Category Archives: Parenting

A Liebster award!

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Thank you to Sand In My Toes for honouring my blog with a Liebster award! I’m cheating rather by only answering the questions, but as I’ve been home alone this weekend with a sick child, I’m hoping this won’t disqualify me. So, without much further ado:

liebster-awardWhat was the most spiritual moment of your life?
My second cesarean, losing two litres of blood (a coca cola family bottle!), literally seeing stars, the student nurse nearly fainting and the room suddenly filling with medical staff in an ER-style scene.

What remains your most outrageous buy?
A nicer car than we’d ever be able to afford back home.

What do you do when the kids are napping?
They never nap.

What would your dream vacation be?
Space travel.

What film makes you cry the most?
Titanic – even though we’ve watched it at least 10 times recently due to my sons having an obsession with maritime disasters.

How do you handle the stress that comes with being a parent?
For me, writing is a sanity saver.

What moment do you most look forward to with your child, every day?
Does anyone admit to the moment they fall asleep? When you smell their peachy heads and they suddenly look so adorable and peaceful. But there are also many other moments that balance out the craziness of our days – the best one being when they say, “It’s a good job I’ve got this mum.”

How do you indulge in some ‘me’ time?
I love re-designing the house, reading, going to work with DH, and, very rarely, painting.

Do you like to cook? What’s your signature dish?
I’m an amateur cook, but getting better. Shepherd’s pie is my signature dish.

What is your happiest childhood memory?
Holidays in North Wales, at Pencaenewydd Farm.

Is there something you secretly wish for every day?
That a giant Tesco would open in Arabian Ranches. With online grocery shopping.

How old do I look?

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DH got back from New York the other day with a story about a homeless guy who’d tried to get some money from him by guessing his age.

I won’t say what age he thought DH was, but it was six years older than he actually is.

xxxxxx

Just the beginning of a pilot’s mid-life crisis

“Well that’s ridiculous,” I replied, because it was – and because the last thing I want is for DH to have a mid-life crisis. He already flies the most enormous jet airplane in the world; goodness knows where a mid-life crisis would lead.

At bedtime, I asked BB how old he thought I was.

“Erm,” said BB thoughtfully, giving it some serious consideration while brushing his teeth.

“Twenty-nine?”

“Really?” I practically yelped, my voice a little too high-pitched.

I came clean. BB has no idea about age, after all.

“Well, I’m not. I’m forty sweetheart.”

“FOR-TY?” responded BB, his brown eyes widening into saucers.

“You mean a four AND a zero? … Oh Mummy!”

Almost incomprehensible when you’re the tender age of seven!

The interview fail

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It was my first interview in years and I was running late – not seriously late, but time had marched forwards, leaving me with about 30 minutes to get dressed, shovel on some make-up and find my portfolio at the back of the cupboard.

I may have put a little more mascara on than usual, because my pink-rimmed eyes looked like I’d been up all night (which is not surprising, because I had). I’d landed back in Dubai at 6am that morning, slept a little and was heading down to Media City for an interview on a fashion magazine.

It had to be that afternoon; it was the only time they could do. And, while a part of me yelled, ‘You’re a mum now. What do you think you’re doing? You left the high-profile stuff behind years ago,” I was excited – the thought of working once again on a beautiful glossy magazine setting my brain alight with possibilities.

As I waited nervously in the foyer, I marvelled at the rows of magazines on display, the glamorous receptionist, the fake-smile PR girl flicking her blonde hair and the overall swishness of the place.

The editor appeared, looking trim and trendy in a metallic skirt, and led me to the canteen. Decked out in white, my eyes were drawn to the green, grass-like herbs on the formica counters, the ping-pong table and the view outside.

You could even get a massage upstairs (I’m not kidding). It beat my kitchen, where I boil the kettle and battle endlessly to feed my children, hands down.

I must have ended up in the right-hand tray

She put me in the right-hand tray!

We seemed to get along; she was nice, interested (and at least didn’t take one look at my hurriedly thrown together outfit and rather dated boots and step back into the elevator).

But there were some stumbling blocks.

“We sometimes have to work at the weekend,” she told me, eyeing me squarely. “I realise you have children, but I need to know you wouldn’t let us down.”

“Umm, that should be okay,” I faltered, “although if my husband and nanny are gone, I’m really stuck,” I blurted.

“I’ll be in touch later,” she said at the end. And sure enough she was – with a writing test she wanted by the next day.

I did the test and sent it at 1.30am, ploughing through severe fatigue, but jet lag at least working in my favour (the position, covering a two-month absence, was to start on Monday, hence the urgency).

And you know what? They haven’t even been in touch. I don’t need to tell you that it’s Tuesday today, and that the deafening silence obviously means I was rejected.

