March 2012

Archive | March, 2012

Things That I Am Too Old To Do…

By Mum's the Word on March 31, 2012 in Rant

I’ve got to a certain age now, or maybe a certain point in life rather than an actual age, where I’ve realised that there are a few things that I’m definitely too old to do. It’s come as a shock because I thought I was still young and cool, but I sense my siblings and younger cousins cringing occasionally which has made me realise that I’m firmly in the ‘Embarrassing Adult’ group. Here are a few things that I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m too old to do.

1. Do my hair in bunches.

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, it looked cute to stick my hair in bunches – you know, on a beach holiday under a straw cowboy hat, at a festival when you can’t wash your locks etc. It helped that I was naturally baby blonde too, it was all a bit Scandinavian, you know? Now, I’m in my late twenties and am definitely not baby blonde anymore and I’m just too damn old for it to look cute. I’m too old for it to even look ironic. It looks ridiculous.

2. Wear hot pants.

Let’s face it, I’m in neither the shape nor the climate to go out in hot pants, regardless of my age. But, were I 4 sizes smaller (oh, alright, 5 sizes…) and living in Miami, I’d still not be pouring myself into short shorts. Why? Because regardless of whether my legs and arse look like they’ve been loving smoothed out of alabaster, I’m at an age where hot pants cease to make me look cute and perky, but rather desperate and street-walkery. Full stop. You can quote the fucking Pussycat Dolls or any supermodel over 30 you like at me, but take them out of the context of performing on stage and put them in a suburb of the UK and she looks like a prostitute. End of.

3. Wear things ironically

You don't look cool. You look disturbed.

You know how there’s this trend of wearing big National Health-looking specs and slightly gimpy clothing? How just about every kid on the High Street looks like a cross between Erkel and Deirdre Barlow? Yeah, once you’re in your late 20′s, that doesn’t like ironic, it looks frumpy. Especially if you’re carrying 4-year old baby weight. If I walked around in bottle-bottom glasses and brown slacks, people would think that’s just me being desperately UNfashionble, not cutting edge like all of these so-called trend setting children.

4. Ride a scooter

I recently got asked if I’d like to test out an adult Micro Scooter. I understand there’s something of a trend emerging for parents to ride alongside their kids during the school run and such times. But, honestly, if I were to ride around on a Micro Scooter, I would simply look a MASSIVE PRANNY. Come on, admit it, if you saw a full-grown adult scooting down the street on a silver monstrosity, you’d be walking along looking for their carer, wouldn’t you?

5. Have a cutesy decal/eyelashes/zany bumper stickers on my car

Just. NO.

I apologise if I offend anyone with this one as, again, I gather that lots of people are in the habit of zazzing up their car with various adornments, but I genuinely cringe when I see most of these. In my immediate vicinity, there’s one neighbour who has a purple sparkly car with about a billion stickers on it, proclaiming her to be a witch, no less than THREE people carriers which have full sets of Betty Boop decals ALL OVER THEM and a car with eyelashes.

I think people are under the illusion that using these bedazzlements gives the impression that they’re full of personality, but actually it belies a human with very little to offer in the way of humour or personality. These stickers can be stomached if on the car of a teenager, but if you’re my age or older – grow up.

So, I’ve given you mine, now you tell me yours – what are you too old to do?

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Saturday Caption

By Mum's the Word on March 31, 2012 in Meme

I’ve never got involved in this linky before but I thought I would this week, I love a good linky! So, here’s my offering:

So, leave me a comment below containing a caption for the photo above. Simple, right?

ECAPV269MFR7

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My First Ever Black Eye

By Mum's the Word on March 28, 2012 in Humour, Personal, Photos

Any of my eagle-eyed Twitter chums may have noticed this on Sunday:

I was secretly hoping it’d turn into a proper shiner, making me look like a female boxer or something, but alas it’s not that dramatic. It also occurred to me that a woman with a black eye raises certain questions, so every time I go anywhere and catch someone looking, I’ve been loudly proclaiming “LOOK WHAT MY KID DID TO ME!” just in case people think I’m a victim of domestic violence.

Anyway, just in case you’re interested in The Life and Times of my Shiner (I’m obsessed with it, I look in the mirror about 50 times a day at the moment), here’s a gallery of its cycle. Weirdly, the one with just a tiny cut is just after it happened and the one with all of the autumnal-shaded bruising is the latest photo, taken today.

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Making Family Chores Fun

By Mum's the Word on March 27, 2012 in Parenting, Personal, Photos

I may have mentioned once or twice (ahem…) that I’m pretty rubbish at housework. In fact, I’ve found no less than four posts on this very blog, with confessions of slovenliness (here…here…here…and here, just in case you’re interested!). However, since I went back to work, I’ve really stepped up on the housework front. I may still have dusty skirting boards and my mother-in-law may have done my washing up for me about half a dozen times in the last few months, but I have been keeping up with the rest of it!

