Siblings are Awful but Awesome and You’re Probably Lucky to Have Them

On Sunday morning, my husband and I were laying in bed, having a lie in. It was 8am and the room was warm, the bed was comfy, we had nice cups of coffee on the bedside tables, and all you could hear was the birds outside, the rumble of the heating turning on, and our two daughters screaming bloody murder at each other.

Me: *sighs* “I think the children may be battering each other”
Mr H: “Yes…….. But at least they’re finally occupying themselves.…”

In the last few months, our children have started to fall out on very regular basis. Until this point, middle sprog had been young enough to accept everything that the eldest said as gospel, and would do and say whatever she was asked. She was like a teeny tiny employee of a very bossy ginger girl, and would answer every one of her boss’s requests with “Otay!” .

However, in the last few months middle child has started to assert herself a little more, and has learnt that she can and will say no. In fact some days that’s all she says. She does not automatically share because she has been told to, she will not do her sister’s bidding, and in fact she is going to continuously annoy her eldest sister by wanting whatever she has in her hand. Eldest sprog is becoming less and less keen on her younger sister as a result. They aren’t too bad, only minor assaults on a daily basis at the moment, but I’m fairly confident that the next few years will see an increase in such activities.

It’s led me to thinking about what I’ve brought my children into the world to endure. We have three daughters and my husband has two sons from a previous relationship, so each of my girls have two full time sisters and two part time brothers. Along with being a sibling is a world of sharing, enduring, coping and accepting. Both my husband and I have three siblings each, so we know all too well about what this is like, and as they say: fore-warned is pre-armed, so I want my kids to know what they’re in for growing up with siblings.

As I said, I’m one of four. Here we are. We are such a photogenic family. I’m the one with the sexy wet-look ponytail and side fringe combo. Apparently none of us had eyes growing up either.

Whilst on many occasions I lamented the fact that I was a sibling, my life would be unrecognisable if I wasn’t.

I was three when my mum was first diagnosed. Everyone seemed quite happy about it, and seemed to expect me to share the same joy. In contrast, I couldn’t quite understand why I should be happy that my mother was carrying the growth and there was little i could do about it. Nonetheless, after about six months of being told of mum’s ‘condition’, my sister arrived and was immediately fairly popular amongst our friends and family. I couldn’t quite understand why, she was a tiny little baby piglet with a pudgy face who made far too much noise. And no-one was interested in me half as much anymore, thanks to that cute little ball of uselessness.

In her first few years, I attempted on several occasions to murder her.

As a one year old, Becca was crying in her highchair but no one could understand why. When Mum went off to the toilet, I realised what it was and tried to rectify the problem immediately. I was very pleased with myself and thought that my parents would be overjoyed that their four year old was so clever. Unfortunately, my parents weren’t quite so pleased that I was trying to feed my baby sister Calpol and removed the bottle from me immediately.

That same year, we were in a supermarket and that same attention stealing sister had also become the trolley-seat stealing sister. Not impressed that I was being forced to walk around the weekly shop, I took an opportunity when my mother wasn’t looking and clambered into the back of the trolley. For this I was told off, banned from ever standing near the trolley and reminded about the said incident for the next decade.

I may have missed out a tiny bit in the middle, where the trolley flipped over and Becca spent an evening in A&E with suspected concussion.

Somehow, despite this and several other manslaughter attempts, my sister lived and was soon joined by another sibling, a brother who had a big head and google eyes. I quite liked him however, and he managed to have a fairly uneventful and assault-free childhood. When I was twelve and my younger siblings were nine and seven, our parents then introduced our failed contraceptive surprise littlest brother Callum. It was then that my parents decided that their family was complete*.

*my mother forced my father to be sterilised or else they were moving into separate rooms.

If my parents hadn’t been quite so fertile, there are several things in my life that would be very, very different.

Sometimes you can be too attractive as family. The Beckhams had nothing on us.

Without my sister, there would have been no-one to play the most amazing pranks on. From the time I convinced her it was a weekday and she needed to go to school, to the time I told her that my parents were putting her up for adoption because she was too naughty, to the time I told her that the mole on her chest was alive, she provided me with hours of entertainment. The best was when I was eleven and convinced her that she had leprosy, and not heat rash. Oh how she freaked out! When my Dad joined in and told her that she would have to go into isolation for a month, that was just an added unexpected little bonus. The greatest thing is: when its your sibling, it’s not bullying! Its just ‘sibling rivalry’ and when they dare to tell on you, you just shout an equal amount of accusations and soon your Mum is all “Oh will you two just get along?!”. Totally got away with it.

