The children of Yummy Mummies always eat broccoli and other wholesome vegetables. Some of them probably even eat it for breakfast. However I have found that just like you can’t bring the mountain to Mohammed nor can you make a small child consume broccoli.

You can serve up the freshest vegetables, beautifully cooked, designed on his plate complete with a scene from an African safari, in which the broccoli is the trees. But if he thinks broccoli is disgusting you’re unfortunately wasting your time. The emphasis is on the word thinks because he may not even try it.

I don’t know where little kids get the ideas that wholesome vegetables such as brussel sprouts, broccoli and beans are revolting when they’ve never even passed their lips. Perhaps there is some underground society of 7 and 8 year olds that hangs around outside daycare centres and playgroups handing out leaflets saying ‘foods to avoid: anything beginning with ‘b’ that is also green. Guaranteed to drive your parents spare’.

There is this lovely Yummy Mummy idea that you should offer your child a food up to 10 times and he will eventually eat it. I don’t find that idea terribly practical or convenient. It generally means you will end up with a bin full of broccoli or you’ll spoil your own dinner by eating it yourself. And the chances of him magically deciding that broccoli is yummy on that tenth serving are remote.

There is another lovely Yummy Mummy idea that by the age of 2, all children should be eating exactly what their parents eat. Ha! That’s a laugh. Unless of course you’re eating fish fingers and baked beans yourself. When it comes to mealtimes most toddlers have the concentration of a gnat, coupled with ants in their pants. I end up following my child around the room begging him to eat whatever I can. Of course this is ridiculous because it reinforces the behaviour and plus it leaves little food stains all over the carpet mat. But in the short term it’s that or a kid with low blood sugar and the whinge switch turned permanently on.

The food advice doled out to parents for their toddlers is mostly unachievable. From my point of view, some of it verges on the laughable. Toddlers should have three servings of fruit a day and five servings of vegetables. What the…….? Okay let’s start with the fruit. Does juice count? That’s one. How about three sultanas slipped in during the car ride to childcare. That’s two. What about a strawberry Petit Miam that is probably just flavoured with a bit of strawberry essence. Three. That’s the fruit. Now for the vegetables. Highly unlikely at breakfast unless you make him fresh carrot juice with a bit of celery and a touch of ginger (yeah right).

So that leaves morning tea…any ideas? An apple or pear if you’re lucky but that’s fruit not vegetables. Lunch…..he wants two-minute noodles. Aren’t they made from wheat? Wheat is a plant isn’t it? At childcare he prefers jam sandwiches. Wacko! Jam is made out of fruit (we’ll just gloss over the vat of added sugar). Afternoon tea. How about some freshly peeled carrots and tomato slices. Nice idea except he will not actually swallow the carrots – he happily chews them up then spits them out and he won’t touch tomato unless it’s a sauce. Biscuits it is. Aren’t they made from plants too? Now it’s dinner. Much easier to serve vegetables at dinner. But five serves? Try that yourself!

I read somewhere that you can’t count potatoes in your list of vegetables because they don’t have enough vitamins and minerals. Well blow me. Tell that to the Irish. I’m counting the potatoes – even if they’re fried. Even if they Pommes Noisettes, made up of previously fried and now frozen and ready to be reheated, with a use-by date of five years hence! Got a few peas in on the fork behind the fish fingers until he noticed. Also a few bits of corn. We have done well!

We’ve all heard the horror stories about chicken nuggets so I don’t give them to my boy. But I was happily giving him fish fingers regularly. A friend of a friend who works in the catering industry told me there wasn’t much fish in fish fingers either and that they use this horrid-sounding stuff called ‘seafood extender’ to make the filling. I could have knocked her block off. There I was thinking my child was getting his dose of Omega 3 etc etc and he was probably getting some kind of mutated protein that glows in the dark.

I’ve tried plain chicken and plain fish and even plain steak and chops. But unfortunately the only plains my kid is into are the ones that fly. It’s not such a surprise that toddlers prefer processed food is it? It’s easier to digest and they don’t have that many teeth. I guess if you never give it to them then they wouldn’t prefer it but then those women probably don’t let their children climb on the lounge in their shoes or use textas…..as if!!!!

Have you seen that ad where the young boys have got their magnifying glass out on the bread, searching for signs of any ‘nasty’ grains within? That sure hits the mark. We all know it’s better to have wholemeal bread than white but the problem is, kids generally hate it.

