Category Archives: Family

The hiding stuff you really need game

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game

Aim: To right royally f*ck up the day/week/bank balance

How to play:

  • The oldest person is usually the seeker (it is possible to reverse this rule but its kinda akin to sh*tting on your own doorstep)
  • It works best if there are 2 or more hiders – one non-verbal player who can’t be questioned and one verbal player who can be questioned, but doesn’t give a rat’s arse
  • The best objects to hide are vital to the planned activity of the day i.e keys, phone, passports, shoes, sanity etc
  • Essentially hiders should just be incredibly, incredibly annoying. Apart from that there really are no rules.

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When did pre-school get so posh?

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One of the baby’s latest tricks is to bend over, put his hands on the floor and giggle at me with his wee upside down facey.

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‘Hey F, come look at what your brothers doing, isn’t it cute?’ I call to the older one.

‘He’s just doing the downward dog Mummy’ he informs me.

Because yes dear readers, my boys aged 3.5 and 14 months both do yoga as part of their jam packed childcare schedules. If i remember correctly, from my time at play school, the order of the day went something like this:-

1, Fight tooth and nail for the sparkly red shoes
2, Paint a picture with a cup of sludgy brown water
3, Eat marmite toast
4, Wander about trying to avoid being bitten
5, Go home

If I ask F what he did that day, he would reply along the lines of this (should he ever be bothered to converse with me): –

‘First we took drama, we danced like leaves blowing in the autumn wind waving goodbye to the summer and then we listened to an excerpt from the Wind in the Willows and discussed its relevance to modern day society. Do you think Ratty’s penchant for poetry was a sign of weakness?’

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Is it time to relax yet?

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Do you ever get the kids into bed, flop onto the sofa, maybe probably with a glass of wine, and then eye the surrounding piles of crap and think – what’s the point of tidying it up when it’s just gonna happen again tomorrow?

But as much as you keep telling your brain to shut up, it keeps on chanting…..YOU CAN’T RELAX PROPERLY UNLESS YOU TIDY IT ALL UP NOW!

So you think about sweeping it into a big pile in the corner of the room or chucking it all into the toy box willy nilly.

But hang on, perhaps you should just round up the dinos and deposit them safely into their stables for the night.

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And maybe you should quickly reorganise the toy kitchen and pop a fry up on.

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Not living in fear.

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Imagine this scenario. You are at the beach and your kids are playing by the surf with friends, making sand castles and climbing on the groynes. A man comes up and asks them to pose for a quick shot, they happily oblige and wave at the camera.

This is all unbeknown to you until you stumble upon a tourism brochure with your kids plastered across the front. You didn’t give permission for the photo to be taken and you certainly didn’t give permission for it to be used as a form of marketing.

What do you do? Complain, go absolutely nuts, contact a solicitor, try and get it banned, sue them, have a stiff drink and blast them in every forum you can think of?

I’d certainly do some of those things if it happened to me.

But you see that scenario did happen to me, except i wasn’t the parent i was one of the kids. I’m in the blue swimming costume with the daisy and my older sister is in black on the left.

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Hurrah for the sun

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Sometimes i wonder if perhaps my blog focuses too much on the down sides of parenthood, that i talk too much about the frustrating aspects of my children. But then i think ‘hey they provide the material, if they want to be painted in a more positive light then perhaps they should stop being such little @#*&!’s.’

I jest of course (a bit) and there are days when i really don’t have a jot to complain about. The suns recent show stopping performances have been leaving everybody in a very bright mood. For us its a chance to have a perfect kind of day.

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A mosey along down to the seaside.

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Do you ever get the feeling you are being watched?

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…you know, when you are lying in the bath trying to relax after a hard day and you start to notice eyes staring at you across the bubbles.

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I counted them the other day. 18 pairs in the bathroom alone (not including my own). I wondered how many pairs there were in the whole house.

‘Count them’ said a voice in my head.

‘No, don’t be ridiculous it would take ages’

‘But don’t you want to know?’

‘A bit i suppose’

‘You might regret it if you don’t…’

‘Will I?’

‘YES! When you are old and grey it will pop into your head and you’ll think oooh i never knew how many eyes were in that house, i wish i had counted them, i really, REALLY do.’

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The Post Christmas Devil Child

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Christmas, although lovely, has left a slightly funny taste in my mouth (and no its not just the combination of too many chocolate orange segments washed down with Hendricks, which incidentally is a pretty decent pairing). I’ve seen the magic of Christmas with a child just old enough to understand it and I’ve also seen the aftermath.

A complete lack or routine, no pre-school for 2 weeks, a diet varied only by E numbers, visits, visitors, present upon present despite being a little……, making empty threats and approving ridiculous requests has led to, shall we say, a rather dramatic decline in behavior levels.

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I sway between being angry and disappointed that I seem to have raised such a seemingly ungrateful and spoiled child and wondering what the hell I expected? Showering a 3 year old in chocolate, glitter and yes’s for 3 days before swiftly turning the off tap was never going to end well was it?

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New Year Goals

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I’m not one for New Years resolutions as such – like a lot of people i don’t see the point of making big changes just because it’s the New Year. If you want to do something badly enough then just do it anyway right?

The problem is that most people resolve to do things they don’t actually want to do but think they should, mainly giving stuff up (drinking, swearing, big macs etc) yawn. I won’t set resolutions but i have been thinking about goals – positive changes or things i want to do or achieve in 2014. This is them.

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