Mush

I recently met up with a friend and her brand new baby. It was simply lovely, I got a rush of nostalgia as I smelled her head (the baby, not my friend) and felt her sweet softness. Then I noticed the stare. My friend had the stare - you know the one, - the “tell me everything you know” stare, the “”don’t you remember how this feels” stare. It snapped me out of my nostalgia fuelled reverie because in the whites of her eyes I could see a panic I had long since forgotten. I realised my ‘memories’ were a romantic fallacy, in my friend’s rictus grin and higher than normally pitched voice I could see the truth of new motherhood. It sucks. Sure, it’s magical and transformative and full of joy, but also it sucks, really really sucks. How had I forgotten? 

My friend started almost every sentence with ‘Of course, you know…’ and I was too ashamed to admit that I didn’t know, not really. I can talk about those unhinged days where everything seemed to be totally beyond my control; I can reel off anecdote after anecdote about baby poo in the bath and vomit down my back but I no longer feel it. I could give my friend sympathy but not empathy and I think that’s one of the most important things you need when you’re in that first flush of motherhood (or indeed fatherhood). You need to know there’s someone right there with you, doing what you’re doing and feeling what you’re feeling. You need to be able to walk into a room, exhale a certain way and know that everyone in that room knows exactly what you’ve been through. No one can fix this stuff, it just has to be worked through and an understanding shoulder to cry on is a vital part of working it through. 

It can be hard to find the right shoulder though. Making friends as a parent is a lot like dating, which is probably where all the trouble started in the first place. I remember my first playgroup, I met loads of mums who were in just the same boat as me, lots of whom I was really interested in and wanted to see more of. I think I only saw one of them again. I was far too nervous to ask any of them round for coffee; the very thought of it induced a panic attack and an unsuccessful attempt to hide behind a 3 month old. I didn’t know those women and my house was in no fit state to be seen by strangers; every surface was covering in some sort of bodily fluid and you couldn’t see the floor for manky muslins and migraine inducing noisy toys. I was way too nervous to allow people to cross the threshold and judge me - what if they were super mums with houses full of educational wooden toys and baby boden clothes with nary a stain to be seen?  I was too shy to even ask if they would be at the group the next week. I never went back. 

This is where Mush comes in. It’s a new app that’s being dubbed ‘Tinder for mums’ because it seems that everything is ‘tinder for x’ these days. Mush, however, does seem like it will be very useful. It allows you to meet local mums and provides information on things you can do together. You can use it to message groups, so it’s easier to keep in contact and up to date with plans - especially useful as everything can change minute by minute when you’ve got kids in the mix. It also features articles on child development and other parents’ experiences. I know that it seems half the internet is full of mummy bloggers getting their gripe on (the other half is cat videos) but it can be very handy to have everything in one place on your phone, especially when you are trapped under a sleeping baby and only dare move one thumb for fear of waking the slumbering cherub. 

For parents of older kids, it might be the ideal place to organise a playdate for kids all starting in reception together. I know I would have felt a lot better if my little one had had a friendly face or two accompanying him as he passed through the school gates for the first time. It could be handy for organising lifts to and from birthday parties - to the the village halls, soft play centres and occasional medieval jousting tournament (when the parents have got a bit too into it). Heck, you could use it to share and donate clothes, toys, books, macrame your own yurt kits and all the other preposterous detritus kids tend to accumulate.  

It would have been incredibly useful to have had Mush when we moved to pastures new just after the birth of our second child. I would have loved to have had people to ask for information on the local area, actually, not just people - parents. I wanted to be able to ask parents for information because they are the ones who know which cafes will greet your munchkins with a smile and which ones are likely to spit in their food, they are the ones who know that the pottery place claims to have a changing table but in reality it looks more like a ducking stool balanced directly above the toilet. Parents know where the good Santas are. The information you need when you have kids is incredibly specific and weird. Mush gives you a way to access that information easily.

