently, 350 people die every year in the UK around 5,000 suffer life changing injuries, because they are not wearing a seatbelt.

Whilst I applaud the message, part of me thinks: why sugarcoat it? Don't you just want to shout 'Don't Be a Tw*t - Wear a Seatbelt' in people's faces?

Maybe it's just my reduced fuse length setting. Oh dear...

For more info go to http://www.sussexsaferroads.gov.uk/latest-campaigns/embrace-life.html

Stealing Time

2010-02-26T18:30:00.003Z

"I Vant to Be Alone." Greta Garbo, Grand Hotel, 1932

I have a confession to make. It's time to admit the truth: Procrastination is not the thief of time.

I am.

I snaffle hours, 'borrow' minutes, take afternoons without asking.

Don't tell anyone - this is strictly a private confession. (It's OK, the ManChild doesn't read the blog so our secret it safe. It's not that he's not interested in my thoughts and feelings or anything, he's just respecting my space. Probably. Ahem, anyway...)

Just between us, I sometimes make up bogus commitments in order to Get Out of the House Alone.

There, it's out. Feel better already.

I never used to be like this. I used to be honest and up-front. Unfortunately, it became clear that this approach was ineffectual. Unless I opted to remain chained to the kids/the house FOREVER, I eventually worked out that a bit of creative thinking was needed.

The ManChild can simply up and say "Got to go" or "Just popping out" and he's gone. No negotiation. No discussion. Definitely no begging. But when the shoe's on the other foot...

So, here goes. On Fridays, I go to college. My course starts at 9.30 but I leave the house at 7.45. It only takes 45 mins on the train, so I'm there bright and early for 8.30. That means a whole HOUR to myself. I can pop in to Asda, Starbucks, even the library, and still have time to read the paper before the seminar begins.

Oh, the guilt. The ManChild does the school run once a week so I can enjoy this rare indulgence.

There have been other times. Times I have scheduled dental appointments to deliberately clash with childcare commitments. Mea culpa. Times I have extended grocery shopping trips to incorporate a quick dash round the clothing shops. To buy clothes. For myself.

So shoot me.

Just got to work on something that I can use at weekends.

As many mums know, Getting Out of the House Alone at weekends is almost impossible. Almost, but surely not entirely.

Got me thinking...

picture by drawgood

Voted Women's Favourite e-mail

2010-02-21T20:15:00.000Z

A man was sick and tired of going to work every day while his wife stayed home..

He wanted her to see what he went through so he prayed: 'Dear Lord:

I go to work every day and put in 8 hours while my wife merely stays at home.

I want her to know what I go through.

So, please allow her body to switch with mine for a day.

Amen!'

God, in his infinite wisdom, granted the man's wish.

The next morning, sure enough, the man awoke as a woman.
He arose, cooked breakfast for his mate,

Awakened the kids,

Set out their school clothes,

Fed them breakfast,

Packed their lunches,

Drove them to school,

Came home and picked up the dry cleaning,

Took it to the cleaners

Went grocery shopping,

Then drove home to put away the groceries,

He cleaned the cat's litter box and bathed the dog..

Then, it was already 01P.M.

And he hurried to make the beds,

Do the laundry, vacuum,

Dust,

And sweep and mop the kitchen floor.

Ran to the school to pick up the kids and got into an argument with them on the way home.

Set out milk and cookies and got the kids organized to do their homework.

Then, set up the ironing board and watched TV while he did the ironing.

At 4:30 he began peeling potatoes and washing vegetables for salad, breaded the pork chops and snapped fresh beans for supper.

After supper,

He cleaned the kitchen,

Ran the dishwasher,

Folded laundry,

Bathed the kids,

And put them to bed...

At 09 P.M .

He was exhausted and, though his daily chores weren't finished, he went to bed where he was expected to make love, which he managed to get through without complaint.

The next morning, he awoke and immediately knelt by the bed and said: -

'Lord, I don't know what I was thinking.

I was so wrong to envy my wife's being able to stay home all day.

Please, oh! Oh! Please, let us trade back.

Amen!'

The Lord, in his infinite wisdom, replied:

'My son, I feel you have learned your lesson and I will be happy to change things back to the way they were.

You'll just have to wait nine months, though.

You got pregnant last night.'

Apparently, this has been voted Women's Favorite E-mail of the Year!

Dirt is Good

2010-02-11T21:37:00.000Z

Not only is cleaning cripplingly time-consuming, it is also the source of much inter-gender disharmony: see Annoying Things Men Do (and feel free to vent, vent, vent!!)

But all that's about to change.

Mums, Ladies, Fellow Toilet Scrubbers - put down your tools! It's official:

Cleaning is Bad for Your Health.

Yes, it's true. All that time you've been worrying about keeping your house clean so your kids could grow up in a sanitary environment - not knowing you were endangering their health, as well as your sanity!

Writing in the Daily Express, journalist Dan Townend has good news for overworked house cleaning managers (i.e. females) everywhere. Dirt is Good, people. Click here to read full text.

"Fifteen million people in the UK suffer from allergies. But the number is expected to soar due to our compulsion to use modern detergents that rid our homes and bodies of germs and viruses that help build up our immune system to fight bugs," he helpfully explains. Dan, Dan, you are The Man! Whoever you are, we love you for liberating us from the shackles of domesticity.

As they used to say in the grubby old days:
A house should be clean enough to be healthy, dirty enough to be happy.

Is it me, or...

2010-01-18T09:44:00.004Z

...does everyone feel like this?

The voices in my head are at it again. Things they have said to me recently include:

God, the house is a mess. Get that washing up done then start on the bedrooms.

Yes, yes, you're right. I am a slob - how have I let it get in this state? And I'm way overdue for a haircut.

Yep - you and the house both look a mess. But there's no time for preening. And what are you doing vacuuming when you really need to get started on the ironing?

Of course, of course. Silly old me. Don't have a clue how to prioritise, that's my problem.

You're not still ironing? What are you thinking? You'd better get started on your assignment. Otherwise you will FAIL your course and all that money will have been wasted.

Shite - you're right. That's the most important thing. The house can wait. This is my education we're talking about!

Education? Like, we thought you'd forgotten. Term starts next week and you haven't even written a scheme of work yet. If you don't get on with it, you will get the SACK and prove to the world how useless you really are...

Now you come to mention it, I knew there was something more important I should be doing. After all, WORK comes first. This is people's education we're talking about!

And have you forgotten about the kids? What are they going to eat tonight? Pizza again? You'd better rustle up something delicious and nutritious or you will FAIL at being a mother and your kids will get scurvy.

But what about sitting at the computer and all the other stuff I need to do?

You should have thought about that before. Family is your priority, remember?

Of course, you're absolutely right. First the kids, then the ManChild, then when they're all sorted out, I can start on MY OWN stuff. Maybe when everyone's in bed.

You can forget that! The ManChild has needs, too, you know. I mean, are you going to neglect your marriage, your house and your kids. As well as your appearance?

What gives?

Wot, No Telly?

2010-01-09T14:06:00.001Z

Apparently, in the olden days, children used to make good use of their free time; they would play and interact and hone their social skills.

What with the weather making you all but housebound (school shut today), the temptation is to leave CBeebies on all day. But the guilt finally surfaces and you tell them to turn off the box - you're going to make some CROWNS! You cut up 'diamonds' from coloured paper, fashion regal made-to-measure headgear from strips of cardboard. The GirlChild sets to work, adorning her creation with spangly bits and glitter and, after a brief incident involving the unfortunate welding of hair to glue, she's good to go. Meanwhile, the BoyChild, tongue between his teeth, brings to the task the kind of focus usually reserved for picking the vegetables off his pizza.

Then they put on their crowns and quickly get into character.

"Servant, bring me my slippers!" the GirlChild commands, all haughty and disdainful. She's good, you've got to give her that.

You bow and obey, backing away with suitable obsequiousness.

"Let's go for a walk," suggests the BoyChild. "Servant, bring me my umbrella." For some reason, walking necessitates the aid of an imaginary umbrella. Off they go, well, out into the hallway, for their constitutional, their noses in the air. Being condescending comes startlingly easy to them.

"We're hungry now. Bring us our dinner!" You make like a butler, proferring imaginary trays of amuses bouche.

"Servant, this food is not tasty. We need ice cream. NOW!" At this stage, your back is starting to ache from all the bowing and scraping. You make a half-hearted gesture towards miming the scooping of ice cream.

"We are tired now. Take our slippers off and read us a bedtime story," the 'Queen' commands.

Suddenly you feel exhausted.

It is at this precise moment that the truth dawns on you. There is no discernible difference between the world where you are their servant and the real world.

