I had one of the best holidays of my life last week. I know what you’re thinking: how has she possibly been on holiday? But it wasn’t really a holiday in the traditional sense. I didn’t even leave my village. And I only include my village in the geographical parameters of my holiday because I…
Just wondering if anyone can help me out with this email I’ve just had – I’ve obviously managed to get myself into a bit of a pickle. Not for the first time, I should add. Every time I sift through my junk mail I’m being blackmailed for one thing or another! “In case you didn’t…
Crikey. If there’s anyone else out there who’s been trying and failing to do the whole work-life-balance thing over the summer holidays, can they please make themselves known? That’s right, hold your hands up high: I need to do a full and accurate head count here. The more people the merrier. Anything to make me…
Here I am, wafting about underneath a canopy of wisteria. It all looks very serene and idyllic, but don’t let appearances fool you! Just out of shot: a cockapoo eating the remains of a small dead bird, a three year-old trying to touch the remains of the aforementioned small dead bird, Mr AMR shouting at…
It’s life update time again, and rather than bore you with all of the tantrums and CIA-level negotiation we’ve been having to do around here, with our three and a four year old, I thought we could talk about bedtime routines and (more specifically) some of the crazy things I’ve done to get the kids…
Why is it that when I have an early wakeup call, I simply cannot get to sleep? And by the way, I’m talking early-early here, when the owls are still hooting and the foxes are still tearing open the bin bags and rooting for chicken bones. Witching hour early, 3.30am early, not your pedestrian kind of early….
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…
I had what can only be described as a Pumpkin-Heavy Sunday. Never have I said the word “pumpkin” so many times in such a short space of time; never have I seen so many pumpkins in such a short space of time. I’ve never been particularly interested in pumpkins or, for that matter, pumpkin carving – incredibly…
I’ve just been away for four days and I didn’t do any work at all! Four whole days without my laptop! Taking childbirth out of the equation (and those necessary, blurry months either side) I haven’t spent that much time entirely work-free since I went to Florida for the New Year which was in – please…
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…
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…
Angelica, aged three and eight months, has taken to telling us all precisely what she is not. We’ve had this before, when she first learnt her name – or a shortened version of her name; “I not hungry, Daddy, I La-La!” “I not cute, Granny, I La-La!” “I not testing your patience today Mummy, I am…
Don’t panic, but this might be the last monthly update on The Uphill in its current form. I’m considering merging my two websites together, so that beauty and style content from A Model Recommends sits alongside life updates and family stuff and posts about being a Mum. I sometimes feel as though I spread myself too thinly across…
My latest video has quite the dramatic title: Things Have Got To Change. It started off as a video about diet and exercise and the fact that I have a terrible diet and don’t do any exercise, but then I went off on a tangent and it became a video about all of the things I…
Well, this must have been one of the strangest weeks of my life, in terms of personal ups and downs*. Firstly, I have been diagnosed with gestational diabetes (you can read my initial post on it here, though it needs updating with the latest findings) and this has thrown my life into disarray. I’m just about 38…
I seem to have turned a bit of a corner, this week (watch me as I jinx myself): I feel as though I’m more on top of things in my life, more in control. Back to being me. There’s probably going to be a whole slew of posts about this, because I have quite a…
Forgive the random pet post, but this whole dog-owning business is new to me and I feel that my steep-learning-curve-experience requires at least some minimal documenting. And yesterday was a bit of a first: travelling with a puppy into central London. I’ve never had to be responsible for anyone in central London, let alone a small…