31 day blog challenge...... Day 20

Sorry this is a day late, been suffering with a cold and couldn't be bothered doing anything yesterday!

Day 20  A difficult time in your life.....

I don't really want to elaborate on this too much, Its hard to think about it If I'm honest.

I suffered with depression from around October of 2007 to maybe May 2008. I was on quite strong anti-depressants I was seeing a Phycologist and at one point my GP was so concerned that he sent the rapid response team from the local mental hospital assess me, I had them calling me everyday for 2 weeks to check I was ok and I hadn't harmed myself. Through all my sessions with people no one ever figured out including myself why I felt the way I did. I eventually got through it and i was weaned of my medication.

I put my family especially my husband through a lot during that period of time.

I haven't suffered with it that bad since, I get the odd days like we all do where I'm feeling a bit down.


Thirty Mummy x

Handsfree Revoultion

I came across Hands free Mama a couple of days ago while searching the internet for something else.

I read her post on How to miss a childhood  She talks about how technology distracts us so much that we end up missing things. I am guilty of some of these

Carry my phone around so much that when you happen to leave it in one room your child will come running with it proudly in hand—treating it more like a much needed breathing apparatus than a communication device.

Decide the app you’re playing is more important than throwing the ball in the yard with your kids. Even better, yell at them to leave you alone while you play your game.

Check your phone first thing in the morning … even before you kiss, hug, or greet the people in your family.

Don’t look up from your phone when your child speaks to you or just reply with an “uh huh” so she thinks you were listening.

Lose your temper with your child when he “bothers” you while you are interacting with your hand-held electronic device.

After reading it I felt sad! I am going to try and stop checking Twitter, Emails, Facebook,Pinterest so much during her waking hours.

Grasp a Childhood It requires only one thing: You must put down your phone. Whether it is for ten minutes, two hours, or an entire Saturday, beautiful human connection, memory making, and parent-child bonding can occur every single time you let go of distraction to grasp what really matters.

The beautiful, life-changing results of your “Hands Free” action can start today … right now … the moment you put down the phone.

I don't want mini me looking back and thinking every time I looked at my mum she had her phone attached to her hand and she ignored me because her phone and laptop were more important than playing or talking to me.

Thirty Mummy x

31 day blog challenge.... Day 1

So here goes the start of my 31 day blog challenge, If you'd like to join in pop over to Boy oh Boy

Introduction and recent photo....

My name is Lisa, I am a 30 year old stay at home mum to my mini me S and wife to my other half. I live in Belfast Northern Ireland. 

I love baking, coffee, crafting, reading, writing is now a bit of a passion which surprises me as I hated english at school. I started this blog just so I could write things down I feel great after writing. 

Currently I am looking to re-train in IT so I can go back to work when the little person goes to primary school in 2014. 

Heres a recent photo taken yesterday (I really really hate having my photo taken)

10 years time...

Sparked by a post by one of my mummy friends.  We had be doing a photo thread of us 10 years ago then now, Someone then asked........

 So where do I see myself in 10 years time....

Well I'll have a 12 year old and maybe one more certainly If S had her way.

I'll hope to be a successful writer (although only if I can get rid of this writers block to actually start) a scientist or working in IT. It seems after my trip to the careers advisors at college on Friday morning (I used to be a payroll manager and I know that I really don't want to go back to that career when S starts school, hence the trip to the careers people)  that science and IT suit me best. I have to agree as they are the only two interests that I have that I could possibly make some sort of career out of.

and I'll still be happily married to my best friend.


Where do you see yourself in 10 years time?

Babies, holiday and Road trips

Sorry It's been awhile since my last post, Me S and the husband were off on a little holiday to the the lakes, to be honest we needed a break after coming home, travelling with a toddler is non stop hard work :-) S is staying at her Nana's tonight ( Its the first time she's been away overnight since she was 10 months when we thought we were still young enough to go to a music festival, It was awful we got soaked and we got colds) So the first time we have a break in ages and what am I doing sitting in our computer room blogging :-) I am hoping to move my bum when I'm finish so we can go out to eat and maybe watch The Hunger games. Anyway.........


 Last night at bath time S was in the bath having a conversation with  her toys one was daddy one was me and one was her baby sister which sparked a whole other conversation. She kept asking "wheres my baby sister"? When I tried to explain she didn't have one she wanted to know why and told me that she wanted one. She then went back to saying "where's my baby sister". I have to admit this conversation made me well up slightly It made me feel terribly guilty (I'm already struggling the wether or not to have another one and there is a lot more in my con list than my pro list)

In other news My husband and I have just signed up for a Charity road trip 3000k around Europe for Dreams Come True Here is a bit about the charity.