"Anyone for CBeebies?"

The Plus Side of Parenthood, Part One

2009-12-31T11:01:00.004Z

Back when Manicmum started this blog, her lovely friend and former colleague Sorrel asked when she was going to write something upbeat about parenthood. Surely there were some positive sides to having kids.
Of course, there are, Sorrel. After wracking her brains for the past 6 months, Manicmum has put together the following, just for you. Note, this is Part One - there is more Good Stuff to come. Surely...

There are upsides to parenthood.

• Children come in useful when you need to make excuses for getting out of things. Telling your in-laws you can’t come over because your child has a temperature is a lot more acceptable than telling them you just can’t be bothered. Whether or not it’s true, no one wants to risk contact with a potentially contagious kid, so you won’t get any hassle there.

• You get better at things you used to be useless at: having kids will make you much more skilled in packing a capsule wardrobe to go on holiday (well, there’s going to be a lot less space for your stuff once you’ve allowed for their cuddly toys, numerous outfits to cover all eventualities, weather conditions and possible twice-daily changes following accidents/soiling incidents)

•You learn the true value of preparation: never again will you leave the house without wetwipes, a banana and a packet of sweets (for the purposes of bribery). You’ve endured the wrath of the pint-sized tyrants often enough to know that the Fail to Prepare: Prepare to Fail adage is horribly true

• You become a world-class Tidier and Organiser of belongings: you will make it your personal goal to know what every drawer, toy container and cupboard contains. Otherwise you’ll spend days searching high and low for some beloved lost toy the size of your fingernail.

• You learn to see the funny side of things, like when the ManChild got up at 3am in the morning to have a shower and dress for work because your toddler was playing with his alarm clock and accidentally reset it four hours ahead.

Well, you thought it was funny.

Will get back to you with the rest of the list...

Manicmumxx

It's All About the Kids

2009-12-24T11:10:00.001Z

"Ahh... Christmas. It's what you have kids for," sighs Younger Brother (Childfree, natch).
"Yeah, for a couple of days every year, it all seems worthwhile," you mutter under your breath.

Yes, they do look cute in the Christmas Nativity at school.

Yes, you can't help share their excitement at the impending arrival of Santa.

Yes, the house looks festive (if cluttered) - all fairy lights, baubles, cards and presents stacked under the tree.

But Christmasses so far have not all been a smooth sleighride to happiness. Oh, no.

On the Girlchild's first Christmas, which was of course, too overwhelming, overstimulating etc. etc, she had a screaming tantrum that lasted for the whole one-and-a-half hour's journey back home from your mother's house. You and the ManChild sat, jaws locked and teeth gritted, in hateful silence, willing her to please fall asleep. At one stage, the ManChild shouted at her to cut it out but not only did she scream harder, she started having a coughing fit that threatened to becoming a vomiting one. She'll wear herself out eventually, you assured him. She finally drifted off to sleep as you were parking the car outside your house.

The first Christmas which could be said to be shared with small sentient beings was last year, when the Boychild asked "Can I open my presents yet?" approximately 400 times on Christmas Eve alone. The little dear.

This year's pre-Christmas excitement has been characterised by the competitive spotting of Christmas street lights.
"Christmas lights, Christmas lights!"
"I saw them first!"
"No, you didn't!"
Blah, blah, blah. Humbug.

Oh, the joy of Christmas, eh? Double the workload of shopping, cleaning and cooking. Twice the expectations of domestic perfection (yeah, and Kirsty's Perfect Christmas or whatever it was called has a lot to answer for, too...)

Merry Christmas. And Gawd bless us, every one.

The Blog is Not Dead

2009-12-24T10:25:00.001Z

... it's just been having a little rest.

Zzzzzzzzzzzz

Where's the Zzzz button?

2009-11-26T21:28:00.000Z

"Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!"
from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Boychild is still inflicting his hpyno-phobia on his poor demented Manicmum. These days, he usually wakes at 5am on the dot, but it can be earlier. There's no logic to it - wear him out in the park all afternoon, he'll still wake before dawn chorus has even started tuning up. You may well punch the next person who suggests putting him to bed later. Duh! Tried that, doesn't work, OK? Still, it's not quite as bad as the dreaded 4.30 starts. Don't even go there.

Not for the first time, you consider the options. Until they start stocking sleeping pills in Mothercare, that's probaby a no-no. The Boychild's uncle helpfully suggests chloroform - and he doesn't even have kids of his own. A wise man, is the ManicUncle. But blissfully unaware of the legal implications.

It's hard to beam a welcoming smile in the Boychild's direction when he bounds into your room in the pitch darkness of the early hours - every single day. If only you could master some technique for getting him to go back to sleep. What was that thing Mr Spock used to do to render his enemies horizontal - some sort of light squeeze of the shoulder was all it took. Even the toughest of the Klingon invaders would fall to the floor, knees buckling, eyes disappearing into their sockets. Oh yeah, the Vulcan Death Grip, or something. Vulcan Nerve Pinch, that was it.

Which gets you thinking - why hasn't mankind developed some kind of Sleep Reflex? You're thinking a little cluster of nerve endings, say, on the temple or behind the ear, which you could just rub a couple of times in a small circular movment to induce blissful, worry-free sleep (either in yourself or in others). Just think - no more insomniacs, no more screaming babies, no more anaesthetics! A quick caress of the sensitive spot and whoosh - temporary unconsciousness.

So why can't we do it yet? Is it something to do with the flight-fright-fight response? We need to be able to saty awake in case we get invaded by marauding aggressors. Viking hordes would have raped and pillaged with gay abandon if all they had to do was lay the indigenous population out with a swift flick of the fingertips - and where would the fun have been in that?

So the world isn't ready for the Human Zzzz Button. You have faith in evolution, though. It'll happen one day. Maybe by the time the Boychild has his own little hypno-phobes to worry about.

Armchair Chefs

2009-11-06T20:44:00.000Z

With the latest series of Masterchef now at an end, all you are left with is that less than palatable modern phenomenon - The Armchair Chef. TV has a lot to answer for, making 'experts' of us all. The ManChild has learnt a whole new vocabulary for criticising your cooking:

"Oooh, these mashed potatoes are a bit claggy."

Claggy? Since when was that a word? Time was, he was pleased to be fed at all; now he's expecting gourmet delights at every turn. Potatoes, when mashed, are just that - they can be a bit lumpy, fine. Hand him the potato masher and let him show you how it's done. But now we're entering a whole new sphere of food-related language.

What will he accuse you of next? Not marrying flavours correctly? Serving food that's under-seasoned?

And you're not even sure if it's praise you're after. If he congratulates you with a "Mmmm, that's a taste explosion on the tongue" or "Phwoar, this girl can really cook!" the food might just get lively and throw itself at the kitchen wall. Of course, this hasn't happened yet.

You had quietly hoped this new-found interest in food might have awakened some interest in the actual cooking process, as in offering to cook dinner now and again. But no, the ManChild's only contribution is to ask you: "Shall I plate up?"

Just slap the mush on the plate as usual, thanks, eh?

Interior Dialogue

2009-10-25T20:15:00.001Z

The ManChild wants your attention.

"It's your birthday soon. I thought we might go away somewhere."

God, yes! Would love to.

"Somewhere childfriendly."

Would love to go away on my own.

"Maybe one of those places with entertainment laid on."

Somewhere hot, where I could sip cocktails all day and watch the world go by. And where kids are banned.

"What about EuroDisney?"

What? But it's MY birthday! Why can't I do something I like for a change?

"What about a fortnight in the Maldives without the kids?"

"Be realistic."

"OK, a weekend in a country hotel without the kids."

"Where will they go?"

Don't ask me, you arrange it. It's MY birthday, after all.

"Grandma's?"

"Don't think she could cope with a whole weekend. She's nearly eighty after all..."

But it's My birthday. It's not fair. I want a kid-free weekend away. I haven't had a proper night's sleep for nearly six years.

"Just for one night, then? We could stay in the hotel up the road from her."

"OK. I'll book it."

Huh. Never get what I want.

Moral of the story: You are acting like a spoilt child. This must be because you got your own way too much when you were growing up.

Parents have a lot to answer for.

Superior Beings

2009-10-21T10:09:00.000+01:00

You're not sure when it was, exactly, that you realised that your children were, in fact, vastly superior to all other children, but it happened pretty early on.

You might be tempted to think this is purely instinct, the powerful urge to protect and promote your own offspring in the Great Big Battle for Survival in the Big Nasty World Out There.