The ‘they’ll eat it if they’re hungry enough’ mantra simply isn’t true. Well it’s true that if you locked your toddler in a room with only Bornhoffen soy and linseed loaf for three days. But in the real world, fancy breads tend to come back in the lunchbox, half-eaten at best. A straight multigrain doesn’t stretch the friendship too much but don’t slash your wrists if your child wants a white-bread vegemite sandwich.

It’s the very plainness of this type of meal that kids like. They’ve got zillions more tastebuds than adults so it doesn’t seem so plain to them. Also those grains can be much harder to digest in little mouths, which is kind of the point I know but you can’t expect a toddler to be up on colon care. Children’s tastes do change just as our tastes have changed as we’ve progressed from children to adults. What your child likes to eat as a 12-month-old may not apply at 2 or 3.

My boy happily ate peas just about everyday from 12 months to 30 months then he started to dislike them. I persisted to a point but I couldn’t wind the clock back. I was disappointed that his favourite summer snack – frozen peas – would now be a thing of the past. Everyday is a clean slate and we all start out with the best intentions.

I often leave home with various healthy snacks organised into colourful air-tight containers giving the illusion that my child is on a health-food diet only to return home from the mall with the lot of them after my child has consumed a milkshake and an icecream. (Never mind the sugar, think of all that calcium! Plus an icecream can keep your child occupied in a shopping trolley for several aisles.)

I breastfed my boy until he was nearly 2. It wasn’t something I planned – it just happened that way. Doctors and baby health nurses continually told me that he wouldn’t be getting much from me as I was only feeding him at night and first thing in the morning. The breastmilk apparently wasn’t contributing much so I shouldn’t really count it in his diet. It wasn’t until he was in hospital with gastroenteritis that I realised what bollocks that was.

 I hadn’t fed him for a day or so as he’d been so ill but I relented one night in an attempt to settle him. I think the cleaner who was summoned to soap the carpet after he hurled up the whole feed would agree with me when I say there was a quite a lot of fluid that was being consumed! When I gave up breastfeeding I rapidly put on several kilos which would also tend to suggest that I was sharing a significant amount of fluid, fat and nutrition with my little one (I guess zealously taking up wine-drinking at the same time after a two-year lay-off could also have contributed to the weight gain!!)

I would recommend to anyone that you breastfeed for as long as you like – don’t listen to what anyone else says. Of course not even Yucky Mummies want to breastfeed indefinitely but these things have a way of running their own course and mothers shouldn’t feel pressured to give up breastfeeding because it doesn’t ‘look right’. Although children don’t ‘need’ to breastfeed beyond six months for nutrition there are many other benefits for mother and baby including convenience and bonding. What is right for someone else may not be right for you.

Once you give up breastfeeding you will never breastfeed that child again so make sure the time is right. Apparently babies are only supposed to feed during the night for the first couple of months of life and many people are horrified by stories of babies who continue to wake up several times a night and feed when they are 12 months old and beyond. I don’t know a better way to get a baby or toddler to sleep during the night than to breastfeed, meaning the disruption to the mother is minimal. If this works for you and you’re not unhappy with it then bollocks to anyone else.

I haven’t had much success getting my child to sleep (I can’t even get my insomniac husband to sleep). I have read all the books so I have lots of ideas. It’s just that they don’t seem to work very well. ‘Controlled crying’ is my favourite. What a euphemism.

The fact is that ‘controlled crying’ is anything but – if we could control it then we would stop it, wouldn’t we? The continual sound of babies or little kids crying is enough to drive anyone mad. Controlled crying – wrapped up neatly in a box and tied with a bow – goes like this. On the first night you put your child to bed and it will probably cry for an extended period of time because it has been fed and rocked to sleep every night of its life previously. You check the child occasionally – maybe even picking it up if the child is very young (under six months) – otherwise just say some soothing words and give it a pat or two. You gradually decrease the frequency of checking and contact.

While all of this is going on you shouldn’t actually look the child in the eye! Of course while your child is crying its lungs out you will be completely relaxed and unperturbed in the next room, probably swigging back a sauvignon blanc or two (if you’re not breastfeeding that is!) Eventually – it may take two hours on the first night – your child will drift off into a peaceful slumber, not waking until 12-or-so hours later.

