Relationships |

Archive | Relationships RSS feed for this section

My Kid is Awesome.

By Mum's the Word on April 5, 2012 in Parenting, Personal, Relationships

I read a post last week on the lovely Kate’s blog, The Five F’s, and it immediately struck a chord with me. The point of this post was to illustrate the fact that we’re many of us guilty of hiding our children’s light under a bushel and that we should all be able to talk a little more freely about how brilliant our kids are.

I don’t know if it’s because of her rocky start to life, the fact that I had problems conceiving or anything else, but Husband and I have never taken Sausage for granted. We talk almost every day about how lucky we are. Not just lucky to have her, but lucky that our Daughter is so incredible. She really is one of the most amazing people I’ve ever had the pleasure to be around.

You know how some parents dread taking their kids to the supermarket or other places for fear of bad behaviour? I love doing stuff like that because being with Sausage makes it so much better! The child really is fantastic company. It probably helps that I’m quite happy to go everywhere skipping, singing, playing I Spy and talking about pussycats, but Sausage is delightful to be around.

That doesn’t even begin to skim the good things about her, I could probably go on all day to be honest, but the other thing you need to know about Sausage is that she’s one of the kindest, most caring human beings ever. She seems to be thinking all the time about what she can do to help people, how to make them feel better and how she can care for everyone around her. It’s very touching and makes me incredibly proud.

In the past, when talking to other people who’ve been moaning about their kids behaviour, I’ve chimed in with things like “Oh, yeah, Sausage is just the same…” or words to those effect. But after a while I stopped myself. Sausage isn’t the same, she’s really well-behaved and selling her out to other parents to make them feel better is doing her a massive disservice.

“Your kid is naughty, you say? Too bad, mine’s an angel” is what I should be saying…and from now on, I think I will.

Love you, Sausage. Infinity.

Comments { 7 }

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.

Comments { 8 }

Space Invaders.

By Mum's the Word on March 6, 2011 in Personal, Rant, Relationships

Since I did my ‘pet hates’ list for Kate Takes 5′s Listography, I’ve noticed that one of the items on the list is really grating on me. See, I mentioned that I’m quite partial to personal space, but just lately, my space has been encroached upon in an epic way. Not by a bad-breathed leaner so much, but by our new neighbour.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how I think it’s important to be neighbourly, and I stand by that. I’ve let her come and nose around our house so that she can get an idea of what the layout of hers will look like once she’s finished renovating. I told her ‘don’t worry about it’ when her builders chipped about 4 tons of rubble into our garden and she wanted to come in and sweep it up. I’ve even offered, when she was staying in the house and the heating wasn’t working, to let her come in here, warm up, even have a hot shower if she needed to.

But, if I want to walk into my garden, on a sunday morning to watch my dog poo (I know. The vet said it was a good idea to see what comes out), wearing my gray jogging bottoms with the baggy knees, my hair scraped back, and not just bags, but a full set of luggage, under my eyes, then shouldn’t I be able to do this without having to say ‘Good Morning’ to half a dozen bloody builders?

We have one of those annoying partition walls, built by some twat who thought that neighbours would want to lean over for a chat, so one section is chest height, meaning that every time we’re in the garden at the same time, I have to talk to her. It’s because I’m TOO polite. I couldn’t go out there and ignore her, it’s not me, but sometimes I don’t want to have to exchange banalities when I’m taking the bins out or picking up dog poo.

Also, my kitchen window looks directly onto the low section of wall, which means our already small kitchen is now almost constantly in darkness because I have to keep the blinds shut. As much as I’m neighbourly, I want to be able to shut my front door and not even think about the outside world. This is our place, the place where my family and I can be ourselves, walk around in our pants and scratch our bums, if we so wish. Not where we have to correct our posture, every time we walk past the kitchen.

I’m probably making more of this because I’m not in a very good mood. I’m still worried about Chuck, I’ve had fairly little sleep and the biggest match in the LFC season so far is today. But I really do wish that the builders would hurry up and fuck off.

Oh, and maybe make that section of wall a wee bit taller.

Comments { 3 }

Three Generations.