As with all things to do with child-rearing Mush is multi-faceted, it can be used as much or as little as you need. It can be used for learning, engaging, planning and socialising - the kind of thing you’re used to getting sorted by 7:30 in the morning once you’ve got kids. I have been extremely lucky to have made some amazing school gate friends; women and men who have made me laugh and think and have given me incredible support when I really really needed it. I am grateful for them. Everyone raising kids needs a strong support network. Mush might help you to lay some very strong foundations to build it. 

Bedtime Blues

I’m sure you’ll have noticed I haven’t been blogging as much recently. (Let’s be honest, it hadn’t crossed your mind at all had it?) There are a few reasons for this; not least because post-Christmas winter is the most rubbish time of the year and I’ve been hitting the wine hard in an effort to keep warm and sane. I’ve been finding hard to find the time to write because there have been some significant to changes to our routine and it seems to be harder and harder to acclimatise each time this happens.  

The main thing that has me befuddled is, of course, my kids. I have been utterly disconcerted by their changing bedtime. They are eroding our kid free evenings like climate change working on an iceberg. If you accept that Global Warming is a misnomer and describe climate change as increasing chaotic energy in the atmosphere, then this is remarkably apt metaphor. This has been a velvet revolution. There have been no marked conflicts, no fire fights or raised voices, it’s just been a gradual war of attrition. (*Listens to gears crunch as the metaphor changes from geography, to history, to car maintenance). 

I know it’s unreasonable to expect 7 and 4 year olds to be in bed by 6:30, but good grief I wish it wasn’t. By the time I make it down the stairs these days I am gnawing on the bannister with hunger. My body clock cannot cope with dinner happening after 8:30, but I would still prefer to eat hake with my husband than miserably gnaw on a couple of fish fingers with the kids. So I’m still stuck doing the dance of reward, threat and hyper aggression that it often takes to get them tucked up and compliant. Of course it’s not as bad as it used to be; it’s nothing like the physically and psychologically gruelling bedtime you get with an under 3 year old (as brilliantly described in point number 9 in this post by EehBahMum)  but it’s still way higher maintenance than I would like. 

They seems to have agreed some sort of covenant that allows them both adequate downtime but leaves me flustered and harassed. Big kid will sort himself out; bath, teeth, pyjamas and reading in bed like something from a Norman Rockwell painting - you can almost see his halo glowing. Meanwhile I am hauling small kid out of cupboards, from under beds and occasionally off of windowsills as she cackles and legs it away from the pyjama bottoms I am holding out for the umpteenth time. Finally, I wrestle her into bed and sing her current weird lullaby choice (it’s Tightrope by Stone Roses at the moment), I treasure her full hearted, arms-flung-wide joy-filled power-hug and off she pops, snuggled down and silent until oooh, at least one o’clock in the morning. 

Now it is big kid’s time to shine. I have to admire his inventiveness when it comes to creating phantom bedtime illnesses, none of the standard ‘my tummy hurts’ for this one. We have had ‘my ears are too hot.’ ‘My jaw clicks when I move it like this’ (to which the only answer is, of course, ‘Well don’t bloody move it like that then’) and my personal favourite ‘My knees feel weird.’ Once we have agreed an imaginary solution to his imaginary problem and settled him back in bed we shift to the next stage. The talking stage. Oh god, the talking. His talking in incessant these days. I look back on those toddler days, when I was working on developing his vocabulary, teaching him preposterous words like ‘assonance’ when he was 2 for my own amusement; I look back at that new mum and I want to slap her smiling chops and hiss ‘Aim low!’ because now he is a big boy of seven he knows ALL THE WORDS and he thinks it is necessary to use every single one of them every day. Especially at bedtime.  In an effort to get him to stop I once advised him that a really good way to fall asleep is to just hold your breath for a really really long time. Unfortunately he has also read all of the words and is far too clever to fall for a trick like that. I’ve kind of given up now and begrudgingly accept his autonomy these days. I let him have that extra chapter or two of his book and just hope he doesn’t come downstairs after I’ve started my second glass of wine. 

