Tag: parenting

How did you tell your other half you were pregnant?

Parts of this may horrify some of you.  I never planned on having children and believed that the batteries in my biological clock were well and truly dead.  However, on Christmas Day 2006, after we drank our way through everything in the house including the duty free cupboard we got a bit carried away!

Late January, I knew in the back of my mind that I was pregnant (sore boobs, etc) so I went off to a chemists, one where no one would recognize me, and bought a pregnancy test.  I came home, peed all over my hand and to my great relief it was negative.  But, I knew it must be wrong, so off I went again to get another one and no big surprise this one was positive!

I was in utter shock and in my true fashion I wandered to the shop at the end of the road and bought 20 fags and 4 of the largest tins of beer I could get.  I then returned home smoked all the fags and drank all the beer and called my best friend in tears somewhere in the middle.  She managed to calm me down.

When hubby arrived home I had the fire going and made him sit down in front of it.  Then I presented him with a present…gift wrapped and all.  Inside were these:

It took him a moment, but he was over the moon and then……I passed out!

So how did you tell your other half?

Please note:  I did give up all this silly business during my pregnancy!

Smile and Fake It!

This is the best advice my mother ever gave me.  I’ve used it countless times:

  • When the midwife came around and was asking about breastfeeding and I’d just been busy hiding all evidence of bottles.
  • When accidentally fair jumping on the underground in Budapest and had a run in with the transit police which resulted in a tug-of-war with passports.
  • When making small talk with someone who I can’t stand and I know the feeling’s mutual.
  • When leading a training session on a piece of software I’ve never seen before.
  • When I was the 2nd woman ever allowed into the Ministry of education in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and the entire meeting was in Arabic.  I didn’t have a clue what was going on.
  • In the bedroom, I don’t think I need to elaborate on this as you ladies know exactly what I mean!
  • When talking politics, if you were to ask me who the Prime Minister of Canada was I’d have to look it up.

What’s the best advice anyone has ever given you?

Home Alone

Do you ever get that feeling….you know the one when you’re going on holiday and you feel like you forgot something?  You go through your mental checklist a million times.  Did I pack credit cards, passport, currency, travel adapter, sunscreen, and toothbrush? Plus a 1000 other items. Did I lock the front door?  Did I cancel the milk?  Did I confirm the flights? Can the neighbours get in to feed the cats?

I can’t shake this feeling every time I leave the house without my daughter (not by accident of course).  I flew solo for 35 years and it’s amazing how in 2.5 years she has become a permanent fixture on my side.  I see her more than my own shadow, which is not a complaint.

Prior to having my daughter I always joked that if I had kids I’d surely forget them somewhere.  Luckily, this has happened……..yet?

I dated a bloke in university that came from a family of 10 he was twenty and the youngest had just been born.  Yes, they were devout Catholics if you were wondering.  They all bundled into the family people carrier for a holiday, made a pit stop at some services.  They hopped back in the van, drove 45 minutes down the road and didn’t realise they had left poor Mary behind until her dad tried to ask her a question.  Quick u-turn and they raced back to the petrol station to find poor Mary standing outside the petrol station crying.  Bless!

Have you ever accidentally forgotten your children or were you forgotten as a child?

Parenting: One Long Guilt Trip

After my daughter was born a good friend of mine, a mother of two said to me ‘from this day forward you will feel guilty’.  Boy! Was she right!

I feel guilty if:

  • I skip a bath
  • We keep her out a wee bit past her bedtime
  • I don’t brush her teeth or for that matter her Medusa like hair
  • I spend too much time on the computer
  • She watches too much TV
  • She gets ill because I didn’t breast feed
  • She has beans on toast for dinner
  • We skip a dance class
  • I have a glass of wine before she goes to bed
  • I give her a sneaky Happy Meal
  • I don’t play with her enough
  • I lose my patience
  • I send her to the childminders when she isn’t 100%
  • She wears the same trousers two days in a row

This list could go on and on.  But, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m far from a perfect parent, hence the name Mediocre Mum, but as long as I’m trying my best then this will have to do.  I can hear my own mother saying these exact words to me as a kid.  Hopefully, this is something that I can instil in my own daughter.

I came across this stanza from a Poem called ‘Memo from Your Child’ and I thought it was fitting.

Child to the parent:

‘Don’t ever suggest that you are perfect or infallible. It gives me to great a shock when I discover that you are neither.’

Thank Goodness!

Don’t you just want to throttle them sometimes……

Do you ever have those moments when one second you want to throttle your kids and the next you want to cuddle them.  It may have something to do with it being school holidays, hubby has industry week so out all week and we’re potty training.  I was at the point of wanting to write a post about pampering to kids, giving them control and putting my foot down and then………..

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXZ0mOfvI8M

God I love her!