Emily is now 21 months old and her vocabulary is expanding with every day and whilst some of it is amusing, some cute, some confusing (for both of us), some however is...erm...well lets just say it's not suitable for pre-watershed.
Now I have been making valiant attempts to think about everything I say before I say it, which is truly exhausting at times! And I am constantly berating those around me everytime some one lets slip an obscenity. And I honestly never realised what a foul mouthed, obscenity uttering family I come from and my friends aren't much better!
However what I did not account for are the words, that if pronounced incorrectly, could be portrayed rather badly. Especially if we were, for example, in a public place with lots of people within earshot!
So the word 'Coat' my daughter has trouble pronouncing it properly. And I bet you can probably guess where I am going with this one. Yes in the middle of the pub on a Saturday lunch-time, post food and about to leave my daughter points and announces, rather loudly,
"Look mama, dada's cock"!
Monday, 31 January 2011
Monday, 10 January 2011
Embracing your inner child...
So post Christmas my house now resembles an aisle in Toys R Us, every shelf, surface and available space has toys of every nature rammed onto or into it! Emily now has two toys boxes, both full and yet somehow my lounge floor space has still strunk and I already removed the coffee table last year. Most of the lounge is taken up by a huge, pink, trampoline (kindly donated and I mean this most sincerely, by a family friend), numerous items that Emily will either push around or sits on while I push her around, books, building blocks, jigsaws, teddies, a pretend till that actually has a scanner that makes the bleeping noise (no...really!), a play kettle - one of two she received, the other living upstairs in her play kitchen with a play toaster, play washing machine, play ironing board, a dolly's cot, dressing up clothes, fairy costumes (x 2), a magnetic drawing board, more books, teddies, teddies, teddies, teddies, did I mention teddies? A Waybaloo Nok Tok, Tickle me Elmo and on and on and on. You get the idea. Do I really only have one child? I keep expecting at least another one or two to appear from somewhere.
So you would have thought with all this to amuse her she would embrace hours of fun filled entertainment. However being, as yet, an only child (despite my suspicions that there may be more children around here somewhere), mummy becomes play mate to her doting daughter. So my days are now filled with not just real domestic chores but pretend ones also. I mean really, trust me ironing is still ironing even when it's pretend!
However I have to say that it's hard not to embrace your inner child, when decked out in fairy wings, sitting in the middle of your little girls bedroom being served imaginary food on plastic plates and drinking imaginary tea out of cups that smell suspiciously like apple juice. Even I have to admit that maybe it's just better to 'go with it' sometimes. Besides it beats the hell out of tackling the real piles of washing up waiting for you downstairs.
And I know I am not alone. Come on hands up, how many of you stood imaging yourself playing with your children's toys before purchasing them? Yes, yes you know who you are! And why not, we all need an excuse to behave like the children we still are, on occasion. Otherwise life just gets a little bit too serious.
Although I do have just one question;
"How come I still get left with the imaginary washing up??!"
So you would have thought with all this to amuse her she would embrace hours of fun filled entertainment. However being, as yet, an only child (despite my suspicions that there may be more children around here somewhere), mummy becomes play mate to her doting daughter. So my days are now filled with not just real domestic chores but pretend ones also. I mean really, trust me ironing is still ironing even when it's pretend!
However I have to say that it's hard not to embrace your inner child, when decked out in fairy wings, sitting in the middle of your little girls bedroom being served imaginary food on plastic plates and drinking imaginary tea out of cups that smell suspiciously like apple juice. Even I have to admit that maybe it's just better to 'go with it' sometimes. Besides it beats the hell out of tackling the real piles of washing up waiting for you downstairs.
And I know I am not alone. Come on hands up, how many of you stood imaging yourself playing with your children's toys before purchasing them? Yes, yes you know who you are! And why not, we all need an excuse to behave like the children we still are, on occasion. Otherwise life just gets a little bit too serious.
Although I do have just one question;
"How come I still get left with the imaginary washing up??!"
Sunday, 2 January 2011
To a new year and another chance for us to get it right.
So we are officially into a new decade and the beginning of 2011. Whilst all that is great, I am just happy to have survived my first term at College, my first family Christmas at the new, owned not rented, family home, my first cooking of the Christmas dinner and my first proper full year as a mum.
It has been a year full of firsts actually, first birthday party, first steps, first duvet, first words and now we even have full sentences on occasion and Emily is also doing very well in learning to talk...ha, ha, ho, ho. First full nights sleep...again... and you all know how much I like my sleep!