But it would have been nice to have been told [she says, in a depressed little voice].

My DH tells me not to worry, that something else – more family friendly – will come along if a proper, more regular job is what I want, and can’t fully understand why I’m so upset. “I’m a mummy, not an Airbus,” I tell him. “There’s no quick-fix for a mummy who’s conflicted about her career being in tatters.”

And then my mum’s words (of reason) come into my head. “These things, they tend to work out for the best, you know,” she says.

She’s right, isn’t she?

EDITED TO ADD: I finally heard from them – still a big fat ‘no’, but feel so much better to know the reason!

A 7-year-old’s day

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“Mummy, I’m SO excited! So excited to tell you!”

BB burst through the front door, dropping his schoolbag and lunchbox on the floor in a heap.

I could hardly wait.

Long-time readers will know from a previous post that I’m a mummy who lives in hope of her children telling her something about what they’ve done at school that day (“I don’t want to talk about it” is the usual response).

“What is it BB? What happened?” I replied, ears agog as I picked up his discarded socks.

“I’ve got to the next level on my DS machine!”

There's BB at the back of the bus, on his Nintendo DS

There’s BB at the back of the bus, on his Nintendo DS

The predatory woman

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Even if, pre-children, you had a really active social life and danced on tables until the wee hours, after you give birth, the prospect of climbing onto heels to paint the town red is about as appealing as being slapped with a wet fish.

And, with small children around, it can take years to get your social life back on track.

Something I’ve promised myself I’ll do this year is to be more adventurous socially (and I don’t mean I want to start swinging). I plan to spend less time on the sofa in the evenings, so that my husband and children no longer have a better social life than me.

Lil' Miss Temptress: You are not my friend

Lil’ Miss Temptress: You are not my friend

I honestly wouldn’t want my pilot to just sit in his hotel room when he’s on layovers, but then again, I don’t want him to have too good a time without me – especially as women can be predatory creatures.

We were stopped in our tracks the other day while walking out of our hotel by an attractive lady.

I say ‘we’, but it was DH she was talking to.

“Where do I know you from?” she asked him.

He didn’t instantly recognise her. They ran through some places – Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong – but were still drawing a blank.

“I remember that we got on really well,” she said, flirtily.

“Just don’t tell my wife,” joked DH, putting his arm round me so she’d at least know I was standing right there (he never did work out who she was).

Her head turned towards me, our eyes met.

Hmm, I thought. I don’t like you.

“Do you live here?” (meaning London) she said, by way of a cursory acknowledgement.

“No,” I replied. “I live in Dubai, with my husband.'”

And then, the word ‘obviously‘ just slipped off my tongue.

Touché. Hands off! He’s mine!

Doing battle at dinner (again)

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Despite having not lived in the UK for just under 10 years, I’m still pretty English.

DH (who’s American) would agree: You can take the girl out of England, but not the English out of the girl, we say.

Mostly our different backgrounds complement each other, but if there’s one thing that DH does that annoys me, it’s when he CORRECTS me in everyday conversation.

For example, I’ll ask him (politely) if he can take something out of the boot, and he’ll shrug his shoulders and pretend he doesn’t know what the boot is. “The trunk, you mean?” he’ll say, in a soft mid-Atlantic accent.

And I refuse to back down. The way I speak, my British spellings and British tastes are so deeply ingrained, it’s like I’m holding onto them for dear life – and living in an expat society such as ours, I’m sure they define me.

This theory also applies, to some extent, to food. We’re lucky enough in Dubai to have access to all kinds of restaurants, from Lebanese to Vietnamese, sushi to Indian. While I enjoy most of these cuisines very much, occasionally all I really want is a shepherd’s pie, or fish and chips.

If only they'd open one in our compound

If only they’d open one in our compound

Or bangers ‘n’ mash, or a greasy spoon …. a proper sausage roll. I could go on.

What has become glaringly obvious, however, is that my expat children are having none of it. To my dismay, they reject nearly all my favourite English foods.

Case study: Chez Circles, yesterday evening
I’m in the kitchen, making an old staple: beef stroganoff with mashed potato and broccoli. It’s bubbling away nicely, smells delicious and I’m just waiting for the potatoes to cook so I can add butter and milk and pummel them to fluff with the masher.

BB comes in. “Mummy, are you cooking?” [clue no.1 as to what’s going on]. “What are you making?”

Then, “OH.NO. Not pie. Oh please Mummy, not pie.”

I made shepherd’s pie last week and the two of them sat at the table for a whole hour while DH and I practically force-fed them in a culinary stand-off.

BB’s eyes actually start shining with fright. “No darling, it’s not pie,” I say glumly.