Then, at sporadic intervals, small kid decides to up the ante by sitting in her own bed at 3am and howling ‘Mum, Mummy, Muuummmeeee, I’m still in my bed. I am.’  Foghorns have nothing on small kid in the dark of night. Neither sweet reason nor barely contained fury seems to make a dent in my darling daughter’s nocturnal habits. The sense of jeopardy adds to the exhaustion - these nighttime adventures only happen about 40% of the time but there is no rhyme no reason to her sleep pattern. Each night when I go to bed I don’t know if I will be stumbling around like a drunk twenty-something in the early hours or opening my eyes to glorious sunshine and sanity seven hours later. Of course if she has to good sense to start this litany with ‘Dad, Daddy, Daaadeeee…’ then it’s a swift karate chop to my beloved’s throat and I am back off to dream land. Team work. 

During the day we can be found at the school gates muttering darkly about how there simply isn’t enough PE on the curriculum, in the hopes that the school might step in and tire them out for us. 

Suffice it to say my posts may be a little erratic for the foreseeable future but I’m hoping that this one is the start of something a little more coherent coming around the corner. 

Bye Bye Beebies

Last weekend my son spontaneously asked to watch the ballet on CBeebies… well, I say spontaneously, he had already been told he wasn’t allowed computer games, or a harry potter film or you tube or joy, but the fact remains my boy asked to watch ballet. There is no other channel where this is even an option. Ballet on any other channel is swathed in pink tulle and is clearly FOR GIRLS. I was more than happy to hand the flag of gender diversity over to CBeebies for the afternoon. Earlier in the day I’d already rolled out of bed with the four year and plonked her in front of the CBeebies prom so I could go back to the important business of pretending to be asleep and assuage my guilt at this neglect because she was watching something ‘worthwhile.’  

When I gave up on trying to recapture sleep I came down and watched some of the Prom with my daughter and it was like a reunion with old friends. I realised that both my kids are leaving the comforting, kind and brilliantly diverse world of CBeebies behind them. I wasn’t expecting this to make me so sad. Watching the gang singing and dancing felt like seeing long lost family members - not siblings or anything, but definitely like second cousins you used to play with at family gatherings. 

The people involved in CBeebies are wonderful. They have educational psychologists, speech and language therapists and a whole host of other professionals consulting on their home grown  programmes. I doubt many of the programmes on the Disney Channel are evidence-based. I’ve discovered many of my favourite people on twitter and some who write some of my favourite comics also write for CBeebies. As for the presenters, oh the presenters… I’ve have developed full blown crushes on at least three of them. If you want to see the dark heart of Mumsnet just search for Mr Bloom and watch the depravity unfold. There have been periods in the last seven years of child rearing where I have spent more time with Sid and Andy than with my husband. Speaking of which, let just make a little time for a number rap or two. 

For me this is the epitome of CBeebies - watchable by children and adults, gently educative and above all bloody good fun.

So little of the television my kids watch these days is worthwhile. It’s there to pass the time, it might be clever and witty, post-modern and self-referential but it doesn’t try to develop them, it doesn’t care. CBeebies cares. CBeebies nurtured my kids, it showed them worlds rich in variety, with a diverse range of people and creatures of all ages, shapes, colours and abilities. Mr Tumble was a goddamn hero to my kids and as a Speech & Language Therapist I realise the way Something Special has normalised the use of key word signing and made it part of the everyday vocabulary of the under fives, is something very special indeed. CBeebies has offered my kids a world where every opportunity is open to them. Thanks to Jessica on the CBeebies Prom my daughter now wants to be ‘Boss of the Orchestra’ when she grows up. Maybe Mr Tumble can show me the signs for ‘Conductor’ to help her out a little.

The standard CBeebies has set for itself is so exceptionally high no other channel even comes close. Nick Jr resorts to days and days of non-stop Peppa Pig, just to compete. On CBeebies there are shows set in caravan parks and harbours, castles and sheds. The programmes are kind and respectful about difference and diversity. They are also bloody brave - Bing kills a butterfly, Topsy and Tim say goodbye to their Nan’s dog at the vets; not every story has a happy ending. The strength of acknowledging this with the under fives has been a lifeline for our family. I’ve used these episodes as a springboard for discussing the hard times our family has been through. These stories have helped my children articulate how they feel in their dark days. 

