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Batch cooking: a licence for smugness

I have discovered the secret to feeling like the best mummy in the world, even if it’s just for half an hour: batch cooking. Pictured (left) is the product of yesterday afternoon’s endeavours – half a dozen handmade miniature Shepherd’s Pies, each in their own little tin and each with their own little label. There’s something about cooking for BB which seems more important than cooking for anyone else, even (diabetic) Misery Guts and even though she is likely to be the least grateful. Have I cut the carrots as neatly as possible? Check. Have I made sure the cheese isn’t spilling over the side of the tin? Check. Does this dish offer the right balance of protein and carbohydrate? Check. Is omega 3/some other form of fatty acid/at least one of her five-a-day present? Check. […]

By |March 20th, 2013|Family life, Food, Health|5 Comments
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Please vote for us!

I am taking the plunge. Three months after joining the growing ranks of mummy bloggers, it’s time to up the ante and try to put Confessions of a Crummy Mummy on the cyberspace map. How? By entering my first parent blogger awards – Brit Mums Brilliance in Blogging Awards 2013. This is a daunting prospect – there are so many brilliant, well established mummy and daddy bloggers out there with so many accreditations, awards and followers under their belts it’s eye watering. But I know I can achieve that too, so I’m putting Confessions of a Crummy Mummy forward for three categories: best fresh voice; recognising new bloggers, best writer; recognising great content, and best lifestyle blog; for bloggers who share the ins and outs of family life in a witty and entertaining way. The thing is, I need your help. If you liked reading about why my child is one of the fussiest eaters in Europe, why I’m worried giving up breast feeding will psychologically damage one of our cats and the latest antics of Misery Guts, or generally like following the latest goings on in the lives of BB and I, please vote for us. It’s really easy – just click on one or (preferably) all of the badges on the right hand side of this post. […]

By |March 18th, 2013|Breast feeding, Cats, Family life, News|0 Comments
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Saying no is harder than I thought

Given that BB is 19 months old today, I thought I’d update you on how weaning her off the boob is going. The short answer is: it’s not. I’ve given up giving up breast feeding. It was going fairly well when I last reported back, fairly well ish anyway, in that I was making a concerted effort to stop, but it’s the effort part that’s the problem. I haven’t got the energy to make the effort – there’s too much else going on and it’s simply too easy to feed her. And I get to have a sit down. […]

By |March 15th, 2013|Breast feeding, Family life|2 Comments
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Bad hair day or the coolest kid in town?

Check this out. This is the sight that greeted me when BB woke up from her afternoon nap (left). I cannot fathom how she managed to whip up such a hairdo in under one hour – my only guess is that she must have been continually grinding her head into the mattress the entire time. It’s hard to describe the amazingness of the creation – there were at least five individual sub-knots interspersed with corkscrews of hair firing out at all angles, all combined into one giant knot. When I’d finally stopped laughing I set about trying to brush it out (we needed to go to Tesco). Which only made it worse. Much worse. Then I did that thing I vowed I’d never do: I licked my fingers and tried to smooth it down. […]

By |March 13th, 2013|Beauty, Family life, Fashion|0 Comments
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Oh baby: stranded in a snow drift on the M23 southbound

BB had her first proper adventure last night: stuck in the back of the car in a snow drift on the M23. For eight hours. It sounds incredible; impossible even, but that’s where we spent yesterday evening, along with the world and his wife. I’m not quite sure where the snow came from – well, obviously it came from the sky – but it came down so quickly and in such volumes that chaos ensued within minutes. That will teach me. After failing to check the weather forecast and driving from Sussex to Surrey to be ladies that lunch in blissful ignorance of the snow clouds gathering, BB and I duly arrived to pick Misery Guts up from work in creepy Crawley on our way back. Big mistake. […]

By |March 12th, 2013|Family life, Food, News|6 Comments
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Mothering Sunday: the smoke was incredible

As promised, here follows my report on this year’s Mothering Sunday after last year’s non-event. Or Mothering Weekend, as it turned out, to make up for last year. That’s right, a whole glorious weekend off! I’m not sure whose nerves are more frayed: mine or Misery Guts. Who really lived up to his name. The high points were this: 1) No cooking. Beer battered cod for tea on Friday; pancakes with bacon and maple syrup for brunch on Sunday, I was not to enter the kitchen. 2) Two lie ins. Two. 3) Not having any involvement in a poonami for which the only remedy was a bath. Priceless. 4) Tea and cake in one of my favourite cafés (pictured). Of course, with high points come low points… 1) Misery Guts halved everything in the beer battered fish recipe except the beer. Meaning the batter wouldn’t stick to the fish. It did a great job of sticking to everything else though, including the biscuit tin and the toaster. […]

By |March 11th, 2013|Family life, Food|2 Comments
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Mother’s Day or Migraine Day?

Mother’s Day is nearly upon us. Or Migraine Day as it is known is our house. Last year Mothering Sunday was my first as a mother, and I looked forward to it with the anticipation of a child before their birthday. Could I really lie in until 10 o’clock? What a treat! Would I get breakfast in bed? Would we go out for lunch? What would we do in the afternoon? Would cake be involved? Could it really be true that I wouldn’t have to do any cleaning for a whole day? The possibilities were endless. None of the above was true, as it turned out. Misery Guts woke up with the start of one of his migraines, which tends to happen every couple of years. He promptly threw up all over the bathroom, and I mean all over. The sink, the toilet, the side of the bath, the floor, the scales: it was everywhere. […]

By |March 8th, 2013|Family life, Health|2 Comments
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Military boot camp. Bring. It. On.

