November 29, 2010 at 8:44 am (british ex-pat, Rants and raves and foams at the mouth)
Tags: daycare, parenting, poor customer service, starbucks
This morning I left Finn crying his little eyes out at daycare as he wanted me to spend the day playing with him and not leave him with a bunch of grumpy ladies to go to work. Any mother who’s ever had to do the same thing will know how much this one hurts and what a horrible start to your day it is.So to comfort myself I decided I’d go to Starbucks to buy a croissant. This is how my conversation with the Starbucks server went:
Me: Hey. Can I have a chocolate croissant please?
Server: A what?
Me: A chocolate croissant.
Server: A muffin?
Me: No. A chocolate croissant.
Server: What?
Me: What?
Server: You want a pastry.
Me: Yes – a chocolate croissant.
So then she picked out a muffin, put in a bag and sent me on my way. So now I am at my desk munching on a muffin I don’t want as I was still too grief stricken from dropping Finn off to argue the point with her any further.
Is it me?
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November 26, 2010 at 8:40 am (family, Parenting)
Tags: babying a toddler, breastfeeding, milk, motherhood, parenting, toddler
I’ve recently noticed that I’ve developed a habit of calling Finn: ‘Baby Finn.’ I also am still referring to him as ‘the baby.’ He’s almost two. I’m not sure why I do it. Maybe it’s because I’m desperate to hold on to his babyhood for as long as I can. Maybe it’s because it just seems like a few moments ago that I was holding his chubby baby body and looking down at his sweet little face for the first time. But as he’s almost half my height and wearing clothes sized for a 3-and-a-half year old it’s come to a juncture where I can no longer feasibly call him ‘Baby Finn.’ Sooner or later I’m going to have to reign in my language and start calling him ‘Finn.’
I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it…
Suddenly I have some sympathy for those women who keep breastfeeding their kids till the age of five. “I just don’t know how to stop.” One of them confided in me once. Well goodness.
The other day BB and I were at a restaurant and I heard the woman on the table next to ours say to the waiter: “And can we also get a glass of milk for the baby.” I swung my head around, eager to get a look at the cute little ‘baby’ but sat there was nothing but a long legged six-year-old girl punching her older brother in the arm. I kept a slight eye on the family for the rest of the meal. No ‘baby’ showed itself at any time. However when the glass of milk arrived the six year old stuck a straw in it and sucked down the whole thing.
If I’m still calling Finn ‘Baby Finn’ by the time he’s out of diapers can someone please take me aside and have a word…
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November 23, 2010 at 8:38 am (family, Loving life!, Parenting)
Tags: child development, child language, childhood friends, daycare, parenting, pre-school, toddler, toddler friends, toddler language
Finn is starting to make friends at daycare and it’s incredibly cute. Every morning when he arrives at school there are two little girls – who are always dressed in pink – sitting down eating cheerios. As soon as Finn and I walk in the room they stand on their chairs and excitedly chant “The Finn! The Finn!” Finn normally ignores the salutation and just clings on to me even tighter. Mom – save me from these crazy girls – they don’t leave me alone all day!
However recently he seems a bit happier about his All Star greeting and he wanders over, pulls up a chair and sits down inbetween them. Recently he’s started to steal their cheerios – they don’t seem to mind. This morning he struck up a casual conversation with the snottier of the two. ‘The Finn! The Finn!’ said snotty. “Blu cubble, doggie,” said Finn.
Well quite!
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November 17, 2010 at 8:32 am (family, Loving life!, Parenting)
Tags: bore, doting on child, mother, parental love, parental pride, parenting
I used to pride myself on not being on of those mothers. You know the ones. The ones that won’t let you go until they’ve shown you all of their phone photo album which contains an endless stream of identical photographs of their offspring. The ones who can talk for a solid half hour about what Juliet did in her potty last week. Those mothers who will derail all and any kind of conversational topic you might want to bring up in order to tell you – in devastatingly lengthy detail – about their recent experience with their new pediatric dermatologist. Or worst of all, those mothers who will sing full stanzas of Barney songs, at top volume… out in public. I haven’t yet started to sing kid’s tunes in public, but I fear I am not far off. Something happened to me recently regarding motherhood and I’m not sure what it was. Maybe I just finally woke up after being in two years of survival mode/shock after my ex husband walked off with a twenty four year old blonde (I mention that she was 24 and a blonde a lot don’t I) and realized what an awesome kid I’ve got.