Without my brother Christopher, my sister and I would have had no-one to dress up. We loved making him our little doll, and as a placid, shy little boy: he was always more than happy to be put in little dresses, our clothes, my mum’s make-up, and sing Spice Girls songs in his tiny little high pitched voice. On that note, without siblings, you’d have no-one to have constant reminders of your fashion faux-pa’s and have photographic proof, like this.

Without my sister, there would have been no-one to share clothes with.Or totally match. Although that said, sharing clothes would have been far more fun if our parents didn’t buy us clothes like this.

Note to my eldest: If you don’t want to share clothes with your sister, just get a bit fat. Or have god-awful dress sense.

When I think about it, even now as a twenty seven year old woman and mother, my life would be very different without my younger sister in particular. She and I are so different: much like my two daughters. For my sarcastic, quite intellectual and a little bit snobby persona, my sister is fun-loving, ever popular and goofy. She is surrounded by friends, I have a small but loyal handful. She has travelled, socialised and explored the world whereas I had a business at nineteen, a mortgage at twenty, and three children by twenty seven. We are polar opposites. But yet it somehow works. We argue like cat and dog in the morning and are friends again by afternoon. I agree with very little that she says: she has learnt to accept that I am always right. She has called me a ‘asshole-faced twat’ one day (she’s never been good at insults) but I would still drop everything to help her the next.

We were different in many ways, none more so than in our ability to tan.

As teenagers we came to blows on a daily basis. She would always stealing my hair mascara; she would tell on me for everything; and she BROKE MY SPICEWORLD CD (actually I still haven’t forgiven you for that).But yet when she was being bullied at school, I almost got suspended because I responded to the graffiti on the toilet wall about her (by graffiti-ing a threatening response to the bully. What can I say? I didn’t chose the thug life, the thug life chose me..).

Because I guess that’s what being a sibling is about. Its about having someone who you can shout abuse at but would head-butt anybody who does the same to them. Its about having someone to commit minor assault on but still let them creep into your bed to sleep the same night. It’s about having someone to share therapy with over the horrific haircuts and outfits that your mother coerced you into.

If my mother hadn’t given birth to that little chimp, my girls wouldn’t have their aunty who buys them horrifically loud and oversized toys that their mum would never agree to buy them, and takes them on day-trips where they could literally do and have whatever they want. If my parents has stopped at two then they wouldn’t have been taught a wonderful arrangement of stupid catchphrases by their uncle (“Keep your boots on baby, baby” . Its weird when a two year old says it to total strangers). If they hadn’t accidentally got pregnant on the pill then the girls wouldn’t have their youngest uncle who always buys them sweets with his pocket money and lets them play silly games on his iPad that I would never allow.

So, my darling girls, as siblings you will be expected to get along with someone who may be totally different to you and that you may never have chosen to be friends with. You will be forced to share your stuff with someone even though the chances of them of breaking it is fairly high. You will have to be told on, shouted at, and fought with by someone who’s existence you had no say on. But it isn’t all bad. Your life will have its benefits as a result. And as that saying goes, ‘Because I have a sister, I will always have a person to ruthlessly mock and force to my bidding friend’….

Photo created by me. Pose created by bribery and Medised (just kidding).

Thanks for reading again! If you want hear more of my ridiculous ramblings, please come and like me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter. Oh I’m a bit needy, really…

I also get very happy when lovely people share my posts, it makes me feel popular and it’s definitely more interesting than fake memes of Marilyn Monroe and pictures of people’s dinner…. (Unless you’re Jamie Oliver in which case your dinners probably look delicious and are much more interesting than my posts.)

Chatting Up Mums…(and why it could be the best thing you’ve ever done)

It’s a weird kind of time for me. I’m currently in the process of moving to our fifth location inside four years. For the duration of our marriage, my husband’s work has led to us repeatedly moving around. This time, I’m told, should be the last move for a while. but I’m not as scared as I used to be, and this move doesn’t fill me with the same trepidation as in the past.

For most people, you reach adulthood with a nice little collection of friends that you’ve collected over time. You don’t ever recall actively getting those friends, but accumulated a random bunch of people that in some way or another have something in common with you. This may be the same school, children of the same age or a mutual love of Noel Edmunds (note to self: no-one shares that with you). At least, this was how my life was by the time I reached my twenties. There was no point in any of the relationships with any of my friends that I could remember asking ‘will you be my friend?’ in the manner of a five year old on holiday to another five year old. I couldn’t recall at what point our friendship status had been confirmed, only that at some point they had not been in my life but that now they were. Because like most people, some of my chums had been gained through school; others through various work places; and some- because I couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of leaving my home town for university- from Uni. When I had my first daughter, I made a few more friends through various baby centres. But effectively, my circe of lunatic peers had been gathered organically. And I was very happy with that arrangement.

