Not so pushy parent

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We’re all guilty of it………….no I don’t mean being a pushy parent, I mean comparing ourselves to other mothers/parents. If you say you don’t you’re in denial I’m afraid.

I’m very guilty of this, comparing my parenting, comparing my children’s ability, it’s not until your around children & parenting of a different culture that you realise that your idea are so different. I think its different being around your friends from home who are parents, they grew up with pretty much the same parenting as you, the same sayings from their parents as you…you know like “if you pick your nose, your brains will fall out”.

I’m not a laid back parent by any means but lately I’ve felt that maybe I am too laid back with my children, ok I do the compulsory tummy time with Miss C not the five times a day I’m supposed too but I’m not in a hurry for her to roll, crawl, sit in her bumbo. Granted if she slept through the night every night, that would be amazeballs but she does it sporadically and that’s enough for me, she’s still a wee diddy. Should I tho? should I be pushing her to do more? Is it not good parenting? I read stuff that makes me feel like I should.

Also with LPV, he’s 3 next month, he’s still in nappys, still has his dummy, not for long tho and I’m sure that will be next weeks posts sorted!! he doesn’t want to go near a potty so I don’t push, however reading things again, bloody Facebook I do start to panic every so often that he’ll be in nappys on his wedding day!!

I don’t know it seems to be part of the set questions in life

  • You get a girlfriend/boyfriend…. So when you getting engaged?
  • You get engaged…….So when the wedding?
  • You get married……..So when you having babies?
  • You have babies…………So are you potty training?? Is so in so crawling? When did you start weaning?

For me tho although my arse gets twitchy when I “read stuff” I look at my wee people and to me they seem happy so we’ll keep doing it our way for now!

Treading water

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Quick, quick I have to type quickly…..You see I’ve managed to get both children to sleep at the same time, both in their beds, at the same time….AT THE SAME TIME!!!!!!

So how have you been, well as the title explains I’ve been treading water in this pool if parenthood. having two children is hard, fantastic but hard. It’s mainly finding a schedule that fits with us all which is the hard part but it will happen over time I guess.

I’ve been brave tho, I’ve attempted outings with the two…..on the bus aswell…I know!!!! One was a success one was an absolute disaster which ended in me muttering to myself all the way home about how much I hate this country and being an expat!! When things go wrong I always blame the country I’m in… It’s an automatic response, and as for hating a being an expat? I just go home and go to my local Asda full of pyjama wearing shoppers and then I love it again. Don’t get me wrong, I love Asda im not Asda bashing I’m shopping in Pyjamas bashing!!!

Well since my last post, we had Miss C christened, which was a truly awesome day, so lovely to have all the family together, plus having our dear friends over from the  United States was the icing on the christening cake so to speak. Miss C was an angel all day and looked absolutely beautiful (as usual) in her christening gown. We got to show our friends round Cork as we were so unbelievably lucky with glorious weather for the entire time in Ireland. For those of you who haven’t been to Ireland this is an extremely rare occurence, which is such a shame as in the sunshine the country is truly magnificent.

We’ve also brought Miss C home to her hood!!! Brissle man!!! She had her first trip home to Bristol, via the channel tunnel. She’s so well-traveled already, I’m so proud of my children both survived a 10 journey in the car with minimal moaning. Every parent is proud of their children but its  absolutely amazing when strangers approach you and compliment them. This happened to us in Reading services, a woman approached EPD and said she’d been watching Miss C and thought she was the cutest baby ever……..she is!!!

Next when we packing up to continue our journey and elderly couple said out of the blue “you should be proud of him, he’s an amazing child, so intelligent” we said thank you and that we were, they kept us chatting for ages about LPV the lady said that she was a retired peadiatrician and thought he was amazing at how he spoke, acted and inquisitive about his surroundings. I just absolutely beamed with pride, we’ve been experiencing some bad terrible two’s with him so this gave me such a boost that I’m not doing such a bad job after all. A friend posted a blog post the other day about how we’re all so negative a parenting. Yes it is hard, sometimes I want to run for the hills and cry but it made me think about how I should focus on something positive each day. Take today for instance, they both went to sleep at the same time, to get Miss C sleeping in her cot is an achievement ok it didn’t last long *she currently in her swing crying* am I a bad mammy for still typing? No I’m not going there, she’s been fed, changed, cuddled, played with, what she needs is a long sleep!! Also LPV and I had a great game of Gruffalo snap after playschool, small things but special things.