By Mum's the Word on February 9, 2011 in Personal, Relationships

As this is a blog about motherhood and family life, I thought it would be really interesting to get a different perspective on motherhood, so I posed ten questions to my own mother, to see if a whole generation makes a difference when it comes to values and priorities. I’m hoping that all of my readers will pick up the thread and go ahead and ask their own Mums ten questions. It’s really important that we know our relatives, so that we can pass on all of their wisdom and memories to our kids, and this is just my little way of doing it.

Here’s the result!

1. What do you think, so far, has been your happiest moment as a parent (aside from the birth of your kids)?

When you passed your 11 + and was accepted into a grammar school, and when Emily [my younger sister] played piano on stage, in a school performance, three years ago. On both occasions, I felt unbelievably proud.

2. And what has been your worst?

When you were hospitalised with Meningitis, aged 6.

3. If you could go back and do anything differently, would you, and what would you do?

Yes, I would try to be more patient.

4. When your kids were growing up, what did you think they would be when they were older?

I thought you would be a doctor and your sister would do something with animals. [Cue much sniggering from me when I ask if my Mum means something along the lines of the ringleader in a circus!]

5. What’s better, being a grandparent, or being a parent?

Parent, because you don’t see grandchildren every day.

6. What one piece of advice would you give to your kids about being a parent?

Read between the lines. You don’t always hear what your kids are trying to tell you.

7. If you hadn’t had your kids when you did, where do you think your life would be now?

I’d probably be living in another country as I would have taken the opportunity to be more reckless!

8. Where do you see yourself ten years from now?

Pretty much the same as now, but maybe with a bit more money, and freedom from the stresses of life.

9. Which part of your own personality do you see the most in each of your kids?

I would say that your musical taste is very similar to mine, you’re a good mum, and are a total softy with Sausage! Emily is far too much of a pushover with certain people.

10. What has being a parent taught you?

That parenthood is the hardest job in the world!

There you have it. I dare you all to ask your Mums the same questions (or your own), you may learn some things that you never knew about them!

Comments { 7 }

Love Thy Neighbour.

By Mum's the Word on January 11, 2011 in Anger, Life, Opinion, Personal, Rant, Relationships

No, I’m not referring to the absurdly racist BBC ‘comedy’ to which Bill Bryson once referred as “My Neighbour’s a Darkie”. I’m talking about the concept of actually being neighbourly, a concept which, sadly, seems to be dying. However, I recently received a reminder that it does still exist, in small pockets, and when you find it, remember to be grateful!

When I was growing up, I lived on an estate in Basildon, Essex. Although the town itself has, to put it kindly, a colourful history, the area I grew up in was a small community which consisted mainly of an older generation who’d lived there since they were moved in from London in the early Sixties, plus young families taking advantage of the good local primary school and reasonably priced housing. Everybody knew everybody else, and apart from a few bad eggs, we all lived together in relative harmony, with minimal scandal. If you walked past a person, you’d usually say ‘hello’, and you knew your neighbours. All the kids played together in the street or the park and often, extended families lived within only a few roads of each other (my Mum and Dad’s road turned onto my Aunt’s road, which in turn joined to my Nan’s road!). Many of us attended Brownies, or the dance school in the community centre, we all bought fish and chips from the local shops and kids could rarely get into trouble as there was always someone around who knew your Mum!

So, it’s fair to say that I grew up with a sense of community, but as I’ve got older, it seems to be more and more of a distant feeling. These days, neighbours seem to be more of a nuisance than anything else. In one flat that Husband and I lived in, before Sausage came along, we had to telephone Environmental Health on no less than 20 occasions because of the obnoxiously loud, and seemingly never-ending, music coming from our neighbour. And they knew that they were behaving badly, as they’d refuse to even answer the door if we knocked to ask them to turn it down. Then there was the woman who used to stare at us through her letter box as we were walking through the communal hall.

Our neighbours have never behaved so disgracefully as our last set, though, who were a large part of the reason for our moving home. From the moment we set foot on that road, Mr. and Mrs. X decided that they didn’t like us. Yes, we’re a young couple, yes, we have a Bull-breed dog, yes, we both have tattoos. But we also do charity work, our dog is a rescue, we’re educated, come from nice families and generally have a good attitude towards others.