Whatever has happened, the result is that I’m finding myself turning into one of those mothers. And seeing as none of my friends or colleagues have kids I’m probably annoying the crap out of everyone. They probably thought, with relief, that I was ‘cool.’ I was the one mom they knew who hadn’t become obsessed with her child’s bowel movements. But now I am beginning to see why parents hang out mostly just with other parents. No one else can stand to be around us as we continually clap trap on about how divinely cute and interesting our children are. BB does a good job of listening to my continual clucking. In fact he even joins in and makes good points of his own: ‘Look how his language has developed this week – there are now three more unintelligible sounds he’s making! Look how he almost didn’t drop the ball just then!’ He always agrees with me wholeheartedly when I tell him how adorable Finn is. He even bought a parenting book about toddlers in order to read up on the whole thing! Who knows maybe the real reason mummyhood has suddenly become a bundle of fun is because I have someone to share it with. Whatever the reason, even though these days I’ve become a bore, I am a very happy bore.
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November 8, 2010 at 8:23 am (family, Parenting, The human body)
Tags: breastfeeding, modern day mother, parenting, stay at home mom, weight loss, weight loss after a baby, weight loss after pregnancy, working mother
All my life I’ve heard about how hard it is for women to lose weight after having a baby. You hear about ‘mummy tummies,’ big bottoms that linger, that extra 10 lbs that just won’t come off etc.
And all I have to say to it that in my unscientific observations (and this is just based on the few people I’ve known who have had babies) women get thinner after having a baby. It happened to me! I was practically scrawny for a while there – yes, some of that can probably be attributed to my husband running off with a twenty four year old blonde – but anywho…
What’s the deal?
I thought mothers were supposed to be pleasantly cuddly. Not the girls I’ve seen. They lose all the weight immediately and then drop another ten just because. And let me tell you right now – none of these ladies has decided to ‘watch what she eats’ or start a new exercise regime. I suppose breast feeding helps a lot – no one tells you how many calories that burns – it’s phenomenal. If I ever have another one I’ll be sure to breast feed if only for the extreme weight loss! The majority of these skinny mummies do all work outside the home. Can that be attributed to the weight loss – I’ve no idea? Being a stay at home is certainly much more physically active than being a working mom so I can’t think that that’s the case. I personally think it might be just the fact that the modern day woman is run ragged these days – stay at home mom or working mom. After you have a baby you will not have a moment to sit on your butt plus you get to deal with the insanity of modern day life too. These days I start at 4am when Finn wakes up and finish about 9.30 pm when I’ve done the last of the dishes, emptied out the cat litter tray and finished arguing with the bank about why they screwed up my direct deposits again – phew. Talk about burning some calories!
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November 5, 2010 at 8:20 am (british ex-pat, family, Loving life!, Parenting)
Tags: child development, daycare, parenting, self esteem, self love, toddler, video
American children, unlike English children, are encouraged to develop a lot of self love. “You are great. You are special. Great job with stacking those bricks,” are things they will hear in pre-school. The theory is that positive reinforcement will lead to higher self esteem leading kids to do better in school and in life. Well, I can report that my son – though he is being brought up by an English mother and has only been an American for not quite 2 years – is doing pretty well in the self-love department.
I took a video recording of the little cutie the other day running round the living room playing with his trucks. When I showed it back to him he was fascinated. Hey look mom – there’s a mini me running round on your phone! After getting very smiley he finally very reverently leant over and gave the screen showing his image a kiss.
Yup, that’s some toddler self loving right there.
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November 1, 2010 at 8:26 am (Parenting, single mother, single parenting)
Tags: online magazine, parenting, parenting magazine, parenting website, single mom, single mum, single parenting, vivacious mum, website, working mom, writing for web
So in addition to my work fiddling away with legal language in my oh-so-beige cubical, I’ve started writing for a parenting website!