When I was pregnant with my second daughter, we moved for the first time. It was only a fairly tame move: about an hour away from where I had always been, and I loved the location. It was the small town with a tiny village school and big rural scenery that I had always wanted for my family. It was perfect. Except for one thing: I didn’t know anyone. My husband worked long hours, and I was about to be on my own with a newborn and our then three year old for the duration of the day. Every. Bloody. Day. When Sprog Two was eventually born, I suddenly felt very daunted by the realisation that I now had two children, five days a week with them, and no family or friends in close proximity. I was buggered.

Initially I really was. Every day would be a slow blur of getting up, staying in my pyjamas, washing and feeding the children, watching CBeebies, and doing some form of activity that filled the criteria of doing ‘something for the kids’: sticking many old leaves on paper or making buns that were at least 20% snot. When the eldest was in pre-school, that’s when things really got dull. I would spend hours watching Jeremy Kyle and Bargain Hunt and buying pointless things online (what do you mean the baby doesn’t need another hat that makes her look like wildlife? Screw you!). I would start projects that I was never going to finish (remind me to show you my range of half upcycled second hand furniture one day. Believe me, they were better before) and sit there thinking about depressed I was. What was worse, was that rather than all of this making me happier when my husband was home, I was angry at him for daring to abandon me. He would get home from to be presented with one of the children and then questioned on why he was ten minutes late.

Something needed to change. I needed to get a life.

My health visitor suggested I went to a local group that she ran. She didn’t tell me much about the group, other than the time and where it was. I turned up to find that it was a breastfeeding class. Women sitting in a circle and breastfeeding whilst discussing their nipples and the colour of baby’s poos. I was in hell. I’m sure you all know breastfeeding groups that are not at all like this, and are full of cool groovy mums that have no interest in discussing their discoloured nipples. But unfortunately, that was exactly the situation I had found myself in. I made a feeble excuse after fifteen minutes and left resigned to the fact I would never have friends again. I would eventually only know the company of children and hence would start talking in that weird ‘talking to young children’ voice like you’ve been possessed, and having sex fantasies of Mr Tumble.

That very same afternoon, I decided to take my sorry ass and my daughters to a cafe. I convince myself that my children and I love cafes. In reality, I spend an hour asking them to sit down and behave while they open twenty sugar sachets and smoosh cheese sandwiches in the chairs. There was another woman on her own across the room from me, with a little boy. She smiled at me as I pleaded with the three year old to stop ripping up napkins into tiny pieces and putting the bits into my tea.  I smiled back at her after I noticed that her two year old had put all of the cutlery he could find in her handbag. Worried about coming across as a bit weird, but more worried about drowning myself in the bath, alone and friendless, I invited her to come and sit with me. And she did! We got chatting: she told me that she had always worked full time and how none of her friends had kids so she didn’t know what to do with herself. I talked about my own move and how I was getting really bored. I told her about the breastfeeding class, and heard how she had been tricked in to going there too. She then told me about a different toddler group one that was full of normal people who wouldn’t dare to talk about their nipples. I liked the sound of it and agreed to go the following day. We exchanged numbers. It was official: I had pulled my first fellow mum.

I did go to that toddler group, and met another similarly bedraggled mum like me, who had gorgeous eight week old twin girls and a four year old boy, and admitted she was knackered and sometimes missed being at work so that she could go to the toilet without interruptions. I liked her a lot.

With my newfound confidence, I took another big step at the nursery playground. There was a group of mums who I had always seen talking to one another at the end of the day, but I had always stayed away. But today, I was going to be brave. I was going to take on multiple mums at once. I walked straight up and told them who’s mum I was, that I was new in town and asked them if there was any good places to take kids. They not only suggested a local play centre, two of them invited me with them to it the following day! I was getting good at this. Within a few weeks I was being invited to their houses for coffee, where I found that they too often wondered if their children were clinically insane and found the park mind-numbingly dull. They too worried about whether over-watching CBeebies was taking away their brain cells and wondered whether in a years time if they would be incapable of formulating a full sentence that didn’t rhyme.

Over those first few months, I played the field a little more, and most of the time it totally paid off. It turns out, there are loads of us. There are loads of other mums who are slowly going mad from the lack of adult company. I adore my kids, I really do, and I don’t want you for one second to think I appreciate their company. I love spending time with them, and lots of it. But sometimes, only spending time with them would be enough to drive you to gin (well more gin).

