September 2022

Wry Mummy is two!

And still a complete mystery to most of my family and friends.

“A blog?”

“It’s my own website, grandma. You know, on the computer.”

“Your own website?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh,” baffled nodding and unsure smiling from the dear nonagenarian.

“Is that for your blog, mummy?”

“Yes, darling.”

“What IS a blog, mummy?”

Well, indeed. Explaining a blog to a small child or a 90-year old lady is understandably hard, but it’s almost as hard to most people I know and meet.

“What do you do?”

“Nothing at the moment. I mean, apart from being a mum.”

“Oh!”

“And I have a blog.”

“Uh-huh?”

“It’s like a funny mummy blog. Tries to be funny anyway.”

“Oh, ok. Is that like, your job?”

“Um, kinda.”

But does it matter that most people don’t get what I do? I don’t understand what my husband does, and we’ve been together 14 years. If you ask me, he works “in IT”. *eye roll from Mr Wry*

The best way of describing it is that basically, my blog is my baby. Er, except now it’s my toddler.

Eek!

My first ever post was Kids’ Bedtime – The Last Straw. Two years on, the 7pm-8pm vortex still kills me.

40 before 40? So over! It’s all about 24 before 2 and a half! Here’s my list of things you MUST do before you turn two and a half:

MY MUCK-IT LIST

1. Bungee-jump off a changing table. Nothing beats the thrill of diving for the floor, dangling only by one foot caught in the safety strap and the other in your mum’s hand.

2. Swim with poo-phins. Never mind the most intelligent creature of the ocean, nothing beats swimming with your own floater.

3. Learn a new language. It’s fine to make up your own. Yes = no; no= yes. Mummy = daddy; daddy = mummy. More = if you force one more spoon of that mush into my mouth, I’m going to regurgitate it all over you.

4. Start a retirement fund. Swallow a penny.

5. Tantrum like it’s 1999. Let no floor be un-pummelled, no car seat be willingly sat in, no drink go un-spilt, no mouthful be un-spat, no thing be right. Make mummy cry in public.

6. Do an up-the-backer. If you try really hard, you can push the contents of your nappy right up into your hairline. For extra points, dip your ankles in it while you’re being changed and pound them on mummy’s clean shirt.

7. Seize the day. And the night. Life is for living, people! Sleep is for losers. Never rise later than 5.30am.

8. Get your hand stuck in a vending machine. Preferably while your brother’s running off in the other direction. You’re doing your mum a favour, at least she – and everyone else – knows where you are: you’re the one screaming and refusing to let go of the Fruit Pastilles even though the vending machine flap is closing its grip like a vice.

9. Get your head stuck in the banisters. Railings are also good.

10. Fall face down in a puddle. Best done when you are late for school / the doctor / a bus. More haste, less speed, mother.

11. Decide who your favourite parent is. Clue: Which one does the most for you? It’s the other one.

12. Get your siblings on side. Take the heat for your older brothers and sisters a few times and they’ll have your back forever.

13. Lead by example. If you acquire a younger sibling before you are two, show them how much you love them by bouncing on their head whenever mummy turns her back. Establish that everything is in working order by hitting them all over with your toy hammer. Teach them what pushes mummy’s buttons.

14. Learn how to take your own socks off. This is an invaluable skill. It can keep you occupied for hours in the car / buggy. The key is to lose one or both of the socks just as you get to where you’re going. For example. your own christening.

15. Find a comfort item. Muslins, dummies, blankets, cute floppy bunnies – all these are good. But mummy’s better. Don’t let her out of your sight.

16. Establish a good sleep routine. I suggest feeds and cuddles till approx. midnight, then a couple of wake-ups between 12 and 5.30am.

17. Cut out an entire food group. You should never eat a balanced diet. One food group must be shunned at all costs. Popular ones are Fruit and Veg – but I find these a bit of a cliché. I have chosen Carbs. Yep, watch mother fret about you getting enough calories / eating out and about when you refuse sandwiches now.

18. Get tech savvy. Work out the code to mummy’s phone and delete all her apps. Get to grips with the TV remote and always remember to hide it before you go to bed.

