In a Victor Meldrew style, I’ve spent the last day or two exclaiming, “I don’t BELIEVE it”. How is it possible that Nairn is turning four already? How did that happen?

I’ve always said that Findlay’s first four years felt like the longest of my life, but Nairn’s have flown past. I feel like we’ve only just had him so how can he possibly be this age already? How can the baby I brought home from the hospital just a short while ago be preparing for his preschool year at nursery? It’s just unfathomable. For all of you out there with young children: Cherish this time, no matter how hard it is. It’s over far too quickly.

For the fact fans out there:
Nairn weighed 9lb 3oz at birth.
I was induced at 14 days post-dates.
Nairn was due on 18th February but due to his late arrival has missed the cut-off for starting school this year.
Nairn is the animal lover out of our children
His nickname is “George” (… of the jungle) because he’s so large and lumbering but generally kind
He is probably the most loving of our children
He loves to read and his current favourite book is Stick Man by Julia Donaldson
He carries about a really revolting quilt that has fallen apart inside. He won’t sleep without it.
He wants to marry Rachel, one of his ‘Ladies’ at nursery. Or his best friend, N.
I hope he never changes.

Happy birthday my sweet, sweet boy and thank you for bringing four years of light and love to our family.

Meeting his big brother for the first time

Six months

One year, earning the “Destroyer” nickname

Fourteen months, with a new sister

Two

Three

Four

Posted under family

Readers I have a terrible admission to make. Terrible. There’s a bit of a backstory to this one so you might want to go get yourself a cup of cha and a nice biscuit. Okay, ready?

I’d like to take you back to July 2008. We – Bob, Findlay, Nairn, Erica and I – were staying on a campsite in Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme, Northern France. The weather was beautiful, the site was peaceful and I was bored rigid so of course I latched onto an idea. Nairn’s hair was a tad overgrown and I thought, “Hey! I can trim it!”

Up until that point I had regularly cut the boys’ hair with a set of trimmers – never with scissors – and the only scissors I had access to were the kitchen scissors supplied in our tent. Still this didn’t deter me and I trimmed the nape of Nairn’s neck, his sideys and his fringe. It looked excellent! For reference, this is a ‘before’ picture:

Flushed with success, I decided that actually cutting hair couldn’t be that difficult. I mean, you don’t need a degree or anything for it and it looks fairly straightforward. Right? Right?!!

Wrong.

I started at his crown and worked round in circles, until I got to his fringe. I turned him round and honestly he looked like he had a crop circle on his head. Panicked, I tried to even out the longer bits by cutting them even shorter until I gave up, burst into tears and put a hat on him to hide my shame until Bob got back from the site shop. When he came back I admitted in horrified tones what I’d done and made it clear that the situation would need to be remedied. And here comes the terrible admission. We went to the office of the site staff and chatted to the English liason chap who had been very helpful when we’d arrived and I said,

“Oh I desperately need your help. You won’t believe what my eldest son has done to his brother with a pair of kitchen scissors.”

Yes. I blamed it on poor, unwitting Findlay. A child who would never DREAM of touching scissors without parental guidance never mind attack his brother’s hair with them. Luckily my tale of woe seemed to strike a cord with the site staff and they lent me a pair of clippers to tidy up the mess…

… except the tale of woe ploughs on. Because you see, I was used to British clippers with British guard measurements on them. I was used to the #2 or #3 guard and so I used the guard marked 2mm, except that since it was a European set 2mm was MUCH SHORTER than a #2 or #3. Regardez!

The moral of the story? NEVER assume that you can do something just because you’ve watched someone else do it and it looked easy. It rarely will be. Thankfully Nairn was more forgiving than my Mother, who refused to display this lovely photo of my children taken on the Somme Bay Railway:

With this saga in mind, I have never since cut the kids’ hair. I was too worried about making a mess of it so they have been treated to the salon experience instead, but I have been trying to get Erica’s hair cut for months and been foiled at every attempt. After visiting Bron yesterday for a playdate I marvelled at Miss Small’s gorgeous hair and Bron told me she cut it herself, reassuring me that, “A bob is very forgiving” and I decided that perhaps I could make one final attempt to salvage my reputation as a demon with scissors. So – ta daaa!

