The Mum Reviews

‘Mum vs the World’ survival kit giveaway

We’ve all had these sorts of days. You wake up to children bouncing on your bed. Your head’s pounding, eyes caked closed, nose streaming with snot, but you can’t roll over and hide your head under the duvet. You have to get up, wipe small bottoms, wrestle them into clothes and get on with the day. The kids fight and run away and shout and do everything except put their blooming shoes on.

And the reward you normally get for finally getting them out of the house? Public misbehaviour and rude judgey people staring you down or (shudder) actually saying things to you. Don’t you wish you could just karate chop them in the head?

Masked Pony Productions gets it. They’re an all-female comedy production company, whose work is specifically aimed at women and especially mums. They’re not only producing fantastic YouTube content that mums can relate to, they’re also championing female talent in the showbiz industry.

They got in touch with me recently to ask if I could help spread the word about their ‘Mum vs the World’ YouTube shorts and I was impressed with the quality of the production. I felt like I was watching a sitcom already on a major TV channel, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see these ladies on one of them soon. They won best scripted pilot recently at the Edinburgh TV Festival.

Check out one of their shorts:

If you like this video, please consider subscribing to their YouTube channel, and/or following them on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Awesome giveaway involving wine and chocolate

Masked Pony Productions are offering one of my lucky readers a ‘Mum Survival Kit’, to help you relax at the end of a long day. The kit includes:

A bottle of Malbec
A large bar of chocolate
Baptiste dry shampoo
An iTunes £15 voucher
A spikey reflexology massage ball for your aching back
A cucumber (For your eyes, obvs)

To enter, please just click the link below and follow the Rafflecopter instructions.

CLICK HERE TO ENTER THE GIVEAWAY TO WIN FREE WINE AND STUFF

Giveaway terms & conditions

This competition will open on 4 November and will close on 19 November at 12am GMT.
One winner will be selected at random.
The winner will receive the Mum Survival Kit goody box described above.
UK entrants only.
No cash alternative will be offered.
The winner will be announced on The Mum Reviews’ social media outlets, not the blog.
The winner will have 28 days to respond to their winner’s email.
The prize will be posted directly from Masked Pony Productions.

Listed on The Competition Database and Loquax.

I did not receive any incentive to do this review. I’m just nice like that. But if they get famous maybe they’ll invite me to a swanky party or something.

How motherhood makes you stronger

With motherhood comes all sorts of lovely experiences and some, um, less lovely ones. The first time your child says “I wuv you” is lovely. The first time he vomits on your lap is not lovely. And yet, some of the things that really suck about parenthood have actually made me improve my coping skills in a number of areas.

Things the pre-child me simply couldn’t cope with just roll right off me like the peas my toddler placed on my head. So here are 5 ways motherhood has made me stronger.

Poo, vomit and other bodily effluvia does not phase me

Before I had kids, simply the smell of vomit would make me feel ill, let alone actually seeing it or, god forbid, touching it. Now, I can quite comfortably (and even intentionally) catch vomit with my bare hands. It may not be my favourite pastime, but I can handle it.

I don’t think twice about the odd smear of poo that may make its way onto my person. These things wash off so easily. It’s only a little bit stinky.

And, as a parent, sometimes picking bogeys out of another human’s nose is simply a necessity. You can try using a tissue but it doesn’t always get the job done. And I’d rather pick it and bin it than stare at it flapping out of my son’s nose all day.

All of this exposure to nasty, germy things means that I have very little fear of anything I might encounter late at night on public transport.

Spiders

On my 8th birthday, I brushed my teeth and when I spit out the toothpaste, a partially-chewed spider came out of my mouth. This was an extremely traumatic experience which kicked off a lifelong fear of spiders.

I remember being 18 years old and finding a spider a big as two 50p coins in my bathroom. I called my dad to kill it for me, but he had decided to foster my emergent independence as a responsible adult by informing me I had to resolve the situation myself. I was too scared to squash it, so I dropped my 1500-page English Literature anthology on top of it and left it there for 2 days. When I finally got up the strength to remove the book, the spider simply got up and crawled away, never to be seen again. I neither killed it not removed it from the house, but it would appear I taught it a lesson!

In more recent years, married life has meant I always had an obliging husband to remove spiders for me. He is a kind and gentle soul and so catches them in the designated “spider cup” and throws them outside.