It has also been a year to see the end of many things, the end of sterilising, the end of formula, the end of dummies, the end of having to carry my daughter everywhere because she is 10 months old and still cannot crawl!! And let it be known that Emily is a lot heavier than most children her age...trust me I have held other children to test this theory (children I know of course I don't just go about randomly picking up other peoples children because...well that would be strange and would probably get me arrested...anyway). Yes we have discovered the joys of walking and running and movement in general and now she never stops, moving I mean. Emily has two settings, on and off! The only time she doesn't move is when she's asleep and even then she is quite the wriggler at times.
So, I am not one for resolutions, they seem so obviously fallible and I just set myself up for failure, instead I look to the new year with hope in my heart and a spring in my step. Courage renewed and the will to fight another day. I welcome the changes that are around the corner. I will endeavour to put right what went wrong this year. I look forward to all the new challenges we will face. I embrace the terrible twos that are creeping ever closer, day by day, like a little cloud looming somewhere on the horizon and I even welcome the prospect of turning 30 in February and the little lines that are starting to permanently creep across my forehead...well okay I am working on those last two!
It has been a year full of firsts actually, first birthday party, first steps, first duvet, first words and now we even have full sentences on occasion and Emily is also doing very well in learning to talk...ha, ha, ho, ho. First full nights sleep...again... and you all know how much I like my sleep!
It has also been a year to see the end of many things, the end of sterilising, the end of formula, the end of dummies, the end of having to carry my daughter everywhere because she is 10 months old and still cannot crawl!! And let it be known that Emily is a lot heavier than most children her age...trust me I have held other children to test this theory (children I know of course I don't just go about randomly picking up other peoples children because...well that would be strange and would probably get me arrested...anyway). Yes we have discovered the joys of walking and running and movement in general and now she never stops, moving I mean. Emily has two settings, on and off! The only time she doesn't move is when she's asleep and even then she is quite the wriggler at times.
So, I am not one for resolutions, they seem so obviously fallible and I just set myself up for failure, instead I look to the new year with hope in my heart and a spring in my step. Courage renewed and the will to fight another day. I welcome the changes that are around the corner. I will endeavour to put right what went wrong this year. I look forward to all the new challenges we will face. I embrace the terrible twos that are creeping ever closer, day by day, like a little cloud looming somewhere on the horizon and I even welcome the prospect of turning 30 in February and the little lines that are starting to permanently creep across my forehead...well okay I am working on those last two!
Tuesday, 7 December 2010
My life...according to Facebook!
A very nifty little app that was brought to my attention by a fellow blogger and Twitter fan. A collection of some of my best statuses from 2010 and trust me there were a few too many to choose from. My new years resolution may be to spend a little less time social networking and a little more time just actually socialising or networking!
Have a go yourself and share with the rest of us:
Monday, 6 December 2010
Let it snow, let it snow, let it sss....hmmm on second thoughts!
For many the prospect of snow is a welcome one, the chance to kick back and re-connect with your childhood, sledging, snowman building, snowball fighting and possibly, if you are really lucky, a day off work!
For a mother with very young, pram bound children, the prospect of snow is most definitely not a welcome one! It means you are confined to your house and a very limited area immediately surrounding it. Luckily for me, well guess it actually depends on how you look at it, maybe fortunately for me (with last weeks snow) I live across the road from a major supermarket with built in cafe facilities. So at least had slightly less limited options when it came to entertaining my toddler because dragging the pram through snow, ice and blizzards, puffing and panting and sweating like...well a very sweaty person, is not my idea of fun in the snow! Our local council worked extremely hard this time to make sure that they kept the roads as snow-free and passable as possible. However what they failed to remember was that us mothers cannot 'drive' our prams down the road! Well we could but am not sure you would do it more than once, if you catch my drift (ohh look an unintentional snow pun, how clever of me).
This is my second year as a snow mum and I have to say I am not yet convinced that the world is a better place just because it's covered in a blanket of white!
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
Self control? No madam I don't believe we stock that here...
Before I had Emily I always wondered how parents could go so overboard with their Christmas spending, if I'm honest I even judged (just a teeny, tiny bit). Their is nothing worse than a spoilt child! Always conjures up memories of Verruca from 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' and well we all know what happened to her.
