Category: Parenting

Mum? Mummy? Mama? Who are you?

We were at the playground last week and the small boy shouted “look at me Mama!” so I did, another playground Mum commented that he called me Mama, which I guess must be fairly unusual. He calls me lots of things, depending on who we’re with and where we are. Variously I am Mum, Mummy, Mama or Jane.

At home when it’s just our little family I’m usually Mama. I like being called Mama, he’s not quite four yet so it still makes me feel like the mother of a little one.

When we’re out, perhaps I’m picking him up from school I’m Mummy. He runs out of the classroom to hug my knee shouting “Mummy!”, invariably he also has a face full of smiles. Other people refer to me in front of him as Mummy, so that’s what he calls me when we’re out of the house, sometimes a “Mama” slips out though.

Sometimes I’m Mum. I don’t really like being called Mum. Technically that’s what I am, but it’s still too grown up for me, I’m not ready to be called Mum yet. He needs to be older before he calls me that I think.

And Jane, my own given name. He’s a cheeky monkey and sometimes when he’s shouting me he’ll shout “Jane”, partly this makes me chuckle, because it’s funny to hear my name come out of his little mouth, the other part of me corrects him. I think it’s good that he knows my name though, if he ever gets lost then as least he can tell people his Mama is called Jane I guess.

Then there’s that phrase I hate, “Yummy Mummy”, to me this conjures up such negative images. I think Yummy Mummy is just a horrible, bland thing to call someone, I certainly don’t want to ever be an identikit, cupcake making, perfect fembot; stalking playground in perfectly ironed capri-pants, an overly white smile and a fringe which is flicked just so.

My Mum asked me a few months ago if I was a “Yummy Mummy”, I snorted and said “God I hope not”, and I think I offended her. I’d rather have a personality, an attitude and some individuality than a twee label. I think that’s the best example this particular Mama can set our small boy. It’s ok to be different. In fact in this house it’s positively encouraged!

Yummy mummy

Growing up: A childhood full of cuddles

The small boy started big school this week. We were both brave and have managed the transition quite well; but it’s made me all reflective about my little baby growing up.

He’ll be four in November and those years have gone like a blur. I know it’s a cliché, but sometimes, most of the the time, clichés are so very true. The memory of holding him when he was born; doing the skin to skin thing and I was just shocked, amazed, full of love and terrified that I had a real life baby in my arms. I knew at that moment, I would fight anyone to the death if they so much as gave him a funny look.

I remember holding him during our first days at home, when I was alone and wondering who on earth had decided I was grown up enough to care for this beautiful, helpless, vulnerable creature. He smelt great too, newborns are almost edible, almost.

Growing up: A childhood full of cuddles

I remember his Christening and watching his grumpy face as he was passed around family and friends when he just wanted to cuddle his mummy or daddy. I remember holding my breath in case he cried when they baptised him. He didn’t.

I remember taking him to nursery for the first time, just short of his first birthday and breaking my heart in the car on the way to work. I held him extra close for a long time that night and for several nights after.

Growing up: A childhood full of cuddles

In the nights before I went into hospital for my operations, I stuck a brave face on for him and squeezing him tight before bed; knowing that I wouldn’t see him for a few days. Those nights in hospital when I hadn’t been able to kiss him goodnight, they seemed horribly long and lonely without him.

He’s not overly cuddly, but when he’s poorly he really craves cuddles and reassurance. I make the most of his under the weather snuggles, when he’s burning up and he just wants his mummy. I know he’s coming down with something when he just climbs on my knee and nestles in.

His first day of school, he was all manly and grown up. No proper cuddles for mummy, just a cursory hug of my knee and he was off. He’s growing up fast and I hope we’ve done enough to prepare him for big school.

Growing up: A childhood full of cuddles

He’s a tough little monkey; independent, funny, chatty, charming, with eyes that’ll get him both in trouble and out of trouble in equal measure. I know his affectionate cuddles will become less frequent now he’s growing up and becoming a man of the world; so when they do happen I’m going to make the most of them, and hold him extra tight for a little bit longer.

He’ll always be my baby, no matter how grown up he is. I hope he’ll still occasionally give me a special mummy cuddle. I hope one day he’ll feel his heart fill with love for the tiny newborn in his arms, and understand for himself what unconditional love really is.

You know you’re a parent when…

Fifteen ways you know you’re a parent… can you think of any more?

