“Can you blog about it please Mummy?” is not something I hear a lot. “Nooo! Don’t blog about it Mummy!” is more like it. When Belle asked then if I could blog about the present she made me this week, I had to oblige, especially as when she checked my blog later in the day and I hadn’t immediately run to my laptop to write a post she looked very sad.

“I haven’t had time!” I protested.

“So why has this post about a breastpump appeared then?” she asked accusingly.

“It was scheduled!” I said.

You can see the pressure I’m under.  View Post

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I was out early this morning. While everyone else was still asleep I was on BBC Radio Bristol, doing my best to sound intelligent and thoughtful about my Ethiopia trip, and not like a toddler who had accidentally been given a microphone. I got back at about 8am, and the house was still silent, but as I was opening the curtains in the living room I heard some quiet footsteps on the stairs. I turned and saw Belle, arms held out in front of her, Jackie Chan style.

She saw me and looked relieved. “I thought you were a burglar!” she said.

“Nope,” I said, “just me.” And then I thought for a bit. “So you thought there was a burglar and you were coming downstairs to confront me?” View Post

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Today I am taking part in a blog tour. Yes yes, I know, yawn yawn, but pay attention please because this blog tour is promoting a very special book. (Plus you get a nose round the author’s house.)

Lunchtime by Rebecca Cobb is beautiful, her illustrations are adorable and Rebecca herself is lovely. Lunchtime is, as Julia Donaldson said, “Funny and charming – as delicious as the little girl’s dinner.”

"Lunchtime by Rebecca Cobb"

But then I would say all these nice things wouldn’t I?

Why?

Because Rebecca is my step-sister.

I know, cool right? What a talented family we are! (And renowned for our modesty.)

I have already mentioned Lunchtime, but it was in a post that was a bit crowded with other things, like my collection of jugs in the shape of chickens where the milk comes out of their beak, so in this post we get to find out a little bit more about Rebecca and where she works.

"Rebecca Cobb's work place"

“This is what my work space looks like,” says Rebecca. “It is very exciting because a couple of months ago it looked like this”:

"Rebecca Cobb's work place"

“And then we attacked it with a crowbar and it looked like this”:

"Rebecca Cobb's work place"

“And now it looks like this”:

"Rebecca Cobb's work place"

“As you can see it is still a work in progress” says Rebecca, “but compared to the rest of the house, which is a bit of a building site, it is the most finished room. This is also our bedroom at the moment and having a bed right next to my desk makes it very tempting to sit in bed under the duvet to do my drawing, especially when the weather is so cold. But I tried it the other day and instantly fell asleep for 3 hours so I have banned myself from doing that!”

“I mostly draw at my lightbox because even when I do not have it switched on I like the smooth surface of the glass to draw on. I have it right in front of the window and I can look out at the garden which is a bit derelict at the moment, like the rest of the house, but it is full of birds and the next door neighbour’s cats. One of the many brilliant things about moving into our house is that we can now have a pet and I cannot wait to get a kitten!’

Lunchtime is doing a blog tour to celebrate its release in paperback so now you have no excuse for not buying it, even if you are a bit of a skinflint.

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The new term is just around the corner. Thank goodness. Belle is really lovely company, but she misses the structure and stimulation of school, and by the end of the holidays is a little on the twitchy side to say the least.

This year is her last year of primary school, and come September she will be moving up to big school. Weird, given she still feels so small to me. I know it’s going to be a massive step for her, and I want to make sure she is prepared for the change in workload and routine. How will she cope with the change, the move to a massive school and all the homework?

I’ve been rooting around on the interweb and come up with my favourite ideas to help support children at school. Do you have children who are moving or have recently moved to secondary school? Please share your top tips to help Belle settle in and do well.

Build confidence
Moving to a new school can be really scary, but if you can help build up your child’s self-esteem beforehand, they’ll find it easier to be themselves, make friends, and be less likely to join gangs, bully others, or be bullied themselves. There are lots of ways you can increase self-confidence – from just paying them more compliments, to getting them involved in a hobby or sport where they can nurture a talent or develop a new skill.