Dreams Come True is a children's charity serving the whole of the UK. Our mission is quite simply, to make dreams come true for seriously and terminally ill children across the country. Over the last 24 years we have brought happiness and joy to more than five thousand children as well as their friends, family and carers.

What We Do

Dreams Come True helps children with both life threatening and long-term illness. We operate with complete integrity and dependability - liaising, coordinating, organising, funding and often accompanying the Dream children - to ensure that each child has an unforgettable experience fulfilling their dream, with wonderful memories to share with loved ones and friends.

Each dream is unique. Some children want to meet their celebrity hero or favourite Disney character while others want to visit their grandparents abroad, ride a unicorn, swim with dolphins or work on a fashion magazine. Many want help with their everyday lives and Dreams Come True is delighted to provide vital sensory equipment, wheelchairs or specially adapted bicycles as well.

Why We Do It

Dream Children often have very little to look forward to apart from endless rounds of hospital visits, painful treatments and the prospect of living with a long term debilitating disease. These very brave youngsters can become depressed and frustrated, yet they all dream of things they want to do and achieve.

Fulfilling a dream provides a positive focus empowering both them and their families with new enthusiasm and strength to deal with ongoing daily struggles of illness, gruelling hospital treatment and sometimes sad loss. It is a legacy of hope and well being that is poignantly expresses in many hundreds of thank you letters we receive from Dream Children and their families.

We have set up a just giving page and any donations would be amazing,  Our Just giving page

Things I would never have done.....

Things I would never imagined I do before I had S 

• Reading the same book over and over again every night of the week
• Being really really excited when your child gives you a squished up page with a wonky drawing on it
• Cleaning up poo and sick that wasn't mine
• Singing, dancing and pretending to be some sort of animal in public
• Having a serious conversation about snot and poo
• Actively encouraging someone to spit chewed up food into my hand
• Being woken at 7am and thinking its a lie in
• Consider food shopping ALONE to be a real treat
• Having a handbag full of stuff, none of which belongs to me
• Referring to people as a character like "Fireman Sam" a fireman, "Pat" Postman etc
• Sharing a toilet with more or more people
• Calling my partner Daddy   

I'm sure there are plenty more, what are yours?

Feeling like a bad mummy...

This morning I find myself feeling guilty and a bit upset, S only goes to nursery on a friday from 9am to 2pm It was awful this morning leaving her off she didn't want to stay and kept saying I love you mummy, don't leave me, I want you and I want to go home all through the tears. It makes me feel like an awful mummy, its my choice to send her there just because I needed a break, this makes me feel selfish. On the other hand I know that its good for her to have some time away from me but, I hate the thought of her being there upset for the whole time like she was when I last picked her up. I know I will sit here and worry about her and not enjoy the few hours I have to do the things I want so whats the point?

The great conspiracy of Silence..

The unwritten rule of parenthood is that you never let on to non-parents what its really like. This was described by a sleep-deprived friend as The Great Parental Conspiracy of Silence. It goes like this......

Your friend announces that she is pregnant, you are of course, delighted. You meet for coffee (yours is a double espresso because your child has been up all night) to talk about it. She wants to know everything or so she says.

Heres what you tell her..

* It doesn't matter if she gets fat, the weight will drop off afterwards, especially if she breastfeeds

* The birth itself isn't that bad, and anyway your body is biologically programmed to forget the pain.

* Breastfeeding can be a little tricky to start with, but in the end she'll get the hang of it.

* You get used to not having as much sleep as you used to.

* The experience of looking after a newborn can really bring two people together.


Heres what you actually mean...

* Her stomach will never be the same again, not even if she goes to the gym everyday (which she won't be able to because she won't have the time)

* The birth is quite terrifying, gas and air doesn't work like they say it does, having stitches is horrible, midwives don't always get it right, there will be more blood and bodily fluids than on a episode of CSI, and having half the world staring and your most intimate parts while you make noises like a demented pig is not, in any sense of the word empowering.

* Breastfeeding can be very hard indeed, you feel like a useless failure if you can't do it, breastfed babies do get colic, you will leak in public, your nipples will feel like they have been sandpapered and your breasts, like your stomach will never really recover.

* You will go insane with sleep deprivation, you really will. Even the hardiest of military men were reduced to wrecks after 3 days of no sleep in Japanese prisoner of war camps, and you were not trained for this. There will be days when the very act of putting clothes on your shattered body will feel like a major achievement.

* Once the initial euphoria has subsided, you and your partner will effectively become shift workers: when he's awake you will be dropping of to sleep, and vice versa. You will become resentful of his ability to leave the house in the morning, bound by the comparatively stressless world of work. In the back of your mind will be the sneaking suspicion that he is staying longer in the office because he would almost be anywhere than at home sterilising bottles and dealing with a frazzled you and a wailing baby. Sex will be implausible, not so much because of the physical changes wrought by giving birth, but because you will both be so exhausted, and no one feels like having much sex when they're tired and smelling slightly of sick.