On subsequent nights the time taken from Step A (putting the child down) to Step Z (the child falling asleep) will gradually decrease until in about a week or so the child will pop straight off to sleep the minute you put it into bed. YEAH RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My boy is nearly three and I only just got him out of my bed and into his. I suppose many would think that’s pathetic but I don’t regret. Okay…I could do without the backache but apart from that….< Sleep is such a vexed issue. It’s all anyone talks about when they have a newborn. “How is your baby?” “Great, she’s been sleeping through since six weeks”. (Arghhh…don’t you want to kill those women? I think many of them lie just to add to the myth of domestic bliss.) I could never hear my boy cry – I still can’t really – so the (un)controlled crying thing never worked for me. I pretty much fed or rocked him to sleep or he just dropped exhausted (okay that sounds awful but then I am a yucky Mummy!!)

Breastfeeding to sleep is a lovely thing but it does tend to prolong night waking. My boy never woke for long, however, so I found I could adjust to the broken sleep quite easily and fall straight back to sleep myself. While we gave up breastfeeding at two I’m afraid the plastic substitute – the dummy – is yet to be pried from my child’s mouth (gasps of horror!)

I have set a deadline of the third birthday but with that approaching in a few weeks – well let’s just say there’s a lot of dummies that have to find their way to the bin. Either you’re a dummy person or you’re not (and yes, you could say, dummy people are dummies) but like anything, it’s what works at the time.

 I’ve been advised to go cold turkey (that pretty much worked for the breast) but then it’s not like my boy could find an old nipple under the lounge and start sucking on it (that sounds terrible but I hope you get the point). Back to the sleep issue.

Getting into a routine of a morning and afternoon sleep as soon as possible is the way to go. However if you’re like I was and still want to go out you may find this often doesn’t work. At 18 months to two years most kids drop the morning sleep and then it’s just a matter of time before they drop the afternoon sleep.

My boy still sometimes sleeps during the day when he’s at daycare and at home if he’s had a bad night or been sick. But I really prefer pushing through until evening, all being well. It’s a wonderful thing to have your child fall asleep in your arms as you read them their third book of the night. You can imagine them drifting off into a dream world of fantasy where everything is as bright as a Disney story. Good night!

Every birthday that your child celebrates is as much of a milestone for you as it is for them, especially in the early years. Today marks three years since my boy entered the world and I find my mind keeps drifting back to that cold and windy day in August 2003 when he came into the world. He was due on August 7.

That day came and went. It was clear he was very comfortable where he was and had no intention of vacating of his own volition. However, his heartbeat was normal, as regular ultrasounds showed, so we simply waited.

After a week or so my gynaecologist booked me in for an induction on the Saturday (August 16). I had hoped that I would go into labour naturally before then but that didn’t happen. So full of expectation my husband and I headed off to the hospital on the Saturday afternoon – only to be sent back home that night due to an influx of ‘urgent cases’! We had to phone everyone, not with our big news, but with the fact that we were back home again.

They hoped to be able to admit me the following day but they weren’t sure. To say that we were in limbo was an understatement. With nothing else to do but wait by the phone for a call to go in, my husband decided to wash the windows! Eventually we got a call at about 3pm the following day (Sunday) to say we could come back to the hospital. Hooray! Finally there was room at the inn.

First they applied gel to my cervix, which is the gentlest way to edge labour along. But my son wasn’t going to fall for that old trick. It did little. A second application of gel didn’t do much either than make me feel a bit bloated.

The following morning (Monday), after a very uncomfortable night for my husband on the lounge of the birthing suite, the midwives inserted a drip in my arm, containing labour-inducing hormones. This finally had some effect and I was a whole 1cm dilated!!!! At some stage – perhaps before the drip, or perhaps after, I can’t recall – my gyno popped in and broke my waters with a very sinister looking hook (I still have it for use in case of home invasion etc).

I had been told that having my waters broken manually was very painful but I didn’t feel anything. Mind you it was more difficult to do that I thought. Everything (amniotic sac and baby included) seemed to be around towards my back rather than my pelvis at the front so the doctor seemed to have to use some interesting arm manoeuvre to reach it (enough said…).

With the drip it was just a matter of time before I went into full-blown labour. The funny (not funny ha ha) thing about labour – and I have discussed this with many first-time Mums since – is that you don’t really know you’re in it. There’s this strange pain, that can seem quite minor at first, somewhat akin to period pain. It can often take a midwife to tell you you’re actually in labour. The pain began to get worse and I had this idea that you should try to get through without drugs. Why is that? It’s not like I refuse the needle at the dentists or reject Panadol if I have a headache. I knew I definitely didn’t want Pethidine but I was more open to an epidural.

