Protecting Your Children From The School System
I have been a teacher for 10 years now. For most of that time, I worked in a large comprehensive school and taught across the ages of 11-18 years. During that time, I supported children from a variety of backgrounds and saw thousands of children pass through the system. In general, my experience with schools has been good. I went to great schools as a child, trained in some lovely schools and worked in one of the best schools in the area. All of these school were filled with fantastic staff who wanted the best for their students. However, once I became a mother my views on the…
New Year’s Resolutions to make as a Parent
I get it! Being a parent is intense. It is so easy to lose yourself into the busyness of family life. After-school clubs, trips to the dentists, the weekly food shop. It is time to come up with some New Years resolutions that help you as a parent. We’ve all got personal goals that we want to achieve, but there are some things that we can change that will help the whole family. These are the things that will make 2020 the best year yet for your family. Go to bed earlier When my kids were babies, we would go through periods when they would struggle to sleep…
Finding calm in a busy world
Full time travel caught up with me about a month in. We had landed in Colombia after a three week stay in a beautiful house in Orlando, Florida. By comparison, Colombia was busy, noisy and our apartment was small. I felt completely overwhelmed. It was a sensory and emotional overload. For a few days, I felt completely destabilised. I was in a low mood, anxious and stressed. All I wanted to do was stay indoors and hide from the busyness that was going on in the world. However, that busy world was the world that I had come all this way to see. I wanted to get…
UK Bloggers Christmas Competition
Christmas is all about the kids. The magic, the excitement, the parties, the presents, the advent calendars. The list goes on. Parents, in all of this, can feel neglected. You put in most of the work. Those presents don’t wrap themselves and sure as hell, those kiddies don’t arrive at the parties in Christmas themed outfits by themselves. That’s why I am a strong believer in treating yourself over the Christmas period. Have an extra mince pie or two, maybe open the Baileys a bit early. It’s a stressful time of year. You need a little pick-me-up. Hence, I’m super excited to present to you this giveaway…
5 pesto meals that your kids will eat
I’m writing this from Colombia. So far on our trip around the world, we have been to the USA (New York, Washington DC and Orlando) and Cartagena, Colombia. The sights we have seen and the things we have done are already incredible, but we are falling short on one goal. We really wanted to broaden our kids’ experience of food. Unfortunately, like at home, we have defaulted to the classic: pesto pasta. In an attempted to get them to eat more “exotic” food, we have found ourselves getting slightly more creative with how we use pesto. Therefore, in this slightly tongue-in-cheek article, I am going to…
Eating gluten free and travelling
First up, I haven’t quite made it around the world yet. But I have learnt a lot about eating in different countries and that eating gluten-free and travelling is possible. Having coeliac disease was a bit of worry when it came to planning our around the world trip. I was concerned that I would only be living off fruit for a year. I like fruit, but with other stuff like ice cream. Ha! But, to me, needing to eat gluten-free was not a good enough excuse to not got travelling. To be fair, there aren’t a lot of reasons that I could think of that would be good…
Homeschooling around the World
Of all the posts, I have ever written for this website this feels the most pretentious from the start. Therefore, I’m going to apologise now but write it anyway. For those of you that don’t know, we currently one month into a year-long trip around the world. You can follow our journey and experiences here. To do this trip, we made the decision to defer Emily’s start to school. She should have started reception in September, but the husband and I felt that this little jaunt would be better. Therefore, we have found ourselves homeschooling our big girl as we go. Or at least trying to homeschool…
Reflections on Tandem Breastfeeding
Before my second child was even conceived I had dreams of tandem nursing. That is breastfeeding two children at once. Given that twins were unlikely and that I already had one child it seemed realistic to expect that this would manifest in feeding two children of different ages. Doing the research on tandem feeding After the initial turbulence that was getting my firstborn to actually latch on and get some milk out of my humungous breasts, I fell in love with breastfeeding. I wanted to know as much about it as I could and set myself a personal challenge to find out everything. Personally, I think I did…
What does Red Tent mean to me?
I’ve been attending Red Tent for a little over a year now so it feels like the right time to reflect on what is “Red Tent”. This time last year I was struggling with the thought of returning to work after a year on maternity leave. I’d left my job full of excitement about my impending arrival and full of ideas about what I thought motherhood would be like. I was putting on hold that career driven, hardworking, fiercely ambitious side of me that had risen up and up in her job, through nothing but my own dedication. I was ruthless in achieving my goals and was absolutely determined to…
The life of a full time working mum!
I’ll be honest this isn’t exactly my dream scenario. I’d love to be a stay-at-home mummy, playing with Emily, helping her to explore the world and comforting her when she’s sad. I’m jealous of all stay-at-home parents. Dan is a stay-at-home dad, well ish. This was a tough decision. I really didn’t want to go back to work but everything said it was the best thing for our family. Me going back to work full time meant that financially Dan didn’t have to work at all, Emily would be at home with one or both of us at all times and best of all we would get weekends and…
