Don’t look at me as if I am a bad mother

Ignoring your child is a legitimate parenting technique. But it brings forth a lot of disapproval.

As a new mum I quickly learnt that shouting did not work. As toddlers my children would just ignore me and continue to do whatever naughty thing they were doing. Once they started school my daughter would just shrug and say ‘whatever’ and my son would break into floods of tears. I read a lot of parenting books and the strategy that I found the best to use was just to ignore the bad behaviour and praise the child as soon as they complied or did what I wanted them to do. This strategy is not always easy and it does not always work but it works better then shouting. However, other people do not seem to understand it at all, especially where the older generation are concerned.

I remember queuing in a shop and my son had a full blown tantrum because I said he couldn’t have a chocolate bar. I calmly ignored him, gave my full attention to his twin sister and waited for him to stop. We then picked up all the chocolate bars together which he had thrown everywhere. But the two old ladies behind were tutting and shaking their heads at me ignoring my son.

When my twins were four my in laws took us on holiday to Spain. After finishing their meal the twins went for a run around the restaurant. They ignored my request to sit back down and play with their toys. So my mother in law was most put out when I sat down and waited for them to stop running around on their own. She and my husband ended up chasing them around the restaurant. They eventually stopped on their own once the game got boring. We went off to do something fun. I made sure to give them plenty of praise for sitting at the table and took them out to play as soon as they were finished eating. They never ran round the restaurant again.

This weekend we took our children to Legoland. Henry was really tired and by the end of the day he had gone into full blown dramatics. If you tried to walk with him he slowed down and started flaying around and doing lots of heavy breathing. The only way to get him to walk was to walk ahead of him and ignore him. Without the audience he walked fine. So we were making our way up the queue of our last ride of the day. Daddy and Lily had rushed ahead to make sure they got on the ride and I was left trying to get Henry to walk up the stairs. Around the corner came this lady with her son. Seeing them, he ‘fell’ up the stairs and started crying. I was a short distance away ignoring him. The look on this poor woman’s face! She didn’t know whether she should help my sobbing child or berate me for leaving him in such a state. I did feel embarrassed but I comforted my son and managed to get him up the stairs and onto the last ride of the day with the promise of a happy meal. Sometimes you have to resort to bribery!

A Day of Dinosaurs and Dogs

The English are known to be a nation of animal lovers. So why do so many places exclude dogs?

Normally, if we want to treat the kids to a ‘good’ day out where we have to pay for entry and where there is plenty to see and do, we have to leave the dogs at home. So it is really refreshing to find that Eastnor Castle, a privately owned house near Gloucester, not only allows dogs in the grounds, but also provides plenty of entertainment for children.

This summer we took the whole family to see the ‘dinosaur show.’ This hour long entertainment started off with an introduction to a variety of animals before a baby T’rex came out. The best thing about it was that there was plenty of opportunities for the kids to go into the arena and interact with the animals and dinosaur, whilst we were able to sit and watch the fun with our puppies. I was rather surprised (and pleased) that the dinosaurs were not at all scary for our puppies. They were quite happy to curl up and go to sleep (not with us though – they chose a random family in the crowd to go curl up with!).  Although they did have a bit of a bark at another dog in the audience.

All the dogs owners we met seemed responsible. Dogs stayed on leads, poo was picked up, very few dogs barked, the children all enjoyed themselves and my puppies got lots of attention which they love. Even better, the children actually walked around the grounds without moaning the entire time about their legs being tired. I only wish more places were as dog friendly!

Let me use the bathroom in peace, please!

Do you enjoy a nice relaxing soak in the bath? Or having a read whilst going to the loo? Yes? Then don’t have kids!

Why is it that every time I go into the bathroom, that’s the moment the kids want to know where something is? Or else they want to moan about their lives. Or they want to know what I am doing.

My kids are 7 now and I still cannot disappear into the bathroom for a bit of peace and quiet. They seem to have a radar that goes off every time I try to have a shower or a bath and that is the moment they desperately need to talk to me. And now the puppies also follow me to the bathroom and if they cannot see me then they run upstairs to search up there.

It is getting better. As babies the kids used to have to come with me as they would cry if left. As toddlers I would make sure they were happily occupied with their toys before I would explain to them that I was just nipping to the loo and would be back soon. Sometimes, whilst on the toilet, I would hear my son call out ‘Mummy? Mummy, where are you?’ I would then hear the front door being opened and my son shouting ‘Mummmmy!” as he ran up the street. Where he thought I was going to the loo is still a mystery. At least I can now shut the door when I go to the toilet at home, although I am so used to weeing with it open that sometimes I forget – very embarrassing when they suddenly come home with their friends!