I’m rather proud of myself I have to say! I wonder if this means the boys will let me cut their hair again. Hmmm…

Posted under family

I usually hate all these clichés about how quickly time passes, especially as a mother of kids who really aren’t that young anymore but five years have passed since Bob kissed me for the first time and two years have flown in since we got married.

I can’t believe it. We’ve been joking about it this morning but in all seriousness it barely feels like a month has passed since we first started seeing each other and it’s five years later. It’s funny because I don’t think I really believed in “the one” until Bob came over one night and never left, we’re that sickening couple who are constantly being cutesy with one another and I am proud that I spend every single day of my life with my best friend.

So here’s to the next year and all the others that come after. I love you, honey. Thank you for being my husband.

Posted under family

Poor Greer. Since she started nursery one day a week prior to Christmas, her little body has been bombarded with germs – moreso than it already was with two brothers and a sister at school & nursery – and this weekend she’s succumbed to a horrible cough and cold which meant she had to miss her weekly Waterbabies class today.

Luckily, she has Mummy & Daddy, a snuggly quilt made by Auntie Kat and a lovely warm sweater made by Auntie Pad to keep her going.

I wish I had her energy! When I was sick, I could barely get out of bed but Greer’s ploughed on quite happily – as do the other children when they’re sick. Maybe it’s a case of different priorities?

Anyhoo. I shall be back later in the week to blog my utter failure with macaroon bars and hopefully a success story too!

Posted under family

I know I don’t really style this as a “Mummy blog” so you’ll have to forgive me, but this post has been brewing for a while and I think it’s time to let it all out.

Do you remember receiving the chain email that talked about lead paint being used on cots and running around on your bike from sun-up to sundown all Summer and how previous generations have been unsurpassed in terms of problem solving and teamwork? I read that many moons ago with the usual click-read-delete that happens with emails with a subject line starting FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: but something within it has resonated recently.

Back in the olden days when I was but a lass my siblings and I spent pretty much every school holiday out playing with our friends, coming home occasionally for a drink or a ‘piece n jam’ and running wild the rest of the time. We were by no stretch of the imagination perfect kids but we rarely got into mischief, we were polite and most importantly we were out of our Mum’s hair.
I walked to school every day. In my primary school years it meant walking across a road outside my house, down a street and across a road outside the school. I went to boarding school for a few years but came home to start a new secondary school three miles away from home and from 2nd year to 5th year I walked to school every day and I walked home, through rain or shine. I crossed several roads and lived to tell the tale. Not only that, but I was extremely fit and healthy thanks to this regular exercise which allowed me to clear my head and listen to some music on my way.
At playtime we’d run around playing tig or ‘kiss, cuddle, torture’ or skipping or football without any fear of us impaling ourselves on railings or splitting our head open on the asphalt. We’d have ‘cake & candy’ stalls where our parents would actually make things to be sold and the proceeds sent to whichever charitable cause we were collecting for at that time. When it was snowy, we went out to play wearing a coat and maybe gloves and a hat. I don’t recall anyone dying from eating a fairy cake made by someone’s parent. I don’t recall any severe injuries in the playground (unless you count the time I threw snow at Ellen Murphy and it hit her eye which swelled up. I thought her eye was going to fall out, or worse I’d get expelled from school).
I’m not making light of serious injuries because I know they happen. A boy at my eldest son’s school had an accident whilst playing football and damaged his thigh – damage that only happened because the school spent the better part of a year like a building site while a new car park was created – so I understand that health & safety rules are necessary and important. But – and it is a big but. As parents, as products of the so-called ‘free range’ age when did we get so neurotic about safety issues?
Findlay’s school holds regular cake & candy stalls where the donated items must be bought from the shop. Now I don’t know about you, but there’s no way I’m buying a pack of penguins for my kid to take to school to buy back. What is the point in that?! It is removing every element of fun and enterprise from learning. The list of things they can and can’t do is long and varied but seems to serve more to protect the school from litigation than to protect the kids from danger.

