The Blogging Post
If you think your blog has what it takes to make it to our homepage then post it here. They can be on anything you think our users might find interesting whether it's kids, relationships, or things to do with spam (tinned or viral). The best blogs will get promoted to our homepage taking your thoughts to a whole new audience. You'll get a name check and of course a link to your blog url. All you need to do is....cut and paste the actual blog in the comment box along with the link at the end.
Easy peasy!
Is Anyone Else Bored of the ‘Stay At Home Mum’ (SAHM) vs Working Mum (WM) debate?!
I see so many articles written about which is harder, which is better, which we should choose, and I always read the mums comments with interest but slight surprise that anyone feels the need to take sides on this one.
I’ve done pretty much every combination of the mum and work thing over the years – working, not working, childminders, day nurseries and self employed work at home mum (WAHM).
I guess that’s why I find it futile to take sides on the ever popular debate. Because each of them have their pressures, stresses, loves and hates in different ways and in different combinations.
Over the last couple of weeks I started to ponder my ‘balance’; my business is growing and demanding more time and No. 2 has gone off to school so I’m revisiting my working hours and childcare situation once again. So I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want, what is my ideal and how near I can get to that.
Some mums work for financial reasons, some because they need their work/business as it’s a vital part of who they are, and some (dare I say it?!) enjoy the time away from their children as much as they enjoy their time with them. I think to be honest I am bit of all of those.
Whatever your reasons for the combination you choose I thought it might be useful to look at the really important angles of being SAHM vs WAHM vs WM...
Tea
SAHM - As many cups of tea as you like, as long as you only want to drink luke warm, half cups.
WAHM - Tea glorious tea (and perhaps a bit of cake!) Not great for the waistline and you have to make it yourself.
WM - Depends who your working with or for, but a few cups of tea a day and if you play your cards right you get someone else to make it for you AND you get to drink it hot!
Bodily Fluids
SAHM - Generally covered in poo, snot and sick. But when the going gets tough you can put on a movie and all just snuggle up on the sofa!
WAHM - A danger of the poo, snot, sick and the laptop colliding! Yuk.
WM - Someone else has to deal with most of the snot and poo... but sick is where the real challenge begins.
Guilt
SAHM - Feel guilty about not contributing to the household income, but feel like an economic master when you manage to feed the whole family for £4.23
WAHM - Feel guilty about looking at the laptop when you should be giving your children 100% but feel privileged to be able to shut the laptop lid and go and play Buckaroo!
WM - Feel guilty about putting your children into day nursery but feel so proud when they come home with a great painting which if undertaken at home would have resulted in complete redecoration of the house!
Entertainment
SAHM - Can sing any Cbeebies theme tune at the drop of a hat – probably to the point where you sing it aloud in public without really noticing!
WAHM - You’re a dab hand at finding new and exciting things to entertain your children to give you that time to send that one important email!
WM - Interruptions from work colleagues can be handled much more effectively than from children. If you tell them to go away and come back later, they will!
School meetings
SAHM - You go to school meetings simply to talk to another adult human and not necessarily anything to do with your child's education!
WAHM - Go to school meetings because you can, but then spend most of the time trying to stop your mobile making a noise!
WM - Can't make most school meetings, but tend to find out afterwards that really they can mostly be summarised in about 2 sentences!
Now, before people think I’ve lost the plot and I’m trivialising what we do, or making light of it – I’m not. Being a mum whether you’re working or not, or somewhere in between is a really tough job for all sorts of different reasons.
I am just a firm believer in everybody finding what is right for them, and the sooner we all just accept that what is best for each individual family is the best solution to work / life balance then the happier I will be.
Now all I need to work out for me is which bits of current motherhood role I want to outsource to someone else, and which I want to keep.... hang on, I'm just reaching for a cleaner's phone number! :-)
http://purple-path-coaching.blogspot.com/
Posted by: TracyG | 4 October 2009
You're so right on the cleaner front. And actually that's not specifically a mum role is it? Most mums I know will puree through the night, live on cabbage for a week and forgo all nightly outings just to afford for someone else to scrub their kitchen floors. Mind you I'm betting most people clean far too much anyway.
Ditto on the guilt -Am writing this while my son watches Noddy eating cereal. Is Noddy even educational anyway, prob not.
Posted by: gigi | 6 October 2009
Defo fed up of the SAHM and WM debate. Having had 3 maternity leaves pretty much off the back of each other but going back full time in between I've had a tast of both worlds. Putting it simply being a mother = guilt about something at sometime. It'll either be down to someone making us feel guilty or us making ourselves feel guilty for...I dunno...having a HOT cup of coffee and letting the little darlings watch Chuggington.