Now that my baby’s no longer a baby, and is starting to sleep through the night (I’m afraid to even write it, let alone say it out loud, for fear of relapse) there’s no longer any excuse to use new motherhood as a reason for not getting fit. Getting fit might be a slight exaggeration – I am already fairly fit, but nothing like I was BBB (before BB). BBB I spent several hours a week in the gym on all manner of fancy equipment, but I haven’t set foot in the place since and as a result am rather soft around the edges. So this week I took the bull by the horns and signed up to a taster session of British Military Fitness, aka boot camp style fitness classes run by former or serving members of the military. It seemed the perfect solution: held on the sea front where I live it offers a chance to make the most of the beach, as I pledged to do when we moved here four months ago, plus intensive training packed into a one hour class before Misery Guts leaves for the office. Just the ticket. Oh. My. Goodness. […]

By |March 6th, 2013|Exercise, Family life, Health|0 Comments
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My baby’s no longer a baby because…

She’s just gone to bed in her first pair of pyjamas (left). Pyjamas! It’s a milestone up there with buying her first toothbrush and taking her for her first proper haircut. There’s no getting away from it now: all traces of babyness are disappearing. Fast. Of course I brought the pyjama landmark on myself, seduced by the cutest pair in Mothercare this afternoon. So cute I just had to buy them. Now she is in them and sleeping soundly, I’m feeling slightly weepy and nostalgic for the days when nothing but a sleep suit with feet would do, all cosy inside her grow bag as I nursed her. […]

By |March 4th, 2013|Breast feeding, Family life, Fashion|0 Comments
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Conversations I’ve overheard this week (and wish I hadn’t)

Being a freelance journalist means I can often be found hunched in the corner of various high street coffee shops tapping away at my trusty laptop. These are fascinating places, and the things you (over) hear are incredible. It’s not that I’m purposely listening out for other people’s conversations; they are often so loud one cannot help but overhear.This is what I’ve heard this week:1) A woman spent four hours – yes four hours – on the phone to a travel agency working out how she could get from Kuala Lumpa to Kolkata in the fastest possible time. If I hear the word Kuala Lumpa again this week I will scream. She must have said it at least 30 times, and in the time it took her to sort out her flights she could have been a third of the way there. […]

By |March 1st, 2013|Family life, Food, Work life|0 Comments
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Mummy it’s not fair!

Here I am (left), feeling suitably sorry for myself after 24 hours in bed with a stomach bug. This is the first time a lurgy has rendered me bedbound since BB was born in August 2011, and there are two things I have learnt: 1) Mummies aren’t allowed to be ill. 2) Number 1 isn’t fair. […]

By |February 27th, 2013|Breast feeding, Family life|8 Comments
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Forget scrunch or fold: do you bite or lick?

Never mind the scrunch or fold debate. It’s the whether to bite or lick a cream filled biscuit dilemma that interests me. At what point does one become a biter or a licker? And is it nature or nurture that leads to one’s preferred method? Or can one alternate between the two, depending on mood and type of cream filled biscuit in question? […]

By |February 25th, 2013|Family life, Food|0 Comments
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Jimmy Choo just saved my life!

We’ve discovered a new game. It’s called These Choos are Made For Walking and from now on it will be exclusively played on deadline days. Like today. Frantically tapping away to meet a deadline for a feature, poor BB, resplendent with a tear-stained face thanks to an angry eye tooth, eventually gave up pulling at my legs and wandered off. Usually when I suddenly realise I don’t know where she is and things have gone very quiet something bad is happening. Very bad. Like the time I found her eating soil peppered with slug pellets, or sucking the nozzle on a bottle of windowlene. […]

By |February 20th, 2013|Family life, Fashion|1 Comment
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Will giving up breast feeding psychologically damage my kitten?

You might not think cats, American country singer Kinky Friedman and breast feeding have much in common, but you’d be surprised. Kinky once said: “Cats are lovers of the status quo. They don’t like anything that might represent change. They hate marriages, divorces, moving days, painters, plumbers, TV repairmen and just about everything else.” And giving up breast feeding. We have two cats. Eddie, three, who spends most of BB’s waking hours out of sight, stealing out from his hiding place when she is napping and after she’s gone to bed to assert his presence, and Daisy Doo, 18 months. Poor little Daisy Doo. […]

By |February 18th, 2013|Breast feeding, Cats, Family life|5 Comments
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Murder on the putting green

It might sound like the working title for the next Midsomer Murders, but sadly not. That’s exactly what happened just yards from my living room window on Monday night. While watching TV, totally oblivious to what was going on less than 100 metres away, a man was apparently violently attacked and died. It’s the sort of thing you hear about in inner city somewhere, but not on the sea front in Hove. […]

By |February 15th, 2013|News|0 Comments
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I'm an award-winning blogger, author, wife, mum of four & freelance journalist. Not necessarily in that order! Join me as I navigate the previously unchartered territory of motherhood always safe in the knowledge there's a bottle of wine in the fridge...

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