Have you entered the giveaway on my other blog?

Why am I telling you this?

Nairn tells me I’m beautiful all the time. He tells me that he loves Greer but not Erica because Erica annoys him, steals his toys and hurts him, until I tell him that it makes me sad that he doesn’t love his sister then he changes his perspective to make me happy. When I’m grumpy, he calls my name until I look at him and then he flashes his amazing big grin, winks and blows me a kiss. He asked me a few months ago what planet my brother lives on and I laughed so hard that now if he thinks I’m upset he asks me again, to make me laugh. He is so loving and so conscientious.

But last week I read this article and sat with my mouth agape, a brick plummeting slowly from my breast to the pit of my stomach as I identified Nairn’s behaviour in every word written by another Mother. Some of you might remember that around the time of my breakdown Nairn’s issues were so bad that I’d called in Social Services to help us. Their solution was to fire us onto a positive parenting class that I was extremely reticent about. I was so against the idea of Nairn’s issues being down to our parenting that I went along, certain they’d tell me nothing I didn’t already know but I was very pleasantly surprised. Armed with new tactics, we set about challenging Nairn’s tantrums with reward charts and different reactions and to a point it worked. We thought we’d solved our issues until his assessment for early entry to school.

In Scotland if a child turns five years old by February 28th they start school the preceding August. January & February babies can defer entry for a year, March-July birthdays can apply for early admission but the child must complete a test to see if they are ready. One of the tests Nairn had to do was to sort a number of building blocks by colour – a task I know he could do with his eyes shut – but as it was such a boring task, he elected instead to build a rather impressive transformer with his blocks. Let me remind you again here that Nairn turned four years old in March. Lego is his ‘thing’ and it amazes me the grasp he clearly has on engineering. Nairn is a little Lego professor and that scares me.

With Bob being diagnosed as severely dyslexic (which he writes about under this tag, work from the bottom up) – the second top ‘band’ of dyslexia – we were made aware that our children could have a genetic predisposition towards it. Dyslexia is a spectrum disorder.

I have fought and lost when it comes to having Nairn assessed because I am as certain as I can be that something is not quite right with the way he processes his feelings. He simply cannot relate to other people on an emotional level and hence the tantrums and certainty that he is hated whenever he has a falling out with a friend or sibling.

I wish I knew what to do. With Bob having fallen through the cracks in such a spectacular manner I am quite terrified that Nairn will be written off as a child with a neurotic mother rather than a child with possible support requirements.

I have two sons and two daughters. I spend a significant amount of my parenting time assuring my amazing children that they can be anything they choose to be even though the Fawcett Society has highlighted that women working full-time still face being paid 17% less than their male counterparts on an hourly basis – a figure that rises to 20% if that woman happens to be from an ethnic minority, 36% if she works part-time and 45% if she both works part-time and works in London. Doesn’t that disgust you? It appalls me and I don’t think it matters if you’re a feminist or not, this pay gap affects every single working person out there. It’s revolting that in this day and age where we’re all supposed to be forward-thinking, liberal and equal that it’s acceptable for the pay gap to still be tangible.

With that in mind, it’s not like I expect the toy companies to pick up the slack for the pay gap but – and this is a big but – this kind of gender stereotyping begins at such an early age and the Early Learning Centre’s marketing is just one admittedly major example of this. Let me show you a webpage from the ELC’s retail site (click for embiggenisation):

Just in case you’re a complete thicket, I’ve highlighted the relevant parts and following the ELC’s lead I’ve even used the appropriate colours. Quite simply, if you have a daughter she’s clearly a princess who aspires to be a nurse or a ballerina. If you have a son, he can be a doctor because of course it’s a man’s job. Right from pre-school levels our children are being segregated into traditional gender roles before they really have a concept of gender constructs themselves.

You know what else pisses me off? And these are simply examples from presents our kids have been bought – a pink shopping till and basket because obviously only women do the shopping or work in retail. A blue multistorey garage since only boys like cars. They even have a pink GLOBE just in case our daughters are too female to look at a regular one. Heaven forbid, eh?