19. Establish good personal hygiene. If this means squeezing the entire bottle of baby wash into the bath, so be it. Wipe your nose on mummy’s shoulder – better out than in. Wash your hands ten times a day, not forgetting to ‘wash’ your whole top and trousers at the same time.

20. Have a 6-month cold. May as well get it over with.

21. Read 100 books. By read, I mean pull off all the “lift-the-flaps”, destroy any turny wheel things, rip out the last page, draw on the cover and stick pages together with puree.

22. Learn martial arts. When you’ve worked out that those wriggly things at the end of your arms are your hands, use them to your advantage. Grab mummy’s hair and close your tiny fist like a vice. Karate chop her on the boob. Roundhouse kick her on the chin while she changes your nappy. Do a running headbutt into her pubic bone. Know your own strength.

23. Decide which colour food you will eat. I have chosen yellow – it’s a goodie: butter (by the spoonful), cheese, Pom Bears, and chips (everyone knows these are not a carb). Laugh in the face of yellow peppers and pineapple.

24. Smile. And the whole world will be round your little finger.

Linking up with #TheList at You Baby Me Mummy and Mums Days.

Will 2014 be the year that I achieve the only thing that I really want: to be the best mum I can be? And will my kids notice the difference? I’ve stopped thinking about being a mum. Somewhere between picking Weetabix splats off the floor with my bare hands, making the last baby wipe last through a messy change and finding the right Octonauts episode with the wrong remote, just being a mum took over. A mother on auto-pilot – or a mumbot, if you will.  But in this ultimate “time for reflection”, I am resolving that I need, and want, to do more than just get through the day. I want to be a better mum. The Resolution That Keeps On Giving This is not a new resolve. I make it every night after another three-hour bedtime marathon. I think it every morning when I wake up. And I think it many times a day in between. I hope I’m not the only one – I’m not, right?  It’s not so much my performance that’s the problem, it’s my presentation. It’s not my ability, it’s my attitude. I’ve got the practical stuff down – feeding, clothing, bathing, exercising. I read to them, I praise them, I use descriptive praise, I cuddle them – boy, do I cuddle them. I get them where they need or want to be within 60 seconds of the required time. I’d just like to do all that without the shouty bits. Cook lunch when I’ve only just finished clearing up snacktime? Sure! Get the playdoh out just after I’ve swept the floor? You betcha, honey! Spilt milk on the new sofa again – well, silly mummy for giving it to you sitting there. The number of times I’ve cried over spilt milk – why, it makes a mockery of the phrase! I know it’s no use, but I just can’t help it sometimes. Be nicer. Be more prepared. Be cheerier. Not too much to ask, then. These lofty goals need breaking down – I need strategies! But parenting manuals are like when I read about a new diet regime: I think “Mmm, that’s a good idea, I’ll remember that”, then within seconds – gone. Also, the only period that I’ve had time to read such tomes is when I was pregnant with my first, when all I could think about was, ‘How am I going to get this baby’s head out of there?’, and everything else could wait. So hurrah for the blogosphere: short, snappy parent-y stuff – with pictures! Get your sentient parenting tips a-ready, parent bloggers, for I shall be trawling your sites for inspiration – or even better, point me to your wise words in a comment below. Will The Kids Even Notice? This is a resolution with no tangible means of measurement. Although my husband might be keen on a new model, I’m not sure the kids really care. Will they notice that we’re leaving the house in plenty of time, with all our stuff loaded up in one calm go, without mummy sweating and suppressing naughty words in the driver’s seat? Will they notice that their tea was part of a week’s menu plan? Will they notice that their pants came from their own drawer and are the correct size? Probably not. But I will. Yes, I know that I am the best mummy that my kids can have, but I am not going to rest on those comfortable laurels. This year I am going to try my hardest. I am going to be the best mum I can be. And it doesn’t matter if my kids notice or not, as long as they are happy. I might even get them doing craft.

Related posts

Kids’ Bedtime – The Last Straw – where I puzzle the 7pm-8pm vortex that opens when it senses a mummy on the edge, trying to put kids to bed.

How Not To Bake – where my better mum-ness rises far above my ability, on the occasion of making a child’s birthday cake.

