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Me and the bride-to-be

I don’t know if it’s just me but ever since I became a mum, I can’t just ‘go out’. I don’t mean that we struggle to get a babysitter or that the Queen will only settle for me, it’s just that I feel like I can’t. If I really wanted to, I could go for after work drinks once a week, every week and my husband could do the same on alternate nights but, even though we’d only miss out on seeing our little one for a couple of hours (and a lot of nights she ends up in our bed anyway) we just don’t do it. And the reason is guilt. I feel guilty for wanting to go out and be away from my child. I feel guilty for spending money on dinners and taxi fares instead of putting it towards a family outing and just generally feel like I can’t do these things anymore. I used to think Catholic guilt was bad but it’s got nothing on mum (or parent) guilt.

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One of my first thoughts when I became a parent was, ‘finally I can embrace my love of Disney without embarrassment’! For years, whenever I would go to Disneyland Paris or Disney World in Florida, I would always play it down. ‘Yes we’re going on a trip to Paris. We may stop by Disneyland, if we have time,’ I would say, or ‘we’re doing a tour of Florida, we’ll be spending a few days in Miami and then we might stop by Orlando and do a few parks.’ When in all honestly, the sole purpose of the trips were Disney, Disney, Disney!

My husband and I are big kids at heart and having a ready-made excuse to go to theme parks is a dream come true. Thankfully, our one-year-old loves Disney (like she has a choice) so now we do it for her (ahem…).

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I honestly had no preference on gender when I was pregnant. I had a huge bump (9lb 12 baby!) so I was convinced that we were having a boy and I was happy with that. I must admit though, a small part of me was delighted when we saw she was a little girl and the main reason for that is…the outfits! It’s terribly shallow of me to admit that but I love shopping for my little girl. When I was young, I would spend hours dressing up my Barbie dolls in different outfits and then when I became a teenager and beyond, I loved fashion for myself. But because we don’t have mountains of space and babies grow out of clothes and shoes at the speed of light, I try not to buy too much and it’s harder than you’d think to create a capsule wardrobe for a one-year-old. View Post

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I really like dogs but I have no desire to own one. They’re needy, messy, smelly and noisy – exactly like children and I already have one of those. I sometimes hear other parents get annoyed when childless folk compare puppy owning to raising a small child but it doesn’t annoy me. To be honest, hearing stories from my puppy owning friends, I think they do sound pretty similar. Here are some ways that I think toddlers and puppies might not be that different. These are also the reasons that we have a cat.

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As a working mum, I sometimes find it hard to be stylish. Gone are the days where I could spend my Saturdays leisurely browsing the shops in town or my evenings soaking in a nice bath with the latest copy of Grazia. As a result, I feel a bit behind. The typical ‘mum uniform’ seems to be comfy jeans, a t-shirt and Converse and although I love that look (I own two pairs of the latter) I don’t want to give up on my fashionable days quite yet and I try to keep up with the youngsters as much as I can (urgh, using the work ‘youngster’ makes me feel 100). View Post