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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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Is Jane Austen a bad influence on my daughter?

I fear she might be. There has been much hype surrounding the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride & Prejudice this year, with the media endlessly banging on about how proud we should be of Austen’s most celebrated work of fiction. But I’m not so sure. BB’s granny gave her a Little Miss Austen children’s version of the aforementioned tome for Christmas (pictured), purportedly a counting book from one to ten. But it’s the underlying message that alarms me. […]

By |February 13th, 2013|Books, Family life|2 Comments
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Eye infection? Try breast milk eye drops

Forget Crummy Mummy. I think I might reinvent myself as Dr Mummy: Medicine Woman. I am feeling mightily pleased with myself following my first foray into self-doctoring. It all started on Thursday when I woke up with an itchy eye. By mid-afternoon it was gummy and weeping, and everything had taken on a decidedly cloudy haze. There was no ignoring it and I realised I’d have to face the infuriating ritual of making an ‘emergency’ doctor’s appointment: phoning the surgery on the dot of 8.30am, pressing ring back, waiting while the phone endlessly rings at the other end only to be answered by the ‘health centre manager’ who then puts me through to reception, only to be asked to hold, etc, etc. After all, I could be blind if I waited until the next available slot in 10 days’ time. […]

By |February 11th, 2013|Breast feeding, Health|5 Comments
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It’s none of their business whether I scrunch or fold

I nearly choked on my sauvignon blanc. ‘Do you scrunch or fold?’ the latest Andrex TV ad asks. They’re referring of course to toilet paper. How revolting. I don’t want to think about whether someone scrunches or folds – it conjures up all sorts of images – and certainly not when I’m trying to wind down at the end of a long day. […]

By |February 6th, 2013|Family life|1 Comment
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Chilli on the nipples? No thanks

My appeal for any suggestions on how to encourage BB to drink more milk from a beaker than she does from the boob prompted some interesting results. Namely putting chilli on my nipples to ward her off. Apparently this is quite common in Melanesian culture, but quite honestly I was horrified. […]

By |February 4th, 2013|Breast feeding|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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Natalie Brown is an Intellifluence Trusted Blogger
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