  1. Your bed is inexplicably full of Cheerios.
  2. You go to work with sudocrem on your trousers and when people point it out you say it’s bum cream, they recoil in horror and you have to point out it’s not your bum cream. This does not dispel the horror.
  3. Hot drinks are something you enjoyed in the past, a time long, long ago.
  4. You always have a biscuit and a used tissue in your pocket for emergencies.
  5. You stop using expensive face cream and use baby lotion instead.
  6. Boy toddlers leave puddles in the bathroom, so you’re always wearing at least one damp sock that smells a bit funny.
  7. You don’t need an alarm clock anymore. At 6am someone always wanders in, throws a toy car at your head and demands a snack. Now.
  8. You eat something involving pesto at least three times a week.
  9. In the shower you sing “Wind the Bobbin Up” instead of the indie classics from your youth.
  10. Getting everyone ready and leaving the house, having brushed your hair and ensuring everyone has shoes on in under an hour is an Olympian feat.
  11. The remote control has been through the washing machine twice and you still can’t find it.
  12. You spend 42% of your time winding toilet paper back onto the roll.
  13. Your car is full of raisins and you think the hamster might be nesting in there somewhere.
  14. Approximately 10 minutes after a successful bedtime you’re so exhausted you decide to turn in for the night. It’s 8.15pm.
  15. Your idea of tidying up is kicking all the toys out of the way to form a narrow path across the room.

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Multitasking Mummy

In the days before I had a child I had a job. A good job in which time management skills were essential. The ability to juggle conflicting priorities; deal with an angry patient, a clinic seriously overrunning, a piece of essential theatre equipment breaking, all whilst dealing with urgent paperwork were all literally in a days work for me. I usually dealt with all that with casual aplomb, quietly congratulating myself on my cool head under pressure.

This morning I was sat on the loo, brushing my teeth and running a bath. The small boy wanders in and needs his bottom wiping, which I do, still sat on the loo, toothbrush hanging out of the side of my mouth. He needs clean pants so he fetches them for me and we get him dressed. I’m still sat on the loo because I haven’t had a chance to get off it yet and I reflect on what glorious multitasking skills a parent needs just to get even a rudimentary wash of a morning.

Cooking tea is a similar rigmarole. Stirring a pan whilst the small boy brings his potty to show me, complete with its little brown friend, I have to deal with the contents and the dirty bottom whilst trying not to burn the meal I’ve slaved over. If he’s not proudly presenting me with his doings, then he’s drawing on the wall, or falling over and needing a cuddle, or a million other things which demand my attention.

The small boy can have my attention. As much of it as he wants and needs because he won’t be a small boy for long. But why does he always need it when I’m sat on the loo, or in the bath trying to snatch five short moments of peace or juggling four pans and a hot oven. Why?

I know I’m not alone in this, I know if you’re a parent and you’re reading this, you’ll be nodding along. You might even maybe sat on the loo, toothbrush hanging out of your mouth, reading this on your phone whilst a small child is doing the I want attention dance around you.

Knowing that you have corporate level multitasking skills won’t make your day-to-day life any easier, but it does mean that you have a tooth-brushing, bottom-wiping, teddy bear-finding superpower than non-parents almost certainly lack. Well done parent. Well done.

multitasking

Toddler Fun Learning Videos on YouTube

I hate this time of year, if you’ve got a poorly toddler and the frozen rain (otherwise known as sleet) is lashing against the window; you’re less inclined to go out and about for ambles round your local park. Poorly toddlers are notoriously narky and difficult to entertain, which can result in some delightfully epic tantrums (not always his).

This afternoon it was particularly nippy and the toddler was particularly grumpy, so we decided to snuggle in mummydaddysbed™, drink hot chocolate and check out the YouTube videos from Toddler Fun Learning.

Toddler Fun Learning is a family-run British production company who produce videos for toddlers that look fantastic, but help your little loved ones with their counting, spelling, vocabulary and lots more. I was all over this concept because the boy is obsessed with YouTube, plus he has hearing problems which means his speech is a tiny bit behind, so if this can help then all the better.

watching videosWe watched a selection, including Twinkle Twinkle, Learn to count on Number Farm and The Wheels on the Bus. He loved them all. We watched them together (I’m very firm that the iPad is NOT a babysitter) and we sang along and chatted about what we saw; a cow; a hopping rabbit; a red tractor etc.

photo (28)He watched some of them several times over but particularly fell in love with “Lets Build a Steam Train: Learn about train parts“. He adores everything train related and this video showed all the pieces of a train with the words, I left the room briefly and returned to find him watching it for about the eighth time and reciting the words, which for me was brilliant I was so pleased.