Get to grips with the basics
Although as parents we worry about the big picture, kids are often more anxious about seemingly trivial things like what they will have to wear, how to find their way around, and where they are meant to go for lunch. Do everything you can beforehand to help them feel confident about the logistics – walk the route to school with them a few times, find a map of the school if you can, and find out online about start and finish times, uniform requirements and what equipment they need.

"Secondary school"

Children need all the latest gadgets and equipment

 

Don’t be afraid to ask for help
This is something children struggle with a lot. Nobody wants to be the kid who is always sticking their hand up and saying they don’t understand do they? I try to teach my children that there is no such thing as a stupid question – chances are if they are thinking it, so are plenty of other kids in the class, kids who will be grateful if someone else is brave enough to speak up. If your child does struggle with something, they can always talk to a teacher after class. Lots of schools will offer extra help if you just ask, or you can always look for external support from a personal tutor or online tutoring.

Get involved
This is something I’m a bit rubbish at, but a lot of children do like it if you make an effort to get involved with their school life. This could be anything from helping them to plan their homework schedule to becoming a parent governor and finding out more about how the school runs. Don’t get too involved though. No child wants their parent popping into their classroom every day or turning up at school assembly to demonstrate their accordion playing skills.

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Recently, I asked you how much pocket money you thought I should give Belle.

We’d been trying out Roosterbank, a new online saving and shopping site for children, and not content with spending her birthday money, Belle was, unsurprisingly, keen on the idea of securing herself a regular income.

Now, in my post I said that I would take everyone’s comments, and try to come up with an average amount that would then become Belle’s weekly allowance. What I didn’t bank on however, (Get it? Bank? I’m so funny…), was you all being so darn flash with your cash. Seriously, five pounds pocket money a week?? What do you think I am, made of money??

Still, a promise is a promise.

Although technically I’m not sure I did actually promise…

However, I have decided to offer Belle a basic rate of two pounds a week. For this, I expect her to do some basic things around the house, such as keeping her bedroom tidy, taking her plate out to the kitchen, not intentionally grinding food into the carpet, that sort of thing. So that’s it right?

Wrong.

Now I have another problem that I need your help with.

Once the money has officially left my purse and entered Belle sweaty palm, how much control can I maintain over what she does with it? Now obviously I’m not going to condone her saving up and splashing out on ten Benson and Hedges, but exactly how free a rein should she be allowed? If she decides for instance that she wants to spend two whole pounds every week or sherbet, am I allowed to step in, for the sake of everyone’s sanity, or should I leave her to make her own decisions?

Using Roosterbank does to some extent alleviate this problem, as their site stocks lots of lovely, wholesome age-appropriate toys. It also requires me as the parent part of the account to approve every purchase, so we’ll never find ourselves in the position where a replica gun or a live guinea pig turns up on the doorstep without my prior knowledge.*

Roosterbank is designed though to give you the flexibility to spend your savings when you’re out and about too, not just through the site, so if we’re in Primark on a Saturday afternoon** and she insists she wants to blow everything on a pair of gem-encrusted denim hotpants, do I retain the right to say ‘no child of mine is being seen in those’ and drag her off to Waterstones instead?

Where do the boundaries lie? Please help me decide…

*I don’t think Roosterbank stock these anyway.

**Heaven forbid.

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We may still have a week of the summer holidays left, but already I’m thinking about Autumn breaks. It’s a bit sad really isn’t it?

I think it’s a positive thing though – I’ve enjoyed my summer breaks so much this year that I obviously just can’t wait to do it again. It’s not that I’m work-shy or anything, honestly.

Travelling and holidays with children is always a bit of a gamble, and not always terribly restful, as toddlers don’t seem to quite get the idea of lazing around on the beach. They tend not to enjoy sightseeing tours of cities much either in my experience, unless the sights you are seeing are play areas and ice cream vans, in which case you may as well save the petrol money, stay at home, and just pop to the park in the afternoon to be honest.

Going on holiday with friends has always worked well for me – friends who have children the same age and can share the ‘work’ of the holiday with you. When Belle was about a year old, we had a really lovely few days in Centre Parcs with a friend and her one year old, and it meant that the babies could amuse each other, while we concentrated on important holiday tasks like finding the corkscrew.