So what have been positive parts of your day today??

Anyhoo here’s a wee pictures of our travels to Cork & Miss C’s christeningDSC_0767 DSC_0820 DSC_0824 DSC_0827

LPV was the entertainment, I hope the Corrs are ready cos my wee family are going to kick their musical butts!!

LPV was the entertainment, I hope the Corrs are ready cos my wee family are going to kick their musical butts!!

 

Terrible travel

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It’s no secret that we travelled a lot before Miss C was born, I was keen to keep it up. Alright, obviously not to the extent of last year but I didn’t want her to hate being in the car, plane etc. finally her passport arrived so we decided to bring her home to Ireland to be christened!

Ah how lovely! Yes in theory! Don’t get me wrong now were here its fab but if I’m honest we’ve had the most supremely crappy day!

Traveling with children under 3 could be used as form as punishment or deterrent for teenage pregnancy, trust me if they had the flight we had today, they’d never have sex!

The trouble started with trying to figure out the newborn insert for the Ergo baby, it was like being on the parenting krypton factor! Full on domestics over a baby carrier while the toddler is screaming from the buggy for “snuggy & na” of course then were at the furthest departure gate, one 40 mile trek later we get to the gate to find out we’re delayed! Que one baby melt down!

We finally get on the plane, Miss C goes to sleep, and breath…………………..LPV kicks off, “back house daddy, back house” Umm sorry dude were kind of stuck! Que one toddler melt down, which involves daddy’s glasses going flying!

Finally we calm down the toddler & the baby wakes up! Takes a feed, so I finally think she’ll sleep, Oh mammy your sadly mistaken! The two of them had obviously plotted against us to make this the flight from hell!

The plane lands, the passengers depart, apart from us who have to crawl between plane seats to search for the AWOL arm of daddy’s glasses. Two flight attendants entertain and hold our kids the other joins us on the floor!

We finally get through passport control, get our bags and get home!

There you have it, a trip not for the faint hearted & guess what? We get to do it all again on Tuesday night!

WANTED!

Some to endure the hell of toddler/baby travel

No wages, no perks!
guaranteed to age you!

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The calm before the storm

Victimised

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My wee man is not so wee anymore, he now goes to peuterspeezaal 4 mornings a week. The change in him is amazing, he’s less aggressive towards other children, you can reason with him so much more, he sings ALL the time and I really think its given him a sense of maturity he loves being a  big bro to Miss C.

However………there’s always a however isn’t there?? I feel that as a family we’re being somewhat victimized/ picked on by one of the teachers for being English speaking.

At times she’s very stand offish with us, one more than one occasion she’s told us off for not speaking Nederlands even tho we’ve been told by expert that if we speak dutch it will confuse LPV. More so I think she’s singled out LPV because of this, EVERYTIME I collect him she “needs to speak to me” about him. Granted one of the things she bought to my attention we already knew about and were dealing with.

You could say that its me being sensitive to the Dutch brutality, if it wasn’t something everyday/few days/week, I would probably be inclined to agree but I feel like its quite clear she doesn’t like as a family or my son.

For example yesterday, the little dig was “he’s not developing right”.  A few days before ” he doesn’t run right, he runs in a funny way”, “when were singing **** song he can’t do the actions right, he does this” here she proceeds to display rolling motion with her arms like you would do to Wind the bobbin up. Apparently LPV can’t manage this and waves his arms in a different way and to the old b**ch this is a sure fired sign that my child developmentally behind, because he cant roll his arms yet. Oh and my personal favourite “I’m sure he doesn’t even understand English” I forgot to tell EPD that one.

I sing loads with him at home, singing songs with these rolling actions, OK he hasn’t quite mastered the rolling motion yet but not once did it occur to me that I should be worried about his physical development.