From nervous introductions and tentative playdates came genuine, meaningful conversations and hilarious coffee mornings. Polite texts soon became picture messages of my dog dressed up in ballet shoes with the caption ‘IS IT TOO EARLY FOR GIN?”. When my baby daughter had to have an operation my new friends were on hand to help with my eldest and bring me shopping. when she didn’t sleep for two weeks from teething, none of them judged me for going to school in yesterday’s clothes with sick in my hair. They assured me I did not like a swamp monster and was in fact hugely attractive.

Three years on, and all of the women I chatted up remain my close friends. One of my conquests was a fellow photographer who was on a photography forum with me, and mentioned on there that she lived close by. I could see from her picture that she also had a daughter, so I sent her a message and said that if she ever fancied going for a coffee with her daughter to chat about camera lenses and toddler tantrums then let me know. She did, and now she is one of my very best friends who sends me messages like this:

Putting yourself out there with people is terrifying, particularly when you’re the new girl, but I would urge you to DO IT. There will of course be people who won’t be in the slightest bit interested in your friendship, but screw them! They’ll never know what they were missing. But like me, you may well find some awesome people who are feeling just as daunted and just as lonely, and may well change your life.

PS. After posting this entry, I received a recommendation to check out the website Mummy Social, and oh my god it’s AWESOME!! It’s a new ‘dating site’ for mums, where you can sign up to find other parents in your area. Please check it out, you may find your new chums for life.

PPS…. if you like any of my blog entries, please click on the ‘share’ buttons below. It means others may actually read it, and you may win a new car!*

*fairly unlikely

I can’t Sew for S**t (and more of my parenting fails)

When I was a little girl, I, like many others, was in The Brownies. Now, if you too were ever a young girl in the Brownies, you’ll remember how you had to earn badges by doing a range of ridiculous tasks: like demonstrating that you could lay the table, or forcing your grandmother to let you ‘assist’ her (she was only in her fifties at the time, and didn’t really need my assistance truth be told). You may also, like me, have had to attend a church service once month as part of your role in the Brownies, where you were made to parade down the aisle in your uniform with a flag singing about something (what would we have been singing about? God perhaps, it was in a church after all). Before we were allowed to do this, our Brownie leader would inspect us all and ensure that our uniform was correct and all of our badges had been sewn on. Unfortunately for me, my mum couldn’t sew. I don’t think she even owned a sewing kit. So when one late Saturday night we realised that I was due for my church procession the next day, panic ensued that my badges had not been sewn on and it was too late to find someone to do it.

“Leave it with me” my mum had said, and I trotted off to bed safe in the knowledge that my mother would keep to her word and ensure my badges were all intact the following day.

Which is precisely why, at 10.30 the next morning, I was the 8 year old whose badge was peeling off as she walked through the church, because the pritt stick had started to wear off.

Two decades on, and I too do not possess the ability to sew. I’ve tried, I really have, but I am incapable of doing it. When it was my eldest’s Sport’s day, her team badge was applied using ‘No More Nails’. It stayed on though, and true to their word, I didn’t need to use any nails.

In fact, I don’t possess the ability to do lots of ‘proper mum’ stuff.

I had kind of thought that as soon as I got pregnant, ‘mum’ things would just magically appear in my brain. But they bloody didn’t.  So on top of being unable to sew; I can’t iron very well. I can’t knit. I can’t do crafts. I can not garden. My daughter needed to grow a sunflower in school and I killed it. I managed to kill a tomato plant that was ALREADY GROWN in our last house. I can’t do fishtail plaits, I can barely put the sprogs’ hair into decent ponytails. As a result my kids spend most of their days going to school/pre-school like they’ve got there on horseback. I try, I really do. But somehow I can not muster the ability to be good at any of it.

In my defence, this is after school. But sadly, it didn’t look much better before.

I try to bake. My lord, do I try at that one. It always starts off ok. I have visions of me as a young Mary Berry, making baked creations that all of my friends and family will marvel over. I can just about make a cake, or cupcakes, or biscuits. They look fine. They taste adequate. But if I dare to decorate them, then we’re really screwed.  I made my eldest a Supergirl cake, that ended up costing me about £70 in ingredients to try and rectify and that my husband refused to let me serve because it was SO dreadful. I told my friends about said cake, and was reassured that it ‘couldn’t be that bad’. I showed them. It was that bad. I reduced my friend Clair to tears of laughter.

My mum couldn’t do these things either. This was my third birthday cake. Why she had painted the ‘floor’ with ear wax I’ll never know.