In the interests of fairness, I emailed the ELC yesterday saying:

I have to be honest straight off the bat and say that my post is going to be criticising the shift over the last 10 years in the ELC’s product range. I have personally avoided ELC since giving birth to my daughter 3 years ago as I realised how heavily gender stereotyped ELC chooses to be and the final straw for me today was seeing this page which tells me that my daughter can be a nurse but only my son can be a doctor.
The product range reinforces traditional gender roles – pink microwaves, dolls prams and kitchen sets for girls, dinosaurs and train sets for boys which contradicts the UK educational system’s approach to free play and I would greatly appreciate a statement with regards to this concern.

Their spokesperson responded today with this:

‘Come down to Early learning Centre and see for yourself the huge range of toys in an assortment of colours. Customers can choose a red kitchen, a blue kitchen, a blue cash register, a yellow dolls house or a gorgeous farm

Our photography features boys ironing, girls playing with space aliens, boys playing with dolls, boys cooking and pushing buggies, girls building and playing with remote control insects. We offer anyone who wants to buy toys so much to choose from that no one should feel disappointed when they walk into our stores.

which comprehensively answered my query. Or not.

I’m interested to know how other parents feel about it. Do you identify as feminist? Do you agree with what I’m saying or do you think I’m overreacting?

Way back in November I posted this entry explaining that due to a massive cock-up by my then employers, my maternity pay had been stopped three months early and I was being told to repay the entirety of my allegedly overpaid maternity pay. Because it had taken six months to discover this error, I subsequently was not entitled to claim maternity allowance from the state and thus this error put us out financially by somewhere in the region of £10,000.

Not content with that, the little doom fairies arranged for Bob to be made redundant from his job on Hogmanay, then me from mine at the end of March. Did I mention I had a complete nervous breakdown? We decided that since things were the lowest we could possibly imagine them to be, there was nothing to stop us pursuing our dream and thus The Life Craft was born.

Our website is now up and running and this week we will sign the lease on our gorgeous premises in the West End of Glasgow. We are going to be paying more per year in rent than I have ever earned and we are responsible now for five members of staff as well as ourselves. I probably shouldn’t be sharing this but what the hell – if the business fails, we will lose everything. We will have nothing except each other. And do you know what? I think I’m okay with that now. We’ve been through so much together that we can make it through any other bump in the road.

SO! In order to celebrate our future success, we’ve got a competition on the blog which I’d love you to enter. You can pick your prize from a selection of the amazing stock we have in store and share your crafty stories.

Bonne Chance!

Now, the difficulty with making comments like this on twitter is the restriction of having 140 characters to make a clear, concise and considered point. I immediately faced fair criticism. “Not everyone can breastfeed” replied more than one commenter. “What business is it of yours?” asked another. Several told me I was being very judgemental. Each of them had a valid point and thus I wanted to explore this a little more both within the context of breastfeeding and within parenting at large.

Firstly, although I breastfed all of mine I didn’t feed any of them for the two years recommended by the World Health Organisation. Findlay fed for four months before starting solids – as was the recommendation at that time – and stopped breastfeeding at 6 months old when he discovered it came faster from a bottle. Nairn managed three months before I had to switch him onto a bottle to administer medication for the reflux that was steadily ruining our mother-baby relationship.

I have never been able to pump more than 2oz at a time and – exhausted with running around after a 4 year old and a fractious, pukey baby – I gave up. I never did get over that and constantly felt guilty about it until my vastly improved breastfeeding relationship with Greer gave me a little closure.. The longest I managed to feed any of my children was 9 months with each of the girls which I was pretty damn proud of, particularly because many of you will remember the battles that we faced – and indeed still face – with Erica’s health issues. Greer stopped breastfeeding when – like Findlay – she realised the bottle dispensed it more quickly.

I understand that breastfeeding can be hard and that for the most part, I had it easy. I persevered through cracked & peeling nipples, through sleep deprivation with a baby who fed all night, through being made to feel a failure because my baby wasn’t gaining weight. I persevered through it because – as we all do – I wanted desperately to do what was best for my children.

