Tag Archives: mother

Taking Care of Your Toddler While Staying at Home

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Being a parent to a toddler is a hard task. And despite the fact that we’re all mostly home due to the ongoing health crisis, the additional household chores, work, and stress make it even more of a challenge.

parenting, toddler,

Luckily, you can overcome the additional workload by staying organised and getting the respite you need. So here are four tips for taking care of your kids at home during these trying times.

Schedule your day

The first step to balancing your work and parenting load is to create a schedule. How many hours or projects do you have to accomplish in a day? In between those hours, set some time for your toddler’s needs, such as feeding and playing. If you run your own business or are a freelancer like mother-of-two Catherine Balavage, then you can be more flexible with your schedule. Otherwise, your company might require you to work for set hours. In this case, it helps to inform your employer about your situation and send in a tentative schedule. They may even have maternity policies to help you out.

Keep them entertained

Keeping your children entertained allows you to focus on your other tasks. In the Irish Times’ article on keeping children entertained, they mention that toddlers are at that age when they want to ‘feel useful’ and are always in the mood to ‘sort’ stuff. For this reason, you can have them do home-play activities such as cooking and cleaning. Kitchen set toys and even a small broom might keep them occupied for a while. To satisfy their urge to sort, you can leave them with simple activities like arranging laundry into piles or different-coloured pasta into groups. Their curiosity has the potential to keep them entertained for hours.

Go out for some fresh air

Staying cooped up in your home is not good for you or your toddler’s health. If you have a garden, now is the time to maximise it. But if you don’t have one, or are simply looking for a change of scenery, you can always go out for a quick stroll. In case you’re worried, the BBC reports that walks are actually highly encouraged now, as adults can use the time to unwind and boost their immune systems. Of course, you’ll need to take trips sparingly to minimise risk. Additionally, it helps to have the necessary equipment to ensure your child remains even safer and more comfortable during these walks. According to iCandy’s guide to pushchairs, a harness and a parasol can help keep your little one protected while you’re out and about. This ensures that they won’t fall out of the pushchair or get too much exposure to the sun. You don’t need these concerns on top of everything else that’s going on, so being prepared will allow you to make the most of your daily walks.

Prepare meals in advance

Meal prep can take up a lot of time, but it will help you manage your day-to-day schedule if you have your toddler’s food ready in advance. It helps to start prepping during the weekend when you have more time. In this regard, Smart Mom Ideas lists a couple of children recipes you can store in the freezer to be eaten for the entire week. The list includes comfort food like chilli mac, small bites like mini pizzas, as well as bulk meals like casseroles.

The current situation won’t last forever. But until things go back to normal, you have to be able to adapt and work around your situation. It will sometimes be overwhelming, but by keeping these tips in mind, it doesn’t have to be too complicated all the time.

Author’s Bio

Jean Baker is a freelance writer and a mother of two beautiful daughters. She does a lot of reading in her spare time, and has opted for this kind of flexible lifestyle to be there for her kids.

I was Abused & Called a Bitch For Travelling in London With my Children

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Traveling in London is not fun for anyone. With children it is even harder. I have previously written about the hell off traveling with children in London but today things got a whole lot worse. On the way back from an important appointment I got on a bus. There was a wheelchair user (who should always be given priority, and I always do) and then space for the pram. There was an older woman sitting there and I asked her to swing her legs round. I was worried I would get her toes.

She ignored me so I asked again. After the third or fourth time she looked at me, pursed her lips and shook her head. At this point a person on the bus told me this woman had just fallen on the bus. Okay, I said. I did not know that. I began to get off but the wheelchair user kindly moved further back so I could fit my pram in easily.

What happened next was truly shocking.  One woman had got up and was trying to help. Which is fine. But there was an older man who kept telling me to get off the bus. As well as older woman. The both started abusing me saying I should not be on the bus and that in their day they walked everywhere. The man said I should get off and run behind the bus and get some exercise. The women (who was separate from the man) was saying the same thing. I told them I had a right to use public transport and they had no idea how hard it was traveling in London with a pram. They continued to shout and abuse me. The woman who was on her feet and initially tried to help got very domineering when the bus moved off. I had to reach out and stop my four-year-old from falling over. She told me ‘look after my son’ and ‘go sit down’. While doing this she actually grabbed me and tried to push me in the direction of the seat.

When I told her I could look after own son she got offended and told me she was just trying to help. I told her she was a good person and thanked her as I did not want to escalate the situation. I told her I did not need anymore help.The wheelchair user needed to get off and I moved the pram and apologised to him and his carer for the uncomfortable experience, They were really lovely.

