It all started so innocently. A bit of afternoon painting to fill up the time in between coming home from preschool and eating dinner. Sounds great right? Whatever could go wrong. Allow me to present a photo essay of what could go wrong: Declan likes to consider himself a post-modern impressionist. He decided he needed a different...

Yesterday I sat down and sorted a pack of sprinkles into colours. It didn't occur to me until Dan asked what the hell I was doing that this might be a little strange, I just didn't want the decorations on my cupcakes to clash. The day that I'd planned to make Declan's cupcakes for his preschool birthday celebration was the same day my...

Dan and I decided to have a business meeting (as much as you can call us scribbling away at notepads and drinking coffee a business meeting) at an indoor playground yesterday. In hindsight, I do not recommend it. One grumpy one year old, and one hyperactive three year old (that has no concept of fear whatsoever) combined with the rainy...

One thing I keep on hearing over and over again since Robyn's birth is how "inspirational" I am. I feel like a fraud. I certainly don't feel inspirational, in fact I think I feel pretty much everything but that. Today I felt jealous. The green eyed monster planted himself firmly on my shoulder in the early hours of the morning and has...

This is me "turning my son gay" if my husband is to be believed. He doesn't approve of the lilac nappy, the dark purple one is okay, it's "like Shaft" apparently, but the lilac is just one step away from transforming Connor into Carson...

One of the main triggers of me going a little loopy is when there is too much inside my head. Brain dumps are my best friend, I need to hold my head over a sheet of paper and let everything that's inside it fall out of my ear and allow itself to become more organised somewhere other than my skull. The house is always liberally scattered with...

The festivities are over for another year and we came out of it relatively unscathed. Once again I learned the hard lesson that the kids really couldn't care less about whether the honeycomb set properly, whether the tags matched the wrapping paper or whether we left out oats or carrots for Rudolf. They (and my husband) care more about having a...

Last night was Declan's Preschool Christmas Pageant. He's been practicing the songs for weeks, he had the actions down perfectly and spent all Friday afternoon telling me about Santa coming to visit preschool that evening. The whole family was excited about it and we'd even dragged the in laws along for the event. I'm sure you can guess how...

...and I don't mean hot and sweaty in a naughty way, I mean hot and sweaty in that it's hot enough to cook steak on the pavement and I'm knocked up and dripping bucket after bucket of sweat from every available pore. I am still adjusting to the Australian Christmas. Christmas in the UK is just such a different experience. I can't help but feel...

Yesterday Declan had a seizure at preschool. He was full of the joys of spring when I dropped him off. Three hours later we got a phone call saying to come in immediately as he'd started having convulsions during lunch. For some reason it shook me up a lot more than the previous ones have, of course excepting the first. The ladies at preschool...