We sit down to eat, I tuck in. DH politely does the same. I have a hopeful look on my face that this meal will be a success.

“WE.DON’T.LIKE.IT,” they wail, wiping the smile off my face in an instant and leaving me grinding my molars in frustration.

“Maybe you should have done rice,” says DH, quietly (clue no. 2).

Through clenched teeth, I tell them I used to eat potatoes every day when I was a girl, that mashed potatoes are yummy and that they’re being ungrateful. And then I try shock tactics and tell them (for the hundredth time) about the starving children in Africa.

BB eats slowly and silently. LB fidgets on his chair.

I go back into the kitchen to pour more wine, pondering to myself how my children could possibly dislike food I grew up on (the answer, of course, is that their taste buds lean towards Asia rather than England, because our Filipina helper cooks rice for them more often than I care to admit).

And that’s when I heard the yelling: “Mumm-eeeee, QUICK. EMERGENCY!” shouts BB.

His brother has reluctantly taken a few bites…and vomited. Everywhere. Bringing the meal to an unceremonious end.

[Thinks: it might be time to reclaim the kitchen – and use ear plugs at the dinner table.]

Wake up and Shake up!

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I am not a morning person. Never have been; never will be. I’m much better at staying up late than I am at getting up with the lark, and have seriously considered having a teasmade installed by the bed to smooth the opening-of-the-eyes process.

All my life, I’ve somehow managed to avoid really early starts. I worked in media (9.30am start in London); freelanced for many years; and studied history at university (earliest lecture 11am, and believe me, even that felt early). I like my sleep, need my sleep and don’t function very well without it.

Cue: children.

I’ve pretty much blanked out the early, mind-bending horrors of baby-induced sleep deprivation, and to be fair to BB and LB, they stay in their beds most nights these days, but my problem is this: schools in Dubai start rudely early.

BB leaves on a school bus at 7.15am, and the doors slide shut on LB’s classroom at 7.50am. Seriously, just typing these times makes me yawn, and if I’m driving on to work, I get there half-an-hour before nearly everyone else.

The moves

The moves

This morning – still feeling like we were getting up for a red-eye flight despite it being the second week of term – it was the usual palava hustling LB out of the house. He climbs into the car like he’s got all. the. time. in the world and climbs out like he’s dismounting a horse.

Being Dubai (where useful things like school car parks aren’t always given due consideration), I have to drag him a fair distance, past the onion-shaped dome of a mosque, over a football pitch, up some stairs, and across the ‘big kid’ part of the school. That gives him opportunities aplenty to attempt to climb walls, meander, stop and smell the flowers, or sit down.

Herding kittens would be easier.

We made it, and I was just about to slope off to get a shot of caffeine when I realised: the parents were congregating on the tennis courts for ‘Wake up and Shake up’ – organised fitness to music at 8 in the morning, with the children. (Think: mums jumping around in Lycra and a generous smattering of dads standing rooted to the spot with their arms firmly crossed and both eyes on the smoking hot PE teacher.)

If I wasn’t fully awake before, I was after throwing a few shapes to Gangnam Style on a surprisingly Arctic-like* Dubai morning.

* That may be an exaggeration. But it honestly was one of the crispest mornings I’ve known in the UAE

Parents are JUST like rock stars

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I saw this on Facebook today and thought I’d share it here as suddenly assuming rock-star status has done wonders for my evening. Enjoy!

How being a parent is like being a rock star:

The eye bags add to the up-all-night rock-star look

The eye bags add to the up-all-night rock-star look

– Endless hours on the road with too many people in the vehicle

– Your job is to entertain a room full of loud, writhing maniacs

– If you do your job well, people ask you when you’ll produce more

– You ask yourself daily: “Am I tripping? Or did I really just see that?”

– Your name is always shouted, never spoken

– Someone is always pulling at your clothes

– Groupies follow you to the bathroom

– There’s a different person in your bed every night. Sometimes even two

– At the end of your work day, you’re sweaty and your hair is a mess

– Screaming is just part of the job

Thank you to Kim at letmestartbysayingblog.com, who wrote this and whose blog I’ve just discovered.

Kidnapping Helicopter Mum’s DD

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A while ago, we met Organised Mum, whose fait accompli in getting her children ready for the new school year left us all vowing to iron the name-tags on earlier next time.

As a new term gets underway, there’s another mum I’d like to introduce you to. You all know her. She’s the mum who follows her young up slides, down plastic tubes and into the toilet. We all share her protective tendencies to varying degrees, and hover over our offspring at times, but let’s just say Helicopter Mum is hyper-present in her children’s lives.

You’ve just dropped your kids at school for the first day back and you’re skipping returning to the car – with four child-free hours ahead of you – when you bump into her.

