Diary of an (ex)London mum

I have been keeping myself entertained on the commute to work watching TV programmes I had missed.  One programme that I particularly enjoyed was‘ Eat to live Forever with Giles Coren ’ and really enjoyed it.  He had me with the first things he said: he was an older dad and wanted to live longer to be with his kids.  I am an older mum and the same thought has crossed my mind.  In the course of the programme Giles takes on 3 extreme dieting regimes which claim to increase lifespan.  This was rather entertaining as I have heard of caloric restriction, the paleo diet and fruitarianism before but didn’t really know much about them.  Giles injected the information with humour.  ‘I am a fat burning beast!  Not like that guy there who is just a fat beast’, as he munched on what he said was a disgusting paleo burger (two burger patties with some veg in between), made me laugh.   I am not a fan of diets.  As a teenager I was overweight...

We make a point of giving Baby experiences rather than presents for his birthday and Christmas as we know that he will be given plenty of presents from his closest and dearest family and friends.  Last year we gave him an annual membership to the London Aquarium to feed his appetite for all knowledge of the fishy kind.  This year we got him an annual membership to the London Zoo.  This is proving to be excellent value for money so far.   We went as a group with some family members in the Summer and decided that we would go for annual membership after the visit as Baby really enjoyed the space and the exhibits.  We got the ticket price discounted off the membership fees and, using the letter confirming that our application has gone through, we got into the zoo on our second visit using an entrance that was closer to the tube station than the one used by non-members and we didn't have to queue.  Collecting the membership cards were a dawdle- we turned up ...

I regularly purchase items from a popular global online seller, let's call them Axxxxx, as they have a large variety of goods and the delivery service is usually very good.  The following events are uncommon but I am sufficiently disgruntled by the outcome to tell the story here.  I ordered some items for my son, taking care to check the estimated delivery dates to ensure that the delivery would be on a day when my husband would be home to receive them. When they didn't arrive (highly unusual for this company), I checked my online account and found the items had been listed as delivered  at a specific time on the afternoon that we were expecting them, but signed for by someone we didn't know.  I emailed  Axxxxx  to ask for further details, offering to try to retrieve the items if I could have a house and flat number from the courier.  It took  Axxxxx  two days to tell me that the items have been delivered to a local shop instead; I...

We recently went away for a beach holiday on the Jurassic/Dorset Coast as my three year old is mad about all things dinosaurs, and we like being outdoors.  The holiday allowed us to combine both and also to explore a little bit the island that we live on. It was also a relatively safe way for us to test how much walking Baby would be willing to do and would help us plan future more active, holidays. We based ourselves in Weymouth which is at the end of the train line from London Waterloo. Three hours on the train took us in to Weymouth town center and a short taxi ride uphill took us to our holiday apartment booked online via Dream Cottages .  We did the reverse journey back to London and the travelling was very smooth.  Not driving ourselves meant not having to deal with traffic jams and tired drivers (the drive was predicted to be about 3.5 hours in good traffic).  We upgraded to the first class compartment for the train journeys and it was a good decision as a...

Baby had been relatively easy with vegetables up until about 2 or 3 months ago when he started to refuse anything that looked like veg.  I was slightly upset to start but has since read that this is quite normal and that children do go through phases of being not too fussy about food and then becoming quite picky.  A colleague at work had also warned that this was something to look forward to.  There is research to suggest that this might have something to do with the development of taste buds and/or the immune system; there are suggestions that it might be the remnant of a survival instinct as certain tastes and colours/shapes may be associated with danger. Whatever the reasons, I believe that making too much of a deal about it could put Baby off vegetables for good so have kept my disappointment pretty low key.  What Ihave found that the pickiness is less profound when he is genuinely hungry e.g. when we have a meal after he has been playing outside.  This le...