I coasted along in such a manner without facing my spider fear until I had kids. Now, there is a real problem because nothing is more spine-chill inducing than the notion of a creepy-crawly, fang-sporting, hairy spider crawling over your sweet, sweet baby’s face. And so suddenly I became both fearless and merciless when a spider comes anywhere near my children’s domain. I’ve caught them in cups, I’ve hoovered them up, washed them down the drain (even using an implement to make sure they really went right down) and even, on one occasion, picked one up by the leg and flung it out the window.

Thank you, motherhood, for teaching me that no spider is fiercer than a mother’s love.

Squatting, carrying, running and squeezing

We’ve covered squeamishness and visceral fear, but of course motherhood also makes you physically strong. The average observer may not be able to see our mum muscles, but I assure you they are there.

A mum can hold a wiggly baby to her breast whilst assisting a potty-training toddler in wiping his bottom.

She can wrestle a tantrumming toddler into a carseat or highchair.

She can climb a flight of stairs in a single bound if she hears a suspicious bang while the kids are in bed.

She can wiggle into narrow spaces to retrieve a much-loved toy.

She can squat for unreasonable amounts of time when needing to apply shoes or change a nappy in a less than hygienic area.

She can push a buggy, up and down hills and over grass or gravel, for untold hours until the little ~~bugger~~ angel falls asleep.

She can carry her handbag, two children, an overstuffed changing bag, a potty and a bit of shopping with barely of bead of sweat appearing on her furrowed brow.

And we do all of this without (much) whinging. Pre-kids I would have collapsed in a heap if I had to do all that.

Pain, illness and lack of sleep

Everyone knows that childbirth hurts, but the bit that comes afterwards hurts even more because it lasts longer and nobody offers you any drugs to cope with it. We take our babies home when we are worn out and emotional, with stitches holding together either our stomach or our undercarriage. I had an emergency c-section after my first, and had burst blood vessels in my eyes and soft tissue injuries in my legs after my 2nd from pushing too hard. But in modern life we’re expected to just carry on. Maybe pop to the supermarket or take a nice(??) walk. In other cultures, women are allowed to stay in bed for a whole month after the baby is born!

Then some of us might get this lovely thing called mastitis. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a lovely infection inside your breast, which not only hurts the breast itself but gives you flu-like symptoms that make you feel like dying. And besides taking antibiotics you have to keep feeding the baby with your sore boob to help it get better. Ouch is an understatement.

Then of course there are the bugs. Have you ever tried to breastfeed in between bouts of vomiting? Or worse, cooking a meal for hungry children or changing a really stinky nappy? It might actually be my personal version of hell.

But I look back at the times I kept everyone alive when I felt like dying, and think it’s a pretty amazing achievement.

Keeping calm and carrying on

The final skill that motherhood has taught me is staying calm in the face of confrontation. I’m not going to say I’m always calm … but it takes more to throw me in a tailspin than it used to. Sometimes, I’m even calm with my own children. Mostly, this skill is employed outside the home when dealing with other adults. I know that it is very unlikely that, under everyday circumstances, an adult is going to scream in my face, kick me in the shins and lay on the floor screaming. And thus any confrontation is that much easier to deal with.

So the next time you feel like this parenthood gig is bringing you down, or you feel insecure about your parenting skills, just look back on your tired, sick, sore self, carrying heavy loads, vanquishing dangerous insects and catching vomit in your bare hands, and know that you are one strong mama.

What things can you do better now that you’ve faced the travails of raising small children?

My First Scalextric review

It is with great excitement that we recently received our first ever toy for the purposes of review. We’ve reviewed all sorts of lovely things, but this is the first time we’ve received a good old-fashioned toy, and by a well-known brand too.

My youngest spotted the brightly coloured box from across the room, just as soon as I removed it from the outer packaging. “Racecar! Racecar!” he shouted in excitement. “Open!” The set is meant for children aged 3+ and my youngest will not be 3 for another 2 months, but I thought he’d be pretty safe to have a go with the toy. My 5 year old was interested too, even though he’s not quite the mini petrolhead that my 2yo is.

The track seemed pretty sturdy and straightforward to put together, but I did have to check the instructions and it took me a few minutes to figure it out. My kids tried to help put it together, but I think it would be easy for them to break the connections if they were left to do it unattended.

Kids assembling scalextric — They couldn’t wait to put it together

You do need to plug it into the mains and there a a few cables to contend with, but my kids quickly learned how to keep these out of their way.

The biggest challenge with Scalextric is for kids to learn that they can’t go full pelt on the controller button. You have to press it gently so that the car doesn’t fly off the track when it goes round the bends. My First Scalextric has controllers that allow you to turn down the speed of the controllers while your kids get a hang of that. This feature is common to the entire Micro Scalextric range, and all of the Micro Scalextric cars and tracks work together so you can build massive tracks if you have more than one set.