That is one side of the story: the disruption and chaos and then somewhere around week three, quite possibly as you are dozing of at 4am, with this little milky person asleep beside you, It suddenly hits you with the force of an oncoming train: you love this little person more than life itself, It is in the true sense of the word unconditional.  It can on the other hand be frightening for the mother, whose happiness now depends on this highly unstable bundle, whose very sanity can feel as if it hinges on one tiny human continuing to breathe. but also for her partner Adjusting from being the centre of a person's universe to being a distance satellite is never easy, especially if the ego involved is male. All this is why you can't really tell your pregnant friend the truth. She doesn't yet understand the peculiar feeling of being hopelessly trapped and elated at the same time - nor will she until she has given birth. You have to let her experience it for herself, in her own way. Far better and easier to say that My child is a angel/genius/source of endless joy, I am deliriously happy being a mother, my partner and I have as much - If possibility not more sex than before and no, of course we do not miss the lie-ins/foreign holidays/actual freedom.

I found this in a book I bought today called Backwards in high heels.  I do think people tend to sugar coat information when your pregnant for the first time obviously not to scare the life out of you.

L x

Only one... Surely not

I have decided that for the foreseeable I am sticking with one child but somehow society makes me feel like a freak for making such a decision with such comments as "You can't have just one a only child is an lonely child" "oh you'll change your mind" or the conversation me and my MIL had yesterday, I was telling her I had bulk bought some pull ups a couple of weeks ago because we were still using them at night and were £2.79 in Tesco. We have a lot left over because S is dry both day and night now. Her response "you should just keep them for the next one" 


I am quite happy with one for a number of reasons. 


Yesterday I came across this study that has proved to be quite interesting in reagards to only children. 






A Stereotype Is Born

The image of the lonely only — or at least the legitimizing of that idea — was the work of one man, Granville Stanley Hall. About 120 years ago, Hall established one of the first American psychology-research labs and was a leader of the child-study movement. A national network of study groups called Hall Clubs existed to spread his teachings. But what he is most known for today is supervising the 1896 study "Of Peculiar and Exceptional Children," which described a series of only-child oddballs as permanent misfits. Hall — and every other fledgling psychologist — knew close to nothing about credible research practices. Yet for decades, academics and advice columnists alike disseminated his conclusion that an only child could not be expected to go through life with the same capacity for adjustment that children with siblings possessed. "Being an only child is a disease in itself," he claimed.

Later generations of scholars tried to correct the record, but their findings never filtered into popular parenting discourse. Meanwhile, the "peculiar" only children — "overprivileged, asocial, royally autonomous ... self-centered, aloof and overly intellectual," as sociologist Judith Blake describes them in her 1989 book Family Size and Achievement — permeated pop culture, from the demon children in horror films (The Omen, The Bad Seed) to the oddball sidekicks in '80s sitcoms (Growing Pains, Family Ties). Even on the new show Modern Family, the tween singleton is a cringingly precocious loner with a coddling mother. Such vehicles have evangelized Hall's teachings more than his clubs did. Of course we ask when someone is going to have "kids," not "a kid." Of course we think that one is the loneliest number.

No one has done more to disprove Hall's stereotype than Toni Falbo, a professor of educational psychology and sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. An only child herself and the mother of one, Falbo began investigating the only-child experience in the 1970s, both in the U.S. and in China (where the government's one-child policy, the world's biggest experiment in population control, went into effect in 1979), drawing on the experience of tens of thousands of subjects. Twenty-five years ago, she and colleague Denise Polit conducted a meta-analysis of 115 studies of only children from 1925 onward that considered developmental outcomes of adjustment, character, sociability, achievement and intelligence. The studies, mainly from the U.S., cut across class and race.

Generally, those studies showed that singletons aren't measurably different from other kids — except that they, along with firstborns and people who have only one sibling, score higher in measures of intelligence and achievement. No one, Falbo says, has published research that can demonstrate any truth behind the stereotype of the only child as lonely, selfish and maladjusted. (She has spoken those three words so many times in the past 35 years that they run together as one: lonelyselfishmaladjusted.) Falbo and Polit later completed a second quantitative review of more than 200 personality studies. By and large, they found that the personalities of only children were indistinguishable from their peers with siblings.

Of course, part of the reason we assume only children are spoiled is that whatever parents have to give, the only child gets it all. The argument Blake makes in Family Size and Achievement as to why onlies are higher achievers across socioeconomic lines can be stated simply: there's no "dilution of resources," as she terms it, between siblings. No matter their income or occupation, parents of only children have more time, energy and money to invest in their kid, who gets all the dance classes, piano lessons and prep courses, as well as all their parents' attention when it comes to helping work out an algebra problem. That attention, researchers have noticed, leads to not just higher SAT scores but also higher self-esteem.