Only on CBeebies is there a sense that the programmes are made to ensure that they are helping children to develop an understanding of the world around them and how they can live in it. It’s not just a mass of colours and sound to fill the time between the ad breaks. On CBeebies women are scientists, pirates and footballers. Men are carers, ballet dancers and story tellers. People with physical and intellectual impairments are shown whole and happy, not instruments of pity to wring a few more coppers out of us on a charity night. It's bloody fantastic.

I would love to stay snuggled up on the sofa watching CBeebies with my kids. I am sad that we are moving on but sleepovers and singing lessons, dance and drama, beavers and ballet have become our new routine. Nevertheless, before we say goodbye entirely, I would like to say a huge thank you to the myriad creative minds who have charmed, educated and entertained us for the last seven years. I hope many more generations of children get to spend time in the wonderful worlds of CBeebies. 

Aveeno, baby!

Our son has eczema. It is under control now but it has been a long hard road to get here. When big kid was very small his skin was covered in red welts and, whilst he seemed relatively undisturbed by this during the day, it is fair to say that we didn’t sleep much in those first few years. His general level of discomfort due to his eczema wore us all out. It was pretty awful to look at and much much worse to feel. Things got pretty miserable at times. I try not to think about it too much. We went to the doctors and got all the emollient creams that didn’t really make much difference and then we went on the internet… always the last bastion of the quietly desperate when it comes to medical advice. Thank god (and all you lovely tax payers) for NHS Choices which calmly informed us that oats were good for helping to manage eczema. 

(Oddly the link to the research on this is now gone from NHS Choices and NICE; as far as I can tell the evidence is that emollients in general work to treat eczema and oat based therapies are not significantly more likely to manage it rather than anything else - with eczema I think all you can do is try the different creams until you find the one that works for your kid and use that. Use it A LOT. There is no one size fits all for eczema; read the evidence and work with the nurses and doctors who are there to support you and keep going. It’s really bloody hard but it needs to be done. )

Thanks to the articles we had read, we started making little bags of porridge oats out of nylon tights to add to the boy’s bath. Every sodding bath night. The bedtime routine is ghastly enough without having to add crafting to the mix. It was a huge pain in the backside, but not as painful as soothing a kid whose eczema is playing up. We grudgingly admitted that the oats were making a positive difference to the boy’s skin (along with continued moisturising and doses of piriton when things flared up) so we continued to do it, regardless of how much more cleaning the bath needed, and how disgusting a nylon pouch of soggy oats feels when you fish it out of the bath. We got through so many pairs of tights I’m pretty certain the staff in our local Boots thought we were bank robbers. 

Then we discovered Aveeno moisturising creams, with colloidal oats as their base. They work absolutely brilliantly for our son. We have been using buckets of Aveeno for years now and big kid’s skin has never looked better. It’s so much easier than a bag of oats, the creams feel smooth and light on application and they soak in pretty quickly.  We have to make sure we get the one with the green lid as there are a few others that contain perfumes that make the boy’s skin angry. Also Aveeno is not cheap, though it is often on offer, but it is a recognised treatment for eczema so you can get it on prescription... if you have better organisational skills that me and are capable of booking a doctor’s appointment when it is helpful rather than when it is urgent.

At the Mumsnet Blogfest I approached the Aveeno stall people to tell them how great I think their products are and, as is the way of these things, I have been given a few of their latest range of baby products to review:

The Soothing Relief Emollient Cream is just as effective at managing big kid’s eczema as the grown up version and it is gentle on small kid’s skin as well. She refuses to be left out of the process, so it’s nice to have a gentle cream to use on her still developing skin. We will probably switch to this one until small kid becomes less strident, so probably for the next nine or ten years, I guess. 

I didn’t think I’d have much cause to use the barrier cream to be honest but, due to her general levels of seasonal excitement, small kid hasn’t really been concentrating too well on her toileting routine recently and has had a bit of a sore bum to prove it. So we cracked out the nappy cream and it sorted her out a treat. I found it much easier to use than other leading nappy cream brands (sudocrem, obviously). It squeezes out of the tube easily, rubs in well and still managed the redness and soothes the soreness quickly and effectively.  