My youngest absolutely loved the track (and so did his daddy, seen lurking in the background above). I asked him what he liked best about it and he said “cars go round and round”. I was actually amazed at how long he was happy to make the car go round and round. Time passed and he was in need of a nap, so he just played lying down.

My eldest loved it too. He said he likes it because “It makes a sound like a train”, which is a bit random, but hey, it kept him busy. It was a beautiful way for brothers to play together, actually. They played for probably an hour and didn’t fight during any of it. Two tracks, two cars, two controllers = nothing to fight about. Who knew peace was to be found in the hum of a Scalextric track?

The ease of family play was definitely what I liked most about the set. I was also impressed at how it was teaching them both a bit of patience and self-control, because they had to be gentle with the go button and keep replacing the cars when they shot off the track.

All-in-all, I’d recommend My First Scalextric as a great introduction to electric slot cars. At £39.99, the set is a bit cheaper than other Micro Scalextric tracks, so it’s a great one to try out to see whether your child will like it. For more specs and information, please visit the Scalextric website.

I was given this set free of charge in exchange for my honest review.

How not to be a supermum

Us women have come a long way since the 1950s. A Google search for “1950’s sexist ads” comes up with such gems as a ketchup advert for a product that, presumably, had an easier to open bottle. The slogan: “You mean a woman can open it?”

The good news is that, in the UK at least, the majority of people recognise that women can open ketchup bottles just as effectively as men can. In fact, I’ve been known to open a number of jars that my husband couldn’t budge. And no, he didn’t loosen them for me.

It is great that women can now choose to have a career outside the home if they so wish. However, society has not fully caught up with this change, and while we might be able to work, we are often expected to do so without falling behind on domestic and mothering tasks. If we can’t go to all of the school assemblies, many of us feel like we might be failing as mums.

And even if we do stay at home full time, modern life seems to pile on the demands. In the 1970s, you could just make your kids some hot dogs, give them a cup full of juice, then throw them outside to play unsupervised with a stick and a ball. Today, you’re expected to cook organic, nutritionally-balanced meals while ensuring they are engaging in developmentally-appropriate, stimulating, supervised (and safe) activities.

The general feeling (propagated by everyone being fabulous on social media) that we need to be good at everything and live up to a certain ideal of womanhood and motherhood is pervading our lives. The sheer force of expectation on modern mums is taking its toll on our mental health. This is the problem that new book, The Supermum Myth: Overcome anxiety, ditch guilt and embrace imperfection, hopes to put right. It states:

“In our society there is relentless pressure for women to be exceptional at everything: gold-star mother, excellent partner, dedicated career woman, committed friend … [but] Supermum simply does not exist … The internet is awash with mum blogs, hashtags and handles with the recurrent theme of Being a Bad Mum: ‘bad mum’, ‘terrible mother’, ‘guilty mother’, ‘the guilty mothers club’, ‘#badparent’, ‘#mumfail’, ‘parenting fail’, ‘notparentingtheshitoutoflife’. This is a reflection of our ongoing struggle as mums with not living up to our own, and society’s expectations of what we should be a mothers. Pre-empting others’ judgement by judging ourselves as failing.”

The book points out that it’s simply not realistic to expect to achieve perfection in every aspect of your life. And when you see that other mum on the school run, perfectly dressed and serenely calm, she is not perfect either. Nobody is achieving the over-achieving supermum goal and everybody is getting it downright wrong with parenting and life sometimes. You may sometimes feel like everyone is handling life better than you, but odds are they feel just the same.

The Supermum Myth asks us to embrace “good-enough motherhood”. One in which we might not wash our hair for a week, but our kids are happy and safe. One in which we don’t feel guilty for plopping them in front of the telly so we can get some work done. It asks us to stop beating ourselves up for our perceived shortcomings, and start acknowledging our successes.

Of course, changing the way you think about your life is easier said then done. That’s why this book gives you practical tools, using a range of established therapies, to help you identify your negative patterns of thought and then work towards changing your mindset. There are all sorts of exercises that you can dip into when it suits you, to help you reset your thinking about your relationships, your thinking, your career, and your whole self.

This book dropped into my lap at a time when I did feel like I was drowning in a pool of my own ambitions for myself. I do want to be the successful career woman, the wonderful wife and mother, and the social butterfly. It is okay to want these things … as long as we don’t accompany our goals with a whip to beat ourselves with when things don’t go as we hoped. This book reminds us to enjoy the lives we have right now, instead of looking always onwards to an elusive perfection. Buy it from Amazon.

