Thursday 4th April 2013

There's no way you can get into our downstairs loo; it makes The Krypton Factor assault course look like the baby section in Snakes and Ladders. It's fully of buggies of various descriptions that won't fit anywhere else especially since I've gone back to work and the boot of my car looks like a mobile classroom.

This means that we are having to rely on using the toilet on the middle floor and it made me realise just how lazy I had become as I'm saying to myself, "I need to go upstairs for a wee and I can't be arsed" (To be fair, when I use the downstairs loo it means that I can keep a watchful eye on what is happening in the living room because as soon as my back is turned, usually one child teases the other). Ho hum.

Suddenly, as my random train of thought began meandering to the upstairs loo I started to think about how having one toilet between 7 of us when we were growing up never posed a problem at all. Then, I got to thinking even further back about when my mam lived in a two up and two down and the toilet was outside in the back yard. Finally, it got me thinking about some of the lesser developed countries that I have been to and worked in where I've had to do some things so that I can have a wee that makes Glamping in this country look like the bloody Hilton!

I was going to discuss the trouble with buggies in this blog entry but now my train of thought is going right out of the window; I mean, are we on the brink of nuclear war? No one will want to buy a second-hand i-Candy pram then will they?

Crikey! I wish I'd never looked in that damn toilet now - I've completely forgot what I was going to blog about :-s

On a completely different tangent, I found this book at m'mam's last weekend. How fab is this?
Cooking IS Fun (notice, no exclamation mark to lighten the mood) YOU WILL ENJOY IT! (That's
my imaginary sub-heading)

Monday 1st April 2013

So happy! Not only is Bethan now fully potty trained, she can also wipe the seat down of her Fisher Price 'toilet' with the Dettol wipes and put some toilet duck under its rim :-)

Only joking - April Fools!!! There's 6 minutes left until midday and I couldn't resist. Besides I'm bored. Stuck in the car on the M6 Southbound on the chevrons that are supposed to keep 2 cars apart (yes, like that's going to happen) and thought I would have a go at writing my blog.

Had a top Easter weekend with family and friends. Highlights include: a trip on Tommy the tram; shopping in the city; Bethan's first wide-eyed visit to the Disney Store; eating tapas and drinking good wine; James getting more confident in his intrepid crawling adventures; laughing and spending time with the Kirwins and the Sheldons; celebrating Easter services in the church I grew up in.

Lowlights include: 1. A near death experience; this happened when my mum convinced us all that a road which we were crossing to get to Deansgate was 'No Entry'. That was until a taxi came hurtling around the corner and nearly took us all out. Thank God Rob is nippy with the pram and buggy board. 2. James the Ripper's Pooey Bum: James' perchance for ripping up the weekend supplements and envelopes and then eating them meant that the two Easter Sunday poos were challenging to say the least. Sat in the snug in the Club changing his bum was a rite of passage for our son as all Kirwin descendants have been privy to that experience (Rob said it was more like a rite of a back passage). Anyway, the various bits of coloured paper that we found in the nappy told their own story. Rob said that all James needed to do was swallow some sticky back plastic and it would have come out gift wrapped. 3. Saying TTFN to our loved ones.

Had to laugh before we left my mum's this morning though. As my dad saw us packing our car with way more stuff than we actually needed he said, "Good Lord! No wonder you got a bigger car!".

This made me think about a beautiful Indian Summer during October half-term 1984 when my parents, three older siblings, myself and a week's worth of food climbed into our white Austin Allegro (equipped with a roof rack) and travelled from Manchester for a holiday on the Norfolk Broads. One of my earliest memories is when we all had to get out of the car so my dad could drive over the bridge at Wroxham because the car couldn't take the weight. No one batted an eye-lid as it seemed like the most normal thing to do.

Like I said, I couldn't help but look in our car this morning and giggle when I saw all of the crap stuffed into the back. If I took out Bethan's portable DVD player and asked her to play with a pack of cards she would look at me as if I was daft. On the other hand, James would probably be in his element because he could rip them up and eat them.

Sunday 3rd March 2013

Considering the fuss in getting there and the fact that we were late, the ballet dancing went well, I think. The teacher said she was fine and Bethan seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole thing. When she came out into the waiting room I asked her what she had done to which she replied, "dancing" and then for the next 10 minutes she started wittering on about "Falling Overs (aka 'You've been Framed').

Despite my earlier prejudices about the class and what it involved in terms of being an Alpha Mum, everyone was absolutely lovely. Ok, to begin with it felt like a film called "Attack of the Pink Clones". However, they all looked very cute but more importantly, they seemed to be very proud of what they were wearing and what they were doing. One mum must have seen me waiting anxiously and staring fervently into my phone as I wrote my blog trying to avoid eye-contact with anyone else. After the class she asked me how Bethan had got on and  I started to feel like I, Liz Hillier, could be part of the waiting room posse. I was cross at my juvenile feelings of insecurity and not being able to 'fit in' when really we are all in the same boat. I'm a bugger for judging situations as soon as I become part of something new; sometimes I get them right and other times I get them wrong, like today for instance.

The one thing thing that we parents all had in common as we were sat in the waiting room was the fact that we want the best for our children. I know Bethan loves to dance and yes, it is a blinking bother getting from a to b on a Friday afternoon but I really wanted her to have a go to discover if she enjoyed it or not.

This is then followed by swimming lessons on a Saturday afternoon which are expensive (Rob said to me, "How much?! At least Dick Turpin wore a bloody mask"), on the other side of town and a real hassle to get us all there fed, watered and changed before we all sing a rousing chorus of "Splish Splash" around the pool.

Swimming is important to us because Rob and I aren't particularly strong swimmers and we want the kids to feel confident and safe in the water. Plus, the ritual after the lesson as we head back to our home is that we start rubbing our egos and commenting on how swimming makes us spend quality time together; just the 4 of us, doing something which is (for all of my moaning), good fun.

Why all this justifying????

Well, as ever, I was reading something on the BBC news app on my phone (on the toilet as this is the only time I get to read anything or text anybody without being interrupted; well, usually anyway), and I could feel my hinds rising up from the toilet seat.

Tory MP and advisor to the PM, Claire Perry, has "criticised parents for filling children's lives with too many organised activities". In an interview she gave to 'The Times', Ms Perry says that "we've created a treadmill"  and that "it's usually the mother that is orchestrating...and doing all the driving" (metaphorically I assume because I don't literally do all of the driving as I am a crap driver and worry for my children's safety).

Controversially, the MP who is a working mother of 3 (I really hoped she hadn't have been because then I could have had a real go at her like I do with Gina Ford) says that, "we worship this feminine motherhood thing and I don't think our children have benefited actually. They're babied a lot".

Crikey! That's scathing and made me feel like squirming into the toilet bowl on which I was sat.

This was written the same weekend when American parenting author Pamela Druckerman, who lives in Paris, has been publicising her new book, "French Parents don't give in" (damn it, another working mum; why oh why can't Gina Ford have written something this weekend for me to moan about?). This book is the sequel to "French Children Don't Throw Food". Morally I don't want to but I can't help it, I've already ordered it from Amazon. I'm keen to know what makes my children want to throw their fruity toast when a French child doesn't want to launch a piece of bread across the room.

To summarise: not a good weekend to be a British Alpha Parent; according to the experts, we're all crap.