Posted by: stgeorge72 | 14 October 2009
Here's a short blog post from me:
Misconceptions I had about parenthood
Five years ago I didn't have children and I didn't know any children. None of my close family and friends had reached that stage either. I really wanted children but that was probably because I thought the following:
- Babies don't walk until they're two
- Babies don't talk until they're four
- Newborn babies sleep most of the time
- Under-fives are incapable of being naughty
- Breastfeeding is easy
- Parents who complain about lack of sleep and toddler tantrums are making a fuss about nothing
- Under-fives do what they're told
- Fussy eaters and bad sleepers are due to poor parenting
- Pregnant women moan a lot (about nothing)
- Parents who complain about lack of time don't manage their time properly
- Birth is straightforward if you follow all the advice
- Mums who complain about baby weight should just exercise
- Parents who complain parenting is stressful have no idea, nothing is more stressful than an important deadline right?
I've found motherhood a bit of a learning curve.
http://babyrambles.blogspot.com/2009/10/misconceptions-i-had-about-paren...
Posted by: Emily O | 5 November 2009
Just the other day while indulging in a little gentle subediting at at the Newspaper I Occasionally Visit the chap sitting next to me apologised. And it wasn't the first time either. He was saying sorry for swearing within range of my delicate female ears. For him it was a kind of reflex - you don't say rude words in front of ladies, ever. But what he'd said hadn't shocked me, in fact, I barely noticed as effing and blinding of the most ripe kinds just wash over me.
When I made my brief foray into the world of public relations, the cursing - or lack thereof - was one of the most shocking aspects.
Compared to many of my newspaper colleagues, of all genders, I was a very mild swearer, turning the air only the very palest duck egg. So, within days of starting at the PR agency I was surprised to have to turn down my inner oath generator (or at least keep them to myself) and it wasn't as if my new PR chums were shrinking violets, far from it. They just didn't use crude language with the enthusiasm of print journalists.
Now given that women have been part of the newspaper office landscape for many decades, you'd think that their male colleagues would have got over the notion that they might some how be offended by the explosive use of a frankly described sexual organ or act.
If you think about it, the words themselves are just direct descriptions of things most of us grown-ups see, do, or, at least, bring to mind, reasonably frequently. So why would they bother us at all?
In fact, most of them don't really cause offence. If you think back to 1994 and that cuddly floppy Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral. It opens with the words: "F***, f****, f***ety, f***."
(Here you'll see that I had a bit of a dither about the use of asterisks given the nature of this blog. However, I've decided to go with the coy option in case full frontal rudery confounds search engines and the like.)
When safe-as-houses Mr G used that word to such cute effect, you couldn't really get upset by it now, could you? He f***ed up f*** for us.
There is one word though that still causes an intake of breath. It was recently described to me as the C-bomb. You know that word. Actually it's an extraordinarily satisfying word and it is another name for a bit of anatomy I posses, so I don't see why I shouldn't use it when I like. In fact, it might be time to liberate the word from its "oooh naughty" status. Anyone up for a campaign - I've got a c***, therefore I demand the right to say the word?
As with so many things it's not what you say but the way that you say it. Swearing itself shouldn't to be banned - but bad, boring swearing should be. Conversely, a right good blasting of profanity can be just what the doctor ordered. Follow the example of The Thick of It's Malcolm Tucker for some properly creative and biologically improbable dirty word wizardry.
And as he would say: "That's enough of that big, flaccid, donkey cock wank."
http://bundance.blogspot.com/
Ellen A
bundance.blogspot.com
Posted by: Ellen A | 21 January 2010
I’m running this marathon in memory of my lovely dad. Most people know that by now. Those are easy words to say. What’s not easy to describe is how it feels to lose someone you love to a heart attack.
On Wednesday the 13th of September, 2006, I was eight months pregnant with my fourth child. The drains outside our house were blocked and I’d spent all day dealing with that, and worrying about finding the money to pay for it. It was one of those beautiful, hot autumn days, and I chatted to my dad on the phone as I gave my daughter her dinner. He was worried I was doing too much – my husband was working away a lot at the time, and I was on my own for most of the week. We talked for a while about nothing – the usual father-daughter stuff, then I said I’d better get the oldest off to bed.
Bye Pudding, speak to you tomorrow. Love you.
Bye Dad, I’ll give you a ring in the morning. Love you too.
At six o’clock in the morning, the children came into the bedroom telling me there was someone knocking at the door. By the time I got downstairs he was walking away from the house, and I called him back. He asked me my name, and I just said straightaway ‘It’s Dad, isn’t it? What’s happened?’
I’m sorry, he has died.
Just like that. I think the policeman-boy was as traumatised as me. He was standing on the doorstep with a pregnant woman howling like an animal, and three terrified children on the stairs staring at him in amazement.