But no, you can objectively say (but only to yourself, of course, you don't want to be a show-off) that your kids are:

better looking
more intelligent
cuter
more talented
superior in too many ways to list

than any others you have yet encountered.

You remember meeting up with your New Mum group shortly after giving birth. Six babies were lined up on the floor in someone's living room, cradled in their portable car-seats. You ooh-ed and ahh-ed in all the right places, but the truth was you felt sorry for the other mums. One baby looked distinctly simian in features, all tufty hair and chimp-like ears, another looked like a bad-tempered pixie. The others were forgettable. Your little angel stood out in her roses-and-cream beauty. You were almost embarrassed at having such a gorgeous baby.

You appreciate this may have something to do with hormones, a mother's eye, etc etc... But five years on, your feelings of awe about your own kids has magnified. They still get on your nerves. But deep down you believe this is because of your own shortcomings rather than theirs.

Anyway, you enter your darlings' amazing, fantastic, mind-blowing artwork for a competition run by a national newspaper. Nonchalantly, you understand, not in some frenzied pushy competitive parent kind of way.

And, when you look in the paper a week later, casually, checking the list of winners, you are genuinely astounded. THEY DIDN'T WIN! Neither the Boychild nor the Girlchild. Not a mention. Not a runner-up. Nada.

The outrage you feel takes you by surprise. WHAT? you want to scream at the judges. Can you not see the skill oozing from every pencil line? Are you blind to the abundant appreciation for colour, texture, light and shade? Who are these judges? Are they even artists? You silently rage at the newsprint and pshaw at the winners' pictures, reprinted in all their mediocrity.

So you ruthlessly exploit your power and influence and go public.

You stick the pics on your blog.

The Price of Work

2009-10-13T21:56:00.008+01:00

"I was looking for a job and then I found a job. And heaven knows I'm miserable now." Morrissey

So you get a job. Now that you've got it, you can't quite remember why it was you wanted it. Oh, yes, something about clawing back some self-esteem, a bit of independence, making some cash you can call your own... (Maybe you had some vague fantasy about morphing into a slick, sharp-suited careerwoman, you're not sure any more.) It's only a few hours a week teaching basic skills at an Adult Education College but you've got to start somewhere. The options were few. Teach in an inner city comp? Nah, too scary. Teaching assistant in a nice little primary school, family friendly hours? Sounded good until you discovered you'd be earning the same hourly pay as the cleaner, but without the job satisfaction.

What you hadn't realised was just how expensive going back to work would be.

First there was the interview: £20 for a babysitter.

Then there was the induction course: £15 for the childminder (she's a friend and did it at short notice, so you bunged her a box of chocs to say 'thank you', another £5, but hey...

It's a long time since you've been in the education game: there's now something called the Institute for Learning, membership of which is compulsory - there go another £44.

Oh, yes, then there's the little matter of the course you have to do to qualify to teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector. Nearly £700. Chuh-ching!

Your teaching hours clash with school pick-up time so the Girlchild has to go to the after-school club; at £10 a throw, snack thrown in, it's not bad value. Except they want a term's fees up-front. Oh, and a £50 deposit (apparently parents have been know to do a runner and not pay up). There was another £20 registration fee or something, you'd lost track at that point. A big fat cheque for £200 or so should see us right up to Christmas.

The Boychild, still a pre-schooler, goes to the creche at your college - at £16 a session with lunch, it's all starting to add up. They want payments half-termly, in advance, naturally.

Your college course means you have to employ a childminder for the first time since having kids. Something about the job title (too much like 'Childcatcher'?) has always made you inwardly shudder, so it feels like a bit of a leap. Don't be such a wuss, you tell yourself. The next day there's that horrific story in the news about child abuse by nursery staff. But A is lovely. The Boychild takes to her. She makes a fuss of him and all seems well. In fact, she's the only person who hasn't taken any money off you yet, urging you to wait until the end of the month, to make sure he's settled in. She's a good 'un.

Then there's the job. Now you remember why you need to go to work. You've got all these new debts to settle.

Businesswoman photo by Wojciech Scrat

Too Late to Send them Back

2009-09-30T10:04:00.001+01:00

Been collecting newspaper cuttings - it's official: kids make you sick!

Too late for us but let's make it a mission to warn all those child-free/childless carefree happy bunnies out there...

I've Arrived!

2009-09-25T22:15:00.002+01:00

Thank you very much to Muddling Along Mummy for sending me this Award.

I don't like to brag about my accomplishments but from reading other blogs I have noticed that it is customary to upload image of said Award and gloat publicly.

Hah!

Why Blogger?

2009-09-24T22:14:00.001+01:00

How does Blogging feel? These are my blogging impressions so far:

Sometimes blogging feels:

☺Like gatecrashing a party. You push your way into a group of people who are chatting amiably and interrupt them. Then you change the subject to something you want to talk about (YOU) and stamp your feet when it looks like no one’s listening.

:( Like throwing a message in a bottle into the deep blue sea. Some day, someone might just read what you’ve written. But then again…

☺Therapeutic. You get it off your chest. Most so-called ‘mummy bloggers’ blog because we have husbands and children, ergo we have no one to talk to.

:( Like walking into a classroom on your first day at a new school and wondering when you're going to start making friends.

☺Overwhelming. The potential readership is huge.

:( Overwhelming. There are so many blogs out there, why would anyone bother reading yours?

☺Democratic. Pooh-pooh to the world of print publishing – no more schmoozing agents or editors and relying on them to get your ideas out there. You are judged by real people, not a handful of decision-makers with their eye on marketing opportunities.

☺Truly open to all. Free. A way to share your thoughts with the world.

:( Narcissistic. You and your micro-life. So what? sneers a little voice inside your head.

Is Not Working Working?

2009-09-14T10:41:00.006+01:00

There are two obvious side-effects of not having a ‘job’: no money and no one to blame for a bad day but yourself.

You never planned to be a SAHM.

You always assumed you'd be a WAHM.

You started off as a WAHM; with your first child it's not too difficult. Work when she naps. Do a bit more when the ManChild arrives home from work. Still got a few contacts who give you bits and bobs to tide you over.

Then the second child comes along. A mere 18 months after the first. So now you have a baby and a toddler on your hands.

The naps are impossible to synchronise.

As Stephanie Calman (Confessions of a Bad Mother) put it,

“Trying to get them to have their nap at the same time is like trying to do those impossible games with the little silver balls: as one goes in, the other rolls out.”

There's no down time. You can't be a WAHM, feed a newborn, look after a toddler, the house and the ManChild. Something's gotta give.

So you find yourself now a SAHM. It's not something you feel comfortable with. It has connotations of Earth Mother types, or Domestic Goddesses or, worse, 'homemakers'. These are the kind of people who think there is something amiss if you don't grow your own organic alfalfa sprouts and hand-sew all your children's garments, fashioned entirely from ethically sourced banyan leaves. These mothers don't work because they think that having a working mother is Bad For the Children. You hope to betsy no one mistakes you for one of these lentil suckers. You're no martyr. You're a SAHM because you let things slide, couldn't fit it all in, didn't somehow get round to sorting out childcare. It was an accident.

And now your home is your workplace. It isn't somewhere to go to relax, unwind and switch off after a hard day at work. There is always something needing to be done. Meals to cook, beds to make, washing to put away. So if home is no longer your sanctuary, where can you go to relax?

All those mothers who have jobs they go to outside the home, feeling guilty that they're not with their children, take heart. Even when you're at home with them all the time, you hardly see them. That's because you're usually tidying, cleaning, cooking or otherwise engaged in drudgery.

They sit transfixed, eyes saucer-like, watching the TV while you rush around trying to 'get on top of things'. Why you kid yourself you ever will is as much a mystery to them as it is to you.

When your home is your workplace

2009-09-11T11:54:00.007+01:00

“If the truth be told, most housework can be omitted without grave consequences.” Lucy Ellmann

The awful truth about being a ‘stay at home mum’ or whatever you want to call it is that your ‘job’ now entails, in addition to turning your offspring into intelligent, well behaved, well mannered and desirable human beings, being judged on skills that you never bothered honing to any great degree; cooking, dusting, tidying and ironing are now your domain, and your ability to ‘home make’ suddenly comes under scrutiny.

The ManChild will come in from work, undo his tie and head straight for the kitchen, sniffing the air as he goes, looking for evidence of your culinary efforts. Suddenly you’re in a time warp, it’s the 1950s, the little woman at home making dinner while the man goes out and deals with the big issues of the wider world. Only you are still aware that life was different before you had children, when he used to do the shopping, cleaning and cooking as often as you did, or as infrequently as you did.

