Tuesday 23 November 2010

Working from home: the positives and perils

Had you asked me a couple of years ago if I'd like to work from home, my answer would have undoubtedly been along the lines of "when do I start?". And five months ago, as I began my life as a working-stay-at-home mum, I maintained this rosy outlook.

However, as I sat at my teeny Ikea desk today and saw my darling 11-month old son pelting my very brand new scanner with a plastic (yet no less hefty) toy mallet, my outlook on working from home hit an all-time low.

My pros and cons for any new mothers considering this as an option are as follows...

PROS:
1. You can work in your pyjamas.
2. You get to spend all day, every day with your wonderful, amazing child.
3. You don't have any ultra-expensive childcare costs.
4. You can get up when you start work (please note, this does not apply to those with children).

CONS:
1. Whilst juggling your normal job, you must also uphold your full-time jobs of mummy, chef, playmate, etc.
2. Your partner will expect to return to a house that doesn't resemble a bomb site.
3. Your offspring is now your colleague. The latest office gossip is that he ate a FULL pack of biscuits when you left them on the side (momentarily forgetting that he's a biscuit fiend and he will hunt them down at every opportunity and eat the lot of them – true story).
4. Said offspring does not understand that mummy is at work. You are for playing with and solving problems. Nothing else.

All of the above said, I'm very lucky to be in a job that allows me to spend every day with my highly entertaining child, which very much outweighs the sometimes worringly loud negatives.

Plus, the new guy at work is pretty cute. Check him out...

Just putting together an email...

...and send.

Monday 22 November 2010

Happy Snaps

After a valiant start at keeping up my blogging, I've had a poor couple of weeks mainly due to a particularly hideous illness that managed to spread through our entire household and then was passed round a second time just for good measure. I'm now pleased to report that I am once again back to my normal self and ready to get back to this blogging malarkey. 'Hurrah!' I hear you cry!

There are three things in my life that I so wish I was good at but, alas, am terrible. These are:
1. Singing (in my head I sound like Alicia Keys - apparently I'm the only one that hears it like that)
2. Cooking (truly inedible nearly every time)
3. Photography

Despite my lack of ability at all of the above, I still retain a keen interest in all of them (if watching X Factor every week counts as a 'keen interest' in singing?!). So, when I noticed that National Geographic were holding their annual photography contest, I couldn't help but take a flick through the entries. Needless to say, I did not enter.

What's most interesting about these photos is often the story behind them. Here's a few of my favourites. Take a look at all of this year's entries here.

'Fishing' by Stan Bourman.
'My Friend the Giraffe' by Ashleigh Haworth. Taken in Glen Rose, Texas.
'Ballerinas, Berlin' by Maria Helena Buckley. A cast of ballerinas prepare to take to the stage.
'Supercell Thunderstorm' by Sean Heavey. A supercell thunderstorm works its way across a Montana prairie at sunset.
'Unsafe Journey' by Amy Helene Johansson. A woman finds a quiet spot on a packed train from Dhaka, Bangladesh, to return to her hometown to celebrate Eid-ul-Fitr.

'Simple Joy' by Brian Yen. Taken in the slums of Bacoload, Philipines.




Friday 29 October 2010

Death by eyeliner

We've been up north (Yorkshire to be precise) to T's family home for the week and as we're not likely to see them all again before Christmas, yesterday we had a big family get-together with a difference in the shape of a murder mystery party!

I've always wanted to go to one and for those of you who are tempted to hold one yourself – do it! It was the funniest evening I've had in a long while and if you're getting together a new group of people it would be an amazing ice-breaker.

Our version of the 'Casino Killings' was brilliantly cast – with T playing a Mexican casino owner (complete with eyeliner-drawn-on moustache and sideburns), T's mum playing a male croupier (also sporting a drawn-on moustache and goatee) and T's older sister laying the deceased man's wife whilst I played his mistress.

Here's us all in our costumes...


T got into character with the help of his mum's chihuahua
Lots of laughs all evening long!

Monday 25 October 2010

15 minutes of freedom


My saviours

I'm not the first parent to make this confession and I certainly won't be the last: I LOVE CBEEBIES!

