My daughter, the hyperactive 3.5 year old early riser of the family, slept at her grandmothers house one night last week.  My son, 1.5, slept at home.
I woke at 9am, eyes gently waking in the sunshine, lying in my bed stretching out and enjoying that glorious first few minutes a natural waking. …

-My baby is going to die.  Something is going to happen, he’s not going to wake up.  They’ll put him to sleep and that will be last time I ever see him.
My chest felt empty, my face hot and swollen with uncried tears welling up behind the skin.
I filled his …

I shall be candid here and admit that I use TV as a babysitter.  There, it’s out there now, I shall brace myself for the onslaught.
It isn’t something I feel entirely happy about, I believe that some TV can be good for them, a lot of programs are educational and …

When you look back over your childhood, what do you see? Nickie asked me to blog about a dark childhood memory* and I said sure, why not, how hard can that be, right? Everybody must have at least one of those, I must be able to come up with …

When I was working as a ski rep in Ruka we spent the whole of December organising so many events with Santa (that’s him on the left there, the real Santa and his wife) that by the time Christmas came around we were ready to kill the first fat person …

This is what I woke up to this morning.

Girl (3 years) it seems had been awake for some time and had sneaked into the kitchen, pushed the stool up against the fridge, retrieved the felt-tips from on top of the fridge (placed up there to prevent just such incidents) and …

9.00 Boy comes into kitchen following call for breakfast, runs straight into dog, falls down, crawls under dog and up to table pulling all newspapers off table and onto floor.
9.02 Boy decides to feed himself cornflakes rapping mother on knuckles with spoon.
9.03 Dog very excited about amount of breakfast flying …

    I went through my entire adolescence and early twenties adamant that I was not, under any circumstances, having children.  Ever.  And then of course I met the man, etc etc, yadda yadda yadda, and it all changed.  Suddenly the thought of procreating and popping out lots of little me …

Chasing Elvi May around the house trying to get her to put some pants on: several hundred calories and a good half portion of the days ration of patience.

Getting two mischeivous and wholey uncooperative kids suited, booted, hatted and gloved and outside into the cold: the other half portion …

There, I’ve said it. It’s out there, no taking it back now.
Oh sure, they can be cute and funny at times, irritating and argumentative (even the 1 year old in his way) at others and the look of pure innocence on their faces when sleeping is enough to make …