Yet another blogging mummy

                                    The moments that matter     When Pickle was very young, about a month old, I was doing the usual first time mum panicking at everything she did and everything she did not do, thinking I was a bad mum for doing or not doing everything and anything, thinking she would die at any moment because she was sleeping or not sleeping, not kicking or kicking too much...I actually remember gasping out the words "do you think she'll die?" when my husband suggested I was slightly overenthusiastic with the amount of nappy cream I applied one day.  I would panic if she woke up too early or too late. I would panic if we were slightly late for a baby music class or if we missed one, or if she drank too much or too little milk, it was ridiculous but also, as I know now, extremely normal. I would be meticulous about the timings of everything for the first part of her life, the clock was my master and controlled my every waking moment. I would think about 6

                                                     Is it a mum thing?                         I love my daughter. I love being a mummy. I really, really do. I don't want to sound like I'm complaining in these posts. I guess the point of them is to let some stuff out, vent a little, and for anyone who reads them to think "Ahhh! so I'm not the only one! That is such a relief!" because I know that through reading millions of mummy blogs and mums forums and facebook mama groups, knowing that I am not the only one gives me a lot of encouragement and hope.  A little like Sean Lock (RIP you genius) can identify what traumatic events he has been through by differentiating his forehead worry lines, I realised that I can tell the last time I had a shower by the length of my leg hair. More often than not, it's too long, which tells me that I need to have a shower pretty soon. I'm sure it can wait until tomorrow though.  At the risk of alienating nearly every mum wh

                                   NOT a tidying post                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               The past year and a half has been hard on everyone, especially mums and dads, and I expect I'm not the only who thinks that I am  the only one who had a really, really,  really  hard year. After the bliss and magic sparkles of the newborn baby love bubble, (forgetting, of course, the holy shit-show that is breast feeding) shit starts getting real. There's worrying about whether they'll sit up. Then one day they sit up, beaming at you and you think you've died and gone to heaven. There's worrying whether or not they are ever going to crawl. Then one day they're crawling so fast you think they're training for the olympics. There's walkin

                              To wine or not to whine?                                                                                     And the answer ALWAYS seems to be, to wine. I have struggled with my relationship with alcohol all throughout my 20s and 30s, and now it seems, I will be struggling with it throughout my 40s too. The amount of times in the last year that I have tried to give up drinking is embarrassing. I've done it every way I can think of. But it feels like I just can't do it. The wine witch is lurking around every corner, up every tree, in every supermarket and grocery store.       I am so jealous of my husband, who in his ... sophisticated, wiser years of life, finds alcohol makes him feel sick. He used to be the life of the party, and up until recently, would have 3 or 4 beers before anyone else had even got there. Now, he does not need to "watch his alcohol intake", because he doesn't even really like the stuff anymore! Oh, to be that guy

                       The reason for Bumplestiltskin                                    Every few years, I start a new blog, and write it in the hope that someday, someone might read it. Like everything I do that isn't mummying or working or cleaning the house, I start with a sparkle of excitement for the novelty of the thing, write for a few months, and then inevitably give up, starting a new one a few months down the road. I'm hoping (as I do with all of my blogging) that with this one,  I will actually keep it up. I think the main problem is that I don't really write for a purpose. The blogs seem to take on a musing, reflective, ethereal quality, but there is no anchor or grounding to them. Which makes sense that they don't get continued. The other thing that I've found is that I never have the guts to actually broadcast my writing online. I am not the kind of person who wants everyone to know everything. I am not an avid poster, or even a poster at all. I have