And now? My eldest son who was bottlefed for 6 months is a superhealthy genius. My second son who was bottlefed for 9 months rarely catches so much as a cold. My eldest daughter who was breastfed for 9 months is allergic to everything, has eczema and is under observation for suspected asthma while my youngest daughter who was breastfed for 9 months is never seen without a runny nose. Now I can read as well as the next person. I know that breastfeeding protects from breast cancer, promotes intelligence, increases physical contact between mother & baby and therefore promotes the emotional bond. In fact I’m almost certain I heard some self-proclaimed “boob nazi” types declare that world peace could be achieved through mass breastfeeding. You may have gathered that I am somewhat sceptical about the claims around the amazing power of breastfeeding – sure it’s great for the baby, designed specifically for them but I doubt any kid has reached the end of his education thinking, “Well I’m sure I’d have done better if only my Mother had breastfed me.”

I understand that breastfeeding versus bottlefeeding is a wholly personal choice. I have no issues with that whatsoever and I would never intentionally push my feelings towards breastfeeding my children onto another mother because it is a personal choice. Yet, when I saw a photo yesterday of a brand new Mum in hospital feeding her baby with a bottle I had such a visceral reaction to it that I went straight to twitter. Through debating it over last night I realised that my main issue was around bonding because for me, bringing my brand new baby to my breast and watching as my milk nourished and comforted was the “WOW. I REALLY LOVE THIS KID” moment. It was when it suddenly became real that I was a Mum with a teeny tiny person to be responsible for. It makes me feel really sad that the breastfeeding rates in this country are so low and the photo that I saw made me as a Mother feel frustrated at whatever had caused that mother to opt for breastfeeding. Again I will reiterate that I know not everyone can breastfeed but I struggle with the fact that some parents choose not to. I wonder what the breastfeeding rates would be if breastfeeding support was funded to even 10% of what is spent on formula advertising. Would things be different?

Is this judgemental? Well of course it is. I am making a judgement on the actions of another person based on no information or facts whatsoever. Is it a bad thing to be judgemental, particularly around parenting issues? I personally don’t think so. I believe that the vast majority of people are judgemental in some facet – whether that’s over discipline issues, what clothes our children wear, how they behave (and I don’t mean tantrumming) – and in fact, I’d go as far as to say that this parenting judgementalism is what individually encourages us to raise our standards of parenting. Who hasn’t seen a child being screeched at or smacked in public? I know I have and my immediate reaction is, “That poor child. I swear I’ll never treat my kids like that.” For me, the subject of feeding babies is a similar judgement and reaction. I can still remember the first time I ever saw someone breastfeeding – it was my parents’ friend “Auntie” Linda, breastfeeding her first daughter. I remember the bond between them being almost tangible, the two of them staring into each other’s eyes – and I compare that to watching my Mum bottlefeed my siblings and how clinical it seemed to be with little physical contact. Thus, when I see a teeny tiny newborn I feel a pang of sadness that this mother-child pair will never experience that intimacy.

So, what do you think? Do you think you’re a judgemental parent? Do you agree with what I’ve said or do you think I’m talking havers?

A few weeks ago, the wonderful people at Eurocamp kindly sent us on a much-needed holiday to their Château Lez Eaux campsite in Normandy. Having done a Eurocamp holiday in 2008 – staying here, in a tent – we thought we knew what was coming. We really didn’t.

I had made the executive decision for us to sail from Portsmouth to Caen rather than Dover to Calais. For us, the driving distance on the UK side was the same but it was going to save me roughly 5 hours driving at the other side whilst also giving me 6 hours on the ferry to recuperate. As our children are so young (Findlay is 9, Nairn is 4, Erica is 3 and Greer is only 1) when we drive down South we tend to leave late evening and drive through the night so that the kids aren’t bored the whole trip home. Generally speaking it’s a win-win situation as doing it this way means we miss any heavy traffic normally encountered around Manchester, Birmingham and London and the total driving time is vastly reduced and indeed we did our 440 mile trip in 7.5 hours.

I have to admit that with four young children who had slept almost all night, Bob and I were dreading the ferry trip. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that not only was there a small soft-play area, playroom with colouring-in station & kids DVDs playing but there was also a full entertainment programme for older children including a very energetic quiz and a magician. As I had work to do, I paid for WiFi and got on with that whilst the children played. All in all, a surprisingly relaxing way to travel.