The kids are using the Soothing Relief Emollient Wash in the bath at the moment. It doesn’t always completely dissolve in the water and sometimes strings of it float round the bath eliciting shrieks of ‘Snake! Snake in the bath!’ which is all good fun, so I don’t mind too much. It’s good at helping their skin stay moisturised in the bath and it works very well as a body wash in the shower for those days when big kid is feeling all grown up. It’s a shame that you don’t get a huge amount of bubbles with it but I haven’t found a bath time emollient that actually does give proper bubbles, so I assume that’s just par for the course with this type of product (and the preposterously hard water you get in our home town). It is, of course, a million times better than bagging up some oats and squeezing them into the bath. This product offers me peace of mind that I just don’t get with other kids’ bath washes - my son will quite frequently have flare ups even with products like Oilatum and Sanex, which claim to manage eczema. That hasn't happened with this wash and it's been over a month so I'm happy with that.

Over all, I am a very devoted Aveeno user and I’ve found them to be a helpful and supportive company. On their website they even have downloadable stories to help children understand their condition and how to manage it. If I’d known about this earlier it might have stopped some of the moisturiser battles of yore, when the boy would refuse to have cream put on without threats and/or bribery. Happy days. The website does contain quite a bit of value added stuff. There are videos for adults about managing skin conditions over time in the Aveeno Breakfast Club section of the website. It is a really useful resource.

Overall I just want to say thanks to Aveeno for making bath times easier, bed times more peaceful and the boy’s skin so much better.  You have made life smoother. Thank you.  

Top Presents to Buy for Kids (When You Secretly Hate Their Parents)

It's that time of year when we are frantically planning, purchasing and panicking - it's the most wonderful time of the year. Honest. So, to help you out, here is my list of most hated presents so you can use it to wreak petty revenge on your frenemies.

Hama beads - I will be eternally grateful to my kids' after school club for allowing them ample time to hama bead their lives away. Never allow these environmentally irresponsible beads over the threshold. In a fit of whimsy two Christmases ago, I though it would be lovely to replicate this calming creative activity at home. I was wrong, so so wrong. Cue half an hour of painstaking bead placement followed by one unexpected arm spasm and suddenly there are beads everywhere and an avalanche of crying. Never again. They have sat at the bottom of the arts and crafts drawer for almost two years, never to see the light of day.  

Loom bands - remember loom bands? these are the zombies of the kids craft world. Every time I think they’ve loomed their way out of our lives, they suddenly reappear, littering the floors in every room with their multi-coloured, hoover-resistant tangles. The ratio of effort to reward is very off - so much effort with so little to show for it. Do you remember at the height of the craze someone made a freaking wedding dress from these little rubbery bastards? I do. I spent five hours weaving away and all I got was a long brightly coloured elastic band.

Aqua beads - I brought this one on myself. I actually asked someone to buy this shitty shitty product for our daughter. This present was a salutary lesson in the evils of advertising for our smallest one. We’d seen the advert; the girls with the pretty hair effortlessly dropping the beads into their allocated holes and creating art and hair bands and bracelets. Bracelets? Really? Aqua beads have the tensile resilience of balsa wood. If you even look at them funny they collapse back into their component parts. Plus, they are a total grind to use. Small kid gets out the high tech bead dispensing wand and clicks the button to release a single bead. Nothing happens. We shake it vigorously to persuade the beads that they want to leave their comrades in the wand and create some art. One brave bead makes the journey and immediately pings off the table and rolls under the fridge never to be seen again. It’s followed by a bunch of companions who then flee to separate parts of the kitchen leaving me crawling round on all fours collecting them like a disgruntled vampire.* Any activity that creates ten times as much work for the parent than the child is on my most hated list. 

Magical musical wand - This is the kind of gift that is bought by an adult who is more concerned with what a child would like than what a grown up can tolerate. I understand, when you press that button in the shop and hear that refrain from the kid’s favourite disney film and you see the characters glistening in a magical snow globe it looks adorable. You know they’ll love it. The problem is that they will love it. They will love it so much they play it for ten days straight. The song never ends. It gets worse when they’ve got more than one. Hearing 3 separate wands playing 3 separate refrains at the same time is like wandering into a fever dream. 