More specifically than that, I love CBeebies at 7.25am on weekdays. As at this point every day, a miraculous thing happens; my lovely but all-consuming, clingy son becomes engrossed in the CBeebies birthday song, followed by the whole of the Tweenies for 15 whole minutes leaving me to luxuriate in a bit of 'me' time (that is, laundry, washing-up and cleaning duties).

Back in the pre-baby days, 15 minutes would have been the time I would take to put on my make-up, or perhaps make a sandwich or even had a casual flick through Facebook. Nowadays however, 15 minutes has turned into my chance to get EVERYTHING done.

It is my daily mission impossible until the end credits of the Tweenies goes off...

Thursday 21 October 2010

Quiet please!


I wish my local library was like the Hogwarts library.

I'm not expecting flying books or cloak-clad wizard librarians (although that would be pretty amazing), I just love that old book smell and the possibility of finding a relic of a book in some dark and dingy corner that hasn't been rented out since 1906.

Instead what I'm met with when I visit the local council library is row-upon-row of polythene-sheathed Jackie Collins and Mills & Boon novels and a group of retired individuals each wearing the same baffled expression at trying to operate Windows 97 (to be honest, I'd be pretty confused too).

That said, the children's area is incredible and every Thursday morning us local mums fill the already cramped library with our all-terrain prams and double buggies in aid of Baby Bounce.

There is nothing I love more than having a good sing. My downfall is that although in my head I sound like Mariah Carey, to all third parties I am completely tone-deaf. So when I found out about Baby Bounce when Little O was around 3 months old, I was there like a whippet.

This free weekly (term-time only) event involves parents and a library representative singing nursery rhymes and kids' classics complete with complementary hand actions.  I say that we sing the songs 'to' the children as I am yet to hear a child sing at Baby Bounce. Most of them just stare at us wildly gesticulating towards them with looks of bewilderment.

Ah well, anything to belt out a classic in public. Even if it is 'Dingle Dangle Scarecrow'.

Here's one of my favourites:

Sing a Song of Sixpence (with a twist)

Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of cheese
Five-and-twenty monkeys swinging from the trees
Throwing down bananas, landing on your head
Call up the monkey police and send them off to bed! 

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Not such a good sport

T turned to me tonight, and I quote: "I don't think I'm going to play Football Manager anymore*. I'm bored of it". Jolly good - it's only taken him 10 years to come to this conclusion, but better late than never.

It's not so much the computer game I loathe, but sport in general.

Don't get me wrong, I like gymnastics as much as the next leotard-clad Russian, but I just don't know why men can't stick to one sport and one team and leave it at that.

Just when the football season draws to a close, oh what's this – yep, cricket's back on. Formula One? Don't mind if I do. Rugby? Sure. Boxing? Why not! American football? I love the Saints!

Of course, I can only blame myself for our current sports consumption. A few months ago I bribed T off of the computer and the evils of Football Manager with the purchase of a Sky Sports package. Big mistake. He easily outwitted me by turning the television in the direction of the computer he's playing on, in turn doubling his sports intake.

But as of today, there could be light at the end of the football tunnel.

Although I have a worrying feeling that the Football Manager void could well be filled with yet another addition to the sport-watching portfolio...sumo wrestling anyone?

At least David Beckham was nice to look at...




















*For those who are privileged enough to not know what Football Manager is – it's a mind-numbing, boyfriend-stealing computer game that leads men and boys to believe that they run a football club when clearly all they are doing is watching 22 dots run around a 2D football pitch (I believe that the game has now improved from its 2D version but T won't give up on the 2008 version – apparently it was a good year.)

Tuesday 19 October 2010

And so it begins...

I'm having a bit of a little fish, big pond moment.

When Little O (my unmentionable son) was about 2 weeks old and T (my long-enduring boyfriend) returned to work, I had a bit of a brain wave: in an effort to retain my sanity and possibly interest and entertain others, I would start a blog about my new-found life as a mum. Genius.

Unfortunately, I had been pipped to the post by about 2,000 other mums doing the exact same thing.

Ten months later, here I am – just another mummy moaning and gloating about our darling progeny. However – as the title of this blog suggests – I shall here and now make a brownie guide promise to touch upon a variety of other subjects too (although these shall undoubtedly contain the child at some point, so I'll make my apologies now).

After all, who can resist these big blue eyes?...