He seemed to love all the videos, was engaged with them, laughed and got excited by them. We loved that the farm cartoons were mixed up with real footage of animals, he got so excited by that. I think the videos are great and a lovely learning tool for parents to enjoy with their toddlers.

NB. In a toddler nod to Hitchcock an orange cat appears somewhere in each of the videos. There’s no bonus prize if you spot it, but it is kinda fun.

The Toddler Fun Learning YouTube channel can be found here.

Potty Training – Part Two

We started potty training just after Christmas and, joy of joys, combined that parenting treat with a dose of chicken pox. Buy one hell, get one free if you will.

I went to playgroup this morning and pretty much everyone sauntered up to me and said with a moderately pained and sympathetic face “potty training….how’s it going?”. At which point I experienced a number of flashbacks ending in the horror that was the poo that was kindly deposited beside my bed this morning.

potty trainingIf I’m honest it’s pretty hit and miss. Sometimes he gets to the potty or toilet in time, whips his trolleys down and hits the spot. We all burst into rounds of applause and he gets a standing ovation. Sometimes he almost makes it and still gets a well done, sometimes he just looks me straight in the eye and wets himself. At that point I assume the foetal position and start rocking.

My house stinks of wee. His shoes, both pairs are washed each night, because they don’t smell of feet anymore, they smell like the stairwell of a multi-storey car park. I dream of his shoes just smelling like feet, I really do. We go through more pairs of pants than a Tom Jones concert goer. And I can’t wait for him to get it, for it to click.

He came home from nursery yesterday in what was basically a biohazard suit for toddlers. He’d gone through four complete changes of clothes. We were scared to unzip it for fear of what might come gushing out. He genuinely has more costume changes than Elton John.

Still I think progress is being made. He understands what he’s supposed to do but I think maybe sometimes he’s just shy or he just mistimes it or maybe just forgets entirely what he’s supposed to do.

But he’s over the chicken pox which is no bad thing. Just need to stop him weeing everywhere now. I’ll do another update soon. I hope it’s more positive than “he’s still peeing in the corner and we all smell like tramps”.

Potty Training – Part One

Potty Training – Part One

Potty trainingSplodge is now three years and one month old. He’s a grand lad and we have always taken things at his pace. He moved up from toddlers to pre-school in his nursery in September. Most of his fellow pre-schoolers are out of nappies and mostly dry. We’ve been getting a bit twitchy about him being behind everyone else in this regard and “helpful” friends and family have made remarks, but we were always sure we wanted to wait for him to be ready.

He’s not ready. He’s nearly there don’t get me wrong, but the Christmas holidays rolled by and it’s a time where we’ll all be at home, so it seemed like the right time to start. We’d read the books, done the theory test and when morning broke on 27th December it began.

By lunchtime we’d wet ten pairs of pants and the house was starting to whiff. Hodge was quickly dispatched to the shops to purchase more pants and some febreeze. By 2pm he was wetting himself, pulling his wet pants down and then sitting in the potty. Almost son, almost. It seems this potty training lark is all about timing.

Fed up of mopping up puddles, we headed to the swimming baths where we had a really fun 90 minutes splashing, dunking, bouncing and swimming. We got out, dried off, got dressed and headed out. We made it to reception when he did the most enormous wee I’ve ever seen, Hodge picked him up like a rugby ball and shot off to the car for a speedy change, leaving a conspicuous puddle in the reception area.

We headed home for an early night, safe in the knowledge that he’d be wearing a nappy at night and we could relax at last. Jobs a good ‘un.

When morning arrived on 28th December he toddled into our bedroom with his usual “Morning Mummy Daddy”, bleary eyed we blinked at him, wished him good morning and then started counting the spots which had appeared on him overnight. It dawned on us, he’s got the chicken pox!

Crisis talks were hastily arranged. What do we do? 24 hours in, do we stop and just let him be ill in peace? Do we carry on? What to do, what to do?

So we decided to carry on. It’s going to be a hellish couple of weeks with either chicken pox or potty training, so we’re cracking on as planned and hopefully getting two completely awful things over and done with together.

He’s not seeming terribly ill with it, he still seems perky so we’ll just crack on. Potty training wise today hasn’t been dreadful. He’s still wetting himself left, right and centre, but he’s stared giving us clues about when he needs to go, like grabbing his crotch or just wetting his pants. He’s made it to the potty a few times but just moments too late.

It’s not easy and I don’t think Splodge is going to crack it overnight, but he’s a bright lad and once he decides he wants to do something then he’ll do it and do it well. I’ll hopefully do an update post in a few days and let you know how we’re getting on. Wish us luck!