She’s sobbing into her hankie. Big fat tears and Bobbi Brown mascara streaming down her crumpled face.

xxxxxx

Helicopter Mum does their schoolwork in her spare time

Your bolt for freedom screeches to a grinding halt and you stop to chat, aware that those four precious hours (in which you planned to knock out several chores in double-quick time, buy a week’s worth of groceries and get a blow-dry) are already slipping away.

“We had such a wonderful holiday,” she blubs, dabbing at her puffy eyes. “I just wasn’t ready for term to start again.”

She regales you with sniffly tales about the cookies they baked, the trip to see Santa (in Lapland) and the Christmas stories her children wrote, while you almost start twitching with the urge to get going.

Helicopter Mum brightens noticeably when you – to get her off the school grounds – suggest a (quick) coffee. It’s the death knell for that morning’s to-do list, but at least it stops her calling her oldest on his mobile – the world’s longest umbilical cord – at break time.

As you part ways, she’s distracted from missing her children – until disaster strikes. It’s pick-up time for the little ones and her car won’t start. She calls you, so breathy with distress you think at first it’s a prankster.

“Don’t worry,” you say. “I’ll bring your DD home, no problem at all.”

But it is a problem, because her DD has never been in anyone else’s car before. It’s never been necessary, because Helicopter Mum is always there. She comes in a taxi, but by the time they reach the school (the driver not needing much encouragement to step on the gas), you’ve already grabbed her child.

You’re heading towards Emirates Road, with her DD doing hightails with her legs in her carseat she’s so excited, when you look in the mirror and realise Helicopter Mum is right behind you. She’s caught up in the taxi and is peering out the front window with an anxious, frightened look on her face.

You’re on her radar, and you realise you haven’t been terribly helpful at all. You’ve kidnapped her darling, bubble-wrapped DD. You wonder if you should stop to hand her child over, but, no, this little bit of separation will do them both good, you decide.

Her DD – singing along to the radio at the top of her voice and fluttering her eyelids at your son – certainly thinks so, even if Helicopter Mum sprouts a smattering of grey hairs on the way home.

Our turn for a break!

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School started again today – and I wouldn’t be being entirely honest if I didn’t admit to feeling more than a little pleased.

Okay, after whooping with relief, I’m now grinning from ear-to-ear and lying poleaxed on the sofa, feet up, magazine in one hand, TV remote in the other and the iPad back in my possession (I’m sure I’m not the only mum who multi-tasks while relaxing).

Don’t get me wrong – I (mostly) loved our countless outings to the beach, the park and the mall over the Christmas holidays; we had several successful playdates where the children didn’t injure or maim each other; and as well as spending time with my beloved cheeky cherubs, I finally caught up with mum friends I hadn’t seen in ages.

xxxxxxx

I’m not moving, I’m really not!

I feel a lot more relaxed than I did before the holidays – and not particularly thrilled about getting back to crack-of-dawn starts (why do schools in Dubai have to begin at 7.45am?), packed lunches, homework and the cat-walk that is the Dubai school drop-off.

But, what I won’t miss is the need to keep your little ones entertained every day, for fourteen hours a day – with new ideas and venues required each day and no afternoon at Grannies to break up the holiday.

If you’re not a parent, I may need to explain:

It starts early, shortly after sunrise and while your tightly shut eyes are still flitting from side-to-side in dreamy REM sleep.

They come bounding in, full of the joys of the morning, and in unison chorus, “Mumm-eeee, what are we doing today?”

If you ignore them (say, you bury your head in your pillow), they simply try again… on a loop:

“Mumm-eeee, WHERE are we going today?”

They know you’ll have to think of somewhere to take them out to, because if you don’t, you’ll be the first to throw crockery at the wall.

There may then be a period of play (or perhaps TV) punctuated by sibling spats, but by 11am, the antsiness has started to build.

“Mumm-eee, I’m bored,” you’ll hear, followed by: “I SAID, I’m bored!”

“I’m SUPER bored!” the other one chips in, not to be outdone.

And, believe me, this isn’t music to your ears. So you trigger ‘the plan for the day’. You run round the house, packing beach bags, filling water bottles, wrapping snacks, looking for lost items. You give them a quick lunch so you don’t arrive somewhere with whiny, hungry children. You even get them to go to the toilet, find the swimming goggles and run a brush over your own hair.

“Right, let’s go,” you pant. “Shoes on.”

Only to be met with cries of:

“Awwww, muuum! It’s my favourite programme… why can’t we just stay home today?”

Cue: a further 10 minutes spent cajoling them out of the house.

As I said, it’s been lovely, but I’m revelling in the mummy break today!