And as Falbo tells her students, the cocktail of aptitude and confidence yields results: only children tend to do better in school and get more education — college, medical or law degrees — than other kids. Not that having siblings will necessarily thwart you; Einstein had a sister and did just fine.


The full article can be read here The only child: Debunking the myths




Who's to say that in a year or 2 I'll change my mind but for now I am happy to devote time and full attention to S.

Motherhood

Being a mother is quite possibly one of the most complex undertakings you will ever embark on.

Modern motherhood is riddled with contradictions, confusion and above all clichés, the have it all generation, the too posh to push, the ticking biological clock, the work life balance.

Women who have children can never be just mothers, there must always be a qualifier. Stay at home mums, working mums, full time mums (although show me a mother who is part time and I’ll show you a pig with wings) Earth mothers, alpha mothers, pushy mothers, single mothers, teenage mothers, geriatric mothers and of course the yummy mummies.

Society sees all these women going about the business of raising children and, instead of delighting in the continuation of the human race It seems to go out of its way to judge them. 

Just going slowly insane

So the week begins again and I feel like screaming. Don't get me wrong I love being a stay at home mum but some days I just feel I would like to go to work or college just so I can have a adult conversation, to have a few hours without S demanding all my attention and to be me and not just a wife and mother.

I had have lots of conversations with fellow mummies its not just me who feels like this we all do from time to time. I also know a few mummies who would hate to be a SAHM.  It is hard work and I do feel like I am going crazy sometimes especially when my husband is away and I really dont have any adult conversation at all.

That being said a SAHM can be really rewarding as well, I get to see all of her milestones which I would miss if I wasn't at home.

L x

The day from hell.. Well maybe not that bad

Yesterday was not a good day. It all started at 11.30pm on the Thursday night when S woke up not feeling great so cue a night of not much sleep.

Sleep deprived (there was me thinking, that was a thing of the past) I threw clothes on me and S and took her to the doctors (little did I know I'd be paying another visit to the doctors later that afternoon) I had the usual reply from the doctor she has a virus.  We got antibiotics and headed home to make a bed on the Sofa.

As the day went on she got worse she refused to take her medicine and if we did manage to get some in she throw it up 2 minutes later.  Another trip to the doctors as she wasn't keeping anything down.  The Doctor give her banana tasting one hoping that might make her want to take it, hmmm No!   We then tried bribery she may be 2 but she wasn't falling for it at all.  Someone give me a tip to make her think she was a big girl and let her take it herself, Well it worked.

I got absolutely no housework done at all yesterday as she wouldn't let me leave her the place still looks like a tip.   Elsewhere in the house My husband was trying to get ready for his business trip. All in all it was a very stressful day!

Today though S seems a lot better she's currently doing laps of the room on her scooter. Lets hope today is a better one.

French children don't throw food!

An American married an English man and lived with him is Paris, where she had a baby. In England or America she would have found sympathy from other sleep deprived new mums. But motherhood in Paris was different.

Babies slept through the night from 2 months old they eat a varied and sophisticated diet and didn't throw their food around. The mums were not knackered and covered in sick. Thy looked sexy and had their own grown up lives.

Do the French make parenting look like a breeze?

As a mother of a 2 year old I am intrigued.

In a study done by Princeton discovered that mothers in America found parenting twice as unpleasant as mothers in France.

When a French baby cries at night the parents go in wait and observe for a few minutes. left alone it might self-sooth and go back to sleep. If you rush in your training it to wake-up properly.

French Babies wait. long stretches from one feed to the next and when they are older they wait until 4pm for treats. Toddlers will wait quietly for food in a restaurant. This waiting, according to the French is a early lesson in self-reliance and that your baby is capable of learning and cope with frustration.

There are no children's menus in restaurants, French children are trained to eat everything.

All in all French mothers are more detached they sit at the edge of the playground chatting to friends, while leaving their toddlers to get on with in.

I do exactly that when I'm out with S at a park or soft play or at a mums and tots group, I just let her get on with it rather than follow her about.

Should children be free to roam and explore as they wish?

I am sitting catching up on the world. I've lost a couple of days helping a friend out, buts that's another post.

I came across an article in the I newspaper. It got me thinking are we too overprotective of our kids these days? Do we "cotton-wool" wrap them as the government suggests we do.

A report published by a children's charity say, that 1 in 5 children never play outside. A third have never climbed a tree or built a den and 1 in 10 children can't ride a bike.

I think I am more for letting S do things that my husband wouldn't like when we go to soft play he would tend to follow her around and would definitely not allow her down a slide on her own like i would. I think even though she's only two and a half she should be given a little bit of freedom from all overprotectiveness if she falls she falls it's all part of growing up.