The man kept aggressively calling me a bitch. The older women said in her day they folded the pram up. All well and good but my 1-year-old was in the pram. Did she want me to juggle the children all the way? The man continued to abuse me, telling me to walk, calling me a bitch over and over. I told him to stop calling me a bitch or I would call the Transport Police and report him. The third woman who initially had tried to be helpful kept telling ME to be quiet even though I begged the two other people to stop talking and let it go. The third woman ended up getting off. They continued to abuse me and call me a bitch until my son started to cry. Only then did they stop. My son told me he was sad. I comforted him and told him everything was okay.

This is not okay. I was bullied and abused by three people in front of my children. I had a hellish journey getting there and only had a short time before I could give my son a quick lunch and then get him to nursery on time on the way back. We can do better than this London. We are better people. I wished the people abusing me love and light in their lives because I refuse to contribute to the pain and suffering in this world. I apologised to the woman who had fallen. I want love in the world, no hate. We can do better. We can be better. Our children are watching us.

Mother: An Unconventional History By Sarah Knott

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Mother: An Unconventional History By Sarah Knott is a unique and fascinating book. An intoxicating blend of history, autobiography and anthropology. I loved it and read through it as quickly as possible. It brings women from every social class and time together. Essential reading for all mothers.

What was mothering like in the past?

When acclaimed historian Sarah Knott became pregnant, she asked herself this question. But accounts of motherhood are hard to find. For centuries, historians have concerned themselves with wars, politics and revolutions, not the everyday details of carrying and caring for a baby. Much to do with becoming a mother, past or present, is lost or forgotten.

Using the arc of her own experience, from miscarriage to the birth and early babyhood of her two children, Sarah Knott explores the ever-changing habits and experiences of motherhood across the ages. Drawing on a disparate collection of fascinating material – interrupted letters, hastily written diary entries, a line from a court record or a figure in a painting – Mother vividly brings to life the lost stories of ordinary women.

From the labour pains felt by a South Carolina field slave to the triumphant smile of a royal mistress pregnant with a king’s first son; from a 1950s suburban housewife to a working-class East Ender taking her baby to the factory; from a pioneer with eight children to a 1970s feminist debating whether to have any; these remarkable tales of mothering create a moving depiction of an endlessly various human experience.

Available here.

We Have To Stop Telling Parents To Enjoy Every Moment

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parenting I am over thirteen months into being a mother of two and there are no words for how hard it is. Since using words is my entire job description that is serious indeed. In those thirteen months I have not had one good nights sleep and my bones feel like they are eighty. Yet I am constantly told by people to ‘enjoy every moment’. As if I am some kind of monster if every moment with my children is not complete joy. Now I love my children more than anything else in this world, (Well, tied with my husband), but pretending parenting is nothing but sweetness and light does no one any favours.

At the moment my daughter is making it hard to write this post because she is doing an adorable peek a boo game and smiling at me, but earlier today she screamed for hours and I could do nothing to comfort her. She is teething and it is one of the hardest things ever. In truth, an unbelievable amount of pressure is put on parents, and on mothers in particular. The standard to be a good mother is one so high you would need a seat on a spacecraft just to reach it. So I write this piece in defiance of the standards that are impossible high, and for all of the people who tell me to ‘just enjoy it’ when I am having a bad day. I mean, when they are doing something they hate, going to the dentist for example, do I tell them to enjoy it because life is short? No, I don’t. Telling sleep-deprived, exhausted parents that they are lucky and to just be happy does no one any favours. Especially as some of them might have post-natal depression. Putting pressure on people to be happy, instead of acknowledging how hard parenting is, just creates unhappiness and pressure for people who are already under a huge amount of pressure.

To be fair I do remind myself that my childrens littleness will go in a flash and I should enjoy it as much as I can. But I am a human being for FFS. Not a robot that can take every crappy moment with a smile. I do not enjoy it when my children are in pain and I cannot comfort them. I do not enjoy the endless sleepless nights and the SAS-like torture of it. I do to like it when my children squabble. I also do not love wiping bottoms, cleaning, tidying or all of the accidental head-butts and scratches. Nor do I enjoy dealing with tantrums, or even a myriad of other domestic crap. And that is okay. It really is.

Mother!