The fact that you are basically bed-ridden after you have the epidural was putting me off. I suppose I thought that leaping around the room might help! So I soldiered on for a few more hours using my own form of hydrotherapy as relief. Every time I got a contraction I used a water jet in the bath on my stomach as a kind of distraction from the pain. Eventually I came to the question: why am I enduring this in pain, when I don’t have to? So the midwife was dispatched to get the anaesthetist to administer the epidural through my spine (eeeww…)

The rest of that day was passed in relative comfort. There are photos of me propped up in bed, laughing at the jokes made by my husband and my Mum, who by this time had turned up to lend her support. Finally (there are a lot of finallys and eventuallys in this tale) in the early evening the midwives declared I was fully dilated and ready to push. How long will it take, I asked. No more than an hour, they promised (fibbers!!) At this point they reduced the amount of drugs going in via the epidural so that some feeling would return to my lower body and I would be able to feel the contractions, which would help me know when to push.

If ever a midwife tells you this is what he/she is going to do, say no!!!!!!!!!! Several other mothers with epidurals have told me that at this point they could barely feel contractions and had only a little pain (though a lot of exhaustion) in pushing the baby out. What followed for me was a very different story.

As soon as they ‘fiddled’ with the epidural I began to experience the most horrendous pain and every push (they made me do three in between every contraction) was like trying to pick up the back end of a car. I had horrible nausea as well, constantly feeling like I was about to throw up but never actually doing it (it probably would have been better if I had).

I think I started pushing at about 8.40pm and I was totally fixated on the clock that was directly in front of me on the wall. 9.40pm came and went. By this stage my husband was flagging too and I have more vivid memories of my mother who was sponging my face (I had already ripped off all my clothes due to feeling like I was in the middle of the Sahara – try doing that when you’ve got a drip in your spine and one in your arm – the image is funny in retrospect – everything gets tangled around everything) and holding a bowl for me in case of puking.

My son finally entered the world at approximately 10.30pm, assisted by forceps and an episiotomy. (When I asked the doctor later how many stitches later he said he didn’t really count them!) They plopped him on my chest and the first thing I remember thinking was “he looks like a rugby player”, whatever that means.

He was bright red and blotchy and he looked like he’d had a really hard day but he also looked healthy and feisty. Almost immediately they put him onto the breast, there beginning weeks of another kind of pain but that is another story. I thought all the difficult stuff was over but unfortunately it was just beginning.

We found out that my placenta had ‘abnormally adhered’ to my uterus, which meant that instead of coming out in a nice big liver-like piece it had to be physically removed piecemeal (sorry to gross you out) resulting in the loss of horrendous amounts of blood. (My husband still likes to tell people that the plush, apricot-coloured birth suite looked like Slaughterhouse-Five).

After what I had been through I desperately wanted anyone and anything away from that whole area of my anatomy (for about a year) but the prodding continued for some time. It was a surreal experience. In the background I remember hearing them weigh my son on the scales outside. He was 4.44 kg or 9 pounds, 14 ounces in the old scale. “Thank God for that,” I thought. “If he had been a small one I might have had to kill myself.”

After some time the doctor gave up on his placenta fishing expedition and said I would have to be monitored in case placenta remained (it took day-surgery six weeks later to get rid of the last little sucker. As an aside, they believe this problem was due to an earlier miscarriage followed by a curette followed by pregnancy possibly too soon after).

The midwives came in to clean me up – poor women. It must be akin to being ‘the cleaner’ when the cops have finished with a crime scene. They should have just got several buckets of soapy water and thrown them at me. Sometime around midnight I was taken up to the labour ward and my husband saw my son off into the nursery.

So there I was in the middle of the night, after this traumatic and amazing experience, totally alone in this pitch black room, and I was supposed to sleep. My mind was racing and then I proceeded to faint. I buzzed the midwife and she came in and gave me oxygen, which seemed to stabilise me. (Ultimately the only thing that would fix me up was a four-unit blood transfusion a few days later as my haemoglobin level continued to drop.)

So that is my birth story. Recounted exactly three years later, off the top of my head. While some details are fuzzy you can see I remember so much. For the first 12-18 months I had a wonderfully placid baby who did most things by the book. Now I have a three-year-old who argues about every single thing with me – even the fact that he is turning 3 today (he claims he is 4 or 6, depending on his mood). And although my husband and I could do without the arguments, the tantrums and the throwing every time he doesn’t get his way, we wouldn’t change any of it. >Happy birthday my boy.

