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Mum’s the Word Recommends: H&M Summer Basics

/ May 29, 2012 / Opinion, Review / Permalink

Just so you know, this is in no way, shape or form a sponsored post or a review, it’s just a genuine shout-out for something we love, totally unsolicited.

I tend to find it a bit difficult to find summer dresses for ladies who are slightly larger of bust. Cotton dresses have no give in them and never fit over my chest and anything that is big enough for the girls is usually like a sack on me everywhere else. During our recent trip to Lakeside (the day after we got our car!) I dragged Husband and Sausage around the massive H&M in there and found these dresses:

It’s as though someone made them specially for me! They aren’t too low cut so you don’t get major boobage on show, they’re a perfect length (I can put Sausage in the car and not show the world my bottom), they have a tie round the middle which gives you a bit of shape and they’re cool and light. They also come in loads of colours, I think there are yellow, orange and white in addition to the ones above and can be dressed up of down, accessorised in a million ways and are just generally super versatile. But do you want to know the best bit?

They’re £7.99 each! I have the five above (and I only don’t have the others because the yellow and orange don’t suit my colouring and I have issues about fat girls in white!) which will basically see me through the whole summer for less than £40!

It gets better.

Got a little girl?

£2.99 EACH! The pictures don’t do them justice, they are really pretty little dresses, a great length and perfect for summer. The prints are gorgeous and at less than three quid each, Sausage can roll about in the mud in them for all I care! They actually wash up very well too and have withstood some serious stain-remover soaking! Sausage teams hers with leggings on cooler days and if it was really cool you could every put a t-shirt underneath. They look great with trainers, Birkenstocks, all sorts!

Hennes have properly sorted us out this year and I think Husband is secretly glad to have been dragged in there as, in the long run, we’ve saved him a small fortune in more expensive summer clothes!

2 Comments

Mental Health Awareness Week

/ May 21, 2012 / Mental Health, Opinion, Personal / Permalink

Today I learned through Jo Middleton’s blog Slummy Single Mummy that today is the start of Mental Health Awareness Week. We’re all aware that ‘mental health’ or mental health issues exist, so what does this really mean? Raising awareness for something that we all already know about?

But, how much do you really know, and how much of it is an assumption?

If I said to you that someone was a paranoid schizophrenic, you may assume that said person was dangerous to be around. Did you know that, actually, people with paranoid schizophrenia are actually extremely unlikely to be violent to either themselves or others?

If I told you that I knew a person with severe post-natal depression or even post-natal post traumatic stress disorder, you’d probably assume, through no fault of your own, that I was talking about a woman. Did you know that it’s estimated that up to 25% of new dads experience some form of PND or PTSD?

Did you know that, despite certain terms being bandied about and used as common language, true cases of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder actually only account for between 2-7% of the population, whilst people with bipolar are around 0.9% and 2.1% of the adult population?

For me, Mental Health Week is not about making us aware that metal health problems exist, it’s about educating ourselves, smashing the stigma and the stereotypes and trying harder to be compassionate to others. It’s so easy to label people, put them into a box and write them off as ‘mental’ or ‘mad’, but have you ever stopped to think what it’s like to live with these afflictions? NO-ONE would choose to live with these illnesses, people who seriously self-harm don’t do it for attention. I guarantee you, the people who self-harm because they are mentally compelled to are the ones you’d never know about, not the silly school girls comparing chicken scratches on their arms.

Take the time to educate yourselves and perhaps suicide rates, which are higher in the UK than anywhere else in the EU, would drop.

Or don’t. It’s up to you. Just know that no-one is immune to mental illness and knowing how to help someone you love could make all the difference.

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Knowing Myself (Or ‘Help Me, PLEASE!’)

/ May 13, 2012 / Cybher, Opinion, Personal, Photos, Style, The Internet / Permalink

After yesterdays session at Cybher with Peggy Poyser about revamping your blog for under £50, I’ve started with gusto to try and make my blog exactly what I want it to be. One of Peggy’s tips was to work out exactly what it is your blog should say to other people, then create a colour scheme to compliment it. (That was the general gist, she obviously put it a lot better than that…)

Great, brilliant, a point to start from.

Except, I can’t work out what the hell it is that I’m trying to say or who I even am.

Sure, I guess I could be called a mummy blogger, after all, I am a mummy and I am a blogger. But a pastel colour scheme with cute cartoons over it is so not me. I may not know myself but I do know I’m just not that… insipid. So if I’m not going from the mummy blogger angle, I need to look a bit deeper at what appeals to me.

