S has always been a fairly quiet child; when she met new people she would do her best to make her head disappear between her shoulders, and resolutely looked at the floor until they stopped speaking to her and went away. Sometimes, if the person was visiting and stayed for Read more…
For her first birthday, S was given a “My first Steiff” teddy bear by Big S. Shortly after her birthday, she started nursery and they suggested I should bring in a transitional object from home – something for her to cuddle and be reminded of home. The Steiff teddy fit Read more…
We’ve all seen the ubiquitous “humble-brag” on social media, haven’t we? The old “oh, I wish Tarquin weren’t so ahead of everyone else in his pre-school class, it’s so frustrating!” or “it’s so hard to parent a genius; you can’t just send them to a normal school, you know.” Read more…
As you may know, I’m self employed and have been for a year or so now. Just lately, I’ve noticed there’s something of a dichotomy in the types of work I do. On the one hand, I write. I write columns and articles, I ghost write blogs, I write Read more…
Today is World Prematurity Day. Every year 15 million babies are born prematurely. 60,000 of those are born in the UK. It seems hard to believe now she is two and a half and full of life and giggles, but S was one of those 60,000 in 2012. She was Read more…
Earlier this month, I wrote a post about my view on parent blogging. It seems to have attracted more controversy than I was expecting, and I must admit some of the responses I saw got me down a bit. I must point out here that the responses to that post Read more…
Saturday morning. We decide to go out to the shops for a wander. S holds my hand; we have a lovely walk across the market, saying hello to dogs. She has brought her own shopping bag with her, which we decorated together last week. We pop into our favourite bakery Read more…
Gaslighting is something I had never heard of, until it happened to me… or rather, until a long while after it happened to me. While it’s happening, it’s really hard to recognise. On Wikipedia, gaslighting is described as: a form of mental abuse in which false information is presented with Read more…
Today is Remembrance Sunday. When I was very small, my sister was in the Brownies, and we would go to watch her in the Remembrance Day parade. When I joined Brownies and was finally able to join in with the parade, I was really excited to be a part Read more…
It occurred to me this weekend that it’s entirely possible my sister has spent more quality time with S than I have, over the last month. Between moving house, trying to fit packing and unpacking in around work, and a bunch of other stuff I won’t go into, my Read more…
The other day I had a meeting about something completely unrelated to my writing or this blog. Over the course of the meeting though, I did mention the blog. Afterwards the person I had been speaking to saw a link to my blog in my email signature, and decided Read more…
Having given up interacting on social media for Lent, and then taken part in Sugar Free September and done the #OctoberLetters project, I like the idea of having a new challenge for November. For those who aren’t aware, November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. It’s a Read more…
Towards the end of September, I decided I’d quite like a challenge for October, so I asked around on social media. After a few random suggestions, I decided to spend October writing letters. I started out thinking the hardest part of the challenge would be finding 31 people to Read more…
At one stage in my previous life, I was going to the gym around eight or nine times a week. I would go in the mornings before work, attend classes on my lunch breaks, maybe go in the evenings or to classes on the weekends. I was at the Read more…
When I had my breakdown, a large part of it stemmed from feeling very lonely. I felt that I would be alone forever, that nobody could possibly love me. My previous track record with men supported the view that I had something terribly wrong with me, and once people Read more…
S and I were very lucky to be sent a copy of The Mumsnet Book of Animal Stories to review. The books I normally review are either adult ones, or kids’ ones where they can sit and read them themselves. This is a proper, old-fashioned story book that you sit Read more…