What follows is a bit of a checklist of essentials to buy before the big event. Of course most women will buy so much and will receive so many gifts that they’ll end up with much more but this is all you really need in the nursery before your baby arrives. Please add a comment if you have other suggestions for the list.

• Bassinette or cot: personally I felt more comfortable having a bassinette as I initially wanted the child sleeping in the same room as me (for initially read two years, ha)
• Pram: second hand prams are fine. Make sure the baby can lay down and sleep in it comfortably if need be
• Nappies, nappies and nappies but mind the size: my husband and I bought boxes of newborn nappies but our big son grew out of that size before we ran out of them. Thankfully the shop allowed us to exchange for the next size up. Forget cloth nappies (other than to use them as a change map or for wiping mouths and fingers etc) and forget anything but Huggies. You may think you are saving money by buying cheaper nappies but in the long run you won’t as they will require changing more often
• Zinc-based nappy rash cream: some baby are prone while others never seem to get it but I always found this cleared up any redness is used liberally
• Baby wipes: how did parents survive before these were invented? Get a big Huggies ‘lunchbox’ container for the home and a small Huggies portable container for when you’re out and about. Again, anything cheaper is a false economy.
• Bonds all-in-one soft Terry towelling suits: whether it’s winter or summer these are terrific. They are cozy for sleeping and make for easy nappy changing. Yellows and greens are good neutral colours if you don’t know the sex of your baby
• Soap-free bath wash Brush and comb Bibs, bibs and more bibs: a must if your baby’s a chucker. If not then save them for when he/she’s on solids. The ones that slip over the head and don’t have to be tied or velcroed are best
• A bath: no need for anything expensive, such as a bath that comes as part of a change mat and has to be wheeled into the bathroom (painful!) Just a cheap plastic container that can go anywhere is fine. Make sure you can put it on a relatively high bench or you’ll damage your back
• Dummies? Some parents hate them others love them. There’s no doubt many kids find them soothing, especially when coming up to a feed or when sleepy. If you do buy one the cheap (approx $2) Happy Baby brand is fine. Make sure you check the size and get ‘newborn’ or small.
• Bonds socks: they fit well and don’t slip off little ankles. And you can wash them a zillion times and they won’t unravel.
• Bonds singlets: ditto Hats: sunhats for summer and little cotton caps for winter (some wools can be irritating for new skin)
• Blankets, blankets, blankets: for the pram, car, loungeroom etc etc. If it’s summer, muslin wraps are great Change table: this isn’t a necessity but it saves your back. Underneath is a lot of useful space for nappies, creams etc
• Towels and washers: some lovely soft, smaller towels and washers that only the baby uses, is a good idea
• Nappy San: useful for soaking!!
• Gentle moisturiser: many babies experience dry skin while adapting to life outside the womb
• Bottles: You’ll need at least six (regardless of whether or not you are breastfeeding) and Avent seems to be the most popular. Get the smallest bottles available for newborns (200ml I think). You don’t need to buys a steam steriliser but they are useful. Simply boiling bottles, teats etc for five minutes does the trick
• Formula: Good idea to have a few tins in the cupboard (the midwife should advise which kind) but don’t buy too much as it is expensive and doesn’t keep for long
• Odour-free plastic bags for nappies: this is a bit of a Bourgeoisie concept but they do work! I was given a Tommy Tippee Nappy Wrapper, which was great, but I wouldn’t recommend them as every refill costs approx. $20!
• Car seat: forget baby capsules. They have been outmoded. Go for a car seat that will cater for your child until it reaches a weight of 18 kg (when it’s about 3). Make sure it’s reversible (can be strapped in backwards) for newborns Baby bag: it doesn’t have to actually be a baby bag. Just a washable bag with lots of components. The ones that found out into a change mat are unnecessary

Things you don’t need :

• Wol blankets (I found acrylic much softer)
• Carry bed
• Baby powder Sleeping bag Baby Mozart CDs
• Books for the first few months (ok, you try reading to a six-week old, sorry Mem Fox)
• Perfumed lotions
• Baby massage oil (what’s wrong with plain Baby oil?)
• Impractical clothes such as jeans Shoes of any kind
• Mobiles (either kind!)
• Loads of stuffed toys
• Plush pram liners
• Drugs of any kind (except, of course, for you, he ha)

The other day I went to pick my three-year-old boy up from daycare to find he was sporting a rather impressive shiner on the cheek. His daycarer was mortified that my son had been injured under her watch. I was pretty philosophical.