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If you are the kind of person that gets twitchy when a hot cup of tea is plonked beside, instead of on top of, a perfectly good coaster then Mother! is not the film for you.  It is the tale of a frustrated poet (credited as Him) and his house-proud wife (credited as mother) living in an idyllic country house.  He spends his time not writing while she noodles about sploshing muted Farrow and Ball tones on various walls of their chic wooden dwelling.  Her domestic goddessing routine is upset when strangers start arriving and, crucially, not leaving however many times she screams “Get out.”

An unknown couple stay over at the behest of the poet followed by their bickering sons.  What follows is rather like watching an episode of Grand Designs in reverse.  Strangers begin to arrive at the house in greater numbers as the film initially plays out as a home invasion horror.  The mother’s show home is steadily ruined as hordes of the poet’s acolytes descend on them, literally tearing the house down.  The film unfolds like the kind of nightmare where you are entirely impotent to events going on around you.  mother dashes from room to room straightening rugs and emptying ashtrays only to find a new group of hell raisers have arrived.

Critical chatter around this film has been mixed, with a good deal of words devoted to the allegory that the film purports to represent.  The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed that the poet’s credit is Him with an upper case h while mother and everyone else including ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are all lower case.  Yes, we are in God territory here.  Javier Bardem is God, Jennifer Lawrence is Mother Nature., the house the Garden of Eden.  The first two strangers to arrive, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer are Adam and Eve, the sons Cain and Abel etc.  The destruction of the house is the pollution of the world and so goes the allegory.

If Mother! feels burdened by a need for interpretation it succeeds in being a nasty and very difficult film to watch – which is a good thing.  Director Daren Aronofsky is tapping into his previous work with the bristly paranoia of Black Swan and the way the camera is often stationed just behind Lawrence’s shoulder as it did behind Mickey Rourke’s in The Wrestler.  The choreography and escalation of the violence and horror make for a deeply uncomfortable second hour as Aronofsky tightens the umbilical cord he has wrapped around your neck.  That Mother! chases its own tail will come as no surprise for some.  However, you may well share the sentiments of four unlikely geysers sat to my left.  As the credits rolled one of them queried, “What was the f****** point of all that?”  What indeed?

 

 

Diary of a Freelance Working Mother: Park Life

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A term time break. The summer holidays. This used to mean something when I was in school, but since my son is still in toddlerhood it does not hold the same excitement. I am not saying it has no effect on my life: the toddler groups close or become less frequent. When they are open they are busier than ever. It seems like everyone, apart from our family, has taken August off and is having a wonderful time sunning themselves in an exotic location. Cry. But what really changes during term breaks is that I end up going to the park with my little one. Parks that are busier than ever.

Usually my little one and I are too busy to go to the park. His social life is packed with different events and lessons. From Monkey Music to his toddler groups. But toddlers need to learn, get fresh air, and burn off their energy. Fun for toddlers, but not always for the mama. I usually love taking my son on the swing, and watching him do the assault course. There are a lot of parks near where we live in South-West London, and they all have something different to offer. But the real interesting thing is the people that each park attracts. Some are easy-going with friendly toddlers, others are full of aggressive children and mothers who do not care. General piece of advice to them: it is called parenting, not let-them-do-whatever-they-want-ing. I reckon I could write a book just on the politics of park life.

I recently had a lovely conversation with a little girl about Star Wars, had an aggressive 10-year-old call my two-year-old a ‘s**t f**k’ because he wanted to go on the bus, and strike up a conversation with a friendly Irish mother whose sons toy my son kept trying to steal. It went well until she told me that 5-year-olds are harder work than two-year-olds and then I just wanted to start drinking, everyday.

I have had many great conversations with other mothers and their children. Not every experience has been great however. Where there is all of life that will not happen. Recently it started to rain just as I took my son to the park, we waited under a tree until it passed. Another mother came to the fence near us and started saying how she had lost her phone to a friend, and had left it on the fence. She gave me the eye and I gave the eye back, irritated. She then went all over the park looking for her phone. A while later she came up to me and asked ‘if I had seen a phone’. I told her, no. The rain passed and I took my son into the park for some fun. I looked over at one point to see the mean mother, who had previously been bitching about me to all of her friends, On Her Phone. No apology. Difficult mothers cannot be entirely avoided. Neither can the competitive ones. One mother kept telling me my son was 3 ‘because he looks 3’ It is hard to argue with that kind of logic.

Negative moments aside I now get why I saw so many mother in parks before I become a mother. Some looked exhausted and spaced out, others were on their phones, and some looked happy as they watched their child play. The park allows parents to socialise while the children burn off energy. On a tough day, it takes some of those hours away when they feel endless. So I might see you at the park, but I will make sure it is a friendly one. Feel free to strike up a conversation.