And still the remnants of the Old You come to the fore: when he shakes the empty packet and informs you "We’re out of Cornflakes" when what he means is "Get thee to the shops, wench, and get me some", you can’t help but retort: “Man is the hunter” and leave him to work it out for himself.

It’s not just your other half who has a new opinion of your role. Other mothers who come over with their children for playdates flick judgmental eyes over your dusty mantelpiece and toy-strewn carpet and even though you know full well that keeping a pristine house and bringing up kids are mutually exclusive activities, you can’t help feeling that you’ve failed in some way to create the perfect environment. And so what, you want to ask. There’s almost always at least one clean pair of pants in the house and no one ever died from a wrinkled shirt.

In the time Before Kids, your female friends joked about housework – how best to avoid it, comparing feats of slothfulness. One friend painted the cobwebs rather than remove them before decorating (you were nothing short of impressed). So how come After Kids, it’s all about who’s go the cleanest house?

This Is Your Life

2009-09-11T11:32:00.002+01:00

“Home is definitely where the heartache is.” Kathy Lette

With kids around it's strange how you can feel as though you're worked off your feet all day and still be convinced you must be a lazy, disorganized slob, because you always seem to be guilty of being a meal behind, a demand in arrears, a need unmet. You're never on top of things. When you've been out somewhere, like to the shops or the toddler group or the park, the minute you arrive home, a blast of neediness will fly at you like paintballs from a stag party. They're hungry and whining around your ankles as you heat up ragou, boil pasta and toast soldiers all at once. No time to take your coat off, even. You help the BoyChild with his hit-and-miss aim as he shoves his soggy bread into your mouth and the GirlChild picks listlessly at her pasta. As soon as they've finished and you've commenced the clean-up operation, they're off to play in the other room and you leave them to it, one ear cocked all the time for sounds of disaster. Too quiet and you suspect one or both is doing something life-threatening. Loud noises suggest acts of violence being carried out from one on to the other. You stick your head round the door at two-minute intervals to check up on them. But you have to leave them to it because you still haven't put the shopping away and now there's more washing up to do.

The thing is, housework has changed since you had children. Housework used to be something you and the ManChild rarely discussed, except to laugh about it. You both saw funny side of hairs down the plughole, a scummy sink and dust under the beds. The only time you took housework slightly more seriously was when your ManicMum-in-Law was visiting from Greece and you realised the place needed a bit of an overhaul. You'd both spent a morning cleaning, tidying and scrubbing in the advent of her arrival but it had been good-natured and even enjoyable.

So when did housework become this big dark bogeyman in your life? When did it stop being something you joked about and start to be a cause of conflict? Maybe it was around the time when you realised that after every meal with two children, you would not only have to wipe down the table but also the chairs, the floor and quite possibly the walls. That's after you've grabbed the be-spattered kids a marched them to the bathroom to be cleansed before they manage to leave ragou handprints on your soft furnishings. It was certainly after the realisation that you would pick up dozens of toys off the floor several times each day and still find yourself wading through the scattered contents of their toyboxes at each and every turn. It was when you realized that you could never stand back, look at a tidy room and know that it would stay like that.

After a while, you stopped bothering and only tidied up when you were expecting visitors. Otherwise, what was the point? Even after the children were in bed, and you and the ManChild sat slumped on the sofa to watch some mindless TV programme, you couldn't see the point of picking up the toys off the floor: they'd just be thrown straight back the next day, anyhow. So you'd kick a path through the sea of primary-coloured plastic, relax on the shores of Adult Space and ignore the mess for another day. You'd thank your lucky stars your other half wasn't the kind of guy to make a fuss about the state of the house. He's mercifully oblivious to the mess, or seems to be. So that's one less pressure, and you stave off any visits from the Outside World for as long as you can.

Fun Embargo

2009-09-04T22:13:00.007+01:00

So it’s the last week of the summer holidays and thoughts turn to digging out last year’s uniform to see if it still fits, buying school shoes and preparing to get back into the routine of packed lunches and last-minute panics over lost PE kit.

The children are definitely ready for the holidays to end, never mind about you. They are suffering from Fun Fatigue, a side-effect of too many ice-creams, treats and days out. All this child-centredness, it’s just not natural! They know it, you know it and you’re all ready for some discipline. Get me a routine, woman, their erratic behaviour shrieks at you, as they whizz up and down the hallway on scooters, crashing into doors, almost taking out the hallway mirror. (“Daddy said we could!” “Yes, I’m sure he did, but he’s not here, so take them outside – now!” Playing bad cop, again.)

When does the ennui set in? Around the fifth week, you decide, when you’re running out of ideas for what to do with them and realise that chips and ice-cream have become their staple diet, CBeebies their main source of entertainment and you’ve done all the museums, one o’clock clubs and craft activity afternoons you can think of/face. So where do you go from here? The definition of a treat is something that you do on rare, and therefore special occasions. Now they are in the habit of whining for ice-creams before you’ve even set foot out of the door en route to the park. Then it’s the chorus of “I want” that begins as soon as they see the bouncy castle. At £2.50 each for a ten-minute bounce, you wince as you hand over the money (do they have to go on it every time?) but even the thought of the tantrums that would ensue were you to deny them this simple pleasure wears down any resistance you thought you might be able to muster.

On the other hand, their needs are so simple, you sometimes wonder why you struggle with the idea of giving in to them. For now, they’re perfectly content with the delights of a chocolate Kinder egg, or a lolly or a magazine with free stickers. In only a few years’ time, it’ll be all about electronic games, gizmos, gadgets (and lip gloss, but probably only for the GirlChild, though one must keep and open mind and welcome all behaviours without prejudice).

But saying ‘no’ is part of the parent-child dynamic. They want you to rein them in, you decide. More to the point, you need to do something you-centred for a change, anything that doesn't involve swing-pushing, chip-eating or films featuring talking animals, thank you very much.

So you formulate a plan. Impose a Fun Embargo. Make week 6 as boring as possible. Take them nowhere, treat them to nothing at all, no playdates, no day trips, just boring old mum and some colouring in. Let them yearn for school to start, that's your approach. You turn off the TV, refuse requests for biscuits, tell them to tidy up and drag them to the shops to remind them of what life will be like from September onwards. And you wait for the outrage to manifest itself.

But it doesn’t happen. You notice the house goes quiet. You potter in the kitchen for a while, then go upstairs curiously to investigate. They’re playing ‘mums and dads’ in the bedroom, carefully tending to the needs of a baby doll.

Imaginative play is where it’s at. Free. Low-key. Educational. Love it.

Holidays, Jim

2009-08-29T11:00:00.006+01:00

So it's time for the annual family holiday to Greece. The children get to see their grandparents, ManChild gets to see his own ManicMum and you get a week away from the housework, so there's something in it for everybody.

This year, for the first time, you are traveling as a party of five: Manicmum, ManChild, GirlChild, BoyChild and StepChild. You've taken each of the children before in various combinations but never all three at once. You can't get rid of a growing feeling of trepidation in the pit of your stomach although you can't quite put your finger on what it is precisely that is making you nervous. Is it the thought of keeping track of three when you're used to man-marking one each? What, as GC pointed out, SC misses his mum (he's only used to spending weekends with you)? Will you be able to meet SC's needs?

It's day two, the sun is shining and you're all in the pool. Three sets of day-glo waterwings thrash around in the water and all is harmony. To an observer you look just like any other family. But the sad thing is that spending time together like this has magnified issues that back home you can get away with glossing over. SC (9) has minor learning difficulties/borderline Autism Spectrum Disorder which now, compared with his half-siblings, seem more pronounced and severe than ever. Away from the security of his home and routine, he struggles to cope with simple tasks like putting on his shoes. But on the plus side, this seems to bring out the best in the younger two. His half-brother (3) is sensitive enough to make allowances for him and his half-sister (5) organises a game in which he is given a pivotal role. Children are so patient and forgiving. Unlike their fractious parents, they don't mind repeating information and have vast capacities for the endless and apparently inane processes involved in completing the task in hand, at least they do when they are in control. You have to hand it to the children. It's role-reversal time.

You catch the early-morning bus to Nafplion to ascend the 999 steps to the vertiginous fortress overlooking the town. Walking behind the three children, you can't help feeling a little proud. They are counting as they climb, determined, united, happy. You must have done something right.

But maybe it's the realisation that the baby years are over that gives you that inner glow: no more nappies, no sterilizing, no buggies (well, only one in part-time use). It's also the first time in the eight years you have been coming to Greece en famille that you've managed to get everyone to sleep at the same time, even fitting in the odd siesta. On previous visits, it felt like you were on 24-hour duty with one child or the other seemingly awake at any given hour of the day or night.