Summer 2018 has been the yet for water fun

It was with a very heavy heart today, that I packed away our blow up swimming pool. My husband bought this 20ft pool at the beginning of the good weather in May. I scoffed that it was a complete waste of money as everyone knows England only gets about 2 weeks of sunshine in the summer. And I was not happy that the pool took up the majority of the garden, leaving no room for our swing set and football goal. But I have never been so glad to be wrong! The freak good weather lasting into August has been absolutely fantastic. Every evening after dinner we have been able to enjoy a family swim and game of water volley ball. After school and at weekends all the kids in the street have rushed over to play. We have even taught our two puppies to swim. It really has been a busy, boisterous, entertaining summer of water fun. The only down side is the unsightly, massive bare patch left in our lawn. Lets hope for a wet winter so the grass can recover ready for the pools reemergence next summer.

Fun Fairs should be mandatory for Town Councillors

There are bigger villages in the UK then my little town of 9000 souls. But despite our small size, there is always plenty going on. This week my little town has been invaded by a fun fair. It turns out that a surprising number of rides can be crammed into our small market square. The fair has been held on the same spot since the 1700s and family in charge can trace their rides back six generations. Luckily they have the right to hold the fair each year in September – our town council is made up mostly of retirees who complain that the rides look ugly, are too close to the historic buildings and are probably shaking the foundations too much.

But walk into the high Street any night this week, mingle with the crowds of excited children and teenagers, chat to the other parents and it is hard not to be swept away by the sheer joy of it. If only the Councillors would attend and see for themselves how the younger community that comes to life on these evenings. And to brave one of the bigger rides which whoosh you above the rooftops, is to experience our little town from a completely different perspective.

 

Tummy bugs do not kill children, but mothers may die of excessive worry

My daughter has a tummy bug. No big deal. Thousands of school aged children get tummy bugs each year and I don’t know of any that have died from it. So why is it that last night I woke up three times worrying that my daughter might have suddenly stopped breathing and died? Actually, it isn’t just during the night. If I nip out of the room for more than 5 minutes I start getting anxious and have to look for any slight movement whilst my child is zoned out in the front of the telly.

You see, this is the part of being a being a parent that non one every talks about. Everyone seems to have an option on the how to change a nappy, how to breastfeed, how to introduce solids, how to control the behavior of your children etc. All these areas have a myriad of information available to help you. But there is no advice on how to come to terms with the fear of losing a child. It is a topic that is just not talked about.

My twins were conceived through IVF.  I knew plenty of people who had to go through the treatment several times before they had a successful birth. So when I took the test and discovered I was pregnant on my first go I protected myself against the risk of loss by being prepared that this pregnancy may not go to full term. Every week I would google all the things that could possibly go wrong so that I was prepared. I was no less terrified of losing my twins, but at least I felt prepared for the worst. The worst never happened and two healthy babies arrived.

I stupidly thought that the birth would be the end of my worries when actually it was just the beginning! When the children are inside you tummy, they are confined, they are secure and they are safe. This is not so as soon as they come out of you. Then they are prone to all sorts of attack from the super-bugs residing inside the hospital. Then you have to take your newborn bundle and brave the big bad world outside full of numerous deadly dangers. Then you have to strap these fragile little bodies into a seat that looks far too big and put them in a car. A CAR! 2000 people in the UK DIE in cars every year. And then even worst, you have to take your child into your home. Now statistically your home is the most dangerous place you can be as that is where the majority of accidents take place. And you have to keep your children there!

Each stage of development is wonderful in its own way, but at each stage, your worrying only increases. When they start to crawl to have to worry about sharp edges and hard surfaces. When they start to walk you have to keep them away from deep water and busy roads. When they go to school you have to trust another person to keep them safe from strangers and the school collapsing. And don’t even get me started on school trips (why do schools want to add to the risk of death!).

I know that children need space to develop and become independent, but each step away from me only seems to increase my own worry. And looking forward I know a lot worse is yet to come. Soon they will want to walk to school on their own. They will want to go out with their friends. Before you know it they will want to leave home entirely and live on their own. My worrying will continue to expand to include the prospect of cyber-bullying, drugs, knife crime, date rape, terrorists.

Worrying is the worst part of motherhood. It may be the necessary part that makes you prepare your children for every eventuality, but it is also the silent unspoken terror that can be hard to admit to and even harder to speak out about.