I was given this book free of charge in return for my honest review.

A clean house is all in your head

I am not a fan of cleaning, and I’m not particularly good at it. I wouldn’t normally remember to wipe down skirting boards or move things to clean behind them. I struggle to find a way of keeping my house in a vaguely respectable state without spending too much of my valuable time on it. When I google for tricks and shortcuts, I mostly find overly ambitious cleaning rotas that make me feel like lying down in a darkened room.

I did try getting a cleaner, but she was never any more thorough than I would be – and sometimes less so – so I didn’t really feel it was worth the money or the loss of privacy.

So I was back to square one in trying to stem the rising tide of chaos in my home. I will never have an immaculate show home, nor do I particularly want one, but I have found that I feel happier if my house is hoovered and my bathroom smells clean. The other annoying things about life are less annoying when your surroundings are pleasant. It can actually have a pretty profound effect on my state of mind.

The problem is I’m kind of busy. I work, I have 2 small children that leave chaos in their wake, I blog, I have a social life, and I even exercise. Where does cleaning fit into this?

I can proudly announce that after years of struggle (and basically inexcusable years of having a much messier house before I had children), I have figured out how to keep vaguely on top of the cleaning. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s working for me. I’ve found by changing the way I think about cleaning, I can be much better at it.

So here are the things that have helped me, in case they might help you too:

You don’t have to do it all at once

I used to plan to “clean the house” as if it were one big job. And because I grouped a large set of tasks together into one, the enormity of the task simply grew in my mind. I would get all stressed thinking about all the cleaning I had to do. I would need to have a cup of tea and a nap to prepare myself for the arduous task. I would end up procrastinating all day and never do any cleaning.

So, I don’t “clean the house” anymore. I do discrete cleaning tasks, as and when I can. If I have a few spare minutes, I run the hoover around just the downstairs, or I’ll pop upstairs and clean the bathroom surfaces. Sometimes I’ll then feel like doing more, and sometimes I won’t. You can prioritise the tasks that need doing, and do just one at a time, when you have time. I’ve actually found this approach saves me from utter boredom sometimes. When I pick up my phone to scroll Facebook for the 27th time in a day, I decide to get out the Mr Sheen instead.

You don’t need to have a set routine

I used to think I needed to hoover the whole house and clean the bathroom every week, and tidy and dust and mop etc etc etc. Now, I clean things when they start to look dirty. I am not a pre-emptive cleaner. If it is dirty, I clean it. If not, then it can wait until later.

You also don’t need to try and work out which cleaning tasks you do on certain days. This helps some people, and I see a lot of these lists around the internet, but for if you’re a cleaning slacker like me, it might just make you feel a bit stressed. Do the task that you dislike the least first. It’s better than doing nothing.

Seize the day

Sometimes you’re not particularly busy and you notice that something is looking a bit mucky. Why not just quickly wipe it down right this minute? It will only take 5 minutes, but if you put off a small task like that or add it to your burgeoning list of tasks to do later, it will just get bigger (in your head at least).

Get a cordless hoover if you can

If you can afford a cordless hoover, it’s a total game changer. Sometimes getting out “the big hoover”, dragging it around and plugging it in is too much for me. I just whip out the cordless and hoover up a few Cheerios when I need to.

It’s totally okay to clean with wet wipes

Sometimes your sink is all full of toothpaste smears but you’re not going downstairs to dig out cif and a sponge, and then moving all your stuff off the edges of the sink. Grab a wet wipe and wipe that baby down. It’s not a thorough clean, but you’ll feel better if your sink looks clean.

Share the load

If you share your home with other adults, they should be pulling their weight with the housework. If you don’t, it’s a bit trickier – but never be ashamed to accept help where it is offered.

My husband and I have specific tasks and areas of the house that are “our responsibility”. These have been agreed based on mutual preferences. It takes a lot of pressure off to know that there are some things I don’t ever have to do! However, if I have a spare moment, then I don’t hesitate to do one of “his” tasks … and he helps me with mine too. That’s teamwork.

When the kids are old enough, I hope to get them to share the load as well. Their future housemates or partners will thank me!

Life is more important

Don’t mentally beat yourself up if you don’t manage to do any cleaning when you’d hoped to. Time with friends and family, and even with yourself, is more important.