My Toddler Boys Winter Bucket List

Being an avid reader and lover of blogs I stumbled across this little cracker. Primarily the blog is about making sure your little nipper gets enough Vitamin D during the long, dark, cold winter months; but the bit that grabbed my attention was the “Winter Potty List” which is basically a mini winter bucket list of fun things to do over the winter for kids.

winter bucket list

I actually love this, I sometimes really struggle to be creative and think of fun things to do with the lad. I’m going to print the graphic out, stick it on the fridge and see how many we can tick off before the trees go into blossom next spring.

The ones I’m most looking forward to trying are –

  • Salt dough hand prints which we can decorate and give to Grandma for Christmas
  • Making messy fruit scones and gobbling them down still warm from the oven
  • Teddy bears picnic for him and a couple of his little chums
  • Making naughty hot chocolate and snuggling under a blanket watching a Christmas film

I think he’ll love this and enjoy helping me plan what we’ll do and then ticking them off. Hope you like this too, thought it’d be rude not to share!

 

Party On Little Dude!

Last Saturday it was my little big man’s 3rd birthday party. It was, I’ll admit an occasion I was partly dreading. He’s not great at parties and never really wants to join in. Part of me considered it a massive waste of time, energy and money throwing a party for a kid who’d much rather run around with his chums than sit down and partake in an activity session. Thankfully I was wrong.

We’d invited 20 of his bestest friends forever to our local church hall, booked a very nice lady from Rhythm & Rhyme to come and entertain the troops and my mother ordered a cake, a very expensive, very amazing cake.

cake
NOT homemade but still amazing birthday cake

Apart from the cake we did the rest of the food ourselves. We went to Aldi, I made a stack of sandwiches. We had crisps, pizzas, dips, cakes, fruit, biscuits and juice. Standard toddler fayre.

The party went rather swimmingly and was a real whirlwind of fun. He behaved himself impeccably, only really throwing a wobbly when he was accidentally kicked in the head by another child.

He properly joined in with Rhythm & Rhyme, passed the parcels, he ate most of his buffet, graciously listened to everyone singing happy birthday and then blew his three candles out leaving surprisingly little spittle on the cake. We all clapped. Everyone left with a fairly decent party bag and a wedge of cake.

It was a simple party, and it seemed to us like we’d thrown it together at the last minute, but I think it was a success. We’ve had lots of positive comments since so that’s always good.

The next task is to sit down and write thank you cards. If you came and bought him a present, thank you, really, he got some amazing presents, you’ll get a card soon, I promise.

Next year I won’t fear his party, I reckon it’ll be cool and he’ll be old enough to tell us more about what he wants, within reason. It was worth the stress and the making of egg mayonnaise at midnight just to see his happy face, plus he’s talked of nothing else since. Happy birthday son x

Why I bottle fed my baby and have no regrets

When I was pregnant I’d always planned to breastfeed. I’d bought myself creams and pads and did all the boob massages beforehand to encourage milk flow and all that kind of thing. Being a realist and did buy a cheap set of bottles, a steamer and 48 hours worth of formula milk just in case. I thought they wouldn’t go to waste if I could express some milk. I knew my baby could be bottle fed breast milk by his Dad.

As it happened my boy was born early in traumatic style and I had a condition which made breastfeeding incredibly difficult. Together we spent a week in hospital. During those long, hard days every midwife for miles around tried to milk me, to no avail. Not a drop could be found. We collectively gave up and resigned ourselves to having a bottle fed baby.

Why I bottle fed my baby and have no regrets

I really don’t give a tuppenny cuss if parents choose to feed their baby by breast or bottle. It’s really no ones business but your own. As a parent you’ve got to go with what works best for you and your family. If you can’t breastfeed, even with experts on hand to help you, then there is no point at all beating yourself up about it. Parenting throws enough guilt and anxiety your way and it’s not worth getting het up over.

Yes, I totally get the breast is best argument. But I look at my nephew and my son who are only 6 months apart in age. My nephew was breastfed and my boy bottle fed and there is no difference. They are both lively, happy, engaging, intelligent boys. Both healthy, cheeky and thriving.

Breastfeeding is an emotive subject. Something which everyone has an opinion on and one which is a real parenting hot potato. For me as with most things, my attitude is do whatever you want, but don’t pour scorn on those who do things differently. That’s just good manners and respect.

How did you choose to feed your baby – breast or bottle fed and would you change anything?