Her slummy mummy’s joyous parenting guide
KIDS? THEY HIJACK YOUR WHOLE LIFE
MANY years ago, I remember staying with my friend when she had a young baby. I was about to take a shower when she asked me to hold off because the fan in the bathroom would wake her son.
Why, I thought, do people have children if they’re so bothered with getting them to sleep all the time?
I wasn’t going to be one of those incredibly dull people who let their offspring overhaul their lives. I certainly wouldn’t be saying I couldn’t meet for lunch at 1pm because of nap time – children should fit around your plans, right?
In short, I was one of those clueless, pre-child idiots who need slapping about the face with a wet fish. Kids, it turns out, are total lifejackers. Mine took away my ability to leave the house without three different bags; my lie-ins; the leisurely brunches and Sunday afternoons reading the paper; my youthful complexion; my desire to wear anything other than trainers; my energy; my pert boobs; the skill required to talk in proper sentences; and the downtime I needed to get over hangovers.
ON MUMMY’S HANGOVERS
I STILL like to have fun. It’s perfectly possible to forget that you have children and/or hideous engagements planned for the next day. When you are woken up after two hours’ sleep by them jumping up and down on your head at 5.30am, you remember only too well.
Here is my ten-step programme for dealing with children while hung over: Play dead and hope they will leave you alone.
FEEDING TIME AT THE ZOO
I’D LIKE my kids a whole lot better if they didn’t have to eat. It wasn’t always that way, of course. As a mum of an approaching six-month-old, I couldn’t wait to get him started on food to break the monotony of bottles and puking. Little did I realise that the simple notion of giving your baby food was actually the most complicated thing in the world. There are entire books written on the subject. I know this because I bought them.
Once we’d got over the hurdle of eating actual food, there came a period where I was able to feel quite smug – I had a baby who ate everything: salmon, cucumber, houmous, broccoli, couscous, cat food, sand, bits of chewing gum that he found in the park.
How difficult it must be to have a fussy eater, I thought, although it’s probably just the parents’ fault for weaning them on chicken nuggets.
That was until he declared that Mummy’s home-made cottage pie was ‘YUK!’
Slowly, his list of acceptable foods started to diminish until, aged about two, he rejected practically everything savoury except toast, pasta and cheese if it wasn’t cut up the right way.
So if you have a fussy eater then there are a couple of things you can do:
1. Cook things they like, and if that means two different meals for the family then so be it.
2. Hold firm with a like-it-orlump-it approach. I tried this and found my younger son will go all day on thin air. He’s skinny and stubborn but I can’t let him go to bed hungry or he’ll wake at 4am demanding Coco Pops.
So I ditched all of my lofty ideals. If something relatively healthy goes into their tummies once or twice a day then that’s going down as a win.
Psssst... sometimes I still do stuff like squirt canned cream directly into their gobs, because what it does to their faces – you just can’t bottle it.
ACCEPT IT – YOUR LITTLE DARLINGS ARE GROSS
OF COURSE I missed him. I’m not that much of a cow! As we said our goodbyes on that very first day at school, I succumbed to the typical stereotype of the sobbing parent with the best of ’em.
I worried he wouldn’t be able to sit still, that he would feel a little lost without me, and that it might all be too much for him. I was wrong. He skips through the door happily each day.
He is also ever so slightly more tired than usual – in a sleeps less and acts like a rabid dog type way.
Then there are the infestations to think about.
At least half the time you go to collect your child there will be a poster up to inform you that there is a case of nits in the class. Or worms. Or, if you are lucky, both.
Kids are gross. Do you know what else is gross? Accepting that ‘playdate’ will become part of your everyday vocabulary.