Animal print.

If there’s one prevailing pattern that I tend to choose for bloody everything, it’s leopard print. I just love it. So a few days ago, Husband created me a banner for my site, complete with leopard print background and funky lettering. I loved it, but Husband made the very good point that ‘Mum’s the Word’ written over a furry leopard print background made my blog look a bit like a landing page for plushophiles (if you don’t know what that is and have to look it up, do so with caution and at a decent distance from children or relatives with a weak heart).

During the session, Peggy showed us a series of swatches of colour and asked us to identify what type of blog each swatch represented. We all got the answers right and Peggy’s point was perfectly made. But I don’t really know what my readers get from coming and reading my random musings? What is it you expect from Mum’s the Word? I’m asking for help here, people! If you have any ideas at all, let me know.  I have a Pinterest board set up for brainstorming and if you see anything that makes you think “Ooh, that’s so Jayne”, be it a colour, pattern, font – anything, tweet me, Email me, link me up on Facebook. Help me make Mum’s the Word a beautiful place to be!

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When Did Your Kids Become Aware of Death?

/ March 22, 2012 / Opinion, Parenting, Personal / Permalink

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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World Book Day, the ‘Mum’s the Word’ Way.

/ March 1, 2012 / Life, Opinion, Parenting, Personal / Permalink

Today is World Book Day. If you have children of primary school age, you probably already know this as you’ll either have needle-pricked fingers from frantically sewing a costume, or a dented Visa from giving in and buying a damned costume!

Here in the Mum’s the Word house, we’re a true family of readers, Sausage has been read to since she was in the womb and Husband and I are never far from our Kindles so we thought we’d put together our list of reading recommendations, in honour of World Book Day.

1. Sausage’s Reads

I asked Sausage what her favourite book in the whole world was and it’s varied between Meg and Mog, Room on the Broom, The Snail and the Whale and her beloved Ponyo and Totoro books. My favourite book to read to her is probably The Snail and the Whale or Room on the Broom as I love Julia Donaldson’s effortlessly beautiful prose, which just trips off of the tongue.

2. Husband’s Reads

The first book that Husband recommends is Life of Pi by Yann Martel. When I asked him why, he said that he found the book “absolutely enthralling” and that it spoke to him on many levels. He also said is was hugely refreshing to find a book that’s both funny and entertaining, whilst espousing a message of tolerance and happiness.

Husband is also a bit of a true crime fan and had nothing but good things to say about author and psychological profiler Robert Ressler, particularly his book ‘Whoever Fights Monsters‘, which he said was traumatising and difficult to read, yet fascinating and rewarding at the same time.

An honourable mention also goes to Paul Ekman’s ‘Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage‘, a truly enlightening look at microexpressions, it’s written by the man who inspired the brilliant TV series ‘Lie to Me’.

3. My Reads

I’m currently smack bang in the middle of ‘The Girl Who Played With Fire‘, the second book in the Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson and I can’t recommend it highly enough. I’ve been wanting to read these books for ages and have finally got around to it and I can’t hardly put my Kindle down.

Another author of whom I am particularly enamored is the amazing Mr. Stephen Fry. I’ve read just about everything he has written, both fiction and non and I would recommend it all. There’s something in his books for everyone, fantasy, history, romance, intrigue, politics…I think they should be part of the National Curriculum,  kids would get SO much more from his books than some of the stuffy old texts that are still prescribed and I guarantee a lot more teenagers would be interested in English if these were in there!

At the risk of overdoing it, I’d also like you ALL to go out and read at least one book by the following authors:

1. Bill Bryson

2. Douglas Adams

3. J.K. Rowling

4. Philip Pullman

Sermon over! (But seriously, do go and read these books, they’re worth it, I promise!)

HAPPY WORLD BOOK DAY!

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The Best Thing To Ever Happen in Waitrose.

/ February 26, 2012 / Humour, Opinion / Permalink

I don’t know about you, but I have a very set idea of the four types of people who shop in Waitrose:

1. Old people. Old, grumpy, usually snobby people who tend to be myopic enough to accidentally (on purpose) try to run you over in their Rovers.

2. Married couples in their late thirties through to late middle age who are probably quite affluent and tend to buy things like expensive wine, bags of salad and expensive pate.

3. Women in their early thirties who have married rich men, who are dolled-up to the nines to do their weekly shop and usually have a couple of kids in tow, who are without exception, really badly behaved.

