Tag Archives: parents

I am She Locked the Car Mum

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Things I learned about the capabilities of my “Twoublemaker” today…

1. She can delete and uninstall apps on my phone much more effectively than I can.

2. She knows how to unlock my phone.

3. She knows how to lock my car.

I found THIS particular gem out today, when she locked it… while she and Mini-Me were IN it… and Mammy was NOT.

Sweet Jeebus Ladybelles. If ever there was something to make Mammy want a gin on a Monday night…

Have you ever thought about how something could happen, JUST as it happens? She had the keys in her hand, having swiped them out of my pocket as I strapped her in. I was on the other side of the car, strapping her sister into HER (hellfienduselesspieceofcrapthatitis) carseat and just as I closed the door, I remembered that Princess had the keys.

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I swear to God, the 0.12 seconds it took my hand to go for the handle and for my brain to register that her LOCKING the fecking thing was even a possibility, were slow motion.

Just as I tried to pull it open, I heard the sound; the heavy, chunking clunking sound that told me that she had indeed locked the car.

“Faaaaaak, I’ve locked them in!” calls Mammy to no one in particular.

2 seconds later and I’m trying to get Mini-Me to unbuckle her straps and to get the keys off her Divil of a shitster. She’s trying to follow my instructions through the closed window and then I remember the guy who sold me the car a few weeks ago, saying something about an alarm.
And then it happens.
The alarm that is indeed standard in my yok, began to scream at me. Mini-me began to scream at me, and because she had just procured the keys from the culprit, Twoublemaker ALSO was screaming.

Mammy? Mammy wanted to scream, but instead Mammy remained very calm and talked Mini-Me through how to open the car, calmly and rationally like in a hostage negotiator… In MY head anyway. I possibly looked and sounded more like a a drunk Granny who’s losing at charades after Christmas dinner.

Anyway, by this stage 2 hours had passed. Or rather 23 second, but the owner of the playschool, and funnily enough my next door neighbour, had come running and so even if she hadn’t gotten the doors to pop, I’m pretty sure there would have been a crowbar or a hammer in hand quickly.

Once I heard the clunky chunky sound again, my two knees nearly went from under me in pure relief. I hugged Mini-me and told her how WONDERFUL she was and promised her treats and hot chocolate as a reward for saving the day.

Of course, when the adrenalin had left me, I also used it as an excuse to remind her “See how brilliant you are when you listen to Mammy and follow instructions? You are the BEST GIRL EVER!”
And yes, OF COURSE, Mammy learned a lesson other than that my car has an alarm.
I learned TWO lessons actually.

1. NEVER give a twoublemaker your car keys and
2. Maybe I should have listened to the salesman when he was going through the features of the car rather than wondering what I should wear to look uber FabMammy on my first day driving!

#turbotwat #mammyfail #rascals

 

I am Surviving a Mary-of-the-Poppins Christmas Mum.

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This week’s Thoroughly Modern Mammy column for Donegal Woman is an updates post on Christmas Survival for the Mary of the Poppins types…

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“Surviving Christmas,” “Christmas Survival Tips for the Working Mum”, “How to Survive Christmas”…

I googled these last night.

Some of the “advice” online is nothing short of HILARIOUS.  I fear most of it may have been written by one of the following:

🎄Mary of the Poppins herself

🎄Someone without kids

🎄A Man… 😂😂😂
Here are some of the best pieces I gleaned, followed by my honest and polite responses: (Buckle up!)

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1.  “Be Prepared.”

No sh*t Sherlock.  As opposed to waking on Christmas Eve and remembering to buy a turkey and gifts? Seriously…  This is a useless piece of advice. It’s like telling a woman to calm down.  When in the history of the world has telling a woman to calm down, resulted in her calming down?  Never. So telling a Mammy to “Be Prepared” for Christmas, is NOT helpful.
2. “Buy gifts throughout the year and wrap them as you go.” 

Now this one I can partially agree with, except S-Mum’s version would read “Buy gifts throughout the year, put them somewhere safe and then forget all about them until the week before Christmas, when you have all the gifts bought and then open a box or bag or suitcase and find all the PawPatrol jigsaws you bought in July.  Or even better, find them when you’re putting the decorations away in January!”

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3. “Choose a theme for your gifts to add that personal magic”. 

Here’s a theme.  Shut.  up.  Most of us just about manage to buy for everyone we have to buy for.  And if you’re anything like me, you’ll remember someone on Christmas Day and freak out with guilt and embarrassment and mumble some crap about it not being delivered on time, before popping to the loo to order on Amazon with next day delivery.