During the 18 months in our last house, we endured unfounded complaints, harassment, Mrs. X watching our every move from behind her curtains as we left the house, knocking on the car window of our friend to demand he tell her why he was waiting outside our house, a knock on the door on the day after Boxing Day, when we all had flu and had rushed Sausage to A&E that night with a temperature of 103, and threatening to phone Environmental Health if we didn’t put our bin bags out, Mrs. X letting herself into our house while we weren’t there and turning off our lights. Yes, seriously. These insufferable pests were octogenarian, though, and Husband and I were raised to respect our elders at all times, so there was never any cross words or retalliation.

Since we moved here last April, the house next door has been empty, until a few weeks ago, when a middle-aged woman named Vi moved in. Within a week or so of her buying the house, she’d come by to introduce herself, let us know she’d be having some work done on the house and wish us a Merry Christmas. Then, a few days ago, there was a knock on the door. Our new neighbour was knocking to tell us that the guys working on her house had knocked some dust and rubble onto our drive, and that she’d swept it all up. Also, there were a couple of minute areas of chipped paint on our house, which she offered to buy the paint for and touch up herself.

Now that’s what I call neighbourly behaviour!

I hope our relationship carries on in the way it has begun, it would be really nice to have a neighbour we like and trust after all these years, and I plan to make sure that the neighbourly attitude is reciprocated with consideration and kindness at all times.

I really don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Comments { 4 }

Paradise.

By Mum's the Word on January 8, 2011 in Personal, Relationships

I’m a lucky girl. I’ve got a beautiful family, a nice home, fantastic friends. But what many people don’t know, is that I’ve been to paradise. In fact, I’m so lucky, I got married in paradise.

The story of Husband and I getting married isn’t a typical one. We met, moved in together after three weeks, got engaged within six weeks and were married six months after our first meeting. I never believed in love at first sight, barely believed in marriage and knew for sure that it wasn’t for me and I’d convinced myself, after years of gynae problems, that I didn’t want any kids. But after a few weeks together, we both knew that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.

Instead of doing the usual ‘white wedding’ (which, quite frankly gives me horrors, walking down an aisle in a meringue does not appeal to me) we decided to go here:

For two weeks, we swam in crystal clear waters, threaded our toes through the white sand, collected exotic shells, basked in the sunshine that seemed never-ending.

We got married, right there, on that beach. I walked down an aisle lined with candles and tropical flowers, carrying the most beautiful bouquet of island flora.

We made our vows to each other under a canopy of palms leaves, and ate our wedding dinner together under the same canopy, our only light provided by candles and the billions of stars above us.

The day before we were due to leave, we were saying our goodbyes to the wonderful staff and Wasseem, the lovely man who’d served us our drinks for two weeks said “You’ll be back here, in two years, with your daughter.” At the time, 13th August 2006, we had no intention of having children.

Two years later, almost to the day, on 6th August 2008, I gave birth to our beautiful daughter.

Sometimes, things are just meant to be.

This post is dedicated to my Husband. My soul mate, best friend, confidante and companion. I love you more than I can say.

Comments { 3 }

Friendship.

By Mum's the Word on January 7, 2011 in Opinion, Personal, Relationships, The Internet

I figured a post about friendship was in order as it’s this months NaBloPoMo theme, and also because in the days of Twitter, Friday has become synonymous with friendship and making new friends, with the Follow Friday movement. But as I sit here writing, it occurs to me that the concept of friendship has evolved, even within my relatively short lifetime, and now represents a whole new set of parameters.

When I was younger, my friends were the people I knew from school, from Brownies, or when I was a bit older, from hanging around our usual (and locally, quite infamous) bench. A friend was an actual, tangible human being who you’d met in real life. You had some close friends who you could call on to comfort you if you’d been dumped, or been given a dodgy haircut, you had some who were always there for a night out, and you had others who were in your group, not necessarily that close to you, more of an acquaintance. I’ve had friendships which have broken down, some of which I miss, many of which I’ve realised that I’m better off without.