As for you and the ManChild - is this a holiday in the true sense of the word? To paraphrase the Doc from Star Trek: "It's holidays, Jim, but not as we know them."

Holi-what?

2009-08-29T10:42:00.007+01:00

Before you had kids, you may have only had a vague idea of what to expect. You may have visualized the prospect as a series of tableaux: first tooth, first steps, first Christmas. The family photo album would be crammed with pictures of your heavenly offspring oozing joy as they reached important childhood milestones. With cute kids dressed in matching pastels, you imagined your summer holidays would be spent laughing and running along the beach, making sandcastles, eating fresh dairy ice-cream, re-creating scenes from the mini-Boden catalogue.

Haha, you can now laugh bitterly at your naïveté!

Let’s start with the definition of the word ‘holiday’ itself: something along the lines of: time to relax, put your feet up, recharge your batteries, do your own thing, perhaps? Surely a week abroad with three children in tow amounts to an entirely different definition?

First off, there’s the Journey. Then Comes the realization that no, you are not going to be able to relax. Not for one second. A change of scene is simply a different set of opportunities for disasters. Do all mothers feel like this? Constantly on edge, anticipating accidents. “Don’t run round the pool, don’t climb on the balcony, don’t slip on the bathroom tiles and crack you head open, watch out for that motorbike!”

Blah, blah, blah, the GirlChild mimics your nagging chorus of danger warnings. You know she’s right but this is what you’ve been like since having children. You briefly toy with the idea of having a nagging-free day but the tanned boy-racers whizzing past doing wheelies on their noisy mopeds as you urgently chivvy three kids to the safely of the gutter (no pavements here) quickly change your mind.

Then there’s the realization that you’re always busy. Even without the housework to do, your time is filled with a non-stop string of demands/requests:

-Can you put my toy together, please? (Your heart sank when the ManicGran presented the youngest with a blister pack containing a Power Rangers set complete with about a million microscopic accessories)

-Can you help me write my holiday diary? (It’s not even homework, like you haven’t got your own blog to write!)

-Can you read me a story/Wipe my bum/find my swimming costume etc. etc.

Then there’s suncream to apply, armbands to blow up, goggles to adjust. Insects to swat. Snacks and water offer in constant supply.

Five people on holiday together means that the odds are someone will be in a strop/have a tummy ache/be complaining about a grain of sand in their shoe at any given time.

The two-roomed apartment is dwarfed by its occupants and their belongings (intimate, but not in a good way) and you’re forever picking up clothes off the floor, the tables, chairs, beds. Can’t help it. Tidying now taken the place of any previous hobbies/life interests.

That night, you dream about jumping into the deep end of the pool and waiting to surface. And waiting. But you just keep shooting towards the surface without ever quite getting there. You begin to wonder how long you can hold your breath but you don’t panic. Suddenly you realise you can breathe under water.

Then you wake up. What was all that about?

Parents Suck, too

2009-08-27T21:16:00.001+01:00

When you’re single, you dream of having a partner, kids, a family - you’ll never feel lonely again. As soon as you find yourself with a family, you can only think about how to get away from them for some time on your own.

At no time is this so evident as during the school holidays. Other mothers smile smugly as they boast of how they’ve palmed their kids off on the grandparents for a week. There’s an air of competition: someone else claims that her two are doing a residential activity course in Wales followed by a fortnight’s family holiday in Corfu at a Mark Warner resort (full-time childcare included). Anyone top that?

But at least the pretence is over. No more claiming to enjoy every living and waking moment with one’s offspring. The game’s up. We can now heave a sigh of relief and let the world know the undeniable truth: everybody needs a break from their children now and again.

And don’t they need a break from us, too? Whenever you mention the word ‘babysitter’ to your two, they whoop with delight. It’s not just because they love the neighbour’s teenage daughter who looks after them on the rare occasions you and the ManChild get a night out together: it’s the associated change of scene that goes with the territory. They love showing her how sensible and grown up they are, schooling her in the bedtime regime, telling her their anecdotes and finding novel ways to get her to giggle. They are the floorshow and she is a fresh audience. They go to bed when she tells them because they are complicit in the charade, but charade it most definitely is. They are in control and only deign to cooperate out of the goodness of their self-interested little hearts (they want her to like them, you see).

They beg to stay at Grandma’s for a ‘sleepover’ (where do they pick up this teen lingo?). Ask how old they have to be to go on holiday without you (are they counting the days, too?). Tell you they’re going to live on their own when they reach the grand old age of six. There’s no misreading the message: they’re sick to death of your nagging, whining, unreasonable boundaries and unpredictable emotions.

“Mum, Dad, get out of my face, you losers,” they would scream if they had heard of teenage angst yet. It’s going to happen sometime soon. Toddlers are just rebellious youths in training.

Awaydays for Beginners

2009-07-28T15:42:00.004+01:00

A few years ago, or maybe a lifetime ago, you had a job. Not a bad one, actually. Quite a cushy number involving lots of sitting around in meetings eating biscuits and whiling away the ‘quiet’ hours between management decision-making surfing your way through lastminute.com. At least, that’s how you remember it.

But one thing that sticks in your mind was the horrors of the annual Awayday – the compulsory corporate bonding session where you would hole up in a country hotel and do stupid things like build a totem pole out of egg cartons to represent the core values of the organization and take part in murder-mystery ‘adventures’ organized by poorly trained actors. The thing must have cost the company an absolute fortune. You hated every minute of it. Even wrote an article for a magazine about it.

So you consider writing to all those big businesses who spend small fortunes on those team-building awaydays, with their hidden agendas of educating their staff about ‘time-management’ and ‘prioritising’, and offer them a day with your offspring so they can hone their skills. What better way to see who has true leadership potential and who falls apart in the face of a crisis?

Here’s a possible scenario: You’ve got a crying baby who needs a bottle. You’ve got to get to the kitchen to sterilize said bottle, make up some formula and feed it to said sprog. However, the toddler now decides this is the time to tell you over and over again she wants her hair in pigtails or ‘’lastics’ as she calls them. While the baby continues to scream, the toddler hangs onto your legs as you attempt to pour boiling water into the feeding bottle and not scald anybody in the process. Should you:

a) Just grab the ‘’lastics’* and shove them in her hair, or
b) Tell her to wait until you’ve fed** the baby, knowing she will whine non-stop until you do her hair.

*you don’t actually know where they are and this could lead to a long rummaging session
**a feed can take around 20 minutes to complete, plus winding time

Or how about an alternative scenario:

Cooking with kids. Can you organize and facilitate a fairy-cake baking session for two cack-handed toddlers without any of the following occurring:

1. Small children sneezing, dribbling, coughing or spitting in the cake mixture
2. Small children doing any irreparable damage to either themselves or to property

It may help to look out for the following:

*Toddlers can and do change the temperature settings on cookers when your back is turned (what’s that burning smell?)

*Toddlers often do unspeakable things with their hands so need washing before touching anything that is to be ingested.

Hell, just give them the kids for a whole weekend. Let them spend two whole days and nights feeding, entertaining, picking up after your children as well as all the housework, not forgetting the cooking of nutritious family meals that everyone will eat and making sure everyone has clean clothes that still fit.

Surely that constitutes a challenge in anyone’s book.

Participants will be graded on their performance, gaining marks for inventiveness, endless patience and stamina and losing points for showing signs of stress, irritation or a desire to bail out.

Team-building? Training like this could mark the creation of a new breed of superhuman.

Friend from a Former Life

2009-07-22T08:13:00.008+01:00

Every now and again, but not often enough, you get the chance to leave the house alone and meet up with Mi, your friend from the pre-kids days. Ostensibly, you are getting together to catch up with gossip and life news but you both know that the real agenda is to Compare Who Has the Shittiest Life.

You are convinced it is you, of course. As you sit on the bus on the way to the café where you’re to meet, you mull over the litany of injustices: having to get up at least 2 hours before you’d like to, every day, having sod-all social life, too much responsibility, housework etc etc. By the time you are both sipping your lattés you’re armed and ready to launch your Missiles of Moaning. But then you hear about … Bosses from Hell, long hours that leach into the evening and weekends, office politics and pressure-laden presentations and you begin to wonder if you really have got such a raw deal. You’d forgotten what work can be like. You’re comparing the grass of a field that exists only in your imagination.

Anyway, on this occasion, you have tickets to see Morrissey perform at Brixton Academy. “This’ll cheer us up,” Mi quips as you clutch your warm lager in plastic cups, quivering with anticipation.

But the funny thing is, he does. Cheer you up, that is.