 

 

Slime is nice, but edible slime is best

Youtube is full of how to make slime videos. It is currently the hottest thing to do and there are hundreds of videos showing you how to make them. The main ingredients are glue, borax, shaving foam, eye contact solution and food colouring. On the YouTube videos the ingredients are all easily mixed together to produce beautiful fluffy, malleable slime. In practice however, after several attempts using a variety of washing powders recommended by British vloggers, all we have so far produced is a mess.

Part of the problem is not being able to buy borax due to EU regulations. Apparently there was a craze  last decade to put borax in your eyes to whiten them so you could go to work and your boss wouldn’t know you had been out drinking all night. The pain only lasted a couple of hours and if you did this three times you went blind, so the EU decided it was too dangerous and banned it. Kill joys.

Countless YouTube hours later, we found a video on how to make edible slime. Now there are  numerous recipes for this too, but I latched onto a really easy recipe using ingredients I actually had in my cupboard. Melt 3 large handfuls of marshmallows in a saucepan. Add a large spoonful of chocolate spread and mix together. Allow to cool slightly (we waited about 30 seconds) then spoon out the mess onto the work surface or your hands and enjoy. I put icing sugar on my kids hands first to stop it sticking, and if you add to much chocolate spread then you can add icing sugar to make it a smoother consistence again. (Warning – too much icing sugar will make the slime stiff). Visually, the slime isn’t great. But the kids were really pleased to not only successfully make slime, but to have slime that also tasted really nice and which they could ‘prank’ each other with by pretending it was dog poo.

 

I would rather lose an arm then break another laptop

You don’t realize how reliant you are on your laptop until you break it.

For those of you who have noticed that it has been two weeks since my last blog, post, Instagram, email etc etc. Okay, so my mobile phone is still working and I could use it for all of the above, but I find writing my blog on my phone too much hard work – the words don’t flow properly. So to have a new working laptop once again is sheer bliss.

 

This is my fifth laptop in 6 years! Here is what happened to the others:-

Laptop 1 (2008-2012) – whilst skyping grandparents the twins showed off their new tippy cups, turning them upside down and tipping all the water inside all over the laptop.

Laptop 2 (2012-2013) – whilst skyping grandparents the twins showed off their new water bottles, turning them upside down and tipping all the water inside all over the laptop. Yes, you think I would have learnt not to let them do this!

Laptop 3 (2013-2016) – I dropped it. I cannot blame the twins for this one!

Laptop 4 (2016-2018) – Whilst I was answering emails aboard Navigator of the Seas, in a very tiny cabin, my brothers son ran behind me, got his feet caught in the power lead and sent the laptop flying across the room where it promptly shut down and refused to start.

After numerous attempts to save the hard drive and get the laptop back up and running I have had to concede defeat and buy a new laptop. If only laptops were more like mobile phones. I drop my phone all the time and it’s case and screen protector mean it doesn’t break, and it can go swimming with me. If only laptops were that durable!

 

Livorno and Barcelona – two ports to visit animals

My two favourite’s ports so far this cruise have been the two where we have visited animals.

With its red terracotta tiles, small size and its nearness to the cruise ship. Livorno is by far the prettiest of all our ports to sit and look at whilst having breakfast. But, there isn’t a lot for families to do in Livorno. Most tourists head for Pisa or Florence. We were too exhausted from Civitavecchia yesterday to want to go too far. We opted for a nice quiet morning on the ship, and ventured into Livorno after lunch. The free shuttle bus drops you in a square where conveniently there is a tourist information. Inside the very friendly staff gave us directions, and money off vouchers, to the local aquarium. The ‘blue’ bus left just around the corner and some nice locals on the bus pointed out the stop we needed (it was about two down).

The aquarium is only small. Barcelona and Lisbon have much bigger ones, but it was quiet and a good place to escape the heat. The kids took their time over every tank of fish and it was lovely to hear them pointing out the different species to each other. The ground floor is devoted to marine life whilst the upper floor has some reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates. The kid’s favourite by far was the leaf cutter ants and they spent some time watching them go round the room. There is also an escape onto the rook, with views out to sea and towards Livorno.

 

Next door to the aquarium is a ‘water park’ – a smallish beach area with a pool and restaurant and a water slide for €6 each. The beach bit was absolutely packed. After our ‘water day’ yesterday, we skipped this beach and got the bus back to our start point and had a wander around ‘little Venice’ – the canals, keeping as much in the shade as we could. We ended up at an entrance into the fort. Inside is a park. Unfortunately the children’s play area was closed, so we didn’t stay long. Opposite the fort was the first square where we caught the shuttle bus back to the ship.

