Soft Play Trauma.

Yes, I really do mean trauma, because let’s face it, soft play is hell on earth. It’s also the easiest way to have a cup of tea with my friends without being constantly harassed by the kids proclaiming that they are “bored”. Have you ever seen the rules in a soft play area? My local one states that children must not play with fire in the play area. That should indicate how hellish it is. There’s a rule about fire.

I love soft play, whoever thought of it should be rewarded richly, however I also hate it and here is why.

You arrive, juggling the kids to read a sign on the door saying you must pay for entry before entering the area. So off you go, to the till, balance a tray on your head to hold the vastly overpriced food and drinks you are about to buy (how are you charging me so much for a fruit shoot when I could buy four for a quid in Co-op?) During this you must also try and stop the kids from running in without you before they have the all-important wristband.

The wristband that grants entry that you need to take out a loan in order to afford, this is immediately placed upon the child’s wrist and about five minutes later they will be screaming trying to pull it off, despite warnings that they will have to leave the soft play if they do.

You are in! You sit down with your overpriced food and drink and immediately leap back up, because the kids have gone sailing in with their shoes still on. You spend ten minutes chasing them back out in order to remove their shoes. They pull off their socks. You spend five minutes convincing them they HAVE to wear socks because soft play is actually gross and you aren’t paying a fiver to remove the verruca’s they will get.

You notice the soft play smells a little bit like sick and old chips.

Off they go, you sit with your friend and start a conversation that is likely based around the kids you came here to be free of, except one of them is now stuck in the ball pit and needs rescuing before they are lost in the balls forever. You head in, realise you have shoes on, take shoes off, realise you have no socks on, put shoes back on and ignore dirty looks from other parents as you wade in and save drowning child.

Child is free of ball pit. Child jumps straight back into ball pit.

You go back to your tea. It’s still sort of warm so you drop some more sugar in and sit back down. Conversation about how tired you are begins.

Child is once again wailing. They’ve got in a fight with another child. Both children are crying. You cross your fingers that your child wasn’t the instigator and go over to assess the damage. Your child is whinging but is clearly unharmed. Other child is nursing a red mark and wailing incoherently whilst his Mum says things like “Oh it’s ok, it happens to us all” but her eyes say something totally different and she clearly wants to throttle you and your demon child.

Play is resumed with the promise that no more fights will occur.

Another fight immediately occurs.

You sit down again, your tea is stone cold and the chips you ordered arrived whilst you were breaking up numerous fights. Also cold.

Children come over for nourishment and eat overpriced snacks, drink overpriced drinks and finish off your chips.

You go to the toilet entrusting ALL the children with friend whilst she stares at her phone wishing she was in bed.

You come back and ALL the kids need the loo now, so off you go again. Reaching the loo and realizing none of them have shoes on, so you carry the children one by one that weigh the same as baby elephant to the loo then the sink and so on.

Back to the play! You sit and manage an actual ten minute conversation with friend about the kids and you finally start to move on to discuss important things like politics when…

One of the kids has returned, they’ve been in yet another fight and this time, they are the injured party. So off you go to make amends whilst trying to not do the angry “my poor child” eyes.

You say “Oh it’s okay my kid whacked another one earlier, ha ha ha” and immediately regret it because now the parent is looking at you like maybe your demon started it and not theirs.

It doesn’t matter any anymore because you have to go dive back into the play because your other child is climbing up the slide, despite the rules clearly saying not too and there’s a queue of kids at the top getting more and more pissed off.

A kid decides to go down anyway whilst you are in the middle of removing yours and it’s a big crash. Other parents stare, wondering who you are and when you will leave.

You sit back down, a child that doesn’t belong to you wanders over to mooch what food you have, whilst trying to locate a parent for the child you notice your own has joined another family and is wolfing down their mini cheddars.

You throw them back into the ball pit for some quiet but suddenly, now it’s convenient, they’ve learnt to escape.

You say “five more minutes” but by the time you’ve dragged them all out and put their shoes back on it’s actually been thirty, one is missing a sock and the other has lost a hair clip and it’s the END OF THE WORLD.

You drag them out, flustered, more tired than when you arrived, promise friend that next time, you will actually talk and see each other properly.

Rinse and repeat.

To the girl that taught me to be a Mum, Evelyn.

To the girl who taught me how to be a Mum, Evelyn.

Happy birthday my lovely girl. You arrived in my life six years ago, after a hellish pregnancy and one long, painful night and a full hour of pushing, there you were, 5lb 9oz of you and you were a dream. Sometimes I still look at you now and see the tiny little squidgy baby that you were, a baby that rarely cried, a baby that slept through the night at 12 weeks, a baby that settled in her own room on the first night, a baby that didn’t need to be rocked often or held constantly. You were just you, this calmly and quietly confident baby that knew everything was okay. Basically a mini version of the girl you are today.