If you have any children under 2, pat yourself on the back if you manage to do any cleaning at all. If you don’t, still pat yourself on the back, because you’re doing a great job ignoring those dastardly cobwebs.

On your deathbed, you are not going to look back and wish you’d had a cleaner house. You’ll be glad you cuddled your kids, your partner and/or your pets, and drank wine (or tea) with your friends.

What is your approach to fitting house cleaning into your busy lifestyle? Did you let it grow into a monster job in your head like me? Do you think the bitesize approach will work?

An evening of chocolate and alcohol

My blogger life has reached its pinnacle. Last night, Red Letter Days invited me along to a chocolate making workshop with MyChocolate. That’s right … someone plied me with both alcohol and chocolate in return for my blogging and social skillz. I’m not sure it’s actually going to get any better than this.

I’ve always rather liked the Red Letter Days concept. Many years ago, I used it to buy my boyfriend (now husband) a flying lesson. I’m not saying the gift had a direct connection to our eventual marriage, but it was a great way of getting an unusual present for someone who didn’t need more stuff. At the time, my boyfriend lived in a shared flat where his bedroom was basically the pantry. It was just off the kitchen, and only big enough for a mattress and nothing else. The first night I stayed over, I had to leave my shoes outside the room because there was no room for them inside the room. Then all of his flatmates teased him. So he really didn’t want more stuff. But I digress… you wanted to hear about the chocolate and alcohol, right?

The first thing we did was learn how to make chocolate martinis. To be honest, I don’t think I’d ever had one before because I’m a bit of a traditionalist. If I’m somewhere that has martinis, I tend to get one “shaken not stirred” or, if I want to go crazy, I get a “dirty” one. I thought a chocolate martini sounded a bit sickly, but it wasn’t at all. The one we made had a perfect chocolate to sweetness to alcohol balance. And, she taught us how to make cool squiggles on the martini glass.

After drinking the martini, they decided to test our fine motor skills by allowing us to design our own chocolate button. You choose either a dark or milk chocolate mixture and smooth it into a shape you’d like, then take the other type of chocolate and make pretty designs and squiggles. Here’s the one the instructor made:

You were also allowed to add flavouring to your chocolate button. I was very inspired and decided to make a mint-flavoured leaf. It was going to be beautiful and delicate. I’m not sure if I can blame my martini for the result:

At best, it’s a giant chocolate apostrophe. Let’s not say what it is “at worst”. Moving swiftly on…

Next, we learned how to make a chocolate ganache, stick it in a piping bag, and then pipe it out to make the beginnings of chocolate truffles. It’s the first time anyone has successfully taught me how to use a piping bag, and a bit of a revelation really. I’m going to try it out at home sometime soon.

We then got to have some prosecco and taste some different types of chocolate while our lovely and knowledgeable instructor taught us about the history of chocolate and the “proper” way to taste it. I failed to take a picture of the prosecco because I was too busy necking it … but here is the chocolate.

Did you know that chocolate has over 400 distinct flavour notes? That’s (apparently) loads more than wine. We had to sniff the chocolate, feel the way it snaps when we break it, and then allow it to dissolve slowly on the tongue. It all made me feel very cultured.

All of this was a clever way of distracting us while our previously piped chocolate ganache set. It all looked like little poos on the paper, as you can see below. We then had to roll and shape them into something prettier using cocoa powder.

After that, we could dip them in chocolate again and get creative with all sorts of decorations such as strawberry curls, honeycomb and sea salt.

A chocolate martini and two proseccos in, combined with my natural lack of fine motor skills, resulted in these lovely truffles.

But it’s okay, because they gave us a bag to hide them in and take them home. The pizza box housed my beautiful “mint leaf”. At least I know how to curl a ribbon.

The verdict? I am rubbish at making food look beautiful, but I had a wonderful time. Also, I ate the entire bag of the truffles that I made, just now whilst writing this blog post. They weren’t much to look at, but they were delicious. Just like many things in this world.

I heartily recommend Red Letter Days and this chocolate workshop in particular. It would be fabulous for a party, a date, a good night out with your friends or even a work do. One of the best things about it was that it incorporated a bit of team work and got me chatting with the other bloggers there, even though I didn’t know them beforehand.

Thank you to Red Letter Days for inviting me along to this experience free of charge.

Easy Pesto Pasta recipe

When I was growing up, my dad was in charge of dinner once in a while, and his go-to was pesto. I have a special place on my palate for this style of pesto, and when I have a bit of fresh basil to use, I make a batch of pesto to keep in the fridge. I use the pesto in my spag bol, or as a spread on a cold chicken sandwich, but most especially for the fastest midweek dinner.

