Family

Okay, so, maybe I’m being dramatic. But he came terrifyingly close to nearly drowning. It all happened so quickly and I was completely oblivious, despite the fact I was standing in the water with him less than a meter away.

It’s that time of year again! In the days between Christmas and New Years Eve I agonise over what to do to ring in the new year. Part of this agony is of course because that is a decision that really needs to be made before the 30th of December.…

It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year Christmas is my FAVOURITE time of year. My tree has been up for nearly a full month and I’ve had presents tucked away even before the tree went up. And if I’m TOTALLY honest I sing Christmas Carols year round. Don’t hate…

Maybe I’m the only one feeling this right now - but I feel it every year. I simultaneously feel like I’ve overdone the Christmas presents while also not having done enough. I feel like I’ve gone too far, I’ve spent too much, they don’t need so much *stuff*. They just…

I was having a bit of a brag this morning about how good my kids are. And they are. I’m entirely biased, but I’ve also been told a few times in the last couple of weeks by various people (friends, one of my kid’s classroom teacher, their after school care…

When my daughter was a toddler to about four years old she would have episodes of intense emotion. Which I guess is a euphemism for a "tantrum", but I feel like tantrum implies that it's an intentional behaviour. Whereas I absolutely believe these outbursts were beyond her control.

Never in my life have I started more sentence - or more thoughts - with phrases like: “Thank goodness….” “Just as well…” “At least…” “I’m just glad that…” “It could be worse.”

While it’s easy to say that mothers should be able to breastfeed anywhere, anytime, it can be a bit daunting breastfeeding in public spaces. Especially in the early days.

I get the “joke” here. I totally understand the feeling of being so bound to your babies and role as their mother that any time out, even if it’s just a half hour trip to the supermarket can feel like a holiday. But I feel like I need to say it:…

It's official. Santa is dead. Or maybe not “dead”, but apparently he is very much not alive. At least according to my five year old. The note reads: I love you Santa but you not alive

When my son was born I felt my lost income pretty quickly. I’d worked in childcare up until three weeks before my due date. After squirreling money away in preparation for taking time off work with him it was pretty painful watching that bank account flip into reverse and slowly drain…

When my daughter was ten months old, after a particularly restless night with her awake every hour, I stood in my kitchen like a zombie preparing my three year old son’s breakfast. He had also woken up a couple of times that night. I was wrecked. My daughter was sitting…

When the movie “Suddenly 30” (Also titled "13 Going On 30") came out in early 2004 I was sixteen years old. And I didn’t get why anyone would wish to be 30. That just seems so… so…. OLD!

Anger, disappointment, rejection, jealousy, embarrassment, the whole range of negative emotions are all are perfectly normal part of life. And we need these things. Life is light and shade. We wouldn’t have any context for happiness if we were never sad.

I’ve written before about how my adverse childhood experiences have made me the person I am, the mother I am. Mothering in a foreign country, similar to my own but far from my origins, has been challenging in practical and financial ways.

As a new parent conflicting advice can be a bit overwhelming. It can start from the hospital - ever shift change a different midwife comes in with a different opinion about how exactly you should be doing everything. Especially if the advice people are giving you goes against your own…

Larissa Waters Breastfeeding In Parliament Shows the No Win Situation For Mothers   Larissa Waters does yet another breastfeeding first https://t.co/A5a18083VE pic.twitter.com/BXMh7vYH5M — Karen Barlow (@KJBar) June 22, 2017   First time I've had to move a Senate motion while breastfeeding! And my partner in crime moved her own motion…

“What?!” I hear you gasp, at the very thought of there being an “UP” side of having a bad sleeper. Well, yeah, there are some. At least for my little boy. Elliot is now coming up to four years old, and up until a couple of months ago, we had…

As promised - this is my new and improved “Butter Chicken” recipe. I’m putting “butter chicken” in quotation marks at this point because I feel like I’ve altered this so much that it doesn’t exactly resemble the traditional dish.

Maybe Baby People ask me all the time if we’re planning to have another baby, and I usually laugh at the thought – of course not. No. No no no. Absolutely not. I don’t want to go back there. Pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding – all behind me. Thank goodness for that!…

Phone Calls Are Scary I hate calling people on the phone. Hate it. I get a little heart racing panic every time. Whether it’s calling the mechanic to book my car in for a service, or calling my mum to ask if she can babysit the kids. I hate that…

As Mother’s Day approaches I’ve been looking around trying to come up with some ideas for when my children (or really - my partner) ask me what I want the kids (him) to get me for Mother’s Day 2017.

Most nights start off with our 8 year old son falling asleep with either me or his father. He doesn’t fall asleep by himself. Either one of us will lie with him in his bed or he'll crawl into our bed.