4. ‘Normal’ people like us, probably not rich enough to do a weeks shop in there and tend to walk around looking slightly bewildered about why their beans cost twice as much in here as they do in Tesco.

Unfortunately, Waitrose is our closest supermarket and when we’re between big shops, we have to go there to stock up on bits, but the other day I had such an awesome moment in there.

I was in the washing aisle and was perusing the washing up liquids. Some of the Waitrose own brand ones have very exotic sounding scents and I said to Husband “Oh these sound nice…then again, I don’t know why I allow myself to get drawn into these, I only end up going right back to Fairy”.

At this moment, a very well dressed man in a baker-boy hat and expensive looking jeans sidled up to us and said “You know, I’m rather partial to a fairy myself” only to smirk and glide away with his trolley!

Such a minute thing, but’s it’s tickled me ever since, every time I think about it. I won’t go too deep into the whole thing, but more than anything I was absolutely made up that in a world, nay, a shop of extreme prejudice, someone can be that secure in himself to just make a joke with a random stranger. That’s the kind of world I want to live in.

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“My Name’s Mummy and I’m a Stresshead”

/ February 20, 2012 / Life, Opinion, Personal / Permalink

(Bear with me while I get through the necessary pre-amble, there is a cogent point somewhere at the bottom of this post!)

Last September, we made the decision to send Sausage to Nursery three mornings a week and I couldn’t, in good conscience, sit at home scratching my arse while she was out, when I could get a job and contribute to the family coffers. Husband had been amazing about me staying at home instead of going back to work after my maternity leave ended and I thought I’d take some of the pressure off of him for a change.

I’d been lucky in that I fell into working from home, managing social media for a few brands as well as a bit of  writing and other bits. I brought in a small wage and still continue to do most of it, alongside my ‘real’ job which is in an Accountants office. Bit of a Jack of All Trades, you could say.

But, I digress. The problem I seem to have is that I find it hard to switch off.

Take today (and I wish someone would…); I had a manic day in the office, I’ve just increased my days to four a week and it was payroll day, so I processed around 30 payrolls in about 4 hours. It’s usually fairly straightforward and most clients only have one or two people on their payroll, but today was just problem after problem. One client wanted his P45 issued..oh, did I mention, he’s moving to Australia TOMORROW so it all had to be processed, scanned, emailed to him, submitted to HMRC etc, and I was informed of this about half an hour before I was due to come home.

The actual work isn’t an issue, I can do it with my eyes shut, it’s the fact that I go into hyper-work-mode to get everything done on time and then after I leave, I can’t seem to manage to shake hyper-work-mode off and get into home-mode. Even when I go home, get out of my work clothes and sit down with Sausage, I’m still thinking about tax returns, payroll and my current side-project of getting a website up and running for my boss.

I’ve not spoken much about it, but I suffer on and off with anxiety. It’s not been getting the better of me as much lately, but it started when I was eleven, carried on through my teens and early twenties and was compounded by Post Natal PTSD after I gave birth. The crux of all of this rambling is that my unspent work-mode energy seems to be manifesting itself as anxiety. I get all hyper at work, come home, feel unable to unwind and by dinner time, I’m having a full-blown panic attack.

So, what do I do, people? Does anyone else get anything even remotely like this, or am I just a big weirdo? What can I do to stop it, if anything? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

5 Comments

Postcode Lottery

/ February 13, 2012 / Opinion, Parenting, Personal, Rant / Permalink

Like so many people in their late twenties and early thirties, Husband and I rent our house, we’re not in a position to buy and social housing is nothing short of a joke, so we pay through the nose to live in someone else’s house.

Our lease is up in April and while we’re happy with our current location, we seem to be outgrowing our little bungalow and so looked into our options for moving. First, we looked in our local area; prices seem to have gone up a lot in the two years since we moved here – no great surprise seeing as no-one can afford to buy – it’s well and truly a landlords market at the moment.

The reason we live where we do is mainly because we’re in the catchment area of a really good school, so in terms of moving it only makes sense to stay within a catchment of an equally good or better school. This is where we’ve come a-cropper. The only school in the area which has better results than our local school is a mile or so up the road and the cheapest rental property within that catchment is £300 more per month than we pay to live here.

Our local school is something of an anomaly, it’s smack-bang in the middle of a council estate, and most of the private houses locally are modest homes, but the school had the advantage of an amazing headteacher, who sadly retired last year but did an incredible amount of work within the school and community. This means it’s one of those rare schools that’s able to offer great results to people from middle to lower socioeconomic groups, equally.