You are the one who has taught me the most about being a Mum, if I make a mistake, it is usually with you, because all the firsts, they happen with you. If I get something wrong, it’s usually with you and some days you test me with your temper, your attitude and your stubbornness and from you I’m learning how to deal with all of that and you don’t hold any of it against me. You forgive me within seconds, you love unconditionally, and you comfort me sometimes when I’ve screwed up.

You are also the kid with the health problems and it never fazes you and because of that, it mostly, doesn’t faze me. Yes, I still lie awake and night and imagine the worst, of course I do, you are my baby always, but when we sit in hospital appointments and at the Drs and discuss what’s going on with you and treatments and future plans I take my lead from you, I ask questions I know you want the answers to, I take your happy, funny approach and roll with it and then we get a happy meal on the way home because that’s how you like it. (No milkshakes though, because they make you so ill) When you need to be sick you just grab a bowl or go to the loo and do it, no crying, no upset, just "Mummy i've been sick" and its over with, back to normal routine. You astound me, everyday with your chilled, calm approach to life. 

When we had you we never talked about the time-frame of having another baby but a succession of siblings have arrived and I know they drive you nuts (by “they” I mean Ivy, the kid can annoy you like no other) but I hope you know that they are probably the best gift we could ever of given you. Ivy is  your best friend, you are lost when the other isn’t around, you don’t sleep properly if one is missing, you know each other better than Daddy and I know you and even though I shout and tell you off, listening to you mess around and be silly together makes me smile and I know as far as Ivy goes you probably sometimes get the short end of the stick, mostly because Ivy is a bloody fearless warrior and Satan himself would send her back but you take it in your stride and I thank you for that, you make my days so much easier with your grace. You are the best big sister to Arlo and Penelope, you are rough and tumble with Arlo making him squeal and you are gentle and careful with Penelope, you understand the difference between them.

And that leads me to this, I am so proud of you my girl, for so many things. You are so beautiful, with your blonde hair and your long legs, you are totally different to your siblings, sometimes I look at you and It stops me how pretty and beautiful you are but you are also so much more than that, you are funny, you have a wicked sense of humor, you make everyone laugh. You are kind and considerate to everyone around you. You are sensitive to people’s feelings and to how people make you feel. You are such a worrier, you fret and panic about the smallest of things. You are meticulous in your approach to some tasks, you are a leader when you want to be but you will follow when the time is right, you have a quiet confidence and you are quietly smashing it at school. You are a thousand magical things and you have given me over 2 thousand magical days and I would have you a thousand times over. 

<3

Half Term Hell.

On the last day of term I can very clearly picture myself saying the following words; "I am sooooo glad the kids are off for two weeks! Quality time together, lots of fun outings and they really need a break from school".

They were the words of an absolute fool, because as it turns out, a weekend was enough for my beloved girls, who were super burnt out on phonics, to recover. That first weekend was lovely, the weather was sunny, we rambled around the nature reserve, duck pond, park, we got ice-creams and all in all, had a great time! Of course we did, Daddy was home.

It has gone slightly downhill from there,

1.  During half term the kids bodies change vastly, they can no longer cope with 3 meals, 3 snacks and two desserts a day. No. They must be fed every twenty minutes without fail or they will ACTUALLY DIE. You will know when they need feeding, they will whine "I'm hungry" over and over whilst you forget to feed yourself because you are so busy feeding them. Sometimes, they will say this whilst eating and at this point, you must immediately supply them with EVEN MORE FOOD. You should probably bare in mind that your shopping bill will vastly increase and you will no longer be able to walk past a shop without ducking inside to find whatever they are craving at that moment.
2. They will forget all manners and decorum whenever you set foot in public. Being out and about will instantly become a cue to act completely feral and it will be difficult to tell whether you have taken out your children or wild animals.
3. You can plan all the fabulous activities and spend all the money you like, but two minutes after said activities end they will forget about that fun and be absolutely bored. There is no "sitting quietly having a chill" there is "constant activity's" and "boredom" 
4. By week two a midday nap for your children probably sounds like a fantastic idea. ABORT THIS IDEA, I repeat, ABORT IT. You will seriously regret it when they wake up an hour later with the most energy you have ever seen in your life and when that continues, long past bedtime. 
5. You will seriously wonder about the stability of your floorboards upstairs whenever the kids are up there because it sounds A LOT like a herd of elephants is traipsing through. 
6. Your kids will forget the most basic of life skills. Getting dressed? A complete mystery, this five minute task now takes an hour and a lot of screaming. Flushing the toilet? Why would they flush the toilet, its much more fun to leave it to hang around waiting for the next time you need a wee and then have to bleach everything and spray air-freshener all over.
7. Every-time you need a wee the kids will immediately bang on the door with absolute desperation because they are about to wee themselves.
8. Or because they need to be sick because they ate 4 Easter Eggs, after crying about how much they hate chocolate and hanging over a sick bowl for half an hour, they will return to their 5th egg, because Dad said it was cool to eat chocolate all day.  
9. Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. The washing machine will break and flood the kitchen, you will drop lucozade all over your phone and no longer be able to hear anyone, you will have ten thousand awful tasks and delivery's land on the same day etc. 
10. You will be the worst Mum ever because you won't let the kids jump off the bunk bed because you don't want to go to A&E again. 