So late last year my son came home super excited that they were starting to learn about coding in his computer class at school. Kid was in Grade 2. The first thing he did when he got home was turn on the computer, and show me this video.

  A Queensland mother was allegedly told to leave a Kmart store on Saturday, by a store manager, for breastfeeding her 3 month old son. A group have organised a “Flash Mob” to raise awareness and show their support for breastfeeding mothers. What Really Happened There seems to be some…

Milk Bar Breast Pumps recently sent me a Haakaa Breast Pump to review! I was really excited about doing this review, because it’s a breast pump I have actually had my eye on for a while.

In Australia we have a free public education system. But it’s easy to forget that our children’s education is apparently free when we open up an invoice for $800 for two children attending public school. That’s not really my definition of free.

My youngest asked me last night "Mummy, how do you breed babies?" Hilarious phrasing. I’m going to thank Minecraft for that one. On Minecraft she breeds her sheep, cows, and dogs. Most of all the dogs.

I’m not sure if it’s because I breastfed my kids for an exceptionally long time (Nearly 8 years in total!!!) so people had plenty of time to comment on it. Or if it’s because I have “Hey, please tell me how to parent” stamped on my forehead.

I hate homework. I hate homework more as a parent than I did as a student (and trust me, I wasn’t a fan of it then either). I’d even say I hate homework more than my children do now. HATE it. Yet, I still attempt to enforce it at home.

have a confession to make - I’m usually the parent hurling their kids out of the car onto the footpath in the drop-and-run zone as the bell goes at 9:00am (give or take a couple of minutes!) It’s a rare morning that my kid doesn’t have to run to class.

“Mum, play with me.” My eight year old moaned. “You never play with me anymore.” (He means since I played UNO with him this morning.) I do play with my kids. I actually play with my kids a whole lot more than my parents ever played with me.

The Favourite Child Apparently most parents have a favourite child. We just don’t admit to it. It’s the darkest of all our secrets – the kind of information we should take to our graves. Whenever anyone brings up whether or not we have a favourite child we should respond with…

My mum adopted a greyhound named Jodie a few months ago. Something that I was a little nervous about - not knowing anything about greyhounds. I had imagined they were aggressive and dangerous to have around children. I had no idea how gentle and sweet greyhounds are.

If I could do anything for Christmas this year (or every year for that matter) it would be load the family up on a plane and fly to the Gold Coast to spend the holidays with my Grandma, Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins. But unfortunately four return flights at that time…

This isn’t just something that happens in the blogging community. This happens to basically everyone in the creative or arts industry. We’re expected to work for experience, for exposure, for trade - but not for money.

Christmas and Ikea are two of my favourite things, so naturally combining the two is simply magical to me. This year I set myself a challenge - that I can find something for EVERYONE at Ikea (or at the very least every age group. If there's absolutely nothing that appears…

Avoid food that requires more preparation than “Open packet. Dump on tray.” If you absolutely must serve something you felt like you actually put effort into, slap together a fruit platter... then you can feel like you've offered a healthy alternative to put next to the sea of chips, lollies,…

The Year A Christmas Carol Broke My Heart *Content warning* Discusses difficulty conceiving. One Christmas, several years ago I was walking through a shopping centre with my son who had just turned 2 years old. There were decorations everywhere and Christmas Carols were playing continuously. Overall it was a lovely…

When my son was first born I didn’t really know much about breastfeeding. I knew I wanted to breastfeed, though I didn’t really think much about it. I didn’t do any breastfeeding classes, or even read much about breastfeeding. I’d figured that breastfeeding would be just like giving birth –…

I don’t let anyone touch, hug, kiss, hold, pick up or tickle my children if my child indicates they don’t want them to. They don’t even need to say “no”; we have more of a “Yes means yes” policy.

We are currently looking for the best pet for our family. I’ve wanted a pet for the kids for several years. I grew up with pets. I’ve had practically every kind of pet. Dogs, cats, birds, fish, rabbits, mice, rats, guinea pigs, chickens, a lizard and even a couple of…

I find it hard to accept help. I’ve never been very good at it. I am a proud person and hate feeling “needy”. I am the eldest of 6 kids and learned fairly early that I needed to be independent and self sufficient;

You could say I’m an expert on weaning. I should be, I’ve been doing it for the last 2 years. I’ve spent more time trying to wean my daughter than I've spent just breastfeeding her.

Here ends another World Breastfeeding Week for me. I cannot believe I’m still breastfeeding. I really thought last year was going to be the very last time I celebrated World Breastfeeding Week as a nursing mother.

I love babies. I’m ridiculously excited when my friend are pregnant and even more so when the baby arrive. I fuss, I knit them blankets that take me 40 hours, I love the smell of babies so much that even milky newborn baby spew smells good to me.