(But if you doooooo want to add a personal touch and be remembered fondly by your loved ones, put glitter🦄 into all of the cards and gifts so that their floors get clattered and you are applauded for spreading the magic of Christmas. Go ahead, I dare you! 😂😂)
4. “Place delicate or expensive ornaments on higher branches.”

Ok this one, I can empathise with.  Especially if you have toddlers or dogs. 🐶But in reality, put delicate or expensive decorations in the ATTIC and leave them there until 2026.

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5. “Ice the Christmas Cake 2 weeks before Christmas”

Or in real life, remember on the 23rd that for some reason you need a Christmas cake to have in the kitchen which will never be cut or eaten.  Then you’ll  either pop to Marks of the Spensive or decide not to bother with cake this year. Either way, it doesn’t really matter does it?
6. “Decorating the home should be a family occasion followed by a family meal.”

Oh really? Should it really? If by “family meal” you mean a bottle of wine after the kids have all gone to bed, then yes…yes this is true. 😅

Decorating the home is, for most, a painful and highly stressful process which generally takes more than one afternoon and involves tears, mess and even declarations of divorcing children… and husbands.  If you can get the actual tree up in one go, save yourself the stress and put everything else up by yourself, on your own, without the rest of the family annoying your head.  After bedtime is ideal.😘😉
7. “Keep alcohol locked away.”

Out of the reach of children yes, but keep the key in your frilly fricking apron Mammy Poppins.
8. “Stock up on essentials:  batteries, bread, milk and cream.”

Why there is no gin or wine on this list, is beyond me.

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9. “Go Christmas Shopping without children. Bring a drink and a snack with you.” 

Who the hell wrote this? It is common knowledge that drinking while shopping with your children is frowned upon in civil society.  Oh… they meant for the children?  Ohhhh… I knew that.  Well, here’s an idea.  If you can get someone to mind the minions for an hour, OF COURSE, go Christmas shopping without them. Then, if you really want to follow the Perfect Mammy rule book, have a drink and eat all the snacks… by yourself!
10. “Create a cleaning schedule for your home to keep on top of things this Christmas”.

There aren’t enough swear words for this one. A Cleaning Schedule? Who the hell has time to write a cleaning schedule? In the time it would take me to write a cleaning schedule, I would probably have half the cleaning done.  If you can keep floors lego free and counters salmonella free, you’re doing great! You deserve a treat. 💚

Riddle me this Mammies?  Why would you spend hours cleaning before opening the boxes of decorations that are going to cause the whole place to need hoovered and dusted again in an hour anyway?  Why?

So there were the Top Ten pieces of advice from the various Perfect Mammy websites…

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There were a few little nuggets in fairness.  Some of the better advice included “Scale down your expectations”, “Invent your own traditions”, and “Give yourself a break.”  

Another gem that I completely agree with is “Buy disposable baking trays”: I stock up on aluminium turkey trays every year and everything is cooked in them.  It’s a life saver!

Alos, Yes to shopping lists. And sublists. (Any list!  I do love me alist!)  Plan your meals for Christmas week and do the shopping based on the list.  It will save you from buying piles of stuff that you won’t actually use. Will you actually use that goose fat or are you only buying it because it’s beside the cranberry sauce you’ve lifted…that no one in your house eats.

AND  remember to factor in Christmas Eve Dinner too.  Don’t do my speciality… realise you have a fridge full of food and nothing for the dinner when you finally get back to the house on Christmas Eve.  This will lead to arguments about who is going to the shop AGAIN, or toast for dinner.


The “Preparing for Christmas” articles largely did what they always do however; they put undue pressure on already busy parents to stress themselves to create a Hallmark worthy perfect Christmas card-esque scene that, in reality, is nonsense.

Do what YOU want to do.  Buy what YOU can afford.  Cook what YOU like to eat. If you don’t like mince pies, don’t fricken buy them. If you want to let your kids open all of the presents on Christmas morning, do it!  If you like to wrap all the everything, do so.  If you don’t, DON’T!

It’s that simple.  We don’t need a survival list to survive Christmas, we need to give ourselves a break and enjoy it, because if you take a second to stop and look around you, often in the midst of lost presents and superfluous food shopping, you can see a little bit of magic without having to buy it.

A perfect family Christmas is like a Perfect Parent… all that’s REALLY needed is love and what works for YOU!
What is your favourite “Survival tip” and why?

I am Slight Change of Plans Mum

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Mammy is rather chuffed to see Friday evening.

Mammy doos LOVE Friday evenings.

I tried to be a very good Mammy this evening, ignoring Jim in favour of lifting my girls early, with plans to do some festively frolicky arts and crafts with a lovely Christmas-Card-making-set that I procured in the Aldi-everything last week, to drink hot chocolate and have a Hallmark worthy Mary-of-the-poppins type evening, where they’d play happily while Mammy magically transformed the vegetables in the fridge into wholesome homemade soup for my minions.

