Well, life is hurtling along and Baby One (four and a half years old) asks for “quiet time” so that she can “write her thoughts in her diary” and Baby Number Two (three today!) has started sleeping in a big boy bed. Now listen; some of you might be thinking that three is a little…
I’ve had a slightly longer break from work than anticipated; but don’t worry, there’s nothing sinister afoot. I’m not ill, the dog didn’t die, I’ve not had a drastic facelift that meant I needed to hide behind bandages for a month. I was just absolutely shattered before Christmas and then the school holidays (aka “the…
I made my first school-related Mum Error the other day when I sent Angelica wearing her uniform on something called a “mufti day”. What the hell is mufti day? Granted, I should have probably Googled it instead of dismissing the mufti-themed email – thinking I have no clue what this means and then deleting it from my…
Life update time – I know how keenly you all look forward to my inane twaddle about domestic affairs. I feel as though this is almost a bonus ball, too, because last week you had a rant about pumpkins which was a life update in itself. Or at least an update into my (unhinged?) state…
Ted Talks! As in, he’s properly stringing together sentences and chattering away, which means we’re at that very weird turning point where you begin to forget that your child was ever a gurgling baby. (Sorry if you thought I was about to announce a Ted Talk coup; not happening. I don’t know what an earth I’d…
A bonus life update, this month, because I promised to tell you how it went with Angelica’s first day at school. Whether I cried, whether I fell to my knees sobbing and tried to hold on to her feet as she walked into the classroom… As a matter of fact, I didn’t cry at all,…
Angelica starts school tomorrow, but I tell you what feels most weird about today, which is officially known as First Day Of School Eve: the fact that I’m not writing my monthly update in a panic at ten minutes to midnight! Yes that’s right, my friends, I’m actually writing this in daylight – everyone is up and…
Oh, the shame, the shame: for the first time ever I’m having to postpone my life update and not do it on exactly the right day. (Third of the month.) I’m hoping that the heavens won’t fall in or that we won’t be sent a plague of poisonous frogs, because I’m very superstitious about my life updates…
A fleeting break from tradition with this life update because I’m going to be talking mostly about me. My favourite subject. (Joke: I hate talking about myself unless I’ve had too much wine. In fact, I tend to stop people in their tracks when they try to ask me what I do for a living…
I always have such good intentions for this monthly life update post (in fact even writing the first part of this sentence seems very deja vu), but however hard I try to do things in advance I always end up compiling it at the nth hour on the 3rd day of the month. (It has…
This could be interesting; I’ve given myself forty-five minutes to write my monthly life update and I’m writing it, perhaps unwisely, from bed. Because it’s bloody freezing isn’t it? And we have now entered the month of May, which means that it is now illegal to turn the heating on. In this house, anyway. So…
Here’s Angelica waiting patiently for her nails to dry (kids’ polish) whilst watching Teletubbies on the iPad. My heart can’t take it, she’s so tiny, yet so grown up – imagine what emotional turmoil I’m going to be in when she hits her teens! She’s only three, so basically I have another ten years of this sort…
Ted is two today, which means that I must have entered some sort of space-time vortex since giving birth to him because I can genuinely say, without a hint of over-exaggeration, that it seems like only last month when I bought him home from the hospital. I can still remember the argument that was happening…
Happy New Year everyone! I wasn’t supposed to be back at work until at least the 7th January (preferably the 14th) but then I remembered that my life update goes out on the third of every month and my superstitious nature won’t let me bend the rules and postpone it. So here I am, popping…
Angelica: started pre-school in September and has aged by around eight years in just three months. I’ve never seen anything like it. I dropped her off a fine-haired, slightly apprehensive baby, and now she comes back home with all the sass of a teenager after a party-fuelled gap year in Bali. “Erm, Mummy, you haven’t…
“Captain’s log. Stardate 031118. I have been lost in cyberspace for over four hours and rescue seems unlikely. The wall lights I’ve been trying to buy for the stairs and landing have eluded me for almost an entire calendar year yet still I search for them, typing every known combination of the words “brass”, “glass”,…
I’m having one of those evenings when I feel as though I’m most definitely losing at the whole parenthood game. The tedious bedtime battles continue and the longer the battle goes on for, the more wound up I get. Honestly, it’s like being a negotiator in one of those Hollywood hostage scenarios – I try…
If you’ve ever wondered how hardy kids’ clothing is, then let me tell you that it does not withstand being repeatedly sandpapered. A couple of weeks ago we went to visit Mr AMR’s cousin and she had a ramp in the garden for her little dog, who is quite old and can’t jump up and…