However, the problem with working and maintaining a decent home is that I still have to find time in the middle of all of that to spend time with Sausage. Fortunately, she’s at that age where she loves to help so I’ve started drafting her in to help with simple tasks, which means that we get to spend time together whilst being productive as well as making the whole thing a lot more pleasant for me.

Here are a few examples of how Sausage has been getting involved:

Sausage loves to help me hang the washing on the line. We make up simple games like getting her to shout out who each item belongs to as I hang it, which is simple but it gets her to use her brain while doing a mundane task.

She’ll often help by passing me the pegs or the wet clothes, or sometimes just keeps me smiling by wrapping herself in the sheets and shouting “COME AND FIND MEEEE!”.

Making the beds is a really simple task that Sausage can more or less do by herself, but we have fun doing it together. We flap the duvet around and generally clown about. I’ve come to the conclusion that chores needn’t be done promptly if you’re having fun. The beds will look better in the end and you’ll have enjoyed yourself in the process. Look at Sausage admiring her work in the last picture, pure pride!

As I mentioned before, now I’m back at work I have to be more efficient and Husband helped by devising a system to help us get the laundry away. Before, I’d do the washing, it’d get brought in and dumped in a corner where it would stay until each item got reworn. Now, we have three baskets in different

colours, one for each of us, and the washing gets sorted into the baskets. This makes it a lot easier to put away in the respective wardrobe and this sorting has more or less been taken over by Sausage who loves working out whose item is whose and which basket it needs to go into.

I HATE WASHING UP. Seriously hate it. So does Husband, which is why between us we end up with a backlog of dishes that need doing and a total of ZERO enthusiasm for doing it. That was, until my little helper got involved! Now, I wash, Sausage stands on her chair and put the clean dishes on the draining board. A minor thing, but it gives us a chance to have a chat, sing, listen to music and spend what has turned out to be some really nice time together.

So, that’s how the Mum’s the Word family make their chores a bit more fun! This post is part of the Morphy Richards Innovator linky over on Tots 100.

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Silent Sunday

By Mum's the Word on March 25, 2012 in Photos, Silent Sunday

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The Age My Mother Was Then.

By Mum's the Word on March 24, 2012 in Life, Personal, Relationships

I’ve had this post brewing in my head for a while now but I had to get my Mum’s permission to splash her private life around my little corner of the internet.

When my mother was 35, after a lifetime of gynecological problems, she was given a full hysterectomy. Uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, the lot. My sister was around five and I was about 13 and as far as I was concerned, my Mum had kids and she didn’t need her reproductive bits anymore so it was best to get them gone. She had endometriosis and her insides were so badly fused together that she had to have tissue removed from her bowel and spine and was told that this could mean, in a worst case scenario, she could also lose a portion of her bowel and have a colostomy bag, so when she came out of surgery and they’d managed to save her bowel, all we could feel was relief.

In the years since, I’ve heard my Mum talk about her grief at losing her ability to reproduce at such a young age, but it’s barely registered. Until yesterday, when I was sat on the bus on the way home from work. I’ve been having some gynae problems of my own, pain that the Doctors cannot explain and wouldn’t investigate (I was told a couple of years ago that they wouldn’t do a laparoscopy because I was too fat. My GP has since sent a strongly worded letter about how ridiculous this is).

I was sitting on the bus, going through the worst thoughts that were whizzing around my head, and it suddenly occurred to me how awful it must have been for my Mum. I’m almost 28, not quite the same age, but somewhere in the ballpark and the thought of having the decision to have more kids taken out of my hands in the next 7 years is devastating. Genuinely scary.

I rang my Mum last night, just to let her know that I finally get it. I know it’s a bit late for sympathy, but she said to me that if she could have she’d have carried on having kids until there was about six of us to look after. That’s what my Mum does, she looks after people, she’s even taking her Nursing degree at the moment. I wish I’d known at the time and could have been more sympathetic to her grief. I guess sometimes it takes a bit of walking a mile in someone else’s shoes to really get it.

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Schleich Farm Life

By Mum's the Word on March 22, 2012 in Review

When Sausage got to a certain age, she started to really get into animals and was keen to learn everything she could about them. My little sister is 8 1/2 years younger than me and I remembered that when she was about Sausage’s age, she too was mad about animals and collected miniature rubbery plastic models of them from a particular childrens toy shop. She’d go in there once a week and get a new species for her collection and it was the highlight of her week.

This shop is still around so I went to see if I could find the same toys, and the toys were still there but the range was hugely diminished and seemed poor quality.

A few weeks ago, I was asked if Sausage would be interested in receiving some toy animals from Schleich, a German company who specialise in animal toys and action figures, so of course we agreed.

We were sent a selection of farm animals including a couple of horses, a cow, some bunnies, a puppy, a sheepdog and a giraffe. I’m not sure how the last one works on a farm, but nevertheless we were happy to receive it! We also received a water trough.