 

The Diary of a Freelance Working Mother

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working mother, mother, working, freelance, blogger, mummy blogger, blogger, parenting blogger, blogger, writing, Hello Frost readers. Many of you will know me quite well, others will be be thinking, ‘Why is the woman being so arrogant to think that we know who she is?’ And you may have a point, so let me introduce myself properly: I am the editor and founder of Frost Magazine. I am also a writer, author, editor, filmmaker and actor. But above all of this I am a mother. Which is the hardest thing of all.

When I got pregnant I felt like I was in a good position as a freelancer. I could be a full time mother AND have a career. Sure it would be hard, but I was used to hard. It is hard not to laugh thinking about this now. Being a freelancer is hard, but the flexibility has always made it worth it for me. Looking back now I can see I was naive when I thought it would be easy. I did not realise just how hard being a mother would be. The funniest thing is that I breastfeed for over a year and I look back at those times when I had a breastfeeding newborn and think of them as the easy days because now I have a two-year-old. For all of those mothers who have babies, enjoy this time. Toddlers are really hard work. Even my sweet and loving son. I know others have it harder. Very much so.

I am going to start this as a column. I am heavily pregnant as I write this and I just want to share the craziness of life as a freelance working mother. The timing is not great. I will be trying my best to take a proper maternity leave and cut back on work. There will be days, weeks even, when I let myself just be a mother and not run myself into the ground. Something that I have been known to do a lot in the past. It has taken becoming a parent to realise that I am not invincible, That self care is important. So I will continue to write my books and run this online mag while I raise my children. But while I am doing that I am going to tell you about how I spend the days taking my son to toddler groups and playing lego, and then writing and answering emails in the evening. I will give you some tips on both parenting and work. I will share with you how I wrote my first fiction book. Spoiler alert: by walking my son around in his pram until he feel sleep and then banging out 2000 words a day on my iPhone. I will talk to you about the guilt and the stress. But most of all I will let you know that I have no regrets at the path I have taken. Being a mother is the best things that ever happened to me. Motherhood is hard and sometimes I feel I am not up to the task, and choosing to work (which I am fully aware is a privilege) gives me back my identity and my freedom. Writers write. So stay tuned. I hope you enjoy the journey.

 

Christmas Gift List For Mum

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Mums are amazing and deserve to be shown how much they are loved. With that in mind, here are a few top picks.

Totes Toasties Faux Fur Mule.

totesfauxfurmulesTotes-Cream-Faux-Fur-Mule-Slippers~30D692FRSC

We love these slippers. Comfortable, super warm and fun.

 

Braun Face Cleansing Brush + Mini Epilator Beauty Edition.

braunface
braun

This cleansing brush and epilator in one is innovative and brilliant, it really cleans skin, gets rid of hair and leaves your face brighter and smoother. This is a brilliant beauty product. We were very impressed.

Introducing the world’s first facial epilator and cleansing brush. Braun Face combines two facial treatments into one device: precise epilation of the finest hairs and gentle deep-pore cleansing. The facial epilator features a slim head with 10 micro-openings to capture even the finest hairs. The facial cleanser cleanses pore-deep to remove make-up and impurities up to 6X better than manual cleansing. Show the world the skin that you were meant to have with the Braun Face epilator and facial cleansing brush.

Braun Face Facial Epilator and Facial Cleansing Brush is available here.

Label.m Giles Moisturising Treatment Duo. 

labelmchristmas

A great Shampoo and Conditioner gift set with a gothic design from Giles Deacon. Funky.

Includes treatment shampoo and moisturising conditioner.

Codorníu Cuvée Barcelona Brut.

Codorníu Cuvée Barcelona Brut

There is a popular meme that says mummy drinks because you are bad, but sometimes it is because you give her a bottle of fizz and your presence is call for celebration, right? This cava from Codorníu is top notch. Trust us, we know our stuff.
Add some sparkle to your celebrations this Christmas with Codorníu Cuvée Barcelona Brut.
Beautifully bottled, indulgently rich and tantalizingly fruity, this cava is as perfect on a wish list as it is served with Christmas dinner, alongside Boxing Day nibbles or to drink at a festive party with friends.
Codorníu Cuvée Barcelona Brut is available at Sainsbury’s and Waitrose RRP £12.99. sainsburys.co.uk waitrose.co.uk