#156337018 / gettyimages.com It’s transfer deadline night. Massive excitement at the other end of the sofa. But it’s not the Falcao coup that is firing up my lifelong Manchester United fan husband. It’s whether he got some random for his Fantasy Football team. I haven’t seen him so animated since, well, Auction Day. As I try to recall when I felt that fired up about anything, I realise the truth: I’ve got Fantasy Football envy. I know lots of women play Fantasy Football. I’m just not one of them. I like watching a game, but rabidly scrolling through results and player news for ten months of the year – I just don’t care enough. Actually playing footie is drifting away from my husband and his mates with the onset of years, injuries and kids. But luckily for them, they have a readymade Hobby 2.0 to fill the void: Fantasy Football. All the banter, camaraderie and fun of the real thing, but without the “ooh, me knee” moments. It’s not that I mind being a Fantasy Football widow. It’s just I wish I had something that I was so interested in I would think about it all day, every day, talk to my mates, and indeed, complete strangers, about it and engage in an ongoing, long-term friendly competition about it. Sure, I have interests. I like reading, for example, but log on to boast to my league-mates: “I’ve finished War and Peace – in your face!”? I’m into fitness too, but does Sunday night see me on tenterhooks waiting for banter on the weekend’s slogs round the park? I have lately come to enjoy a spot of gardening, but “I’ve dead-headed my rose bush – eat my mulch!” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
But then it came to me. I do have such a thing: sleep. Sleep is the ultimate commodity of parents with young children. The phrase “transfer window” to me now means that precious 90 seconds you have to get the sleeping baby out of the car and up to his cot, before his next sleep cycle ticks in. Man U paid £59.7 million for Angel Di Maria; about the same, in my Fantasy Sleep League, that I would pay for nine hours’ unbroken sleep. But that would blow my budget. I’d be left hoping for free transfers of less sought-after players, or “sleep-blocks” of a couple of hours. Would I be better to bid £5 million for a straight five-hour run, or £10 million for an eight-hour lie-time, with two intra-night get-ups? The permutations are endless, and ultimately pointless, as the moving parts are entirely subject to chance. Just like in Fantasy Football: as those who bought Olivier Giroud for £28.5 million know (ruled out injured for three months), children can, and do, wake you up whenever and however often they please. But however dud your “team” of sleep-blocks is, it’s a talking point. Sometimes I feel it’s all I can talk about, so droopy are my eyelids. Stuck with another new-ish parent, as one so often is once one enters the world of parenthood, it’s a relief to be able to discuss how their night was, what hours their baby keeps, whether either of you will ever, EVER get a proper night’s sleep again. Even if it’s someone you’ve only just met, or haven’t seen for ages, and whether they’re male or female, you can always find common ground in comparing Night Notes. It’s funny, bedroom habits were such a taboo before we became parents; now we think nothing of asking what happened in the night, who was in who’s bed, and whether anyone got any (sleep). Just like Fantasy Football, where the prize is usually pretty token, it’s the taking part that counts. But if you have a good week in the Fantasy Sleep League, you actually physically feel better. You just have to accept that, as in Fantasy Football, you will be temporarily despised by fellow participants as a result. What’s your Fantasy Football equivalent?

#200400583-003 / gettyimages.com

When being maternal gets misconstrued

It started innocuously enough. After an abs session at the gym, I happened to fall into conversation with the new fitness coach, Tom*. He asked me about my exercise routine and goals, I said I wanted to drink wine and eat chocolate guilt-free. I asked him what he did before joining our gym and he told me a bit about his career, including playing county rugby. He said he had to give it up because…and here I found myself uttering this deathless phrase:

“You don’t want to ruin your beautiful face.”