Because she asked me to. (Well, that was a quick blog post - hope I cleared that up.) No really, she asked me to. Pretty directly actually.

There is a lot of myths and misunderstandings about what Attachment Parenting is and how it works - usually from people who haven't really looked into what Attachment Parenting is or how it works.

I’ve heard people say things like “I basically do attachment parenting, except I don’t breastfeed” or “I like the idea of Attachment Parenting, but I don’t feel comfortable with bed sharing”. That’s could still Attachment Parenting!

I'm sure I'm not the only person spending school holidays at home, we have no plans aside from a few play dates and a sleep over scheduled in, so I have a lot of time to fill in and a very busy 5 year old to keep entertained. I also…

Star Wars Episode 1 is popular in our house in a BIG way. The kids want to watch it all the time. So maybe it's not such a bad movie after all. One of the proudest, most exciting moments for me and a parent has been sitting down to watch…

This is my current nightmare. My son would happily live off nothing but crackers and air, now can’t even eat crackers.

Yesterday was a particularly long day. It started at 3 am where my little girl woke up and simply could not fall back to sleep. I’d only gone to sleep just after 11 pm myself. She’d already woken up briefly at 1am, so my 4 hours sleep had already been…

So apparently there’s some controversy behind the simple statement: Fed is Best. It’s a take on “breast is best” and in three little words it acknowledges all the different way we can feed our babies that might be best for our circumstances: breastfed, formula fed, tube fed, mix fed, cross…

I was doing a little bit of housework while babywearing with my baby girl in a carrier on my back. I turned on the upright vacuum cleaner and as I started to work on the living room floor two bullants dropped out of the vacuum onto the carpet.

Is your newsfeed constantly flooded with “jokes” about how fathers need to be micromanaged to care for their own children? Or how men generally incapable of parenting, housework and keeping themselves alive? That men are irresponsible and essentially additional children?

On some subconscious level I’d assumed that would be what being a school mum looked like for me. I’d be a super involved helpful parent. I’m pretty crafty, I like being helpful, I studied teaching so I assumed I’d be the first to put my hand up as a classroom…

I was recently involved in filming a clip for Medela - "Motherhood is different for everybody". I was so nervous with filming that it sounds like I was about to cry and I discovered I'm not destined for a life in television given how utterly wigged out I was by…

I have a little bit of a bone to pick with the word “Please” as it’s snuck its way into my house lately and it’s getting on my very last nerve. “Please” is a nice enough word in itself, it’s reasonably innocuous, but when it’s used as though it has…

I’ve been enthusiastically recommending Ergobaby carriers for the last 7 years as it's the most comfortable, easy to use, versatile and long-lasting carrier I've ever tried, and the Ergobaby Adapt is now the carrier I would recommend above all others.

My littlest turned 4 years old a couple of weeks ago, a birthday milestone that filled me with more dread than I could put into words. I was feeling very apprehensive about the fact that I have still not managed to wean her and so I would now be breastfeeding…

So, in the last month I’ve only published one thing written by me. I don’t know if anyone has actually noticed - and it’s totally okay if you haven’t - I’ve gone to some effort to conceal my “writer's block”; frequently posting amusing memes on social media and sharing guest…

Being a stay at home mum comes with both its blessings and its challenges. The things I did not realise before becoming one was that not all SAHM’s are like the ones we see on TV. All mothers make choices which cost them in different ways, this is my story…

To all the parents out there, You're doing great! It does not matter how you came to be parents, all that matters is that you are.

Witty, well thought out responses to unsolicited parenting advice are all well and good - if you have the alertness and sassy personality to pull it off. I do not.

Firstly, the picture goes viral because the vast majority of parents are sitting behind their computer screen going “ahahaha, yeah, been there, done that” OR at the very least can go “Oh, I totally can see how that went down”

Not every child can be exceptional. That seems like absolute common sense, doesn't’ it? If every child was exceptional then exceptional would be normal.

Child-free friends do often get a bit of a bad press. They don’t understand what it’s REALLY like to be a parent, which occasionally leads to them giving us advice about how we should raise our children based on how they imagine parenting will be with their theoretical future children.

You recently asked me for a photo album containing pictures of yourself for your birthday, because you’ve become increasingly aware of the fact that there are multiple albums and picture frames dedicated to your brother - and not one hard-copy photograph of you.

I always thought I was vigilant with the security around my own house. Ironically, that was until I accidentally locked myself out of my own home (ironic because I’m a locksmith).

7:30am - Mr 7 year old appears beside the bed and immediately starts telling me something about minecraft. No “Good morning Mum”, no “Hey Mum, are you awake?” just “Did you know, on Minecraft, that Stampycat built a sky island?

When is it okay to leave children unattended? It’s a simple enough question and it’s one that I’m finding myself asking myself often, in small ways.