Then came the internet. Now we describe people as friends if we communicate with them on a forum, a game, a chatroom, or a social networking site. These are people we’ve never met, may well be wary of giving your home address to, and certainly wouldn’t call on in an emergency. So, these days, friend means ‘a person I have communicated with through one medium or another’. And I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t cut it for me.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I’m not as good a friend as I could be. A combination of laziness, lack of time and several fairly irrational social phobias have led to me neglecting several friendships that are very important to me. I’m rubbish at remembering to phone, and the longer I leave it, the higher the anxiety about not phoning builds. I’m even worse at actually getting my arse onto a bus or train, mainly because I have no faith in public transport and have Final Destination-esque visions of a car ploughing into the side of the bus, or a serious derailment caused by children placing pound-coins on the tracks (see, I told you they were irrational…)

I have to say, since I’ve started blogging, I feel as though I have become a part of a community, and whilst I’m still a little uneasy about the term ‘Mummy Blogger’, there is a sense of camaraderie between us. Since I’ve been blogging, I’ve read blogs of other women who’ve made me feel as though I am doing something right, or more appropriately, I’m not doing everything wrong. We all have the same doubts and fears, the same stresses and the same experiences of joy every time our child does something which blows us away. So maybe I’m being a bit harsh on the gamers, the forum writers and chat room regulars. Friendship isn’t just about a physical presence and someone you’d trust with your spare key, it’s about a commonality, a spark of recognition of yourself or your life in another person, be that through a computer or face-to-face. And in these times of hostility and community breakdown, we all need all the friends we can get.

So I urge you all, make it your mission to try to connect with someone new. Comment on a new blog, say good morning to your neighbour or talk to the woman who stands by herself at the school in the mornings as groups of other mums drop their kids off and hang around for a chinwag. It may lead to nothing, it may just be a person you’ll follow on Twitter before unfollowing the after a month because of the banality of their Tweets. But you might, just maybe, find a person who will enrich your life, make you see things from a new point of view and who will, in time, become a firm friend.

Comments { 0 }

Inequality? It goes both ways, you know.

By Mum's the Word on December 5, 2010 in Opinion, Personal, Relationships

Husband and I have a long running debate regarding music videos. It’s the age-old discussion of whether there really needs to be so much skin in all of them. We’re both fans of many genres of music, and are both partial to the odd dance track. But whenever we put MTV Dance on the TV, it seems that every video is one step away from soft porn, and it’s getting worse.

Scantily clad women have always been a feature of music videos. Most people focus on rap music and the in-the-camera butt-jiggling that goes on in them, and that’s definitely an issue. Then there’s the rock videos, and as a longtime fan of Guns ‘N’ Roses, I’ve seen plenty of half-naked women in rock videos. Hell, even Cher is in on it. How she kept her labia in check in the video for ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’, I’ll never know. But these days, things seems to have gone a bit further.

I don’t know if it started with Benny Benassi and his ‘Satisfaction’ video, where women in skimpy outfits are in charge of heavy-duty construction equipment, but it certainly carried on with the elongated crotch-shots in Eric Prydz’ ‘Call on Me’ (and yeah, I know he’s Swedish and they have different boundaries!). Now, Husband thinks I am a massive prude for my distaste at these videos, but I just get really sick of seeing these so-called perfect women prancing about on my screen. And I’m not even going to try to pretend that it isn’t to do with my own body issues, because that would just insult your intelligence. But it bugs me, okay?

The other element to our debate is that I think that it’s unfair, the way these women are paraded around as perfect, and the rest of us are expected to live up to it. It’s another bit of added pressure to womankind. However, Husband believes that there’s just as much, if not more, pressure on men these days, and he blames the good ol’ Sex and the City girls. According to him, women may feel pressured to look good, but since the inimitable girls of the HBO show turned up, men have been under pressure to look good, earn a huge wage, have a huge *ahem* member, be amazing in bed, more romantic than a Hugh Grant movie, great at buying gifts….the list goes on.

I must admit, when I started writing this post, I fully had the intention of poo-pooing everything that Husband was saying, but the more I consider it, the more I see where he’s coming from. And, in the style of the fabulous Miss Bradshaw, I ask you…Do we expect too much from our men?

There seems to be this opinion that women should be loved for who they are…so why do I so often hear about women trying to change their men? Many of us think that boyfriends and husbands are a work in progress, and to a certain extent, yes, many men need to be nagged into putting their pants in the washing basket, but shouldn’t we at least be happy with the fundamentals of who we committed ourselves to? Wouldn’t there be uproar from the female community if we suspected our men of trying to change us? I’m sorry if I’m betraying the sisterhood here, but it’s how I feel, and I’m not known for keeping my mouth shut!

I’d love to know what you all think about this, my comments box is waiting with bated breath!