Pie face - ah Pie Face, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. You got cream in your face - ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. This is cute and hilarious on Christmas Day. Who doesn’t love the sight of Grandad with a face full of whipped cream? However, on a miserable wet Friday at the end of January, at 6 o’clock, when my eyes are already sliding toward that bottle of wine waiting on the worktop, the last thing I want is to drag the (most likely mouldy) whippy cream from the back of the fridge and set up a machine to help me nasally ingest it. 

Hypersexualised dolls - My daughter is still very much at the baby and barbie stage of play. God bless her rigid conformity to stereotypes. I used to hate barbie (I was a Sindy girl through and through), I hated her shape and her vapid american breeziness, but my word, I will take that with both hands over a Bratz doll or a Monster High monstrosity. Why, exactly, are 80% of girls’ dolls wearing shoes that wouldn’t normally be seen outside a strip club? I’ve seen some excellent arguments online discussing some benefits of Bratz and their ilk for teaching diversity and non-conformity to little girls and I’m definitely down with that, but I don’t understand why it has to be in outfits that would be considered a bit full on in Spearmint Rhino. If we want to share a joy in personal style  and non-conformity there are plenty of positive role models we can use for inspiration: Bjork springs immediately to mind. I would pay good money for a dress up Bjork doll.  (Also, I am old.) It is worth bearing in mind that if you step on one of those tiny, pointy shoes in bare feet you will be able to teach your kids a whole new set of vocabulary they've never heard before. 

Laser guns - if any toy that makes a ‘pew pew pew’ type noise enters my house without a mute switch it will be defenestrated in under 24 hours. That is all. 

To all of you who have been kind enough to give these items to my kids, I really do appreciate your generosity and the fact that you have placed my children's happiness before mine, and I’m sure it doesn’t mean you secretly hate me… does it?

*Honestly, one of the recommended methods from stopping a vampire is to scatter rice, salt or lentils on the floor because it’ll be compelled to pick up all the grains. I’m a bit sad they never used this strategy in Buffy. 

Detective Dot

I don't really do product placement. It's not really my thing, but occasionally a product comes along that is so firmly in my wheelhouse that it would be churlish not to sing its praises. I recently attended the Mumsnet Blogfest, which was much more inspiring than I had expected. The speakers throughout the day were erudite and eloquent, the Scummy Mummies were brilliantly funny and the whole day has really helped me to recommit to writing and to focus on what I'm going to do next with all this. To be honest, I was expecting it all to be very corporate and brash so I was delighted to meet Sophie Deen and get swept away in her passion and pride in her project. Everyone, meet Detective Dot.

What I like about it is that this isn't just a story; it's an ongoing mission in educating and inspiring children. Dot isn't just a female hero who appeals to boys and girls, who is in to STEM and who helps other people - although, my word, that's enough for me to be singing her praises anyway. More than that, Dot aims to help children to really question the world around them, to interrogate their own privilege. Your child has the opportunity to join the Children's Intelligence Agency. They will receive a TOP SECRET envelope through the post - thrilling when you're under ten - which contains additional missions. Kids can investigate things in their own lives, like who made their favourite toy etc - I won't go into too much detail, you'll have to find out for yourselves. 

Since reading it my son has certainly been more considered in his approach to the world - I'm constantly being asked what things are made of, what country they come from. etc. It's gratifying and infuriating in equal measure. Thank god for Google. Admittedly I've tried to work through a couple of the CIA's missions with him and he's not been massively interested, but then he is 7 and it is nearly Christmas so this is probably worth reintroducing these activities in January to help stave off the post-Christmas malaise. 

I will leave it to my own secret agent to explain what he likes about the whole story "I liked that Dot was really good with technology. She had the ability to talk to technology and she used that ability in the book. It was exciting and sometimes funny." 

Thank you Sophie (and family) for this brilliant brilliant project - I just wish I was allowed to join the Children's Intelligence Agency too!