Of course, this level of overprotectionism starts at a far younger age than school. A friend of mine recently told me that when she fills her car up at the petrol station she removes her two young children from their carseats to take them with her to pay before returning back to the petrol station to go through the rigmarole of putting them back in their seats. Now perhaps she has particularly well behaved children, but I genuinely can’t get my head around it. I can just see it now: I pull into the petrol station, fill the car up and open the car door. I get Erica out first and clamp her arm between my knees while I lift Greer out of her seat. I close the door and open the boot to let Nairn & Findlay out but I’m holding Erica with one hand and carrying Greer so Nairn will have to hold Findlay’s hand, except he doesn’t want to so we have a meltdown in the petrol station during which one of the toddlers pee themselves and a massive queue of cars are filled with impatient businesspeople staring at us and wishing a slow death on me.
Maybe I’m a bad parent but simply the thought of having to cajole the four of them back into their carseats is enough to put me off, and my car has this magic device called a LOCK on it so I doubt any sneak thief or wannabe paedo is going to manage to break into my car, hotwire it and drive off in the couple of minutes it takes for me to go in and pay.

The reason this is particularly getting to me right now is because Findlay is going to be nine years old in June this year. His Dad lives about eight miles away from us and there is a bus that goes from almost outside our door to almost outside his Dad’s house and I’m willing to take him on the bus to do a mock run so that he can do it himself, but most people I have suggested this to have recoiled in horror. At his age, I made an unaccompanied flight from Los Angeles to Glasgow with a layover in Boston. I regularly walked to the bus stop after school and got the bus to my Nana’s house at the other side of the city. I just don’t believe that our kids today are in any more danger than my generation were.
Unfortunately we’re becoming the products of a twofold attack against our civil liberties – one from the litigous society we are becoming and one from the media hell bent on reporting PAEDO DANGER – and this is threatening to kill off any fun activities which have an element of what could be construed as ‘danger’ to them. I genuinely feel sorry for today’s teachers because how difficult must it be to work with your charges in today’s climate?

I will keep you posted as to how the bus trip thing pans out but in the meantime I’m going to leave you with a rare photograph of my gorgeous firstborn enjoying the terribly dangerous snow.

Posted under family

… she’s definitely ginger.

Posted under family

I haven’t been very well lately – I’m one of those delicate snowflakes who doesn’t react well to stress in the slightest, and I’ve alluded here and there that life has been quite difficult for us recently but not really elaborated. In short, the position we found ourselves in back in November has escalated and I have had no maternity pay since the end of September whilst being told I must repay the monies I have been paid. It’s… been difficult really. Add to this the general day to day drama of parenting four energetic, charismatic and strong-willed children and it’s no real surprise that something would give. Unfortunately the something was me and I have had to finally accept that I cannot do everything.

Luckily for me my awesome sister Stephanie has been on hand to look out for me and has kept me supplied with tea, coffee and company. She’s been super with her support during this horrendous time and I can’t thank her enough.

Steph – you’re the best sister a girl could ask for and I love you x

Posted under family

Bob linked me to this website earlier and I was quite amused by his picture strip and decided to do one of my own. It’s cracking fun this, you just need a webcam hooked up to your computer – click the buttons and away you go! Here’s me:

Aaaaand here’s Brian Blessed Bob:

Your turn!

This is my 200th post! Isn’t that nice?

Posted under family, me

It occurs to me that I have loads of blog fodder but I hold back on posting it for reasons known only to myself. What daunts me slightly is the aspect of permission – I have Bob’s permission to blog about him, I’m capable of making decisions for myself about what I’m comfortable blogging but a large proportion of my life revolves around the children who are not capable of providing informed consent. Part of me thinks that worrying about this is being hugely self-indulgent because nobody is going to remember what I’ve posted in five, ten or twenty years time. But. And it is a big but – is it fair to them that I make their moments so public? The kind of moments which are filed away by parents and brought out at 18th birthday parties or meeting-the-boy/girlfriend-for-the-first-time are the kind of moments that I could (and have) shared with the world without their permission.

So it’s something I’m working through because honestly they’ve provided me with some real fodder over the last few days. Plus I can’t blog about anything I’m crafting right now because it’s all for Christmas!

Posted under family

It’s Greer’s six month birthday today, and I swear with each child these milestones come faster and faster. I can’t believe that she has been in our lives for such a short period of time and yet we’d be so lost without her. She’s suddenly gone from the newborn stage to being a little person with a big personality, big smiles, big love and a big voice! Not sure who she could possibly have taken that from!

So to celebrate we got a lovely picture of the children all together.

and of course five seconds later got this beauty which I think I might actually prefer

Posted under family