Stay strong Mummas, only 3 days until they go back to school and you will forget the horror that is half term and once again say things like "Oh I can't wait for half term" 

Trump.

I read an extremely concerning statistic earlier, 52% of women, voted for Trump. 52% of women voted to give one of the world’s most powerful positions to a man who does not care for or respect them or their rights. There is a huge list of things that are frightening about Trump being President but for me, as a woman, with two daughters, it is his attitude towards women which I find most terrifying. This is more than just the fact that the POTUS has been RECORDED as saying he just “grabs them by the pussy” it’s so much more than that. It’s that with his words, his policies, the treatment of his wife and daughter, his aggressive, hostile and disrespectful attitude towards the female gender just seeps from his every pore.

One of Trumps policy platforms was an end to the funding of Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood already gets a rough ride in America, it is an institution which provides birth control and terminations to women, basically its Marie Stopes USA. It’s something which stopped back alley abortions that led desperate women to risk their own lives rather than be barbarically forced to continue a pregnancy they didn’t want. Thanks to Trump, it’s now seriously at risk. Thanks to Trump, the rights of a woman’s body now lie in the hands of a man. It’s the 50s again and women are at the back of the queue. Ending Planned Parenthood means women no longer have a safe space to discuss avoiding pregnancy aswell.

On Election Day, Trump was pictured LOOKING DIRECTLY at his wife’s ballot paper. The act and right to vote, which women fought and died for, which should be a private moment, Trump invaded that right, he stomped all over it by thinking he had the right to monitor his wife’s actions (and the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, his son Eric was pictured exhibiting the same behaviour towards his wife also)

Then there is Trumps derogatory and violent stance on women’s bodies, bodies which Mr Trump feels entitled to grab, simply because of his wealth. He defended Mike Tyson after his arrest and sentencing for rape, declaring that Tyson should be freed. He has stated that women are essentially aesthetically pleasing objects. You hear that ladies, your brain is unimportant, as is your successes and achievements, you are only good for looking pretty! (Something further proven by the fact that until 2015, Trump owned Miss USA pageants, where he could work in on women changing because he “owned” them)

His belief that sexual assault in the military is inevitable because “what did you expect when you put men and women together”, not rape Donald, we didn’t expect rape, why would a woman ever expect that? Or that Angelina Jolie can’t be attractive because she’s dated too many men, oh look, it’s that age old contradiction of promiscuity, women are sluts but men are to be celebrated for the same behaviour. It’s all cool though for The Donald, provided you have a “young hot piece of ass” by your side, so let’s all stand and congratulate Melania Trump, his wife, on being Trumps trophy wife, his young hot piece of ass, we look forward to your contribution as First Young Hot Piece of Ass of the USA.

Trump has a creepy approach to daughter Ivanka, making comments about her “best body” and how if she weren’t his daughter, she’d be his date. Which is literally 100% creepy and 100% making my skin crawl.

& then of course, his treatment of opponent Hilary, in a since deleted tweet Trump asked, how Hilary could possibly satisfy America if she can’t satisfy her husband, do you hear that scorned women of America, has your husband cheated? Left you? Donald wants you to know that you are to blame for not handing out sex on a plate at every possible chance!

But by far, the most concerning part of his 52% female vote is this, two days before his second presidential debate that infamous recording came out, where Trump claimed he could “grab women by the pussy” because he’s “a star” so he can “do anything” . Its sexual assault, its vulgar and disgusting, sexist and forced Donald to do something unprecedented for him, apologise. But it his apology is full of hot air, because Trump has a catalogue of disrespect and sexism towards women, a history of basing a women’s worth purely on her looks and a “boys club” attitude towards a woman’s place  in society, because besides your vote, Donald doesn’t care for you at all.