I think we all know those bears ain’t sleeping…

She used to insist on making our family’s cakes for every event as well. Can you remember back in the nineties, when we wore hair scrunchies and you couldn’t buy ready made cakes in shops?? ME NEITHER. Which leads me to think that either she actually thought her creations were special, or that she has some sick sense of humour that got off on watching her family force themselves to eat these monstrocities.

At least I learnt quickly that my abilities do not stretch to cake decoration. When was I supposed to learn these skills? Am I the only one? Will my children be psychologically  damaged from the lack of well hemmed skirts?

I try to take solace in the fact that I can do other things. Whilst I somehow missed the class at school where I learned how to be the perfect storybook mother and wife, I had other skills that benefited their young lives. Like, I’m awesome at reading bedtime stories. Seriously, I deserve an oscar for some of my performances. Even those bastard Topsy and Tim books can be made semi interesting by my huge range of accents (and yes, Vinda was always Welsh). Also, I can cook. Better than that, I can cook with no ingredients in the cupboard. My husband says he has never met someone who can make a meal out of a parsnip, half a pack of bacon and a pack of noodles. I’m a pretty good driver. I can improvise a song at the drop of a hat and make it rhyme. I know the lyrics to almost every Disney song.

So that’s my hope anyway. I’m hoping that when my girls reflect on their childhood, they’ll ignore their shop bought birthday cakes and lack of home grown suedes, and remember that their mum could recite the Gruffalo better than anyone else.

They’ll have to appreciate those things, because- I suspect- their own children will be the third generation that will never know the pure joys of a well ironed pillow case.

Bloody nora, I’m Blogging…

Seven months ago, I found out that I was very unexpectedly expecting my third child. I have two of the little chimps already, and the impending arrival of a third was met with some trepidation to say the least. After freaking out for a few months, we started the necessary preparations for the arrival of Sprog 3.

In my case, this meant starting off by buying a teeny tiny pair of converse. It’s all about priorities.

As a self employed photographer, I never took much leave after I had my first two. Firstly, I wasn’t aware (until recently) that if you’re self employed you are even eligible for maternity pay. Secondly, at the time we simply couldn’t afford it, with my job being so seasonal. I’m lucky that even when I work full time I can work from home, and most of the time I can organise my time into having only a couple of days away from the children.

This time, we decided that with there soon to be three children, I should probably take some proper time off.

Determined not to waste my upcoming leave, I made a plan of things to do whilst I was having some time off. Below is said list.

The first two were completed fairly quickly. I found out that biscotti are strange little Italian biscuits. I made some and they looked like this.

Added a filter. Naturally. Almost makes them look edible.

My third point didn’t go so well either. I started sorting out our belongings in an organised and timely manner, posting pictures of ironed and well presented children’s clothes on to Facebook and eBay. this was quite time consuming, so I stopped ironing and started just presenting the clothes un-ironed and presented on the floor. This still took too much time, so I then posted a picture of of the clothes in a bin bag with the caption ‘Please take my crap, anyone??’ Weirdly, my attempts at selling our belongings was taking too much time and was ridiculously boring. So I just gave it all to the charity shop. That’s so me, just a giving kind of gal.

So that’s most of my list done. Which now means I have to finally get around to plucking up the courage to put my personal blog out there. Why am I finding it so daunting? I’ve been running a fairly successful business for years; I have managed to convince some poor mug to marry me; I [we] own a home; I am semi-successfully raising three children (well one of them is only a few weeks old, it’s quite early to tell whether I’ve emotionally damaged her yet or not). I’ve been writing for years, why have I put off getting people to actually read it?

BECAUSE I A AM A WIMP.

But unfortunately, even the biggest wimps in the world can’t ignore something if it on a list, so I’ve got to do it now. Hopefully no-one will be too mean to me. Hopefully other bloggers won’t turn on me and talk behind my back about how crap I am. Hopefully perfect wives and parents won’t send me hate mail about how I am not one of them. Although, there is very little chance of anyone being mean to me if no one reads it. OH GOD WHAT IF NO-ONE READS IT?  What if I write and write and write and no-one ever wants to read a single word I have written, and then I become obsessed with writing more and more, hoping one day to find out the secret behind being a super successful blogger who has people that read my work but never succeed and so spiral into a deep depression about why everyone hates me so much and then my husband leaves me and i can’t keep up the mortgage payments and my children and I all become homeless and I have to sell our dog to buy food? OH GOD WHAT IF NO-ONE READS IT?

I think I’ve set the tone for my blog.