One thing that struck us about every single one of these toys is that the attention to detail is superb. The animals look almost lifelike, the painting is beautifully done and the toys have a certain heavy quality to them that makes you think that these toys will last for many lifetimes. I certainly intend to save them and give them to Sausage’s children, in a couple of decades time!

One thing that I didn’t realise until I started looking for pictures to go with this post is just how extensive the range of toys really is. There are no less than 34 breeds of horses available, with several models within each breed, and that’s not to mention the dozens of different dogs, humans, vehicles, buildings and hundreds of animals available. I’m impressed and overwhelmed by the amount of choice available and recommend these toys to just about anyone.

Go over to the Schleich site and have a butchers at wants on offer, I can guarantee you’ll be as impressed as I am. Sausage, of course, loves the toys and has set up a farm on her bedroom floor that no one is allowed to move! I think we can safely say that these toys are a hit with us.

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When Did Your Kids Become Aware of Death?

By Mum's the Word on March 22, 2012 in Opinion, Parenting, Personal

I’ve had this post in my head for a while but have been finding it hard to find the right words. Sausage, just recently, has been talking about dying. During her games with her dollies, she’ll talk about them dying from one illness or another (mostly due to starvation, if I remember rightly…) and she starts random conversations about people passing away.

When my step mum died last year, I thought I did a really good job of hiding my grief, but looking back I know I failed. She saw me crying, utterly bereft, in denial, angry – the full set of emotions that goes with losing a loved one. Maybe this has contributed to her sudden awareness of mortality.

Then there’s Disney.

I wrote this post not long after I started my blog, but due to that wonderful parental pressure that kids know how to exert, Sausage now watches a small selection of Disney films, with Lilo and Stitch being her absolute fave. In fact, there are FOUR Lilo and Stitch films and a TV series, all of which she now has. In Lilo and Stitch 2 (for those of you who haven’t seen it…) Stitch’s batteries run out at the end and everyone thinks he’s dead. Sausage fixates on this part of the film and even though he comes back to life, often says repeatedly “Stitch is dead, isn’t he Mummy?”.

I always said that I wanted to protect Sausage’s innocence as much as I possibly could, but there comes a time in a child’s life when they start to ask questions.

“Daddy, why don’t you have your cat Mitzy anymore?”

“Mummy, why don’t we see Lorraine anymore?”

She also became aware of the concept after seeing charity adverts on television. She asked her Daddy why the little girl in the Water Aid advert looked so sad and Husband explained that she and lots of other kids didn’t have any clean water to drink, to which Sausage responded that she wanted to give her Christmas money to the little girl to help her. Husband made a donation on Sausage’s behalf (though not out of her Christmas money) and he and I were bursting with pride at our child’s kindness.

And how do we answer those questions without touching on the subject of death? To an extent I feel like I’ve failed her, should have given her a more imaginative answer and skirted around the issue, but at the same time, I don’t condone lying to kids when the truth will do. I think I just have to come to terms with the fact that she’s a bright kid and it was time for her to learn certain facts of life. She’s only three and a half, though. Seems horribly young.

Do you know when your kids became aware of death and dying? Did they hear about it from you and how did you handle the subject?

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What Was Top Of The Charts The Year Your Kids Were Born?

By Mum's the Word on March 19, 2012 in Meme

I’ve been tagged in a meme by one of my favourite bloggers, Mama Syder of The Syders and I’m pleased to say that this one is right up my alley. Also, it’s been aged since I’ve been tagged and I do love a meme, so I was well chuffed…until I did a bit of research!

The meme itself is NO problem, a great idea in fact. The rules are:

Post a video of the number one song in the charts when your kids were born.

“Excellent!” I thought. Except, the number one song in the UK charts when Sausage was born was this monstrosity:

I’m REALLY sorry if you clicked play on that and were subjected to a bizarre redneck raping two formerly brilliant songs.

I was going to cheat and use the US number one for that date, but that’s ‘I Kissed a Girl’ by Katy Perry and I can only insult my blog with shit music once in a day, so if you want to see the video for that one, you’ll have to go and look for yourselves!

Now, I get to tag some peeps!

JoJo of JoJo’s So Called Life (@jojokirtley)

Vickie of Never Found the Plot (@mumfordnsons85)

Stacey of ‘It Takes a Woman‘ (@svmitche)

Lexy of ‘Mammywoo‘ (@mammywoo)

Hannah of Metal Mummy (@MetalMummy84)

It’s your turn, post a video of the song that was number one on the day your kids were born and then pass it on to 5 other bloggers.

Have fun!

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A Sausage-ism for Mother’s Day

By Mum's the Word on March 18, 2012 in Parenting, Personal, Sausageisms

Sausage and I were sharing a joke and laughing together (about bogies, just in case you’re wondering. I never said it was high-brow) and I said to her “Oh, I’m so lucky to have you”, to which she replied:

“And I’m so lucky to have a doggy”.

Oh. Right.

Happy Mother’s Day, one and all!