What she hasn’t seen is mine & EPD dancing, the kid is doomed from the beginning  EPD dances like Hugh Hefner!! And I’m a farking disaster when it come to rhythm and co-ordination.

Yesterday whilst bringing Miss C to the dutch equivalent of the health visitor, I mentioned old hags concerns. The nurse looked at me like I was crazy but told me to observe at home. This women has made me paranoid, I’m just waiting for her to knock his intellectual development or use the A word on me and I will go for the jugular. After all he know shapes such as hexagon, octagon, crescent, can count to 10 in 3 languages and he knows all his letters and phonics, he’s not even 3 yet!!!

However LPV is happy there and he has his favourite teachers, thankfully its not her!! Now I just rush in get his bag & cup, grab him and avoid eye contact with her. Surely she’s seen enough children in her time to know they’re all different??? Or maybe us expats have to live with the fact that all Dutch kids are practically perfect in every way *falls about laughing!!*

 

 

 

Cranial therapy

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Its been a while since Ive blogged, life is crazy at the moment and Im just absolutely shattered in the evening.

Being a mother of two is awesome but it has its stressful moments, Miss C is having a wee bit of trouble with colic & constipation she was getting so stressed when she was desperate to sleep. So we’ve been using a Cranial osteopath for the last couple of weeks. Its awesome, I was quite skeptical at first but Dr Bob has worked wonders for my baby girl.

After the first session she’d quite happily take herself off to sleep without being rocked or cuddled, she pooped!!!! Unfortunately then she picked a tummy bug and we were back to square one sleeping wise but she is way more relaxed.

Dr Bob came recommended by a fellow expat, he’s a very softly spoken, chilled and gentle guy, today Miss C was in awe of him. Her eyes followed him whenever he moved, she was flashing him big smiles and for the first time she started cooing. Now I’m slightly pissed off she hasn’t cooed for me but it’s fab to see the treatment working. A friend asked me if I thought my wee girl was flirting, she has Dr Bob wrapped around her wee finger but if she was flirting she’s got to work on the farting in front of guys thing as she trumped all through the session like mother like daughter.

Long may this relaxed state continue…………………………..for us all

St Patricks day curse

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St Patricks day, The Craic, few pints, hangover!! Thats what its all about isn’t. Thats what it used to be about anyway, however you’ve two little sprogits the only craic you want is something to get you through an episode of Mister maker!!

As we are taking Miss C back to th homeland to be christened in April we were summoned to our local church for Kindviering “a children’s celebration” so the priest could allow us to get her christened, I know it’s ridiculous! Anyway it’s started off well, until LPV got ants in his pants and wanted to walk around, at this point I have to say we had attended a service that was completely in Dutch and considering I end up tell a waitress that I AM coffee not I want coffee, you can imagine there wasn’t an awful lot to be understood.
Any good catholic will tell you about the old “peace be with you” section of mass, if I’m honest I hate this part, it gives me the giggles. I alway remember my uncle who instead of saying peace be with you wished everyone a Merry Christmas.
EPD had taken LPV for a stroll around church and left me on my own to deal with the Dutch service. Blah blah, and a Dutch dude goes to shake my hand……with a vacant look on my face I practically shout “oh right, peace be with you”. Everyone stares and I curse EPD for leaving me.
Mass comes to an end and before we leave we say goodbye like good little church folk, the priest tells us it was nice to meet us and proceeded to tell us a story that terrified me to my core.

Priest: Happy St Patricks day
Us: Thank you Fr
Priest: You remind me of another couple I met on St Patricks a few yrs ago
Us: Really
Priest: Yes, they were English speakers, he was English, she was Scottish. Lovely couple, however he was murdered in a park over there *points in the direction of our house*
Us: *awkward smiles on outside, shits self on the inside*
Priest: you’ll be fine tho

I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the tactless, blunt matter if fact way of the Dutch, however if I didn’t look back on this conversation and laugh, I’d be crying hysterically.

Anyway I’m off to check all the doors are locked so we don’t become a case load for CSI Haarlem, how did your St Pats go?