 

Barcelona in comparison was daunting in its vast size. What appears a short distance on a map is actually quite far to walk! Wanting another easy day after all the walking in Marseille, we paid the €5 each to ride the shuttle bus to the world trade centre, then we caught the H14 bus (costing another €2.20 each one way) from the stop to the right of the roundabout to the NW corner of the park. My brother’s family used a taxi from the port to the same spot and it only cost €11. Across the road and around the corner is a little chocolate museum. The best bit is that your ticket is a little chocolate bar you have to scan to enter the museum. It’s dark chocolate, so I got to eat all four bars. Inside there are a few boards on the history of chocolate and then a number of chocolate sculptures. The kids loved examining these sculptures, and in particular looking for the tiny bugs that have infested a couple of the glass cabinets!

Next, we walked over the road and entered the park. We were a bit disappointed that the numerous play areas only seemed to have a couple of pieces of equipment each. So we hurried to the zoo. We had managed to find the tickets to the zoo half price online and were able to skip the queues to enter. Inside the zoo had plenty of shade and it was a nice place to wander around. We really took our time, having a good look at each animal. My daughter finally got to see a dolphin (she has been desperate to see one this trip and was failed to spot any from the ship). The dolphin show no longer runs, which was disappointing but much better for the dolphins. In the middle of the zoo was a good kid’s play area, although they were most impressed by the water sprayers on the path to cool you down. We spent four hours wandering around, then caught a taxi from the train station outside the zoo back to the World Trade Centre (costing less than €5), where we joined the queue for the shuttle bus.

These two days were not the most energetic and exciting. We really took our time, and we had frequent stops for food. But it was nice to see the kids excited about seeing animals. As toddlers they were more interested in the enclosure fence then the animal inside. At 4 all they wanted was a play area, and were too impatient to spend more than a second at each enclosure. Now they are 7 years old, they want to know what the boards say about the animals and they point out interesting animal behaviours.

Price Info:

The Livorno Aquarium costs €14 Adults, €8 Children

The Museum of Chocolate costs €6 per adult, children under 6 are FREE

Barcelona Zoo costs €21.50 adults, €12.95 Children, but tickets are half price online.

Tempers flare when the Temperature Soars!

Temperatures hit 32⁰C in Marseille today. Okay, this is positively cool compared to the 44⁰C some parts of Europe have experienced this summer, and it is not as hot as Italy was yesterday, but today we have had to WALK in the SUN, and this does not make for good family relations.

It’s Royal Caribbean’s fault. They wanted to charge €60 for a shuttle for a family of 4 to the old dock. We refused to pay such an outrageous price, so instead we discovered on Facebook a free shuttle bus five minutes’ walk away. Upon leaving the terminal building you follow a thick green line until it reaches an air conditioned bus. But there is no shade and we had 5 minutes of moaning from both children.

We did make it and were dropped at the port entrance building. From here it was another trek to the old harbour. We followed the sea and ended up at the top end by a ‘Minecraft’ like building. No problem, at least there was air conditioning inside and we were able to get up onto the roof and cross a bridge to a fort. But this fort had little shade. We escaped down into the harbour and ducked along the parade of restaurants lining the front. This is where it all kicked off. The kids were hot and tired. My husband was hot and thirsty and I was hot and feeling really really stressed as the. It was not a good combination. I t felt as if we would never reach end of the harbour. Luckily, after much bickering we found an ice cream shop and gained enough sugar to find the boat to the Chateau D’if. For any fans of Alexandre Dumas (he wrote the Three Musketeers) this Château was a prison and the setting of Dumas’ ‘Count of Monte Cristo.’ This prison is only accessible by boat and for a short time we were united as we ran from prison cell to prison cell, looking for secret passages and holes. But then we had to go back out in the sun!

On both the boat journey to and from the prison the kids argued the entire time about who was holding the giant packet of Doritos and who was eating more than the other. Then they both complained it was too hot to walk and they needed a drink, but not water, or the juice they had asked us to buy which they had decided they didn’t like. We tried to give them a chocolate bar each as a reward for having to walk back to the cruise port (we found a street by a Carrefour near the boat drop off that lead straight back to the Cruise Port Entrance), but they argued that one bar was bigger than the other and tasted better, even though they were both identical. Then my son said he needed the toilet, so we found one, only for him to say he had never said he needed the toilet! And this was all before we had to brave the five minute walk in the sun back to the cruise ship.

Boy was it wonderful to get back on board the cruise ship. We all collapsed in our windowless air conditioned cabin. We didn’t even notice how small and cramped it is. We were just all so glad to be away from the sun and the temper tantrum causing heat.