It is something that is discussed in most  households, especially between couples with young children. To stay sane while coping with kids and working full time, one needs a system. I wonder how  many people follow their plans. We certainly don't really follow ours.  Partly it's due to a difference  in personalities. I want things done now; my other half likes to take the considered approach and get things done right. There is virtue in every method; you just need to agree to differ. Recently we decided to put our original plan of taking turns with cooking into action,  We had agreed on this since I returned to work but had never actually stuck to a system.  I ended up doing the bulk of the cooking but that meant I didn't spend as much time with Baby after nursery/preschool as my husband.  There was also a big divide in what we cooked because of this skewed division of cooking duties.  I  never prepare anything spectacular because ...

I have been reding this book by Pamela Druckerman on the way to work and found it a really enjoyable read.   It was getting a bit boring reading 'how to parent' books which were largely prescriptive.  I found it refreshing to read about the problems that this particular new parent faced and how the solutions didn't always come from her personally, but rather from the people she met who had very different ideas about how to raise kids.  She wrote about her observations and what she learnt from other people and how she adapted what she found to suit her particular needs and ethics.  It is kind of what we have been doing with Baby; it was reassuring to read about someone who has done pretty much the same thing and had ended up with a good family life.  It seems to be that getting the balance between discipline and giving a child enough freedom to explore and develop at its own pace is the big parenting challenge.  It isn't always easy as we get so much...

We have been looking into schools for the past year or so, having been warned by friends that we should start looking well before school application time.  It was good advice in that there is quite a lot to consider and we had not really thought about what we would value as education for Baby.  Neither of us are religious even though we both attended Catholic schools as kids.  Although we acknowledge that the education provided by Christian schools are generally good, neither of us want to keep up the pretence of being something we are not just so that Baby could attend a 'good' school.  Lying to make one's life easier is not a lesson we want him to learn. We both love facts so we looked at the data available from Ofsted and came up with a list of schools that we would like to take a look at.    In the mean time we found out that the Christian schools have to offer a percentage of non-faith related places so we decided to include a few on our list of sch...

I occasionally receive chain emails, or social network versions of chain emails. They are no longer the regular ocurrences they used to be when I was young but I do still get them sometimes. I can't help but wonder whether the people who propagate them really believe that something bad will befall them if they didn't, or if the messages are just a way to tell their friends that they are thinking of them. I don't mind them even though they do distract from the already rich landscape of messages and information online. Other widely (re)circulated messages often involve health scares. I use the word 'scares' because mostly the information that is circulated has no scientific basis even though scientists are often quoted as having evidence in support of such claims. For example myths about microwave use abound, from cancer scares to, I just heard this morning, how microwaving food increases the salt content.  I am a scientist/professional sceptic of sort and criti...

Going out for a social gathering since having a Baby has become a bit more complicated. On the one hand we would like to take Baby with us so that he would be exposed to as many different social experiences as possible, but on the other we are often not sure if he would be welcome to attend. We do have a baby sitter that we trust who could be asked to help on those  occasions when we feel we cannot bring him with us. Some events, e.g. evening drinks at a bar, are obviously not suitable but others are less cut and dry. We don't want to come across as parents who cannot bear to be separated from their offspring but he is one of us and where we are going out with friends, say for a meal, we often don't think it is inappropriate to bring him along. The invitation is frequently not specific. 'Us' these days is three people, not two. Not everyone will agree; I suppose we will learn from experience with whom it would be a definite no-no. We may end up not seeing some peo...

I had four days left of annual leave before the end of January and, rather uncharacteristically, decided to take them rather than just let them go. The decision was taken as I felt I didn't actually have a Christmas break. My husband could not take any days off aside from the statutory days of leave over the Christmas/New Year period so I was on childcare duty almost all the time. The result was that I took time off to look after Baby but didn't actually have a rest. In fact it was more mentally and physically demanding than usual as I was also doing a bit of work in my spare moments to meet various deadlines at the beginning of the year. I went back to work in January more of a wreck than before the break and found it hard to concentrate. So I decided that I would use the remaining leave days and spend them doing things I would like to do. It was a good decision. The state of the flat had been bothering me for a while and it was a constant source of stress. I am not a cl...