We’ve continued the holiday with friends idea ever since, and it has proved a big hit. Belle is ten now, but she still enjoys having someone to play with, and this year her holiday companion was her friend Ashley. He and Belle got to sleep in a yurt, climb trees and chase the farm dog, while Ashley’s mum Vicky and I had a little lie down with a book and a glass of wine. Are you noticing the theme here?

"yurt holiday"

Our holiday home this summer

Back in the spring, we were planning our holidays. “The kids will play of in the woods or something,” I say excitedly, “and we can lie around reading and drinking!”

“Hoorah!” agrees Vicky.

You see? Simple.

The risk of course, especially in small spaces like yurts, is that the kids start bickering and your friend drives you mad, but fortunately this hasn’t happened to me so far. It may have happened to Vicky of course. You’d have to ask her that…

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I don’t.

I feel bad about it, I feel like I should miss them, but no matter how much I try to conjure up fond images of them doing cute things*, I just don’t.

Does this make me a bad mummy?

I don’t think so.

It’s not like I’ve always just gone off, happily doing my own thing, without giving them a second thought. In fact, for about the first two years of Belle’s life I was very rarely even in a different room from her. She was what you would call a ‘highly sensitive’ baby. I didn’t balk (too much) at this, just accepted that she’d let go (literally) when she was ready, and in the meantime I learnt to do a lot of things with just one hand.

Despite becoming a mum at such a young age, I’ve managed to hold on to a very distinct identity for myself, that isn’t just about being a mother. I am not defined by my children, and so when they’re not there, I don’t feel bereft, or like a piece of me is missing. I don’t throw myself on the bed and wail, questioning the meaning of my life without them. I know that whatever they’re doing, they’re probably enjoying themselves/having money spent on them/getting to stay up later than they would at home, so why would I worry?

Sometimes I voice these feelings out loud though, and it doesn’t go down very well.

Last year, I was away in Germany for work for five days. I don’t think I called home the whole time I was gone. One evening, out for dinner with a group of people, while one woman sobbed quietly into her soup, I declared that I didn’t miss my babies At All. “But you can’t mean that?” upset woman cried, a look of horror on her face. Everyone else turned to me, slightly aghast. “It’s just part of your whole slummy mummy act right?”

“Um…” what to say? I didn’t want to become known as the heart-of-stone woman…

“Oh no!” I backtracked, “I miss them of course! I just don’t miss them. You know what I mean.” And I hastily gulped back half a glass of wine.

I lied though. I didn’t miss them at all. Don’t tell anyone.

So what do you think – do I have a heart of stone, or after 17 years of parenting is it alright to enjoy a bit of time to yourself sometimes?

*At this point, I paused and tried to conjure up such an image, so I could give an example, but to be honest I couldn’t even get that far.

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‘You remember how it was sometimes when you were a kid? You got into bed, and then suddenly it was morning, with no interval in between.’

I read this line in a book yesterday and longed for those days. When I was a child I was such a deep sleeper that my mum and sister would sometimes shake me and shout in my face to try to wake me, worrying I had slipped into some sort of coma in the night.

I don’t know whether it is becoming a parent, or simply adulthood, (as they both happened to me at the same time), but it has been about 17 years now since I slept like that. After thinking about it for a bit, and sighing heavily and indulgently to myself, I thought I might write about a typical night for me – I know, you’re yawning just thinking about it, that’s how evocative my writing is…*

And then last night, I had such a terrible night’s sleep, I just had to share. It went something like this:

10.30pm: Come to bed, with warm drink, feeling optimistic. Read for a bit until Boyfriend starts snoring. Turn off light.

11.00pm: Lie in the dark for a while, wondering what the weather will be like tomorrow, deciding what to wear. Try to remember if we have bread. Make mental note to self to change kitchen bin in the morning, and to become thin/fit this week.

Midnight: Wake from dream about Nazi massacre, where I’ve had to step over the body of Hitler, unsure whether he is actually dead or not, and scared he may grab my ankle at any moment. Lie awake for a while recalling all the things I made myself remember an hour ago. Drift back to sleep, waking every ten minutes or so to rearrange duvet, fidget etc.

