A Modern Mother

I think this half term was a huge success

Half term is over, and we had no trips to A&E. I consider this a huge success.

One year I had to deal with a two-year-old who got her finger nail ripped off when it got slammed in the door (her sister swears she didn’t do it) AND a three-year-old who broke her arm climbing out of her cot.

In the UK, kids seem to have time off from school every few weeks. I’m lucky as my children go to state schools. It’s worse at the fee-paying schools. The more you pay for your child’s education here, the more time off they get off school (I guess it comes in handy if you have a chalet in Chamonix and want to get full use of it).

Mummy is not very clever

HM, my almost four year old, is a clever girl. I’ve always known that.

For the past few weeks, she has refused to go to preschool. (BTW--if you haven’t read my biog, HM stands for high maintenance or her majesty, both are relevant). 

This has been going on since Scottish Grandma’s visit, which ended last Thursday. Scottish Grandma, whom is nearly 80, is a saint and spends hours with HM -- drawing pictures of butterflies, reading "Princess Poppy" on repeat, or re-arranging the doll house furniture for the hundredth time.

I don’t like Thursdays!

I should have had a clue when I spotted Emily’s favourite sweatshirt crumpled and damp on the bottom of the dirty clothes pile. Darn! I forgot to do the washing.

I don’t like Thursdays. On Thursdays I have to wake the kids, feed the kids, dress the kids, make packed lunches for the kids and get the kids to school before they lock the school gate. And we need to do this all 15 minutes ahead of schedule.

(Apologies to my English readers for my use of the word kids – but the term really fits, my children are more like bleating animals than little people.)

The Best of the Mommy Bloggers Carnival call for hosts and posts

A carnival is a blogging event and "The Best of the Mommy Bloggers Carnival" takes place every two weeks and features recent posts from the cream of the mommy blogger community.

This is how it works: every two weeks a different mommy blogger “hosts” the carnival. The blogger community submits their best post from the past month -- this could be your most popular post, something that has done well on StumbleUpon or Digg, or one of which you are particularly proud.

The rules are one post per blogger and it must be something written in the past four weeks.

The host blogger then compiles the carnival. Check out the ones below for examples.

Is there anything the Scots didn’t invent?

This post is written for anyone who is fortunate enough to be married to a Scotsman.

I suppose it is relevant if you are married to a Scotswoman, but I have to say I have never heard a Scottish woman brag that television was invented by a fellow countryman.

Or that Tarmac was invented by a Scot. And the steam engine. Flush toilets. The bicycle. Penicillin. Radar. Motion pictures. The list goes on.

It’s a guy thing.

I think there is a class that all Scottish lads take when they are about to leave school. It is titled: Famous Scottish inventors: How to woo young foreign women.” To a Scotsman, "foreign" means born outside of Scotland, and that includes England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Work and mummy rot

One of the things that people fail to tell you when you have children is about a condition called “mummy rot”. This is the fact that 10 percent of your brain deteriorates with the pregnancy and birth of each child.

I have three children.

When I was working full time, I used to try and hide this condition from my boss. I was doing fairly well until a meeting with an analyst.

It was with one of those now defunct dot com analyst firms named after a planet in the solar system. Industry analysts are a breed of their own, and this guy was no exception. In a different era he might have been one of those professors that spent their career publishing loads of headline grabbing research under the guise of "nice understated lecturer".

Confessions of a dummy addict

I have a deep, dark secret.  I have hidden it from my closest friends for years.  I tried to hide it from my mum, but she eventually found out.

My children used dummies until they were practically young adults.

OK, I'm exaggerating, but it sure seemed like my life was governed by dummies for ages. I should have given them up earlier, but as the years went by they became harder and harder to extricate from our lives.