We docked in Caen in the early afternoon and set off towards Saint Pair-Sur-Mer, getting hopelessly lost circumnavigating Granville but still arriving on the site an hour after we got off the ferry which I was extremely relieved about. Now, in the space of 10 days we had been offered the trip, put an emergency passport application in for Greer, arranged for someone to stay at our home to watch over the menagerie and got permission to take Findlay out of school for the week so I must have missed the section of the email that explained that rather than staying in a tent, we’d be hanging out in one of these for the next week:

I have to admit to feeling a little ambivalent about staying in the static caravan rather than the tent but when the heavens opened not half an hour after we arrived, I realised immediately the one difference which became massively important – the kids didn’t end up traipsing mud everywhere. Anyone who has ever been camping will relate to that feeling as if your entire body is filthy no matter how good the ablution facilities are and thankfully, in our 3 bedroom superior we never had that. Having such an expanse of space was excellent too since the boys had a room to themselves where they could escape to play games, the girls had a room to themselves and we still had a comfortably sized living & dining room space too.

We were so exhausted after our trip down that we stayed on the parc for the first few days which is unlike us -we’re the kind of family who goes out and sees things rather than the heading-to-the-beach type – but with beautifully clean swimming pools and excellent facilities on site we wanted for nothing. There was plenty for the kids to do, a shop on-site where we could get the essentials and a bar too where internet access was available.

The kids absolutely loved the swimming pool and I have to admit I was terrified at the prospect of taking four of them to the pool with only two adults but it turned out to be completely manageable. What mainly worried me was that there was no lifeguard supervision (a common occurrence in France) around the pools but the boys took good care of Erica leaving Bob and I to take turns with Greer. Although, we did see a fairly horrific accident involving a teenager, a backflip dive and a certain broken nose. Ouch.

The site had a kids club available but our brood, being quite anti-social wary weren’t too keen on being left there which was fine. Instead they chose to spend a fair amount of time in a well-designed playground. I remember thinking, “Health and safety would never allow a playground like this back home” when watching Nairn clambering up a climbing wall – it was exactly the type of place that kids should always have access to and they absolutely loved it. Look at the smiles!

The Eurocamp staff who had briefed us prior to our departure had mentioned that this parc in particular was beautiful but that didn’t quite do it justice. The site was just stunning, plenty of greenery and a little fishing lake where guests were welcome to sit and indulge themselves. One thing that really impressed me – and which I felt reflected the consideration given to the site’s clientele – was that the entry to the parc was controlled via a security barrier which opened after a PIN number was entered into it. The PIN station was available on both sides of the road meaning that both UK and continental drivers could access it. Clever, eh?

We did do a couple of day trips – to Le Mont-Saint-Michel and to Saint Malo where we visited the Great Aquarium which were both within an hour’s drive of our site – and I shall blog about these later.

All in all, this trip just reinforced how good a holiday a family of our size can have on a budget. A seven-night break in this site, staying in accommodation exactly like ours would cost £987 accommodation only and – as we did – you can book your ferry crossing through Eurocamp who manage to get it significantly cheaper than I ever found quotes for. I’ve been told that Eurocamp can also help organise fly-drives and rail travel too.

For me, the difference between this kind of holiday and a package holiday is simple – you do everything on your own time. Having our car with us meant we could leave when we wanted, go where we wanted and not have to worry about schedules and going off-plan. The Eurocamp couriers spoke English – which was an embarrassing relief as my French has never exceeded schoolgirl level – and were available at the drop of a hat to assist. As an example – on our trip two years ago I came down with a stomach bug and had to go to a Doctor. Our courier found a Doctor and came with me to translate. I get the impression that the sites are picked by people who understand what a family abroad needs, such is the level of detail like ensuring we had a travel cot available for Greer to sleep in and providing loo roll and washing up liquid in the welcome pack.We’ve done two Eurocamp holidays now and I know that we’ll be back. Thanks ever so much for a great time!

(photo credit donttread22 © All Rights Reserved)

When Cristiano Ronaldo announced that he’d become a father recently, I know I wasn’t the only person thinking, “Eh, what?!” when he stated that the child was to be under his exclusive guardianship. What got me wasn’t that the baby had apparently been born to a surrogate, or that the mother was to remain anonymous or indeed that the baby’s mother was not Ronaldo’s longterm partner – it was that whilst making the announcement that the baby had been born several weeks ago the baby was photographed in Portugal under the care of Ronaldo’s sister & mother whilst Ronaldo partied it up in New York. To be fair, Ronaldo did say he was looking forward to meeting the lad. That clearly makes this messed-up situation A-OK then.