It’s UK-based and features articles and all things interesting for working and single moms/mums.
It launches today so take a look and see if you can find my article…
www.vivaciousmum.com
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October 12, 2010 at 9:39 am (Rants and raves and foams at the mouth, Survival of the fittest!)
Tags: bad parenting, court case, fighting, florida, girl fight, inequality between the sexes, parenting, white trash, wrestling, youtube
Hmm.
A 39-year-old mother in Florida is facing five years in jail for cheering on her daughter in a fight with another girl.
Now obviously this behavior (the fighting and the cheering on) is more than a little Jerry Springer-esque, and if I ever have a daughter you can bet your bottom dollar she won’t be involved in any street brawls and if I witness her doing so she’ll be hauled out of that situation and grounded before you can say as much as ‘lipstick-smeared fat lip.’
However. I watched the Florida teen fight online. It seemed like a pretty clean fistie cuffs between two equally tall and skinny teenaged girls. Lord knows what they were fighting over – probably some acne-covered teenage boy.
But it does beg the question… would the same court case be going on if it had been a father encouraging his teen son to get up off the floor and give back as good as he got?
I doubt it… The whole thing would have been shrugged off as boys being boys and the father would have probably been applauded by most for letting his boy tough it out and not mollycoddling him.
Irrationally setting different parameters of behavior for our sons and daughters? Or just too white trash to allow?
Whada you think?
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October 3, 2010 at 8:24 am (family, Parenting)
Tags: child sickness, parental advice, parental love, parenting, sweat
1. Unless you isolate your kid permanently in Michael Jackson-style oxygen chamber he will get sick and you get to pick up a good portion of the sicknesses too.
2. When you are sick – you have to keep being a mother – yes, even when you have a temperature of 103…
3. Taking your kid in and out of car seat will cause you to break into a thorough sweat. As you will probably do this many times a day, be prepared to get sweaty. Very sweaty.
4. Your kid will wrestle with you every time it’s time to change his diaper and this will result in him, you, your work clothes, your hair, your bra and most of the changing mat becoming covered in poo.
5. When you go out with your little one and everyone smiles at him – you are obliged to dreamily smile back – even if you’ve only had 40 minutes sleep over the past three days.
6. The signal that your kid has finished dinner is that he will start to pick it up and throw it at you, the cat, the sofa, the TV. I recommend wooden flooring throughout.
7. The ample supply of clichéd and out dated advice from well-meaning individuals that you received when you were pregnant won’t stop after you’ve given birth.
8. You just won’t love your pets as much. Sorry Mr. Pickle Pants.
9. No one else’s kid will be as cute, funny or smart as yours.
10. You’ll love your kid so much that every time you look at them sleeping you feel like someone just kicked you in the chest…
I love you Finny boy!
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July 27, 2010 at 9:32 am (family, Parenting, Rants and raves and foams at the mouth, single mother, single parenting)
Tags: coping, coping skills, motherhood, motherhood wall, parenting, stress management, time management, Uma Thurman, working parent
…Worn down to an insignificant crisp of a woman by motherhood. And I don’t see the few mother friends I know worn down to a nub of blubbering insignificance by it either… So what’s with the media and film world portraying us as world weary, brain dead, non sexual, emotionally scattered zombies? Just a question. I recently watched ‘Motherhood’ staring Uma Thurman. Yes she was living in a walk up in Greenwich village, yes she had one more child than I do, yes she had a pretty useless husband and yes an incontinent dog too but – really? This woman was behaving as if she was permanently one step away from a full-scale torrid sweaty meltdown. Watch the film – this woman has been driven to the edge of mania by her two seemingly well-behaved and quite cute children and I really don’t know why.
My thought is that when women fall mentally into a thousand pieces like that – I don’t blame it on their being mothers at all. I blame it on the crazy lives they have been pushed into living. I know when I reach the Motherhood Wall it’s not really Finn that’s sent me there – it’s because of financial pressure, or the shitty day at work, or the prick who nearly killed us both on the freeway, because the neighbor is blaring Ariba Ariba music again, or because something just didn’t go the way I wanted it to. Read the rest of this entry »
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