The pesto I make has walnuts, which may turn off a few due to taste or allergy, but you can substitute a nice hard, Italian cheese for the nuts if you prefer. Pine nuts are more traditional, but I find them expensive and less versatile than the walnuts, which also find their way into baked goods in my house. You can also add more olive oil than the recipe calls for to taste, but I usually add olive oil to the dish I’m using the pesto to flavour, so I use just enough to blend and preserve.

If you don’t fancy making the pesto from scratch, you can always tear in basil leaves and crush fresh garlic for the pasta recipe, and it’s still flavorful and quick. My kids aren’t the biggest fans of this pasta if it isn’t angel hair and the garlic is overpowering, but they never notice when it’s in the spag bol! This dish takes all of 15 minutes, the longest step really is waiting for the water to boil. You can even make the pesto in the food processor while you wait for the water and then pasta. So quick, and so tasty!

You’ll need:

Pesto (food processor to a paste)

1 cup fresh basil leaves, rinsed
2 teaspoons (or two cloves) fresh peeled garlic
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup walnut halves or pieces
1 teaspoon salt

Pasta

Angel Hair pasta (or spaghetti) to serve four (one handful usually does the trick)
½ cup chopped onion (I use frozen)
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 cup sweet peas (again, frozen)
½ cup rough chopped walnuts
1-2 tablespoons pesto from above batch (or a handful of basil leaves and a bit of garlic)
½ cup shredded Parmesan or preferred hard cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

The method:

Using a food processor, blend the basil leaves, garlic cloves and olive oil until smooth.

Add the walnuts and salt, and any more olive oil to keep the mixture smooth up to an additional tablespoon. The pesto paste should not clump up, but remain semi-liquid.

Using a medium saucepan, bring 6+ cups of water to a boil for the pasta.

Break the pasta in half and add to the boiling water. Add salt and oil if you choose, but I usually don’t bother.

While the pasta cooks, scrape the pesto into an airtight container; this will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks!

Drain the pasta in the sink and return the pan to the cook top with a medium heat.

Add the onions, peas and oil and thaw/lightly fry the onions and peas.

Add the pesto you’ve created and the additional walnut pieces and stir into the onions and peas. This allows the garlic to fry off lightly before adding the pasta.

Return the pasta to the pan and toss lightly. You can also pour the pasta and sauce into a large serving bowl for tossing, it may provide more space for evenly coating the pesto.

Remove from the heat and either in the pot or bowl, add the cheese and toss again.

Salt and pepper to taste before serving. Enjoy!

Regrets, fear and the comfort zone

Have you done things in your past that you regret? I’m sure many people have. I’ve done a few stupid things, but I’m not sure if I entirely regret them. I feel like some of the ridiculous pickles I’ve been in through naivety (or pure stupidity) are actually sort of fun looking back on. Wouldn’t it be boring if we didn’t have any embarrassing stories to tell our friends?

So I don’t really regret things I have done. But I do have regrets. I regret the things I haven’t done. I regret that first day of high school when I was too scared to go and talk to a boy I really wanted to talk to. I regret the camping trip during which I was too scared to try white water rafting, and so I stayed behind and missed out. I regret not making the most of a summer fling when I was young, just because I knew it didn’t have a long-term future. These are just some of the small things that I’m willing to share with the internet.

What my regrets amount to are that I regret letting fear hold me back from making the most out of life. There are times when fear is sensible – when there is an actual likelihood that something will harm us. In that case, fear does us a service. But in many cases, it simply holds us back.

Maybe you’d like to change jobs, or even careers, but you’re afraid to move on. At your current job, you feel safe – you know where you stand. What if you changed jobs and then it didn’t work out?

Maybe you’re stuck in an unhappy relationship, but you’re afraid of the upheaval that ending that relationship would cause.

I’m not saying these things are simple to face. Making a huge life change requires thought and planning. But fear alone should not be the reason we don’t do things.

Maybe you’d like to do something just a little bit physically scary (like white water rafting), but you feel anxious about it. Maybe you’d like to do something a little bit socially/mentally scary (like going on a date or giving a presentation), but you are scared of it going wrong.

It is scary leaving our comfort zone. It is hard to do things that might be difficult and scary but necessary. Or to do things that are just a little bit risky, either physically, socially or mentally, but could result in huge payoffs.

As I look back at my life, I see that fear of leaving my comfort zone has never served me well. When I did do things I was scared to do (like moving countries, taking a risk on a relationship, having babies, putting myself in any situation where I was under scrutiny), I was almost without exception glad that I did. When I let fear hold me back, I later felt sorry about missing out.