So although I still feel the same, I no longer judge because I now understand the inclination to give your child everything their little heart could wish for. It's like a gut reaction, you have no real control over your desire to make your little one(s) happy! We are of course constrained by other factors, such as a lack of endless supplies of cash and the fact that I may enjoy buying ridiculous amounts of presents, however I lack the same energy and enthusiasm to wrap all said presents. Of course their is always a way around these problems, credit cards and presents so big that wrapping them would be a complete waste of time.
However it is scary that in the current economic crisis we can all still find the vast sums of money required to 'Do Christmas'. I overheard a news reporter relaying the fact that most people will do Christmas on credit this year as people are no longer saving. Well maybe that has to do with very few of us having any spare cash to save, that combined with the fact that most credit companies seem to be offering interest free on everything at the moment. I don't think I have made an interest payment on my credit card for at least the last 18 months. Although in our case the tax man is paying for our Christmas and our family holiday next year, thank you very much. A nice little rebate saw to that...don't you love it when they finally give something back.
Anyway all of that said I am determined to practice some self-control and not rush from shop to shop, exclaiming in delight,
"Ohhhhh Emily would love this, and this oohhh and this..." And every time I go shopping I am determined that NEXT TIME I will definitely succeed in my mission. Oh dear!
So although I still feel the same, I no longer judge because I now understand the inclination to give your child everything their little heart could wish for. It's like a gut reaction, you have no real control over your desire to make your little one(s) happy! We are of course constrained by other factors, such as a lack of endless supplies of cash and the fact that I may enjoy buying ridiculous amounts of presents, however I lack the same energy and enthusiasm to wrap all said presents. Of course their is always a way around these problems, credit cards and presents so big that wrapping them would be a complete waste of time.
However it is scary that in the current economic crisis we can all still find the vast sums of money required to 'Do Christmas'. I overheard a news reporter relaying the fact that most people will do Christmas on credit this year as people are no longer saving. Well maybe that has to do with very few of us having any spare cash to save, that combined with the fact that most credit companies seem to be offering interest free on everything at the moment. I don't think I have made an interest payment on my credit card for at least the last 18 months. Although in our case the tax man is paying for our Christmas and our family holiday next year, thank you very much. A nice little rebate saw to that...don't you love it when they finally give something back.
Anyway all of that said I am determined to practice some self-control and not rush from shop to shop, exclaiming in delight,
"Ohhhhh Emily would love this, and this oohhh and this..." And every time I go shopping I am determined that NEXT TIME I will definitely succeed in my mission. Oh dear!
Thursday, 11 November 2010
The true meaning of 'mum'
Covered in vomit, scrubbing down a mattress and a cot at midnight.
Two and a half hours of enforced insomnia whilst trying to get my daughter to sleep in the bed with me. All the time hoping that when we do finally fall asleep, we aren't woken a hour later by a repeat performance of the midnight antics. Not one of the nicer way to be woken..vomit in the face!
Giving up on trying to get my daughter to sleep and returning her to a freshly made up cot, wondering if you have any more spare blankets and bedding for a predicted repeat performance of the midnight antics.
Finally falling asleep to wake with a start an hour and a half later in a blind panic, wondering where your sleeping daughter has gone to (vision of her lying at the bottom of the stairs), until you remember that you put her back in her cot an hour and a half ago!
Check on sleeping daughter and go back to sleep for 3 and half hours before daughter wakes you at half seven, looking...well... just fine! CHILDREN!!!
Oh and Gavin was complaining because the washing machine was too noisy for him, whilst he slept in comfort and peace in the back bedroom! MEN!!!
Two and a half hours of enforced insomnia whilst trying to get my daughter to sleep in the bed with me. All the time hoping that when we do finally fall asleep, we aren't woken a hour later by a repeat performance of the midnight antics. Not one of the nicer way to be woken..vomit in the face!
Giving up on trying to get my daughter to sleep and returning her to a freshly made up cot, wondering if you have any more spare blankets and bedding for a predicted repeat performance of the midnight antics.
Finally falling asleep to wake with a start an hour and a half later in a blind panic, wondering where your sleeping daughter has gone to (vision of her lying at the bottom of the stairs), until you remember that you put her back in her cot an hour and a half ago!
Check on sleeping daughter and go back to sleep for 3 and half hours before daughter wakes you at half seven, looking...well... just fine! CHILDREN!!!
Oh and Gavin was complaining because the washing machine was too noisy for him, whilst he slept in comfort and peace in the back bedroom! MEN!!!
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