How mammiful of me, eh?

In reality, I had an extra hour of them screaming “NO WAY”, “She HUT meeeee!” and “STOP iiiiiit!” at each other and at me, while I delivered a Freezer Friday Special of oven baked cardboard for them to smear all over the floors. Then we watched 65 Cartoons, Princess fell asleep standing up 👇👇👇and we had a generally riotous bedtime chaos…

I didn’t shout as much as usual however and both have gone to bed reasonably content 💞and (finally) temperature free… (Is it bad that I now get more upset if we run out of Cal-of-the-pol, than I do if the graperack runs out? 😂😂)

The arts and crafts stuff remains in the car. It’ll probably still be there on January 1st as I’ll have given in to the cheap, cheerful and mess-free joy that is 30 cards for a penny in the pound shops! 😆😣😅

I HAD indulged in my usual Thursday night Domestic Goddess cleaning splurge last night, in the hope of doing feck all tonight. Right now, it looks like a creche puked its contents onto my living room floor.

There is however a shiny new grape glass from TK-Maxyourcard sitting beside the bottle of grapejuice that needs a snog…

How was your Friday Ladybelle?
Hit me with a gif to sum it up! 😚😚😚

I am Saving the Day Mum

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Mini-Me began to BAWL on the way home this evening.

“What’s the matter Darling?”

“I have vewy bad nooooos Mammy”

“Oh no? What happened?”
(Sobbing…)

“Michael Jackson has DIED!”


(WAAAAAAILS for at least 2 minutes, thankfully so grief-stricken that she doesn’t realise I am in fits of laughter in the front seat. In fairness, with my shoulders dancing as they are, she possibly thinks I am sharing in her devestation.)

What should I say? How do I deal with her grief? When did she begin caring about Michael Jackson?

What does a sensitive, open and emotionally supportive Mammy say to their child in such a situation?

“Cheesy pasta for tea?”

“Oooooh yes please!”

#mammywin #sorted

I am Suddenly Remembering Mum

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Women are incredible.

I think there’s a slight truth in the old myth that we can choose what we want to remember, and forget, about pregnancy and childbirth. Let’s be honest. If we couldn’t selectively block out things, there’s a good chance we’d all refuse to ever go through it again and we’d eventually run out of tiny humans on our messed up little planet. 🙂

Last night, I was reminded of one of the things about being pregnant that I have obviously blocked out, when my good friend who is expecting told me she’s off work with Pelvic Girdle Pain…

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At the mention of it, I crossed my legs and stopped short of kicking The Him out of the bed and into the spare room, or dog box… or wherever!

Jeeeeeeeeeesus, even the thought of it as I type has my ovaries tying themselves in knots…

I remember the first day my Pelvic pain kicked in on my first pregnancy.  The Him and I had gone to Belfast to the Christmas Markets.  I was walking through the stands when I stopped in my tracks. I couldn’t physically move.

There and then, I was certain that had I taken one more step, my ladybits were going to end up on the ground. I felt like someone was sticking a burning hot poker into my pelvis. I was convinced that my entrails were about to be outtrails.

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I scared the bejaysus out of Himself. I don’t really remember how, but he got me shuffled to the nearest taxi and back to the hotel. After a terrified phone call to my Midwife-on-call (or Aunty! I’m not THAT special. haha!), she calmed me down and prescribed a long sleep and a trip to the physio the next day.

Panic over and insides still inside, I did indeed relax, but did the pain go away? Did it feck!  I got an appointment with a physio next day and she gave me the most fablis, sexiful and incredible invention ever… a girdle belt.

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It saved my ass.  Literally.  I wore it religiously, took smaller steps when walking and generally behaved my pregnant self, sleeping with a mahoosive pillow between my legs and following the physio’s advice. Thankfully, it didn’t get any worse.  Apparently it CAN get worse, a LOT worse.  I want to puke even imagining how it could have been worse if I’m honest. It was bad enough as it was!

It was horrific. The pain was shocking. The whole experience was enough to put me off ever wanting to experience anything like it ever again!

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So yes, even typing this has my Ladybits throbbing in terror. I want to fly to England and give my buddy a hug.  Instead however, I’ll send her a virtual hug and remind her that it’ll all be worth it in a few months when she holds her wee munchkin in her arms.

I’ll also remind her that she’ll soon not even remember the pain she’s in right now…until someone reminds her of it in the future.

And that someone will NOT be me!

Now, it might be time to hit those Christmas Markets in Belfast again? And maybe this time I’ll get past the gate!

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