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11 Things I Swore I’d Never Do As A Parent… But I Did!

Do you know when you are the most perfect parent? Before you have kids, that’s when!! When you imagine how life with a teeny baby will be. You picture yourself looking lovingly down at your baby at 3 am, being able to go for brunch with all of your Mummy friends and not hearing a peep out of your little one, thinking you will have all that time on your hands to bake homemade goodies for them…

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The Fourth Trimester Has Arrived!

It feels a bit odd to be writing about the fourth trimester when I never actually got the chance to write about the third. I had wanted to document each trimester of my pregnancy and enjoy talking about it all but as William decided the third trimester wasn’t entirely needed I just jumped straight to our birth story instead!!

So, the fourth trimester eh? (Yes, tri does mean three so we’ll just ignore that technicality) I will be honest,

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The Summer Holidays: Expectations Vs Reality

Ahhhh, the summer holidays, the time of year when you get to spend more time with your kids, where routines and school runs go out of the window, the time of year when you romanticise how special every moment is going to be… shame reality takes over, eh?!

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You Know You’re a Stay at Home Mum when…

My life has changed considerably since becoming a stay at home Mum. Some may question my choice but I wouldn’t change any part of the last three years. Yeah, so my priorities are a far cry from what they were when I was employed and I may not be the hard-faced business person I once was when I worked in retail but I have a new focus and, for me, it is the most important one I have ever had.

Of course, there are plenty times when

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Sometimes I just want to be able to…

There were some areas of your life that you just used to take for granted before having kids. Strange things which you would never have given much thought to, things which are not areas you would have expected to become your issues in the future but all things that once you may have subconsciously enjoyed. Parenthood opens up a whole new world of daily battles and here are a few of the things that us parents want to be able to do…

 

Pee alone

Why is it that as soon as I stand up and announce I am just popping for a wee the child has to drop everything he is doing to come with me? Do you know that if I lock the door he just stands outside screaming and crying? He’s three years old! I miss peeing with the door shut. Why are they so interested in our toileting activities?!

 

Sleep

Just sleep in general, I really want more sleep. I have experienced the newborn night feeds, the teething wake-ups, the battles at bedtime and the 5am starts. I am now in the process of trying to work out why he still wakes to come in with us at night. I may just resort to buying a king size bed!

 

Walk

Oh what I would give to just be able to walk somewhere and get there without stopping every few moments to look at a tree, or a leaf, or a lamp post or yet another bin lorry (he is obsessed!) And if it isn’t one of those it’s the sitting on the floor refusing to move because of a label bugging him, something in his shoe, he wants to be carried or he just likes to secretly wind Mummy up (I think this is always the answer if I’m honest!) Remember when you could walk and get to the destination in a few minutes? Nah, me neither.

 

Have a bath

Alone… without plastic toys being thrown in at me… without being stared at… without being begged at to get in. It’s MY bath, I don’t need any plastic crap and I certainly don’t need a little person throwing water over my head whilst I am trying to relax. I used to have candles, a magazine, a face mask and maybe a little music, now I get rubber ducks!

 

Watch a programme of my own in the day

After three years of Peppa, Paw Patrol, Bing, Fireman Sam and Mr Tumble, I think it is only fair that TV time gets a little shared out now. Just an hour of This Morning or a quick cuppa in front of Loose Women or even an episode of The Chase, please someone return my sanity!

 

Get around a supermarket without a strop

Oh, the days when a supermarket run used to mean in and out as quickly as possible, without speaking to anybody else and without arguing over what food to buy… remember those days?! Vaguely, I’d say. Now it’s the routinely battle of forcing a tiny contorting body into a trolley, the regret when you give up and let them run around the supermarket like they’ve had 2 bottles of coca-cola before you’ve entered and the stress of yelling ‘watch out for those people’ every few minutes. Why is a supermarket so much fun to them?! And then there are the epic strops because they can’t have the giant Peppa pig cake or the chocolate on every aisle end… you then become that parent who has that kid laying on the floor in the middle of Sainsbury’s – fan-bloody-tastic! All I wanna do is buy the food!

 

Eat my own food

Every meal time this is the scenario- he has his food, he takes forever to eat it, often moaning about eating it and it’s all a struggle. I have my meal and suddenly he swarms around me like he hasn’t eaten in days and regardless of the fact it is practically identical to what he’s just moaned about on his own plate, he is there picking my food off quite happily whilst making ‘yum’ noises. Don’t even get me started on the chocolate… Let me eat!

 

Go a day without a million questions

In the space of an hour this morning I have been asked about 25 questions… I am exhausted. There really is no need to ask why is that can there? Who put it there? Where did it come from? What is it? But why? and so on and so on. Sometimes, son, it is just because and sometimes Mummy doesn’t want to answer all of these questions, sometimes silence is really overrated.

 

Read a book

The last book I read (except for Hurrah for Gin’s hilarious one) was a crime novel when I was pregnant. I never finished it. To be able to take some time to have a hot cuppa and read a book would just be pure bliss.

 

Do you have any to add?

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Why Free Childcare Comes At The Wrong Time

Dear Government,

I would like you to know that there has been many a day where I have sat and wished the time away until my son was three and we were able to take advantage of the free hours at pre-school. On those days when he just wouldn’t nap, when his teething pain had

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