There are literally thousands of other reasons why Trumps new position is incredibly frightening, his ideology that peace is achieved through strength, his determination to start war with China, his infamous wall and one of his most terrifying polices; his plan to reduce Government, therein reducing the amount of people who can stop and argue against his insanity.

So women of America who gave your vote to Trump, I hope you saw something in him that the rest of us don’t, because you just set fire to the legacy of the Women before you who fought for equality and for their voices to be heard and respected.  

It's ok.

Lately a few people have asked me what’s the difference between having three children and having two, I think for me personally, it’s been realizing this, it’s okay if some days you are a screw-up Mom, you can start over tomorrow.

Babies one and two, (Evelyn and Ivy) came in super quick succession, just 13 months apart and at that point I was young and obsessed with this idea that I needed to be the best informed and perfect parent I could possibly be. I researched absolutely everything (and I mean everything) I spent hours on parenting forums comparing and seeking validation from other mums. When I did night feeds I kept myself awake by arguing with other parents on Facebook parenting pages about ridiculous non issues. I can cringe about it now, but back then, only five years ago, I was really dementedly obsessed with being the absolute best parent I could be that I couldn’t actually admit out loud to anybody in real life when I was having a bad day or when I screwed up (and there were a lot of those days).

Ivy was a co-sleeper, which I sold to everyone as this deep bonding experience that I adored, this was bullshit.  It was co-sleep or NO-sleep. I love my sleep and I function at best, poorly without it (replace poorly with * as a manically evil bitch* for a more accurate description) and so I had to train myself to sleep for a full year on one side, with my arm flat, Ivy lying in it, or none of us slept. That was 90% of nights. The other 10% she screamed bloody murder for no god damned reason at all except just to wind us all up.

Evelyn was a kid who loved to walk and thus walked EVERYWHERE, except one day when I walked to the supermarket and on the way back, having only brought the single pram and a buggy board she decided she was tired and also terrified of the buggy board and would comprise only to sit on it. Hahahahaha I uploaded to Facebook and sent to relatives. The truth was that I fumed and sweated the long walk home as she snivelled and Ivy slept.

The day of the buggy board

Then there was a day when after a super morning at the park we walked in the door and the girls immediately started to throw up everywhere and then I did, then Aaron came home and started too and we were all so ill that at one point there were just towels on the floor where various sick explosions had happened that we were all too ill to actually clean.

The fact is, for those first two years, if you didn’t know me that well, I would of presented you with a lovely little picture in which I tried to be a funny, happy, perfect parent and left out all the totally shit screw up days where I was far from that. Having baby number three, Arlo, a few years apart from the other two, has given me a different perspective, a lot more patience, it’s okay to screw up, it’s okay if 3 days out of 5, you arrive on the school playground as the bell goes, because hey, at least you got them there, right? It’s okay if you notice half way down the road that one of your kids has her shoes on the wrong feet because at least she has shoes on! It’s okay if you have to go back to the nursery twice a month to give in the snack you forgot to pack for your child because you had a million and one things going on that morning. It’s okay If your three your old was still swinging off the bunk bed at half past nine because some days she’s wild and feral and strong willed because she was born that bloody way and no amount of telling her off is ever going to get her bed before she decides shes tired (but you can convince yourself it was the last seriously very firm telling off that did it if you like)

Perfect parents don’t exist, you might see those moms who look like they have it all perfectly held together every day, who are never late, who look like they have never forgotten a non uniform day and done a mid school run turnaround, who have never left the house in a cardigan with a baby sick stain that they were fully aware of but just didn’t care, but they have, because they well put together parents are a lie. They screw up just like the rest of us do, they’ve had a baby poo explosion in the middle of a shopping centre, they’ve had to dash their daughter into a bush and hold them in the air whilst begging them not to wee on Mommy’s shoes, they’ve walked out of a room with their 6 month old in their arms and caught their heads on the corner of the door and they’ve gone out in a long top with a pair of jeans underneath that don’t quite do up.

Moral of the story is, it’s okay if you today you sucked as Mom, if your patience wore too thin, if you shouted, if you fed your kids the same thing for dinner that you did for lunch and for breakfast, If you meant to give them a bath but forgot, If you let them use the iPad for half an hour too long or if you put a film on to shut them up for an hour because they were driving you totally flipping mental, it’s okay if you turned your back for a minute (ten) and they drew all over themselves in pen, it’s okay if you bribed them to behave with 2 (4) biscuits. It’s okay if you felt like less than perfect, total screw up, not patient, crappy Mom today. Tomorrows another day.