So the next time you have an opportunity that you are afraid of taking … the next time you face a difficult choice … or if you simply feel unhappy with where you are right now, ask yourself: Is it only fear of the unknown that is holding me back? And if the answer is yes, throw your fear in the bin and break out of that comfort zone.

Sometimes when you’re hunting for unicorns, life gives you a goat

I took my eldest to see Despicable Me 3 recently. I thought it was brilliant – all of the 80s jokes were perfectly pitched to those of us who are now parents today. But there was also a sweet moment that stuck with me. **(Slight) spoiler follows**

At one point, Agnes, Gru’s youngest daughter, goes hunting for unicorns. She lays out a bunch of sweets and waits for hours in the woods until, sure enough, a fluffy one-horned beast appears. She brings it home and Gru is forced to inform her that it is merely a goat who lost one of his horns. He says tenderly, “Life is just like that sometimes. We’re hoping for a unicorn and we get a goat.”

And I thought, wow man that’s deep. Am I right? Think about it. Unicorns are the ultimate in awesome, sweet mythical beast. They are pure, fluffy and, apparently, poop rainbows. Why wouldn’t you want a unicorn? Goats, however, keep it real. They definitely don’t poop rainbows, they eat everything (and I mean everything) that they can get their mucky teeth into, and nobody likes it when you play the goat – even worse if you get their goat.

So, when you’re hoping for mythical perfection, you get real life. We can learn something here from Agnes’s response to Gru’s disappointing revelation (and forgive me if this is a slight misquote): “Well then he’s the best goat in the whole world!”

So, she didn’t get what she wanted. She got something that was less than her ideal fantasy of a mythical beast. But she saw the good in it and was grateful for what she had.

I can think of a lot of times in my life when I was hunting unicorns and got a goat.

I was going to be a famous musical theatre star but instead I have an office job. I was going to drive a Ferrari but instead I have a Hyundai. I was going to marry Robert Downey Jr but instead I married an IT consultant from Yorkshire. I was going to have a boy and a girl but I ended up with two boys. I was going to have ab muscles that you can see, but I never have and (I’m pretty sure) never will.

These were the dreams of an immature and inexperienced girl. They might have meant a lot to me at some point, and they served their purpose in keeping me motivated, but they were never really the right things for me. They were unicorns. My goats are much, much better.

Musical theatre would have been a hard life. Constant rehearsals, pressure to look a certain way, working late nights, moving from town to town all the time. It must be hard to start a family with a lifestyle like that. My office job is challenging without being overwhelming, has predictable hours with lots of holiday, and my colleagues accept me for who I am.

Ferraris are extremely impractical on British roads, would not fit all of my shopping, and with my driving skills it probably would have been totalled in the first month I owned it anyway. My Hyundai can totally cope with being rubbed up against a bush from time to time, and it can fit the spoils from a trip to Costco in the back.

Robert Downey Jr has bounced back from his drug problems thankfully, but I’m not so sure he’d be a nurturing life partner, and is really too old for me anyway. My husband cooks, cleans, changes nappies, listens to me spout rubbish all the time and basically puts up with me doing whatever I fancy. Who could ask for more?

Lots of people have a dream “gender pattern” for their future children, but us parents learn that that’s a load of rubbish. My two boys are everything I really wanted. They cuddle me and give me an excuse to watch kid’s movies and play with toys. They are smart and funny and have totally unique personalities. I did grieve briefly for not being able to buy pretty dresses and fix my daughter’s hair like having a real-life doll, but pretty dresses look hard to put on wiggly legs and I’m sure I’d be rubbish at combing the knots out of long hair.

Now I’m not going to try and feed you a line of effluvia about how chiselled abs are not actually all they’re cracked up to be. I can’t think of any reason rock hard abs would be bad. But we live in the real world. And in the real world, my love of donuts was never going to mesh with the visible ab muscles goal. And I’m okay with that. I don’t want to miss out on any food pleasures for flat ab pleasures. Anyway, I totally do sit-ups from time to time, so I’m pretty sure my abs are actually rock hard (underneath the layer of fat).

So there you go. My unicorns all turned into goats. And my goats are pretty awesome.

Now, I would like to recognise that sometimes life gives you a lot worse than goats. It might give you a stinking, partially decomposed and maggot infested ex-goat. I’ve had a few ex-goats in my time and things can be really, really hard. It takes time to move on from ex-goats, and sometimes a part of you never fully heals from the worst life has to dish out.