When somebody you love dies suddenly, the world you lived in is gone forever. Every moment of happiness and joy is tempered with sadness that they aren’t there to share it. It’s easy to write that, but so much harder to live with it. I gave birth five weeks after my father died and he never met the grandson who bears his name. My daughter passed her ballet exam and she’s going to be ten soon – remember my tenth birthday, Dad? You bought me a pair of red earrings in the chemist because I was in double figures and you were proud of me. My son learned to read – listen to him read this, Dad, isn’t he clever? My other son learned to ride a bike without stabilisers – remember when you taught me to ride without stabilisers, pushing me up and down the road outside the house in Beauly? The little one can walk, has started preschool, can count to twenty. He looks like you, he smiles like you, he’s a stubborn bugger like you.
Guess what Dad, I’m running a marathon for you.
I miss you.
www.marathonmummy.com - from chocoholic to marathon runner in one year
Posted by: karamina | 30 January 2010
Karamina...I'm sending you a virtual hug, as well as a high five (for the marathon running part of this, and because I'm a little bit naff/retro).
You've made me cry. But in a sort of a good way because your beautiful words just remind me of how much we take for granted every single day in our lives. And, although I don't have one tenth of the relationship you clearly had with your father(long story), I do feel your sentiments in every second that my son spends with his dad, and me, creating those most precious things - memories.
Thank you for writing this and sharing it here.
x
Posted by: gigi | 30 January 2010
Thank You For The Days
High Fives
I got tagged by a friend to share my "high fives". It doesn't mean posting pictures of my kids after a pint of cola. It's a deep meaningful thang. About what inspires me in life........
1. My first high five has to be (er, er thinking now) oh yeah, my kids? That’s right. Yes, to be totally honest, having 3 young children as a single parent has fulfilled me totally in life. They have transformed my life and my vision of the future in lots of ways. Financially, in terms of my freedom, independence, autonomy… to mention a few.
2. Second on the list of high fives is laughing. I love this. It’s totally free and it can happen anywhere you like at any time – even I’ve found it can happen at the most inappropriate times. I’ve had to find ways to make myself laugh over the years and one of the best ways to pick yourself up from a bit of self indulgent pity is to make yourself laugh till you’re crying. How to do this exactly? Easy, three simple steps:
1. Think of your most embarrassing or funny moments and laugh.
2. Think of other people’s embarrassing moments and laugh – a lot more.
3. Carry on repeating steps one and two till your sides hurt.
The other brilliant thing about this method is that you have to regularly ask people for their most embarrassing moments, which means you get to have a great laugh as you go along compiling research material for those low moments. I’ve pondered on why it is I love embarrassing moments just so much and it’s the vicarious nature of them. It’s as if you were really there, you share the cringing discomfort of them, but you dont have to own it. So I guess you’re expecting me to share one with you now, hmm. One of mine was before I learnt how to a park a car. I was trying to park my rusty shite ole car in a really posh narrow shopping street in Cheltenham. I’d envisaged – car parked tidily at side of road. Eventually, with a lot of effort, I managed to get three of its wheels up on the pavement and found that the front of the car was sticking out blocking the whole pavement, so no one could walk past. A lot of people had walked around me by this stage and I needed a solution. So, I decided it was a good time to abandon the car. So I got out (and instantly felt a lot better) then I went in the nearest pub and asked someone to park it for me. This was not the brightest move. I hope you can imagine the response from a bunch of Cheltenham rugby blokes, I just stood there, going “oh, hello, er, could anyone help me park my car please?”. So after a lot of laughing one of the blokes came striding out to help. When he saw my brown Austin Allegro strewn across the pavement, he actually let out a scream. Then his friends followed him. There was little point in him parking in, because as soon as he did, I had to get in and drive away because they were taking the piss so much.
3. So I think next would be writing. I love writing and talking is nearly as good, but writing is definitely better in important ways. I get to say everything I want and no one interrupts and I can go on and on for ever if I like- this will probably be the case. Whereas with talking people tend to roll their eyes or run away etc (I’m sure these things happen to you too).
4. I love the sky, it’s my favourite thing. I’ve been looking at it all my life and it still fascinates and amazes me every day. It’s the most wonderful art I’ve ever seen. Last year Laura and I went to see an artist who paints these really wonderful skies. We drove for miles to get to her house and when we got there, they were shit. Not like the real sky at all, hers were all static. What a con.
5. People. I like people. I really do. (I lurve you all). Oh I can’t be bothered to go into all the stuff about people I like. But one of the top things, is that they are full of surprises. You find out something about them that you can’t believe, or they do the opposite of what you imagined. They are full of unexpectedness, and that’s what makes them so interesting.
There are other things I could have included, but these 5 are the things that make me smile in life. The deeper stuff keeps me going too, but in a different way.
love and good lives to y’all.
PS. If you want to share a little embarrassing story of your own, please feel free.
Posted by: marmitetoastie | 4 February 2010
In Cyberspace no one can hear you smile...
