Blankie!

It's been a time for reflection as I realised that it is 25 years since my Grandad died this week.

With a shock, I also realised that when Grandad died, my dad would have been the same age that I am now. My mum's dad also died about this time of the year and it is the 60th anniversary of his death (my mum was five when he died; and three when her mum died).

It's all part of the circle of life, but the funny thing is that what has actually had me pondering about how quickly childhood goes by before turning into parenthood was the fact that I took the McBaby out on a very hot day last week (remember those?) and the little monkey would not wear his sunhat. EVEN THOUGH IT HAS PEPPA PIG ON IT!

It meant I had to improvise with a blanket that I put over his head and the pushchair to keep the sun off. Except while I was walking the 4 miles to meet my friend, I took an important phone call that engrossed me for a couple of minutes and during that time, the McBaby threw away his cup of milk and the blanket. I retraced our steps, turning our 4 mile walk into a 6 mile walk but couldn't find either of them.

The cup isn't so vital, although it's annoying. However, the blanket was mine when I was a baby. It had brown 70s style rabbits on it and is so old that it's become fashionable again. I know it's not by the road so someone must have picked it up possibly not knowing what sentimental value it has to the McFamily!

So please take a moment if you can to remember my five grandparents (yes, five, but that's another post), my 70s rabbit blanket and my childhood - all in memoriam today.



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"Why aren't you looking after him properly?"

I feel like I am losing a grip on the McBaby's discipline and it seems I'm not the only one who thinks so.

These are some of the people who have commented, tutted, or rolled their eyes in the last week:


-an elderly woman in Waitrose with hair that didn't move.

-An older man also in Waitrose who told the manager that we should be removed (and sent to Lidl I guess).

but today when the McBaby ran off in the opposite direction, screaming, someone stopped me. The little man then ran into someone's foot and fell over, prompting someone to ask me: "why aren't you looking after him properly?"

However, the most humiliating moment was when a woman was quite understanding and was very patient about the McBaby running screaming into her shop, throwing her phone on the floor and trying to break her card machine by entering a £5,000,000 card payment onto it. Why this upset me even more than the judgemental comments, I don't know.

Before I can even contemplate having any more, has anyone got any tips on how to get a child to come when you call them? On how to stop them screaming for the sake of it? On how to stop them scratching you in the face?

HELP!



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Dough!

Concerned that the McBaby was watching too much Peppa (mainly because he kept calling me Peppa), I decided to look for things to do outside.

So when a recipe for homemade play dough popped into my inbox, I decided to follow it.

Step One:
Take a large bowl and add:

* 2 cups flour -DONE
* 1 cup salt -DONE


(Phone call here from a friend..."what are you doing?" "Making dough" "Oh sorry, didn't realise you were working today..hangs up)

*2 tablespoons vegetable oil ..er, I've only got olive oil. Does that make me middle class?
* 2 tablespoons cream of tartar - haven't got any of this. Is it like tartare sauce? Ah, never mind, just how crucial can it be?

The answer is, very.

The McBaby loved playing with this but not quite in the way I'd imagined.....

The generation gap

We had an interesting weekend with MrM's parents, who - you won't be surprised to hear - are older than us.

MrM's parents are truly, truly old school. We watched on in amusement as his dad drank a glass of orange juice in one go before gasping at how sweet it was.

"You do know that you're meant to dilute it?" said MrM.

Anyway, while we there, we encountered their siblings, also old school types.

The reason that I am mentioning this is that four of them -all women in their 60s - without asking how I was or any other pleasantry, demanded in an accusatory way: "Have you gone back to work yet?"

Now, "yet", as anyone who has seen High Fidelity knows, means you should have done it, doesn't it? Or that you are planning to?

"Have you done the washing up YET?"

All of them went back to work about six weeks after they had their babies, and their question made me wonder if they were proving their worth or they were just saying that I have it easy? Or that MrM earns a lot and I have it easy? (He doesn't and I don't).

Or that I should have gone back to work?

Being somewhere in the middle and having gone back to work, left work and set up on my own is not an answer that I found easy to explain to them, nor a situation I think they'd have any interest in. I know times weren't easy back then, but in those days it was possible to buy a house for about twice a man's salary.

Now, you struggle on a combined income and are looking at a quadrupling of your income to buy a small house.

There's definitely a war of the generations between women and I wonder if anyone else has been on the receiving end of a question like that?

I don't think any of them know what I do for a living anyway.

Bookstart competition - did we win?!

No, we didn't!

But I can spy our entry in "The Gallery"!

Biting

I met a friend of my dad's the other day who asked me what the McBaby's real name is as my dad constantly refers to him as the "GLM" (Great Little Man). He then bizarrely went onto say that meeting him (the McBaby, not my dad) had made his wife broody.

However, the McBaby has put me OFF having more children. I used to want 10 little versions of him, but recently, he's taken to screaming at a hitherto unknown pitch, he's been biting and he's been grabbing my face.

But if it's good enough for Suarez, then who can blame the McBaby for thinking it's ok to bite?

There was a piece on Woman's Hour about biting at about 25 minutes in. Not that useful really, but at least I know I'm not the only one....


http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s0s6h




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A celebrity in our local Mothercare!

Lots of people told me about this and I didn't believe any of them!

But it's true as it's in our local paper - Beyoncé has been shopping in our local Mothercare. The most famous person I've ever seen while out shopping in Newbury is Bruno Brookes.....



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