I don’t know why I said it. It just came out! Of course, I had noticed that he was a total hunk of divinity, but very much in an ‘ooh, his mother must be proud’ kind of way. I can honestly say when he mentioned the rugby thing that I went off into a reverie about my oldest son’s (aged 6) very recent foray into this sport and was ratcheting through my various feelings on the subject – dreams of World Cup glory, fears of a smashed-up face – which led to my final comment. I can thus excuse what came out of my mouth, to myself. But Tom now backs away whenever he sees me coming. You see, I have become an accidental cougar. Once I was a flirt; now I am a mother hen.  This was by no means an isolated incident. It all started when I had my first child. Once you become a mother, you feel full of such emotion and power that sometimes it feels like you could mother the whole world. Mother to one, mother to all. Now I’ve had three, and am permanently around other people’s children too, I can’t keep my maternal manner at bay. In general, this ought to be good for society – offering a kind, interested and sympathetic face to the general public. However, when it comes to males young enough to be my son – at a stretch (I’m late-thirties) – it can backfire sometimes, as I’ve discovered. “Good for your muscles!” I’ll call gaily to the young chap pushing the trolleys in the supermarket carpark. He nearly rams them into a car. “Oh, youlook a bit tired today,” I recently told one of the baristas at my favourite café, as if I were going to proceed to put him down for a nap. He said he was hungover; I asked whether he was out with mates, in a ‘check he got home safe’ type way. He seemed to construe this in an ‘are you single?’ type way and now I can’t order my decaf cappuccino without ducking knowing smiles from him and his pals. But I can rise above this. I know my intentions are pure. It’s too late with Tom – if I tried to retract the “beautiful face” (still cringing) comment, it will just seem like I’m protesting too much. As long as I limit myself to transactional-based chat and keep my cheery commentary for my own children, I may yet shake off my reputation. Is it just me or do you ever find yourself being an Accidental Cougar? *Names have been changed. This piece is also over on The Huffington Post here.

Never fear, Tortilla Boy’s here! Both a snack, and a disguise! For a moment I thought I’d found the perfect car snack – look no crumbs! Until they started tearing them apart and rolling bits into tiny balls…

Bamboozle them with Twiglets Create a booze’n’snacks smokescreen. I cannot stress this enough. Nothing draws the eye like a glinting wineglass and a bowl of tortilla chips – while the guests dip, they won’t notice the tip. Wear an apron = instant hostess. For added effect, dust your cheek with a becoming dab of flour, implying you’ve just made your own pastry. Have a steadying drink. But open a new bottle when the guests come – it makes them feel special. And stops them suspecting that you’re already two sheets to the wind.

Nobody needs to know…

Hide the sick bucket, toilet unblocker, fly spray, Immodium, Calpol, nit shampoo, dirty nappies and any other indicator that all is not well in your household. Dress yourself before the house. Would you rather be told your skirting boards are immaculate or that you look great? Ditch the mop until you’ve done your mascara. If you don’t manage to do the floor, pretend your kid just spilled a drink that minute. Rather that than they go away saying, “Doesn’t she look old?” in the car on the way home. Plan in advance. Whatever you do, don’t take your three children who found a rogue packet of jelly sweets in the back of the car on the way there to the largest Tesco in the land and make up the menu while pushing the trolley through the toy aisle. Don’t punch above your weight. I’ve never made a soufflé so this is not the time to start. Bake a cake. This is more for a daytime event, but having a cake in the oven makes both an amazing, welcoming smell as they come in – and you look good. Plus you can get all the kids to ice it later on, thus appearing like a top mum and saving yourself the embarrassment of making a hash of it yourself (or is that just me?). Sweep everything from surfaces into drawers. Try and ignore all the stuff shoved in there from your last Christmas tidy-up. Bills over 12 months old don’t need to be paid, right? Leave out a half-finished board game, giving the impression that your children have spent the day gainfully engaged. You definitely did not just turn off Frozenwhen the doorbell went. Put chocolates on the pillow. Your sheets may have been dyed in the wash, but who’s going to notice with a bowl of Smarties on the bedside table?

Don’t sweat the limes!

Clear up while drunk. So much less painful than doing it with a hangover and the kids clamouring around your shaky knees.

Don’t fret about limes in the Corona: Quite a specific one this, but it saved me some angst and an hour of fruitless skewering – I checked and it’s OK to recycle beer bottles with lime inside. Yes! Just in case you’re planning a Mexican-themed evening!

Focus on the fun not the food. It’s New Year’s Eve! Who cares if pudding is a load of leftover cheese and a box of chocolates with only the coffee crèmes left? If you like this, Like me on Facebook! An idea for after-dinner fun: