What will he be when he grows up?

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I was watching a TV documentary the other night and it started to reel off a list of personality traits that seemed oddly familiar: –

  1. Unconcern for the feelings of others
  2. Unnecessary risk-taking or impulsive behavior
  3. Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms
  4. Very low tolerance to frustration
  5. Incapacity to experience guilt
  6. Marked readiness to blame others
  7. Superficial charm

I repeated them to J and asked him ‘Does that sound like anyone to you?’

‘Yep sounds like F – why?’

‘Those are the personality traits of a SOCIOPATH!!’

[Laughter]

‘He’s 3 – most 3 year olds are like that surely?’

‘I guess so but do most 3 year olds ask stuff like…‘

knife2

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A world cup widow

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11 days of emptying bins, crawling out of bed at every waking and taking 2 minute showers whilst hoping nobody tries to kill themselves.

11 days of emptying the dishwasher, figuring out why the TV keeps buzzing and eating cereal for my dinner.

11 days dragging two wayward children out on the banana/yoghurt/milk run and 11 days with no one to pour me a glass of wine after a hard day.

[I am lying here a bit because i had my lovely friend Janie stay with me for 3 nights and also a child free night away in London but that makes it all sound a bit less melodramatic and if i’m honest i have enjoyed playing the ‘woe is me’ card on and off. I have also enjoyed the only farts in the bed being mine]

But it was still 11 days without J and If that was a long time to me then it felt like half a lifetime to a 3 year old. There were 11 days of questions asked; ‘How many sleeps until daddy comes back?‘ and obviously the more important ‘and he is going to get me a really, really big present right?’

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Our football pizza party

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From time to time mummy gets asked to review things on this blog, usually she can’t be arsed. Her policy is to say yes to alcohol, food or holidays so when Domino’s contacted her and asked her to hold a football pizza party she was all like ‘great that will be one dinner i don’t have to cook then.’

The biggest worry when you get take out is always – are you sure you got enough?!

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Lets get stuck into the kronie then!

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Piles of stuff and boxes of crap

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We have an incredibly organised filing system in our house for important documents and miscellaneous items. It goes a little something like this: –

  • The lift up lid box (aka foot stool) – lint rollers, tea lights, dusters, broken sunglasses and the digital thermometer
  • The kitchen scales – nail files, keys, clip safe things, bits of lego and used batteries helpfully mixed with new batteries
  • Kitchen table – magazines, nursery day sheets, unwritten thank you cards that will never get sent, gaffa tape and the latest Toys R Us catalogue
  • Blackboard key tidy thing – parking permits, chalk, safety pins, blue tack, party invites, hair bobbles and Calpol sachets
  • By the Printer – generally just a huge stack of various papers including bills, forms that need filling out, to do lists, the kids ‘art work’ and seasonal related goods such as the a panini world cup sticker album
  • The ‘to file’ box –  important documents that needs to be filed
  • The actual file – a bunch of old documents that need removing from the file so that stuff that actually needs to be filed, can be filed

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7 top tips for a child free holiday

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With hen do’s and impromptu girls weekends thin on the ground now most of my friends are mid 30’s there is less of an excuse to wangle a night or two away from the kids. That is unless your husband is massively indebted to you for the fact he will soon be buggering off to Brazil for 10 days (I may have mentioned this a few times).

Anyway In part payment me and one of my best friends sauntered off to Spain for 3 nights which was the longest either of us had left our children. I had wondered if we might miss them a bit – we didn’t. Here are a few tips to planning a guilt free break: –

1, Drink on the plane – revel in the fact you don’t have hand luggage stuffed full of Goodies oatey bars, a bra full of raisins and small people jumping up and down on your crotch. Consume as many small bottles of fizz as possible – just cos you can.

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The happiness thieves

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”Becoming a parent has defined me; I am the happiest i have ever been.”

This is the sort of stuff people say out loud in public. This is the sort of stuff you hear in interviews or read about in glossy magazines – but is it actually true?

What if you don’t feel that way? What if you were happier before?

I watched a really interesting TED talk the other day which was about encouraging honesty in parenting and dispelling some of the most popular myths – one of which was that people often wax lyrical about how happy they are since they became parents.

They looked at four (yes four!) independent studies tracking individuals happiness over the course of their marriage and you can see the findings below. The green line is the average result.

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TED – Let’s talk parenting Taboos by Rufus Griscom & Alisa Volkman

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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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My holiday diary by F aged 3 and 3/4

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Day 1 – We are going on a holiday. Daddy says it’s a chance for us all to relax which makes mummy snort and mutter something like ‘same old sh*t, different location.’ A thing called packing happens which seems to make everyone hate each other and random inanimate objects such as shoes and charging devices.

After we have been in the car for a bit the baby sicks up loads of big lumps of milk that stink. We can’t stop due to the motorway so we have to drive for ages with lots of crying and everyone feeling sick due to the disgusting sick smell.

When we finally find somewhere to stop mummy starts changing the baby and daddy wanders off, she says ‘you have got to be kidding me!’ He comes back later with a coffee the size of his head which mummy says is ‘bloody ridiculous’. I wonder if when I grow up, I will get angry about the size of drinks other people buy too.

We get on a boat that takes us on the sea to the France which is a place where they drive on the wrong side of the road and eat cross ants for breakfast.

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The house we are staying on sits on water. It has no wifi which is also ‘bloody ridiculous’ and causes mummy to have a tech tantrum similar to when i throw the ipad on the floor in a rage or when daddy kicks the xbox because he loses on Fifa. It means I can’t watch videos of people opening kinder eggs on YouTube. This sucks.

I can’t sleep because I don’t understand how a house can be on the water and not be a boat. I have to ask for clarification 37 times before I can properly relax.

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