2.30am: Just entering satisfying period of deep sleep when Boyfriend’s phone rings. Not sure what is happening in sleepy state. Boyfriend goes back to sleep, holding his phone with the screen shining in my face.

2.45am: Phone rings again. Poke boyfriend awake. It is Chinese bed and breakfast owner wondering if he has checked in. Yes he did, he says, two weeks ago. Chinese bed and breakfast owner is not convinced. Boyfriend shouts at Chinese bed and breakfast owner that it is the middle of the night.

3.00am: Boyfriend goes back to sleep instantly, while I lie awake for an hour, thinking about what it would be like to be a Chinese bed and breakfast owner, and trying to work out the time in China. Get up and go to the toilet for a change of scenery.

4.30am: Phone rings again. It is Chinese bed and breakfast owner, calling to apologise for disturbing us earlier. Have dream about ballroom dancing with dead Granddad. Wake up feeling a bit disturbed for a while.

5.30am: Scratch myself awake on spiky duvet. Lie awake for a while regretting choice of jewel encrusted bedding set.

8.15am: Phone rings again. Is Boyfriend’s mother. ‘No,’ says Boyfriend, ‘there is no school today.’ Make Boyfriend make me tea and then complain about it when it arrives.

Spend rest of day moaning about feeling tired.

Really, I am a joy to share a bed with. Is this just me, or just how grown-ups sleep?

*Evocative. Not dull.

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I’m definitely not a ‘shopper’ in the ‘Oooh I simply must have yet another pair of shoes’ sense, but one type of shopping I do like is buying presents. To me, shopping for gifts feels like getting all the fun of buying pretty things, but without any of the guilt. It’s a present after all, something you have to buy, so it just can’t be helped can it?

It’s probably why I enjoy Christmas so much, and why I’ve bought rather an alarming number of Christmas presents already – every time I get the urge to spend some money on myself, I buy a present instead, and then I don’t feel bad.

Anyhoo, this is why I didn’t mind too much when Bamarang asked if I would have a poke about on their website, and see what I thought. Bamarang only launched at the beginning of this year, but are going all out to create a sale site with a bit of a difference. Yes they bring you massive discounts, but what they also want to do is bring you carefully chosen brands and designers, that they’ve picked because they really love their products.

As we speak they are in the middle of a one week only kids sale, with five specially selected brands, who they have chosen for their high quality, heritage and traditional values – Le Petit Prince, Vilac, Juliet the Band, Solar International and Trousellier.

All the products are discounted, so if you’re like me and can’t resist starting your Christmas shopping just a tiny bit earlier than strictly necessary, now would be a great time to stock up on gifts.

A few of my favourite things on sale right now:

This Bunny Angel rattle from Trousellier is very cute indeed, comes in a lovely gift box, and is reduced to just £6.50:

"Bunny Angel"

Bunny Angel

You can’t go wrong with a wooden train set can you? Ours was one of the only things I kept to hand down to future babies, and this Noddy version from Vilac is rather lovely:

"Noddy train set"

All aboard!

It’s not just toys either. Juliet and the Band do a beautiful range of kids’ clothes – this grey dress is my favourite on sale at the moment:

"Juliet and the Band dress"

Too cool for school

 

If you like the look of any of these, and want to have a bit of a browse, you can sign up to Bamarang now and get £10 off your first purchase. Lucky you!

This is a sponsored post, but all the content and opinions are my own.

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I have to say straight up that I don’t have the answer to this, I was sort of hoping you might provide it. I just wanted to have a moan.

I was talking to a friend yesterday about the sheer relentlessness and futility of parenting. It came about from a discussion about teeth cleaning. I was complaining that I couldn’t get Belle to clean her teeth properly, and confessed that I had got to the point where in all honesty, I just don’t care any more.

I have been nagging one child or another to clean their teeth/tidy their room/wash their hands/turn lights off for SIXTEEN YEARS now and I am bored of it. I am absolutely sick of it. I never want to do it again.

How to get children to clean their teeth

*face palm*

“Pop and clean your teeth before you go then,” I’ll say to Belle before she leaves for school.