By the time I arrived to pick my boy up, several hours after the event, he was fine, and didn’t appear to bear any grudge against the perpetrator. I also knew my son well enough to know that he was unlikely to have been the completely innocent party.

Three-year-old boys remind me of male gorillas who beat their chests. They are so often motivated by a need to be dominant, at the cost of all else. They want that toy, not because it’s such a great toy, but because the other kid wanted it.

They will happy play on their own until you get on the phone – then they will do something completely stupid just to get your attention again. But are three-year-olds so different from the rest of us? The answer is, yes, because they are honest about it.

Sometimes it would be just great to have a huge tantrum in the middle of the shopping centre when they don’t have the product you want. Embarrassing, yes, but strangely liberating too. No more smoke and mirrors. No real agendas other than wanting to be loved fully and on demand. Just say what you mean all the time. No recriminations. No regrets. No grudges.

The corporate world could take a lesson from three-year-olds. The punch-ups in boardrooms around the country might be a bit unacceptable but then at least everyone would know where they stand. The best way to deal with rash outbreaks of emotions in little kids is to firmly state your case: “No, you can’t have that” or “We will go to the park tomorrow” and then move on to some brilliant distraction. If this doesn’t work then you can have a tantrum too.

Last week we took the boy to the paediatrician for his annual checkup. He doesn’t need surgery to fix up his umbilical hernia or grommits for his ears - at least not yet - but he does have a drinking problem.

Well these things are hereditary I hear you say. No not that kind of drinking problem! He’s drinking too much milk, so that’s why he isn’t eating properly. Apparently three-year-olds only need 400ml of dairy per day. And he’s drinking 750ml-1 litre, not to mention any cheese or yoghurt he might have.

Kids who drink too much milk grow okay but they can be iron deficient. The energy he puts into those tantrums would suggest he has as much iron as the Incredible Hulk but we have tried to limit the guzzling of the white stuff.

The doctor said he should drink milk just morning and night so you need some pretty cute distractions for the 3 o’clock blues. Drinking milk is more than just topping up with liquid with little kids - it’s associated with sleep and comfort. (And Dairy Farmers have really done a job on the calcium scare campaign with mothers.)

So weaning him off milk and onto big, red juicy steaks is definitely something that can’t be done overnight. But at least this time it’s the product of poor Daisy’s udder and not my breasts!!

I am working and my husband is not. After three years of part-time work (including about a year of barely any work), I am back in the grind of five days a week of employment. And after 20 years of long hours, deadline stress, and climbing up the slippery pole, my husband is caring for our son, doing the housework, cooking and making furniture. I have mixed feelings about it.

We’ve been doing this for about three months now and I still miss those lovely one-on-one meandering, non-productive days with my boy. Days of not getting out of our pyjamas until 10am, going for a coffee (or in his case a milkshake, abandoned halfway through or spilt all over the floor), followed by trips to the park or to friends.

My husband often wondered how I got so little achieved. Now he knows - you achieve a lot when you do ‘nothing’. Already, sadly but inevitably, we are adjusting. In the first weeks my son threatened to lock the door, so I couldn’t leave. Just the other day he said to me on the phone: “I miss you, I want you to stop going away from me.”

But we are settling into somewhat of a routine. And there are so many things I don’t miss too. One example are those hectic mornings when I was trying to get myself and my son out the door for work and childcare at the same time, with no help from my husband (he was long gone to work). Another is waiting until 8pm for my husband to come home. …

This post was all getting a bit too serious so I’d just thought I’d tell you I’ve just been interrupted by my son shouting from inside the shower. I went down to find I had to remove a large, brown cylindrical object from within. (Try doing that with toilet paper while the shower’s still on!!!!!)…..

I have encouraged my husband to take the rest of the year off and then next year we aim to find a better family-work balance for all of us. But the truth is, as much as I could happily never work again, I think my husband does the home thing better than I do.

The house is much cleaner, various new items of furniture have been made, walls have been painted, and the yard is clean. Also many wonderful things have been cooked, despite the fact that I’m making things very challenging in the kitchen by being a vegetarian on a low-carb diet! (In fact I don’t believe I’ve cooked a single dinner since my husband left work. I could joke that I make up for my lack of prowess in the kitchen in the bedroom but it would be exactly that - a joke!)

Now at the end of the day it is me who has to take care to notice that the beds are made and that the washing is done. So I must conclude that for our family, having a house husband, is definitely better than having a housewife. I wish I could just do the house-Mum part!