So BritMums launched this challenge at the beginning of the summer. How do you fill your days during the summer, how do you entertain your little ones? Here is 42 ideas: 1. Go out cycling. 2. Blow bubbles. Inside or outside. Doesn’t matter as long as you spread a towel on the slippery floor to make the activity safe. 3. Go for a walk to the beach. 4. Go swimming. Indoor or in the sea, weather permitting. 5. Make a scrap book with pictures and activities you do over the summer as a memory for when they are all grown up. 6. Sleep in late after a movie night in with popcorn and sweets. 7. Build a fort indoors or in the back garden. Chairs and blankets will do. 8. Join a summer class. Emma is big on drama at the moment and although she didn’t get a chance to do any classes this summer due to our circumstances, she will start in September. 9. Go fruit picking, if you have where. 10. Go to …

This week the world has been shaken by the loss of a great man. I remember the shock of reading the news that evening. Robin Williams? Dead? Suicide? Wrong words jumbled together. So we all did what our hearts told us to do. We mourned publicly the loss of a great person. We quoted the artist, we comforted the man’s family. We created and forwarded lists of his favourite performances. More important, Robin Williams’ death served as a catalyst. Unprecedentedly, we ACKNOWLEDGED clinical depression publicly and its devastating effects on the sufferer and the surrounding family. And then, we acknowledged our own pain and hidden suffering. I saw so many beautiful people coming forward and bravely acknowledging their personal fight with the overbearing monster that clinical depression can be. And we showed solidarity. And we proved humanity still exists by embracing these people and whispering to them, in comments on their blogs or in tight embraces when we saw them face to face. It is okay. It is not your fault. As Nick Coffer put …

First of all, let me start by saying my baby has been gone for five weeks yesterday. 35 days!! How cruelly fast the time passes, stealing with it the sweetest features, the small details, the tactile. I have started to forget how my baby’s tiny hands looked. I need pictures to remind me now. My body has stopped aching for his physical presence in a painful way. The time has dulled the sharpness of the physical pain. But he is still in my thoughts. Of course he is. He is there when I accidentally end up on the Mothercare website and spot the “small brother” baby grow. And my heart stops for a few painful seconds. He is there when I go for a walk in Perea, where our holiday apartment used to be and I see a baby boy pushed in a pram. And my mind says “this should have been us” before I can stop the thought from coming. He is there in Emma’s features when she is deeply asleep. He is there, …