“ARRRGGGHHH!” she’ll wail back at me, stomping off to the bathroom. “I’ll just be LATE then shall I? Is THAT what you want?”

*forced deep breath on my part*

“I’ve done them,” she says, reappearing ten seconds later.

No! No you haven’t! You clearly haven’t!

Why don’t they just listen??

Why, when I have told them 27,394 times, do they still just ‘forget’ to do such simple things or think I’m so stupid I have no concept of the passing of time?

It makes me want to punch myself in the face out of pure frustration.

I know that if I were a Proper Parent I would willingly nag for as long as it took, caring only for their dental health, but sod that, they’re not my teeth are they? Both of my children are old enough now to understand why they need to clean their teeth, and what will happen if they don’t, so why should I waste the precious handfuls of sanity and patience I have on reminding them to do the same thing every single bloody day?

What I don’t understand either, is that the lengths she goes to to convince me she really has cleaned them – like switching the toothbrush on so I hear the buzz, running it under the water in case I check to see if it’s wet – are surely just as much effort as cleaning the damn things in the first place.

*takes long, soothing breath*

OK, I think I feel better now.

Is this just me being selfish and impatient? Should I be ashamed of myself for wishing that Belle would need a filling, just to prove my point, or is this just a natural symptom of 16 years of parenting?

Photo credit – Flag75*

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I am always fascinated by what my children think of me as a parent. Whenever we watch Wife Swap I make them place me on the line from one freaky parent to another, always wondering which way my mothering scales are tipping.

It can be hard to get the right balance.

Being a single parent makes it especially hard, as you somehow have to blend the two roles into one – good cop and bad cop become one flakey, inconsistent cop, who will let you eat M&Ms for lunch one day, (peanuts = one of your five a day surely?), and then go mad at you the next when you don’t eat your wholemeal bread crusts.

It is probably a sign of some deeper rooted insecurities, reminiscent of the hours I spent as a teenager fantasising about giving the whole school a compulsory questionnaire to find out exactly what percentage of people liked me.

(That sounds far more disturbing now I’ve written it down. Let’s move quickly on.)

This week though I got the chance to see, quite literally, how Belle sees me, as she drew me this:

Slummy Single Mummy portrait

I rather like it. It has a casual seriousness to it, the peering over the glasses, concentrating hard on who knows what. I love the expression she captures, not bad given we were in a cafe and she was sketching in felt tips.

Do you ever wonder about how your children see you? How would you like them to think of you?

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I got cross in the car today.

I was listening to the radio, and had one of those ‘God, am I getting old and prudish?’ moments, like when I had my anti-porn rant. In fact, I got nearly as cross as I do at the Eminem song where, despite the fact that he’s repeatedly violent towards her, Rihanna apparently ‘likes the way it hurts, and loves the way he lies’. What a fantastic role model she is.

The song was called ‘Down For Whatever’, (read ‘Up For Anything’), by Kelly Rowland, and includes the lines:

I’m down for whatever, I’m down for whatever, when it comes to you I could make love on the floor.

It was a dance version, so I’m imagining gangs of drunken, barely dressed teenage girls, dancing and falling over. It gets better. She goes on to sing:

Say the word, I’ll do anything, I can’t say no to you.

Is it me or is that just a bit rapey? And then:

There’s no place I wouldn’t go. Tonight I’ll take it anywhere.

Nice.

Now I’m really not a prude, and I’m more than happy to be open and experimental in a trusting relationship, but really, is this the kind of ethos we want to be instilling in our young clubbers?

A quick bit of research shows I’m not alone in being concerned about the potential harm of such widely heard and sexually explicit and misogynistic lyrics. One study for example showed the impact of sexual-aggressive song lyrics on aggressive thoughts, emotions, and behaviour – male participants who heard misogynist song lyrics recalled more negative attributes of women and reported more feelings of vengeance than when they heard neutral song lyrics.

And don’t even get me started on the videos. Is this really music and art, or merely soft-porn, peddling the idea of women as submissive sexual objects who invite abuse and violence?

Am I over-reacting and simply showing my age, or is it really not OK to be glamourising the idea of not being able to say no to ‘taking it anywhere’?

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