He has this energy that fills the stage and the air beyond. You’re mesmerized as much by his broad shoulders as by his lyrics (has he been working out? What, Mozza in the gym?) and he’s just as you remember, except more at ease. He introduces the band and it’s as much about the music as about the persona and he seems to be – ahem – enjoying himself.

And then you wonder: If Mozza is happier than you, does that mean you’re beyond misery? Or his he just having a good day?

But it’s still the old Morrissey. It’s just that the lyrics about frustration and lack of girlfriends, in comas or languishing in Luxembourg or otherwise unavailable, are less poignant now. It’s all much more tongue in cheek and light-hearted. After all, he must have got laid loads in the intervening years.

And we always knew there was humour in the saddest songs. Singing about shyness whilst performing on a stage has to be ironic, non? Anyone who ever ‘got’ Morrissey knew what it was all about and loved him for putting our gaucheness to (really good) music.

But the best thing was that, for a couple of hours, you were transported back in time. The music reminded you of a younger you, a freer you who angsted about life and threw herself into it in equal measure. Life before children. Hey, you might even buy the tour T-shirt to show off your cred on the school run. But one look at the design and you change your mind.

Morrissey holding a baby. It’s just wrong.

Baby Phobics Unite

2009-07-17T12:06:00.002+01:00

So the Babyphobes are coming out of the closet. Not for the first time in a couple of weeks, you’ve heard mothers admit they 'couldn’t go through the baby stage again'. It seems you are allowed to say this once your children have reached the upright-movement stage and no longer recline in your arms for twenty-three hours a day. “I couldn’t face the first year again,” someone admits to you, in the knowledge that her family is complete, her two sons now in school. You hear second-hand about another mother expecting her second who is “dreading the first two years before they become human”. These comments make perfect sense to you and it is a blessed relief to hear this from those around you.

But where was the honesty when you were in the thick of pooey nappies and on-demand feeding? You can’t recall a single mother of your circle admitting that motherhood was anything less than a dream come true. “I feel so fulfilled, don’t you?” you recall one fellow new-mum simpering over coffee after a baby-massage session. You’d grunted something non-specific in reply and fervently hoped she wouldn’t press you further. Mind you, that was a week or so before she went back to work full time. Maybe she wasn’t that fulfilled after all.

Now you come to think of it, isn’t it always the mothers with the assistance of childcare who claim to be the most content with the motherhood role? Just take a peek at any interview with a ‘celebrity mum’. Jennifer Lopez, mother of infant twins, gushed about how motherhood is the ‘best thing ever’, claiming:
“You know what? You can win an Oscar, you can win a Golden Globe, and as an ambitious artist you strive for those things. But when you have a kid, all of that is irrelevant.” Gosh, if only she’d known fulfillment was a nine month gestation away, she could have short cut it straight to the maternity ward and saved herself the trouble of doing that pesky pop star and acting thing.
(Does she have a nanny? Let’s hazard a guess.)

It’s the worn-out 24-7 mums who don’t try to ram the ‘motherhood is bliss’ message down the throats of anyone who’ll listen. They haven’t got the strength.

Feeding Time

2009-07-15T11:17:00.004+01:00

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!" King Lear, Act I, scene iv

Family mealtimes should be about talking over your day, discussing important events and 'spending quality time as a family', apparently, all the parenting books say so. And who hasn't tried to replicate the Waltons-style, hand-holding-grace-saying-ideas-exchanging ideal that sounds so heavenly? Like most advice from the parenting nazis, though, harmonious family mealtimes remain a fantasy in a (probably childless) child-rearing-expert's head:

The truth is, Food + Kids = Stress.

For a start, you know you're supposed to feed your children healthy, nutritious food, but is there really a child out there who eats five portions of fruit and veg a day? Bearing in mind two satsumas are equivalent to one portion (you’re lucky if you get so much as a couple of segments into your little darlings' fussy little mouths) isn’t this a rather ambitious target even for a hungry adult?

Annoying food-related things your kids have done this week include:

1. Turn their nose up at the time-consuming repast you have created for their delectation and ask for marmite on toast instead.

2. Try to get you to customise the dish to their specific requirements. Anything from wanting you to remove a piece of kiwi fruit from their fruit salad to the unforgettable ‘Mum, can you take the cheese off my pizza’. You explain for the umpteenth time that this is not an à la carte service.

3. Lick their food instead of ingesting it. Not only are they avoiding its nutritional qualities but they are also making it inedible to others who might like to vacuum up the leftovers (i.e. mum).

4. Push the plate away and demand lasagne/fish and chips/dippy egg. Then scream the place down when you reiterate the ‘eat or go hungry’ rule. They know your resolve weakens as the day wears on.

5. Tell you they prefer Daddy’s cooking to yours. (Yeah – you can’t go wrong with popcorn.)

6. Tell you they’re hungry five minutes before you’re about to leave the house for an urgent appointment, then refuse to eat what you’ve given them even though it’s what they asked for after you’ve worn yourself out with the effort of meeting their precocious requests under time pressure.

It reminds you of the unforgettable Butternut Squash Incident.

Birth Stories

2009-07-08T11:24:00.008+01:00

Your friend Di has just started her maternity leave. High on the unaccustomed freedom from work and the Knowledge that You Are Getting Paid while Sitting at Home, she calls to suggest lunch. But when you arrive at the bistro, she eyes you tentatively.

“You’re not going to tell me any scare stories, are you,” she frowns. Scare stories? Don’t you mean scar stories, you want to joke, but don’t.
“Of course not,” you reassure, thinking: those are for afterwards. That’s when we’ll sip tea and compare feats of endurance, pain thresholds and degrees of perineal damage.

Your birth story becomes part of your repertoire of anecdotes, trotted out now and again, mostly put on the back burner, but never, never, forgotten. You’ll never be quite the same, you think, as you nod encouragingly when she lists the items of baby-related paraphernalia she has invested in, most of which will doubtless be en route to the charity shop before you can say ‘storage issues’.

She asks you if you opted for pain relief or went for the Natural Childbirth option. You mutter something about an epidural but leave out the conveyor belt of drugs you said ‘yes’ to in the hours that turned to days that was your first labour. You involuntarily clench your pelvic floor muscles at the thought of what is in store for her. You are colluding in the age-old mystery of childbirth – that it’s a mystery until you’ve been there yourself is a given. You can read all the books, you could hear all the scare (or scar) stories but you can’t really make sense of it until you’ve been there and done it. By then it’s too late, of course.

For the Love of Price

2009-07-05T09:30:00.002+01:00

So now that the Price-Andre union has gone silicone-up, coinciding with Manicmum’s household finally going digital, you can watch the Katie-Peter marriage thrashing around as it nears its final death-throes in the mad, mad series that is their TV documentary: Katie and Peter: Stateside.

Lord knows you don’t have too many vices these days, but this and Coronation Street are your two guilty pleasures of a night-time. The former’s tawdry, puerile and self-aggrandising acting up for the cameras is as cringe-making as it is fascinating. But you’ve always felt an unfathomable admiration for KP. She’s one of the few slebs to talk openly about PND and she doesn’t go in for that insincere gushing about the joys of motherhood so common amongst her peers. But it’s one thing to admire from afar and quite another to live with, as PA was seen to discover. Here are just a few conclusions you have drawn from watching a couple of episodes:

1. Their bickering and bitching are familiar ground for most couples with young kids and say more about being tired, stressed and coping with too many responsibilities than actually not liking each other.
(Why no couples counselling?)

2. Yes, La Price nags and moans but Pete’s quite annoying, isn’t he? Cute, sweet-natured, but bunglalow-esque (you know, all downstairs, nothing up top?) Mind you, aren’t all men just such simple creatures? And he doesn’t seem to ask much, just plenty of ground-floor attention, if you get the drift.

3. KP is driven, describing herself as a ‘workaholic’ – but is self-promotion actually work? She’s certainly busy, no doubt about that. Interviews on chat-shows seem exhausting and stressful and require huge amounts of work from her hair and make-up people. And she seems lost when ‘off duty’, dismissing a trip to view the New York skyline as ‘boring’. But she seems terrified of no longer being noticed, photographed, gossiped about and thus in a prison of her own making.