It’s been one of those weeks in the matrix, ups and downs, misunderstandings, blatant bloody-mindedness, and laughs, there’s always a lot of laughs. But how do you get your point across? How do you ensure that your friends/ followers/twiblings (delete as) understand where you’re coming from?
I guess I’m focusing mainly on Twitter, although the misunderstandings can spread far wider than that, but also on macro (as opposed to micro) blogging generally and I’m trying not to go down the paranoia path- been there before. The ability to communicate is a wonderful gift but it comes with a caveat. Everything we say has the ability to impact, to wound, to inspire and offend and it’s important to remember this. We can argue that our blog is our little safe place, that we write it for ourselves and that’s true… to an extent. But if it really was private, then surely we’d all be using Live Journal or a similar platform to record our musings without putting it into the pubic domain? No matter what we all say, we like it when people visit our blog, we like it even more when they take the time to comment and, if they return and/or subscribe? Well, it’s time to hang out the bunting!
So, we have a responsibility to our readers, not necessarily in the choice of subject matter or how it’s presented, I’m not talking about self-censorship or imposing parameters- I stopped doing that a while ago, but just a bit of respect. So, when I’m writing this, I’m thinking about you and how you might respond to it, trying to consider what you might question and answering that question before it needs to be asked. I’m proof-reading (although you can bet I’ll publish and have to immediately edit and republish) and I’m trying to make it interesting. I’m not assuming that you’ll read it just for the sake of it…
Twitter is harder still, it’s 140 kernels of you-ness. 120 if you want to make it easy to be RT’d (so ‘they’ say), and it’s immediate, no going back – BANG! Yes, you can delete tweets but it’s not always so easy- most of us are now using platforms other than Twitter, great hulking dashboards that divide our friends and mentions and searches and lists into easy to read silos and cache them there. We’re developing this burgeoning area of social media and making up the rules as we go along.
The virtual world isn’t as ephemeral as we’d like to think and it’s as easy to offend as it is to amuse, so how do we make sure that people ’see’ our point of view? I resort to exclamation marks and emoticons on the whole, despising them for taking me over my character limit but relying on their obviousness, add in the occasional hastily written DM when I think I may have crossed a line and that’s about the best formula I’ve found. Ultimately I think it’s about getting to know your peers and accepting that you’ll have ups and downs like in any relationship but if you can take the time to invest in this virtual world, then 140 characters starts to feel like just the right amount…
@peabee72 / http://battleplan.wordpress.com
Posted by: peabee | 13 February 2010
Kids Say The Funniest Things...
I was chatting to a few parents after a Perform class this week, when one of the children came running up to me; very excitedly:
“Lucy, Lucy – I’ve got a massive brew – do you want to see?”
Amused and somewhat intrigued I said yes, of course. He rolled up the leg of his tracksuit bottoms to proudly display a very large bruise.
“Wow” I said “That really is massive, but you know it’s called a bruise, not a brew.”
“No” he said “I’ve only got one of them!”
Fabulous, eh? It’s hard to argue with logic like that – anything with an ’s’ sound is plural :)
It got us talking about the other funny things children say – ranging from the cute to the cringe-worthy:
One parent shared something her little girl said when she returned home after her aerobics class – “Mummy, you’re raining!”. Horses sweat, men perspire… and ladies merely ‘rain’.
Another shared a story of how when whilst cooking in the kitchen she (like many of us) was doing the running commentary thing – “So we open up the can with the tin opener… Can you say tin opener, darling?”
Bless him he gave it a good go, but sort of got stuck like a broken record – “tin op nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope.”
Another shared a similar story about the running commentary habit – apparently it was vexing her little one somewhat, as one day mid commentary, her daughter gave a huge (very adult sigh) and said “Mummy please be quiet.” Her Mother said she’d never seen such a good impression of herself.
Another of the parent admitted to being absolutely mortified when her daughter dropped a clanger when out shopping. They were in the supermarket when her daughter asked very loudly -
“Mummy, are we going to steal this shopping or pay for it?”
Shocked, she replied “We’re going to pay for it of course, we don’t steal things.”
She’d absolutely no idea where her daughter had got the idea of stealing from (perhaps Robin Hood?) but was sure she was about to get stopped and searched by the security staff. Fortunately they managed to make it out of the supermarket without further incident!
Of course as parents, we will at least get the last laugh; as doubtlessly we’ll be at pains to remind our children of all the embarrassing things they’ve said over the years…
And so, over to you dear readers – I’d love to hear about the funny/embarrassing/adorable (delete as appropriate) things your children have come out with…
http://www.perform.org.uk/blog/2010/03/kids-say-the-funniest-things/
Posted by: Lucy_Quick | 7 March 2010
Hot forum topics
Most popular pages
Advertisement
Comments - 10 and counting...