Has anyone else been filled with terror at the prospect of the school summer holidays? It’s one of those things that I’m nervous about mentioning in polite society – I have vi... Read More
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This morning we enjoyed some glimmers of normality (and a quiet house) as our second child was welcomed back to his primary school. Lockdown with two parents working from home, two extrovert pri... Read More
For almost 5 years now, I have struggled to reconcile being the mother my daughters deserve, and the daughter my aging parents deserve. Not to mention everything else on my little life's spectrum... Read More
I had been jotting down ideas for this blog with lockdown in mind. My husband and I are working from my mother’s house in the land that high-speed broadband forgot where we are locking down to ... Read More
Emma Bradley, parent, qualified teacher and founder of blog Emmaand3 , explains how she’s guiding her three children through this tough time at home and shares her top tips for home scho... Read More
Lockdown has been an experience to remember. As it threw people out of their usual routine, I’ve been able to notice a number of interesting and positive changes. In eight years of living in my... Read More
I’ve been learning a thing or two about myself this lockdown. Beginning with the fact that, when initially facing the prospect of Armageddon, my priorities were to stock up on tahini, scen... Read More
Can you look back on this as a scared time to treasure rather than just survive?
Child – “How old are you, Grandpa?”
Grandpa – “I’m 81, dear.”
... Read More
My name’s Linda and I feel really anxious. This is a new experience for me and I find it hard to admit. It's also hard to admit that until recently I'd never really understood... Read More
I have lots of useless trivia in my head (names of the Bond films in order and who played Bond in each, check), but one anecdote has recently come back to mind. Years ago, I heard that lion tam... Read More
Over the last few weeks, all of us have been adjusting to the new reality of working from home, social distancing, and the like. I thank my lucky stars that my boy is not yet of school age, so at lea... Read More
Things were starting to go better in 2020, my mum is home and stable, my brother’s chemo was underway and he was doing ok on it, and I had my surgery at the end of February to remove the last o... Read More
I started writing this blog a few weeks ago and it was originally about the amazing #MotherWorks photography exhibition ( www.wearemoi.net ), created by Fiona Freund. #MotherWorks compares... Read More
When I was invited to join the team of blog writers for WorkLife Central, I thought I’d be able to write some light hearted observations about the day to day juggling (always juggling) of work ... Read More
As I write, the world around us is changing daily, and we’re all navigating a new, very insular and yet much more intense daily life.
Things have been changing so fast. In what feels almos... Read More
How do you ensure an anxious child follows a healthy diet? And what if the anxiety is related to food itself? These are the questions that I have had to ask myself in the past few years, since my son... Read More
Like me, I suspect you’ve hitched a ride on the coronavirus pendulum recently – swinging between complacency and obsessive panic, before balancing out somewhere in the region of business ... Read More
“Home-school”: enough to chill the heart of many working parents and, until recently, two words that had rarely entered my mind as potentially one day being relevant to my world.
... Read More
We’re coming up for 5 years of parenthood and 10 years of being a couple. Or can you add the age of the second child to the first and say you’ve been a parent for 6 1/2 years? Then when w... Read More
“Boys don’t like unicorns mum, they’re for girls.”
“WHAT??!!” I scream internally.
“I see…” I actually say “…and of ... Read More
When I returned to work after maternity leave, we decided to get a cleaner for our house. Today I will tell you how employing cleaners not only made me a better cleaner but changed my entire per... Read More
In the olden days I used to exercise a lot and to a reasonably high standard, swimming as a kid then rowing at uni. I took it for granted, but I now think it was why I never got stressed about ... Read More
So, we’ve got through January. I am one of those people who actually likes the reflection and resolutions that the first month of the year brings. After December’s hectic combinatio... Read More
It wasn't quite a New Year's resolution as I don't tend to go in for those (why not try to tweak things as you go along?). But I had thought to myself that I should try and be usefu... Read More
Trigger warning: premature birth
Life with a pretermer baby was hard enough. When our baby daughter Isabella arrived at an exceptionally early 24 weeks, as I described in my previous blo... Read More
Christmas is a magical time of year for children, when the Big Man in Red wriggles down the chimney to deliver presents to good little boys and girls. I have fond memories of shooting downstairs on C... Read More
My life seems to be made up of “threes” recently.
Most of you probably know my personal story to date from a previous blog, I’ve got cancer and so far have had 5.5 weeks... Read More
And the Christmas clock is ticking. This year, I find myself feeling incredibly disorganised. The in- and out-of-school commitments seem to multiply as the kids get older – Christmas production... Read More
Is anybody else buckling under the pressure of Christmas expectations? A flurry of demands that start to simmer around October, when the days get shorter and colder and the shops are poised on the st... Read More