Maternal Myopia – Standards Are Slipping

This week Emily shares another humourous insight into the world of multiple parenting, explaining how your standards relax (collapse) with each additional child…. Mothers of multiple children, whether born singly or in sets, will acknowledge that their standards slip a little with each child. Prior to the birth of your precious first-born, the heralded arrival [...]

The hypocrite’s off to Disneyland

This week Mothership, our Brit mum in the US finds herself putting aside her anti-Disney ways for the love of her daughter… As you may or may not know, I am a loud and vocal critic of all things Disney and rarely miss an opportunity to descry Walt’s retrousse-nosed, D-cup princesses and their passive, sanitised, [...]

The Travelling Circus: Flying With Children

This week Emily reminds us of the chaos of flying with children and offers up some handy tips for helping you get to the other end in one piece with your sanity (just about) intact…   I love flying. I love everything about it; people-watching at the airport, shopping for duty-free, running to the gate in [...]

Child Hierarchy – In Order of Importance

This week Emily ponders whether you can avoid the hierarchy that affects how you celebrate and commemorate each of your children… As a child I loved flicking through my parent’s photo albums; laughing at the fashions of the sixties and marvelling at the wallpaper of the seventies. There were literally hundreds of snaps of a [...]

Brit Mum Does American Easter

This week Mothership, our Brit mum in the US lets us in on her full on (yet eco friendly) Easter preparations… Today was spent in focused preparation for all things Easter which, as is usual for every holiday, involved trying to explain to Four why I wasn’t going to spend our weary and increasingly pathetic [...]

Countdown to Baby 2: End of the Madness Road (Almost)

So it’s the final week and the next time I waffle on about my shenanigans with ‘baby 2′, they will be out. I can hardly believe it! Actually, that’s a lie. I catch sight of myself in the mirror sometimes and do a double take, which I suppose is better than when the bambino cracks [...]

Top Marks for Me…& My Little Eco Warrior

This week Mothership, our Brit mum in the US attends parent teaching meetings for her children and discovers strange and wonderful things to leave her proud… Today Husband and I went for Four and One’s parent-teacher conferences. This caused some tittering amongst ourselves partly because, despite being the owners of a couple of grey hairs [...]

Sing With Suzie…for a Buggy In a Trapped Shop Door & a Load of Second Hand Tat

This week, Emily demonstrates how passing time between playgroup’s can be a trap in more ways than one… There is a conspiracy among the organisers of toddler groups to cram everything possible into two days, leaving the rest of the week stretching endlessly before you, and forcing you into attempts at home-based messy play in [...]

Countdown to Baby 2: Panic Mode

Not long to go now. That’s what strangers say to me never mind people who know me! It’s the large protruding bump that is totally out to the front and ‘precariously’ low. I of course am at that stage where I am sick to the back teeth of being pregnant, excited about ‘baby 2′, and [...]

I’m Sorry…Are we on holiday?

This week, Mothership, our Brit mum based in the US explains how family holiday’s can be like a stressful home away from home… We are on our first ever ski trip ‘en famille’ in Colorado and whatever jokester coined the phrase ‘family vacation’ was obviously high as it is clearly a contradiction in terms. I [...]

Thank Heavens for Big Knickers

This week, Emily shares her tale of bearing her big knickers in church… I blame the Vicar for my momentary lapse of common sense. She visited us prior to the girls’ Baptism and told us how welcome we’d be at their Sunday morning family service. I was feeling an increasing amount of guilt at our [...]

Countdown to Baby 2: Nesting Overdrive

I am in full nesting mode so I have hustled my dad into coming up in a few days and redecorating the bambino’s room (ssh the boyf doesn’t quite ‘understand’ the full extent of my plans), put up a load of shelves, and a few other bits and bobs that we’ve put on the long [...]

How on earth do you do it?

This week, Emily does the big reveal on her ‘secret’ behind surviving juggling three very young children… Previous columns have alluded to the lack of originality apparent in remarks from well-meaning, yet mis-guided passers-by.  (If you missed my thoughts on this, here’s a quick summary: DON’T ask me if multiples run in my family, DON’T [...]

Countdown to Baby 2: The Hospital Bag

Well with just under four weeks to go till ‘baby 2′s arrival, every week (unless I pop suddenly although I wouldn’t hold your breath with my track record), I shall be sharing my preparations (read shopping exploits and pawing at virtual windows like a junkie) and what’s happening as I’ve had a lot of people [...]

Attitude of Gratitude

This week, Mothership, our Brit mum based in the US explains how being thankful with her family has been met with ingratitude… When I was little and first went to school I was completely baffled by the practice of saying prayers before school dinners. I came from a family of die-hard atheists and nobody had [...]

Next Page »