To me, that’s not the actions of an excited and devoted new father. Maybe I’m being judgemental but if my babydaddy had gone thousands of miles away for fun and frolics leaving the baby at home, I’d have a few choice words to say about his parenting, his prioritisation and his aptitude for being a father. This whole situation just stinks of someone with more money than sense buying something he’s decided he wants on a whim. It’s weird, it’s uncomfortable to read about and as much as I know this child will materially want for nothing I still feel a great amount of pity because there’s nothing that can replace being loved unconditionally by a parent. I truly hope that my gut feeling is wrong though, that Cristiano Snr bonds properly with Cristiano Jr and forms a solid, secure and loving family unit. I guess time will tell.

So I tag Nicola, Louiz, Rachael, Hayley and Laura

I wasn’t really that surprised when almost every invitee to Erica’s party turned up. On the days when she goes to nursery there’s usually a gaggle of excited toddlers waving and shouting to her at the window and before she moved up to the pre-preschool room a few weeks ago (she is now officially a Cheeky Chimp) her toddler room-mates would chatter excitedly to me when I dropped her off. When we go to the park she always makes a friend no matter how dreich the weather and when we first met Amanda and Bron it took a matter of seconds for her to race off with her similarly-aged counterparts. She’s exuberant, effervescent and extremely high maintenance but is the most sociable of all my children. I wouldn’t say she’s more popular than the boys – they have a firm group of friends which tends to be close knit – but her circle of friends is wide and fluid. From my perspective of being distinctly unpopular as a schoolie, I’m enthused by the demand for her friendship but if course, this demand leads to supply issues.

In other words the dreaded birthday party.

Over the last 8 weeks Erica has been invited to no less than six birthday parties, all of which have been held at (an admittedly better-than-usual) soft play centre in a local pub. I should be honest here and say that soft play is an anathema to me – witnessing my children mutate from reasonably polite if excitable dwarves to puce-faced sweaty hulks sustained by chicken nuggets and fruit shoots is not my idea of fun – but they absolutely love it. Therein lies my first ‘concern’. If the kids have been invited to a softplay party, how should they be dressed? Party dresses simply cramp your style when you’re trying to clamber up wipe-clean plastic mountains, but on the few occasions that I’ve dressed Erica in a long tshirt and leggings she’s looked distinctly out of place. How do other parents do it?

Added to that there’s the financial obligation too. Erica was gifted some beautiful presents at her birthday party in May but since Bob & I have been self-employed since the turn of the year we simply don’t have any disposable income right now. As you can imagine, six birthday parties in eight weeks really hits the pocket. I don’t feel comfortable turning down invitations and so I try to stick within a budget of £10 for the gift with a card & wrapping paper on top.

This is where my dilemma lies. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that I have some idiosyncracies when it comes to gifts being bought with hard-earned money. There’s nothing that angers me more than my kids breaking something they’ve been bought as a gift because I can remember all too well how long I could eat for if I had £10 while I was a single parent. For someone to spend almost two hours-worth of wages on something means a great deal to me and I want my kids to appreciate that, but I also want anyone I’m buying for to appreciate it too. Hence, I really begrudge buying crappy pointless toys as gifts no matter how much my kids beg me to. We all know the kind of toys I’m referring to – Gogo’s crazy bones are top of my ‘Vonnie hates these’ list, along with those revolting aliens in a plastic tub of slime which Nairn particularly adores – and so I usually resort to books or crafting kits to encourage parent & child to spend time together. BUT THEN I have the guilt for pushing my parenting ideals onto others.

I decided recently to let Erica pick the present for her friend, but that backfired spectacularly when she – who has a new-found love of gardening – decided that her friend J REALLY needed a massive strawberry planter from B&Q. I bought it since it was clearly a gift from the heart then bought a kite as an apology to his parents for handing over a bucket of mud to look after.

There’s got to be a happy medium, surely? Do other parents stick to a birthday budget? Do you have a policy about the kind of gift you’ll buy? Most importantly, what are your fashion principles?