4. How does she find the energy for her high-maintenance hair and beauty routines? Preparation for going on-air saw her spray herself with perfume (from her own range, presumably?) a total of 45 times. Yes, 45 squirts later she felt ready to take on the interviewer. And her face is usually plastered with inch-thick foundation, false eye-lashes and eye, cheek and lip-goo in an array of hues. Most of us would worry about:

a) Overpowering others with the fumes
b) Wasting a whole expensive bottle of pong in one go (Manicmum has a tendency towards ‘saving for special occasions’ and ‘using sparingly’
c) Having to wash it all off again in a few hours (is it worth all the bother?)
d) Whether it was bad for the planet
e) Using the time to do something more useful

As you watch them near deal-breaking point over denial of ownership of a smelly fart (“Swear on your life you it wasn’t you!”), you know all-too-well how it’s the little things that can cause the biggest rifts. When David Beckham allegedly played away with the Loos woman, he was forgiven and he and VB patched things up under the scrutiny of the gossipmongers. But one ill wind and it signalled Game Over for the PrAndres.

If you can learn one thing from this: next time you need to blow, remember to evacuate the area first.

Pigs Flying

2009-06-28T21:39:00.003+01:00

You were going to be such a good mum. That was before you realized you had none of the Mother Theresa-like qualities required for the job. In the pre-kids days, you thought you were an OK person. You were pretty sure that you were fairly:
Kind
Patient
Caring
Well-organised
Energetic

But now there is no escaping from the all-too-obvious facts. You are actually:
Short-tempered
Selfish
Forgetful
Lazy
Disorganised

As your former office manager used to say when something had gone horribly wrong and a witch-hunt was imminent:
“How could this have happened?”

There are certainly times when you really do lose your patience and you wonder how you are going to stop yourself from throttling the living daylights out of your impossible offspring. You look around for role models to inspire you with their superior maternal attitudes. Help comes from the most unexpected of quarters. Peppa Pig's mum, on the cartoon your children love, never even raises her voice. She doesn't get cross or tell her little pigs off. Even when they mess around with her computer and it looks like she's lost all her work. An 'Oh dear' is the strongest riposte you will hear from her.

You resolve to be more like Mummy Pig. Not only is she forever smiling and good-tempered, she even manages to 'do important work on her computer' while Peppa and her brother George play peacefully somewhere else in the house. You really need to get your act together. Even a cartoon pig is doing a better job than you; but if you’re comparing yourself with a cartoon pig, you know you're really in trouble.

Buggy Hell

2009-06-22T10:07:00.003+01:00

You are convinced the person who invented the baby buggy must have been a misogynist. Why else would you be compelled to transport your child in a four-wheeled collapsible contraption that makes your back ache? You are beginning to develop the unmistakeable ‘buggy stoop’, the hunched-over posture of a woman forever pushing heavy loads up hill and down dale. Then there’s having to squeeze your battered buggy in and out of heavily-sprung doorways that push against you, dragging the thing up and down stairwells and worrying about shaking the baby’s brains to mush as you speed over cobbled streets or ruts in the roads, hurrying to get out of the rain.

That’s the other thing: they came up with the idea for a raincover for the child but what about you? You can’t hold a brolley and push at the same time so you just have to get wet.

In the supermarket, you can’t push a trolley and buggy at the same time (only one pair of hands, Mr Inventor, see?). So you hook the shopping basket onto one of the handles and struggle to keep it upright as the basket’s load increases. If the buggy topples backwards, which they invariably do, you risk a nasty accident involving sudden and violent baby-to-floor contact.

And when exactly did ‘pushchairs’ (reasonable, descriptive word) become ‘buggies’ (stupid, non-sensical moniker).

Yes, whoever he was, and it was surely a ‘he’, ill-intent was on his mind. Buggies were invented not to help women but to send us spiralling back down the evolutionary continuum until our silhouette resembles that of some primitive Homo semi-erectus.

Honey, I Blew Up the Car

2009-06-18T08:06:00.004+01:00

Since the demise of the car (actually you didn’t blow it up, the friendly mechanic attributed its self-combustion to poor owner-maintenance, so we know who to blame), we are now officially a SITKNOC family. That’s Single Income Two Kids NO Car.

A friend stops you in the supermarket, puts her hand on your arm and asks in a concerned voice how you’re coping. Two people have offered the loan of their ‘spare’ car. Very kind, but really not necessary. It’s not like you’ve lost a limb. You do live in London. There are shops at the top of the road. The train station is four minutes’ walk, the bus station about the same. The park is across the road, the leisure centre (+gym, pool, etc) about seven minutes away. On foot.

There are even some advantages to not having a car. No, really. It is possible to survive.

1. When you walk somewhere with the kids or take them on the bus, you actually talk to each other, instead of spending the journey shouting over your shoulder at them and threatening to pull over if they don’t stop fighting in the back seat.

2. Then there’s not having to worry about parking. Never was your strong point. They really should fit cars with bigger mirrors.

3. You are exempt from car-pooling. No more waiting around for other people’s kids and getting to school late through no fault of your own. Now you only have yourself to blame for being late.

4. You get more exercise.

5. You have no need to remind the ManChild there are minors present when he fires off volleys of expletives at fellow road-users. (“Mummy, what’s a f***ing a***hole?”)

6.You have that warm feeling that comes from knowing you are saving the planet.

Of course there are downsides.
Like heaving loads of shopping home several times a week.
Getting rained on.
Listening to children whingeing about tired feet.
Realising you’re not getting fit, just knackered.
But the real loss is time. Twenty-minute round trips now take three times as long.
And your feet ache.

Come to think of it, not having a car sucks.
Sod the planet. Manicmum says: I ♥ carbon emissions.

Universal Truths about Having Kids

2009-06-16T10:33:00.004+01:00

1. You never get the kind of kid you think you’re going to get. Some people think our children come along to make us better people. Low boredom threshold? Wait until you’ve been forced to read those dreary Thomas the Tank Engine stories with their tedious tales of engine sheds and shunting. Yawn! You’ll be a million times more bored than the most bored you’ve ever been in your life. And you’ll have to read them over and over again if you’ve got a boy.

Averse to loud noises? Chances are your offspring will be of the blood-curdling yodelling variety.

Like order and routine? Meet Spontaneity Junior.

Or maybe kids are sent to cure our phobias. If you’re emetophobic, the chances are you’ll get a sicky baby. You and your soft furnishings will be on intimate terms with the aroma of undigested milk and the words ‘posset’ and ‘reflux’ start to enter your everyday vocabulary. Yep, kids are there to make us better, improve us, usually by breaking our spirit first.

2. Not all kids are likeable. Sad, but it’s a fact. You might not like yours at times. Especially when they do things that remind you of yourself. Infuriating. Maybe this is the true meaning of ‘karma’.

3. You should never pick up a book with 'Yummy Mummy' in the title. It is guaranteed to make you want to kill somebody.

4. All families have secrets.

Baby Phobia

2009-06-11T22:33:00.000+01:00

Big thanks to everyone who made it to Manicmum's Blog Launch Party! And thanks for all your feedback! Virtual parties are so much easier to clean up after than (what's the opposite of virtual? Oh yeah, real) ones. Maybe I can do something similar for the kids' birthdays.

Some of my lovely guests asked me what I had against babies, so I thought I'd better elaborate.
It's true, saying out loud you don’t like babies is like admitting you don’t like Barack Obama. Or Disneyland. But the good news is, you find yourself liking your children more and more the older and more independent they get. Not that you’re wishing their childhood away or anything. Just celebrating those milestones like wiping their own bottoms and not trying to choke themselves to death on bite-size Polly Pocket accessories. Babies, on the other hand, well, they are another matter.

Some reasons why babies suck (apart from the obvious):
1. Newborn babies have scrunched-up faces. (Reminds you of someone you know…)
2. They also have very grumpy facial expressions. Which is rich considering how much time and attention is lavished on them. (Oooh, who is it, now?)
3. Babies can’t tell you what they want or need so they yell at you. (Oh yes, it’s the Father of Your Child)
4. They want you to cuddle them all the time and grizzle if you take time out to do things you enjoy on your own. (Just like Your co-Parent)
5. Babies are totally self-centred. (Just like Him Indoors)
6. They have no manners or sense of decorum or control of bodily functions. (Just like the Man in Your Life.)
7. Babies don't care how tired you are as long as they get fed. (Just like your Other Half)
8. They take everything you can give but it’s never quite enough (Just like The Man You Used to Call your Soulmate in the Days When You Still Had Time for Conversations).

Of course, the difference is, babies grow up.

Wusses Beware

2009-06-09T11:29:00.001+01:00

When your mum’s given birth to seven children - in the days before epidurals were invented, mind - spent her working life nursing psychiatric patients and used to tell you as a teen to go and mow the lawn as a cure for period pain, you’re not in the habit of expecting sympathy for your lightweight woes.

