All posts tagged: parenting

Parenting with less grace. Remedies

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I have been struggling with some of Emma’s behaviour lately. Or maybe not only lately but my reactions have become more dramatic and anything to be proud of. I shout and I smack. There, I said it. I do it in certain circumstances and I thought I might be brave and share them with you just in case other mothers struggle with the same things. 1. My number one trigger is TIREDNESS. Both mine and hers. When we’re both tired and short-fused and when I expect Emma to sleep and she plays up(quite expertly lately, I must add!) I lose it. And it’s not a pretty sight. Remedy: stick to a sleeping routine even if it’s painstakingly difficult to do it. Reinforce your words and actions(thank you, Supernanny!) until the child understands you mean business. Even if that means putting her back into her bed 100 times until she’s dead tired of playing the same boring game. AVOID sleepover with relatives less aware of routine/unwilling/unsupportive. 2. BOREDOM. Yeap, we’re all guilty of it as mothers. …

What to expect when you’re expecting

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I can’t remember last time I saw a movie in a cinema. Oh wait, something vague is coming to mind…it’s been a few months at least. Anyway, last night I just decided to go solo, left toddler with hubby for the last half an hour of her awake time and fled the house. Quite literally. Gooodness knows when I’ll be able to do this next, with us travelling to a different country and all… I didn’t have much time to check reviews on what’s good of all the movies that are out at the moment. What to expect had a cute trailer. Although seeing it I didn’t expect much ,to be honest, as I know trailers generally contain the best bits in the movie and I wasn’t particularly impressed by it. Okay, it had a large number of cliches ( all American movies do, I’m afraid): the rich and famous father who married a slut much younger woman and the scarred for life by his father’s behaviour son; the clueless father-gang thing protecting each other’s …

The miracle of raising a toddler

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….is that they develop so fast that you can hardly keep up with them. In the last three weeks or so we noticed  Emms taking giant leaps in her speech and her imaginative play development. She has moved from two-three word sentences like “Mummy, water, peeease” to full-blown speech and coherent thoughts. It started with daddy getting it all in stereo: “Alex, can you hurry up, please?”… “Daaaaaaddyyy, hurry up!!!” If you find that amusing try imagining two women raging and stomping their feet at you in the same time… poor guy. It went on to Emms trying to put words together on her own, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so and sounding like a slurred drunk: “Mummy, me go shopping…take bag…need money..okay???” Today I was washing the dishes after breakfast when I heard her say: “Mummy, there’s a big dinosaur.” I thought she was just imagining it. Daddy has been playing this “Peppa Pig living in a castle” game with her and her imagination sparks like fireworks when you least expect it. Daddy stepped in …

50 Things That Make Me Happy

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I wrote in my last post about things that relax me. This morning I went grocery shopping(another thing that relaxed me, especially when done on my own, on a Friday morning, looking for good deals in Tesco’s!) and then the thought came to me: can I find 50 things that make me happy? I did this exercise several times in the last six years but I never did it with such a big number…Anyway, it will be interesting to see what the epiphanies my catharsis will bring. Just bear with me, that’s all I’m saying, this is gonna be another random order list! I like the rain. Its sound relaxes and soothes me. I love rustling autumn leaves. I like good quality ice-cream. Movenpick and Mauds come to mind. I like studying. To the point that when I signed up for my Master degree my dad pulled me aside and told me the story of this very smart PhD. student who lost his marbles from too much reading. I’m interested in photography. I’d like to …

What’s haven for Mama’s Haven?

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I’d love to say that I am sporty and I go running, swimming and Zumba dancing regularly…But I’m not sporty, I can’t run more than 90 second intervals and 15 minutes in total on a treadmill, I can’t swim and the first(and last) time I went for a Zumba class I almost had an apoplexy. So how do I relax and stay healthy? Thank goodness, hubby has been into super healthy eating since baby was born(as he explains now, he needed a project himself, since I had mine:raising the baby!) so I haven’t had many opportunities to pig out and pile up the weight. At the end of the day, I’m the one doing all the super healthy cooking! I enjoy cooking, theoretically and it used to relax me. I say it “used to” because almost a year ago baby went through a phase when she refused anything to eat except, well…crap food. I started to stress out so much that every meal time became a nightmare. She’s past the exclusive junk phase but I …