But maybe even on our darkest days we can remember the little things that we are still grateful for. If we can remember that sometimes things don’t turn out the way we expect, but that they can still turn out pretty good, then there is always hope, and something to look forward to.

4 things I learned from 1 year of blogging

Sometime around the end of July, the one-year anniversary of me starting this blog quietly passed. This blog was originally inspired by a holiday that I wanted to write about. A year later, it was ignored because of another holiday, which I should probably write about at some point.

I often see other bloggers writing something about their blogging anniversary (blogiversary??), and I’m not usually one to avoid a good bandwagon tbh. However, I think the sort of things I want to say might be a little bit different.

Until last week, I hadn’t blogged in about a month. I was unsure whether I was done with blogging, or I just needed a break. All I knew was that I really just needed to chill out and watch Netflix in the evening, and to never ignore my kids at the weekend so I could (just quickly) join a linky. I also had some other stuff going on in my life that distracted me from blogging, which I’m not sharing publicly yet … but watch this space (however I can tell you now that it’s nothing to do with having more babies – that’s what people always think when you say you have a secret).

So I had my break and I enjoyed it, but then last week I had a really stressful day. So to stop me mulling over the stressful thing, I went ahead and wrote a little blog post. It brought home to me the real reasons I blog – reasons that I hope I’ll remember as I continue to blog – reasons that might even keep me blogging for a long time yet.

I don’t need to be the best

When I first started blogging, I knew absolutely nothing about the world of blogging. I was just going to write down some stuff on the internet that I thought a few other people might find interesting. Then, I got sucked into the world of stats and leaderboards and follower numbers and branding collaborations. I got a little ambitious and competitive. I got a little obsessed.

What many people who don’t blog don’t know is that nobody gets to be a famous blogger, or a blogger who makes their living from blogging, without having a killer combination of hard work, talent and luck.

I do not need to compete with the famous bloggers, the well-paid bloggers, or even the ones who I personally think are just awesome and wish I could be more like. I don’t have to publish consistently or have beautiful social media feeds unless that’s what I want. I can just blog because it relaxes me and because it helps me think things through. My blog is about me, and if anyone else is interested or thinks it’s good, then that’s a bonus.

I don’t need to get paid

Making a living from blogging or getting occasional paid blogging opportunities or product reviews are totally awesome. I’ve dabbled in this a little bit. I may or may not continue doing so. It’s kind of cool, but usually the time and effort I put into a review or sponsored post is not worth the money or “free” thing I got.

Occasionally, there have been a few experiences I’ve had because of blogging that money actually couldn’t buy. I’m grateful for these. But if they never happened again, I would still be happy about my little blog.

Blogging is about people

The best, best thing about blogging is people, in a couple different ways.

First of all, any blogger worth his or her corner of the internet engages with other blogs. We don’t all have endless time to read and comment on other blogs, but really a good blogger ought to have a few other blogs they read. Blogging isn’t just a broadcast … it’s a community. And if you read other blogs, you will be learning new things, and often these things are about people, and you will learn interesting things about people who are different to you. This expands your horizons.

Second, blogging really does help you make new friends. I have made at least one proper, meet-up in person friend through blogging, and have several other acquaintances who I really like. There are lots of bad things on the internet, but blogging has an amazing knack for helping you meet like-minded people.

Blogging is healthy

Ok, so there is the risk that you get obsessed with social media and you never look away from a screen again. But the act of actually blogging – writing something about your life that you have thought about – mitigates against that.

Blogging encourages introspection, but it also requires you to think about how to write about your introspection in a way that engages others. For me, blogging has helped me avoid negative thoughts about myself and instead think about how I can be my best self. This process is what I like to share on my blog.

So what next?

A lot of people talk about their future goals for their blog on these sort of posts, and sometimes those include getting to a certain follower milestone or something measurable like that. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I’ve been to some mindfulness talks and I now prefer to set intentions. So here are mine:

To stay true to myself in all ways, including with my blog.
If I don’t feel like blogging, I’m not gonna blog. So you know what’s happening when I don’t post for a while.
But temporary breaks don’t mean I need to shut down the whole thing.
Carry on nurturing the community I’ve become a part of by joining in on social media and reading other blogs when I can.
Carry on balancing introspection with things that might be useful to others – this is, after all, a public place.

What do you think? Has your blogging journey taken you to places you didn’t expect? Did you go down a road that you later decided wasn’t right for you? What’s good and what’s not so good about being a blogger?