So, this leaves the options of either staying where we are, or moving out of town or even out of county. Husband and I have had wander-lust for some time, even considering Canada or Australia and would dearly love to give Sausage a better life away from the grind of living in a large town. But then, there are other things to weigh up. Yes, she could potentially attend a school with far fewer pupils, live in a rural setting and in a place with a lower crime rate, but does all of this weigh up against not seeing our extended family, not knowing anybody or anything about the new town, or just the general upheaval of starting again?

I’d love to hear from anybody who’s made a big move, whether you think it was a wholly positive thing to do and whether your kids have got over the huge change. Also, do you find this kind of class division in terms of education in your local area?

Answers on a postcard…just don’t ask me which town to send them to!

9 Comments

Where the Hell Did That Come From?

/ January 10, 2012 / Anger, Opinion, Parenting, Personal, Rant / Permalink

Skanking. See what I did there?

One thing we’ve started to noticed since sending Sausage to nursery is that she comes out with things that Husband and I have never heard her say before. It’s largely all positive and her vocabulary and comprehension, although already fantastic, seem to be improving daily.

However, yesterday she came out with an expression which was totally alien to us, but not in a good way. She’s been poorly lately and has very dry lips and whilst watching The Simpsons with Husband she turned to him and said “Daddy, my lips are skanky”. Now, skanky is 100% NOT an expression that either Husband or I use, nor have I heard any other adult use it in our company.

So, our thoughts turn to the kids. The only kids she socialises with outside of nursery are her cousins and not only have we not heard them use the word ‘skanky’, I can’t imagine any of them telling her that as generally, they all seem to dote on her.

We know it’s definitely not come from the telly, ‘skanky’ isn’t a word I’ve ever heard on CBeebies, and I know that Peppa Pig is causing kids to become riotous and end up in juvenile delinquent facilities (what a load of bollocks, eh?) but I don’t think I’ve ever heard such an utterance from her baconey lips.

The thing is, when we questioned Sausage on where she’d heard the expression from and after about ten minutes of clamming up like a good’un, she said to Husband and I “No, I refuse to tell you”. So, where do we go from here? I hate the thought that someone at nursery may have said something so negative to her, but she doesn’t seen adversely affected by it. Do we go to the nursery and ask them to look into it and keep an ear out, or do we drop it and hope it doesn’t happen again?

For the moment, as we have no firm idea of where it came from, I guess we have to just leave it. I don’t want to be one of those parents who flies into the nursery and scolds her teachers for the slightest thing, but at the same time, letting it go has left me feeling utterly impotent.

Any advice, dearest readers?

1 Comment

Grief and Faith.

/ January 8, 2012 / Life, Opinion, Personal / Permalink

Some of you may know and some of you may not know that my stepmum passed away at the end of last year and while we’re all dealing with it, there are times when it still feels very raw and painful. On a seemingly unrelated note, Husband was bought a book on Buddhism by my little sister for Christmas and when reading it, found the story of Kisa Gautami. It goes something like this:

Kisa Gautami was a young woman from a wealthy family who was happily married to an important merchant. When her only son was one-year-old, he fell ill and died suddenly. Kisa Gautami was struck with grief, she could not bear the death of her only child. Weeping and groaning, she took her dead baby in her arms and went from house to house begging all the people in the town for news of a way to bring her son back to life. Of course, nobody could help her but Kisa Gautami would not give up. Finally she came across a Buddhist who advised her to go and see the Buddha himself.When she carried the dead child to the Buddha and told Him her sad story, He listened with patience and compassion, and then said to her, “Kisa Gautami, there is only one way to solve your problem. Go and find me four or five mustard seeds from any family in which there has never been a death.”Kisa Gautami was filled with hope, and set off straight away to find such a household. But very soon she discovered that every family she visited had experienced the death of one person or another. At last, she understood what the Buddha had wanted her to find out for herself — that suffering is a part of life, and death comes to us all. Once Kisa Guatami accepted the fact that death is inevitable, she could stop her grieving. (source)

If you’ve read this blog lately, you’ll know that I’ve been musing over faith, mortality and eternity and while Christian teachings allow us to take comfort from the idea that we’ll live forever in Heaven, what I really like about the Buddhist parable is that it makes no promises. It doesn’t speak of clouds and winged angels and halos, it simply teaches us that in grief we are never alone as everyone has suffered loss and that it is an inevitability in life.

I don’t know why, but I find this very comforting and have felt strangely peaceful since Husband told me. What do you all think?

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