But it doesn’t stop you thinking ‘poor me’ when you realise you’ve not had a proper night’s sleep for over five years.Then you get chatting to one of the other mums on the way to nursery. She looks a bit tired so you launch into your tale of self-pity, lamenting the spawning of a child who gets up at five a.m. every day. You pause, politely, confidently, waiting for her to share her stories of sleep deprivation. It’s one of the most popular themes amongst other mothers, you’ve noticed.

Then she tells you that, yes, she’s a bit tired. She’s been up all night because she WORKS NIGHT SHIFTS in a busy London hospital. And she works FOUR NIGHTS A WEEK. She’s just come off her shift and is going home to have a few hours’ sleep but she’s got FOUR KIDS UNDER FIVE so she’s not sure how she’s going to fit in any shut-eye. But she conveys all this in a quiet, matter-of-fact way. She’s not looking for sympathy. She laughs when you ask her how she does it. She tells you she likes to keep busy. BUSY? As your mum benignly pointed out, it’s a good job you haven’t got a job, or you’d have had a breakdown.

Not for the first time, you ask yourself if you are a wuss. You pick up a dictionary, just to check.
Definition of wuss: noun, slang: a person regarded as weak, ineffectual, overly sensitive, etc.; wimp, also wuss′y

Just what happened to you thus far to make you think that your life should be easy, enjoyable, fun or fulfilling? Lots of people have hard lives. For some reason, you never thought to count yourself amongst those who have confronted the uncomfortable truth about human existence: Life is never easy.

It’s not that you’ve never experienced hardship before; you’ve weathered your fair share of bereavements, broken hearts and failed ambitions. But maybe you come from a generation of women brought up to expect too much. Got a problem? Get a self-help book. Find your parachute’s colour. Life-coach your way to happiness. Dream yourself a better life and go get it.

That’s all fine and dandy until you have kids. Then, we shred our how-to-have-it-all manuals along with our unrealized ambitions. Too late, we realise it’s not about us now. It’s about the baby. The unconditional love thing. The putting yourself second to your child thing. The not-enough-hours-in-the-day thing.

The parenthood is not for wusses thing.

Ditching Chick-Lit

2009-06-07T21:56:00.000+01:00

You used to love reading. Curling up in bed after a hot bath with your latest tome. Now, though, not only do you find your time alone for reading severely curtailed - there’s the added dilemma of what to read.

You’ve a stack of childcare manuals you know you should be finding time for, but you yearn for a bit of escapism. So you reach for the old staple, a bit of chick lit. But just as you’re settling in to the plot, something starts to niggle you. In the far-off depths of your brain is a little voice and it’s getting louder. Now it's yelling, and what it's yelling is: “So What?”.

You realise, with a stab of grief, that it’s possible you’ve grown out of chick-lit. You’re past caring about whether Miss X will meet Mr Y and whether he called when he said he would and the oh-my-gods and the inside-outs of some neurotic woman’s journey towards coupledom. Oh, the angst, the worry, the gnashing of teeth - and all that she’s got to stress about is which shoes go with her new cashmere pashmina.

You read the bit about going on holiday - skimming over the lame details of airport delays and luggage hold-ups. The tiredness and exhaustion. Huh - what do you know about tiredness and exhaustion if you’ve never been up half the night with a crying baby?

Jet-lag schmet-lag. Walking around the sunny streets of Sydney trying to persuade your sleep-deprived brain to adapt to Time Down Under would be a positive treat for you. So what's her beef? All this 'chick' has to do is please herself, sleep when she wants and get up when she’s not tired any more. Give me a break, sister.

You think you may be through with chick-lit forever. Or at least until less sleep deprivation makes you less crabby, judgemental and unsympathetic.

Embrace Your Inner Slob

2009-06-03T22:22:00.000+01:00

You've heard the adage: Don't trust a thin chef - well, the same goes for a new mum in full make-up. If you don’t look dishevelled, you can’t be doing it properly.

You remember the dolly-bird mum waiting for her kids by the school gates when you were little - the back-combed hairdo, the panstick make-up, the elegant chain-smoking and the condescending sneer? You secretly wanted your mum to look more glamorous but now that you think about it, it was the high-maintenance mothers whose kids looked most scruffy and ill-nourished. And how could it be otherwise? Knowing what you do now, there's no way you can fit in regular full-body grooming, clothes shopping and hair straightening and have time to do the supermarket shop, cook, keep on top of the laundry and check behind your sprogs' ears for dirt. Something's gotta give.

Witness any mother going about her life. It’s like watching a manager beside the pitch at a Saturday football match. He’s shouting, spitting, cursing the referee. The lines etched into his brow tell you he cares. You wouldn’t trust a football boss who looked elegant, well-groomed and sat still on the bench for fear of creasing his whistle. You want him to care enough to bust a gut, a seam, whatever. To love enough not to count the cost of sweating all over his Armani. If you only care about yourself, it shows.

Top 10 signs you're doing a good job at bringing up your kids include:
1. Wearing clothes that don't fit.
2. Wearing clothes that sport porridge stains.
3. Having fuzzy legs and/or pits.
4. Not noticing that your shoes are still caked in mud from that trip to the park last week.
5. Having lank, unwashed hair for three days in a row.
6. Not being able to remember if you brushed your teeth this morning - sleep deprivation causes you to merge memories of one fuggy day with another.
7. Having fingernails remininscent of an agricultural worker.
8. Having 'comfortable fleshy areas' where you used to have muscle.
9. Living in a black trackie - "because it won't show the dirt".
10. Not being able to remember the last time you moisturized.

Mothers Stink - and that's how it should be.

Your Love-Hate Thing with Angelina

2009-06-02T13:04:00.002+01:00

Anyone who’s married knows it’s possible to love someone and hate them at the same time. Angelina has that effect on you. You admire her altruistic urge to share her millions with underprivileged kids (well, three to be exact) yet you can’t help but hate her smug pneumatic pout. “Look at me,” she screams from the front pages of the gossip magz, “I’m so great, Brad thinks I’m so great - and I care, too.” But the thing that puzzles you, is just how does the six-kids-high-octane-movie-career thing work? Even if you have an army of nannies, cooks and cleaners, kids still want their mum. No one’s suggesting she shouldn’t have a career and all that but how does she keep track of who needs their MMR booster and who’s looking a bit peaky today and who seems to be having trouble making friends? You’ve only got two to monitor and just keeping track of whose bowels are playing up or which kid seems a bit quiet and might just be coming down with something is more than enough to keep your tiny brain busy. And you’re not even a multi-million pound movie star. So how does she do it? With six kids, when one wakes in the night, do three, or even the whole six wake up, too? Gotta be a bit of a strain. Impossible, some might say. But some might also say, in an uncharitable moment, just what has she done and did she think it all out first? One thing you’re sure of is being a mother to six children is a huge and daunting task and one you’re not planning on attempting.

Babies Mess up Your Concept of Time

2009-05-30T15:29:00.000+01:00

Why do people always buy fluffy bunnies and pastel jumpsuits for new babies? What all babies need is a good, reliable, posset-proof watch. Or at least that’s what baby’s parents need. And a clock for every room in the house would come in useful, too.

Having a baby around completely messes up your concept of time. You’ll spend half the day sitting down, feeding or rocking the baby and the other half frantically rushing around trying to get everything un-baby-related done. The sitting around bit makes time drag. The rushing around bit (when the baby is asleep) makes time pass like someone pressed the fast-forward button. When you take the baby to one of those dreary mum-and-tot sessions at the library, time will almost standstill. You will look at your watch, convinced you’ve been sitting cross-legged on the floor singing nursery rhymes for hours when truth be told a mere ten minutes have passed.

When the baby naps and you sit down at the computer to check your e-mails and scan the on-line news a whole hour can pass in a flash and when the baby yells to tell you he’s awake, you feel like you’ve just been flattened by the Road-runner. Where did that hour go?

And how is it that every pensioner you meet tells you to ‘enjoy them while they’re young because they grow up so quickly’ when in truth a week with a baby feels like a month?

You meet one of your friends at the school gates

2009-05-25T12:17:00.000+01:00

So it's back to school after the holidays and you bump into one of the other mothers. She's got a real glow about her. You start to chat, looking her over for telltale signs - can't be botox, the smile creases are authentic. "Have you been away?" you ask. Turns out she's been skiiing for a week. Without the kids. She's separated, so she gets time to go skiing alone. Is that the only way mothers get to go on holiday on their own, grab a bit of me-time away? Seems a bit drastic, but you start to see the attraction of splitting up. You can't, though. You've got no reason to, other than the urge to go on holiday alone. You're married, got two kids, so get to go on holiday as a foursome. Every silver lining has a cloud...