Fussy Eaters: Born This Way Or Made This Way?

Oh-Hell-No!

I have to confess: I have two fussy eaters.

With the prevalence of political correctness dictating that children should be eating only healthy nutritious food items, this can be a somewhat embarrassing predicament for parents who’s kids are fussy eaters – in other words, if it’s not bread, pasta, rice, chicken nuggets or processed foods (ie. biscuits, crackers, chips and cheese) then they don’t (won’t) eat it.

But are we to blame? Or are fussy eaters born this way?

Read more

The Truth About Gender Disappointment

The-Boys

Circle-Quotation-Marks

‘Your boys are going to grow up and leave you and you’ll end up all alone.’

……………………………………………

These were the first words that greeted me one morning at work as a regular client of mine decided to start sharing his ‘honest’ opinions about my position as an all boy mama.

This client was an outspoken regular so I tried not to take it to heart, but as a mum of two boys and no daughters, this kind of comment was becoming a regular occurrence.

‘Oh you poor thing, when are you going to try for a girl?’

‘You must be so sad to only have boys’

‘I would be so disappointed if I had only had boys’

The thing is, most mums of all boys have probably heard all of this before.

Read more

Child vs Parent: Things Children Will Destroy

Cat-vs-Human-Calendar

I found this fabulous calendar on the Friday Favourites of an awesome blog I follow called This Is Meagan KerrIf you’ve never checked out her blog, do! As a cat lover I loved this cool quirky cat calendar and I want it!

Cats can definitely be furry little destroyers. I remember my cat as a kitten attacking my legs every time I walked in the vicinity of where he was hiding by launching himself at me and grabbing on with his claws! It was not a pleasant phase and my lounge room curtains also got the brunt of his ferocious play, to this day we have tiny pinpricks of light shining through the holes on the odd day we close the curtains during the daylight hours!

But indeed, children can be equally destructive. If I could illustrate I could totally make one of these calendars. I would call it Child vs Parent: Things Children Will Destroy.

Read more

Toilet Training: Driving Parents to Insanity Worldwide

No-no-no

Those two words that all parents dread: Toilet training.

What the hell do you do when your kid just WON’T POO ON THE TOILET! I mean, trying to train a little person to pee and poop on the toilet and not in a nappy/undies/on the grass/in the bath (ugh!) is not a fun activity for parents in any shape or form (ha!) and boys can be harder than girls to get on board with the idea.

I started my oldest just after age 3. That could be considered quite late but everything I read said that boys can take longer to be ready and forcing them to start early if they’re not ready can be a battle of wills that ends up with the unpleasant side effect of taking longer, more accidents and regression. Cohen also had a few communication issues with his speech delay which spurred me to hold off (and he turned 3 in the middle of damn winter, not an ideal TT time of year!).

Read more

What’s Yours Is Mine

Have you ever noticed since having kids that what was once yours is no longer yours alone but is now also theirs?

Whether you want that to be the case or not, kids have a knack of sneaking in and putting claim to everything. Whether it is theirs, yours, their brothers, a strangers. If they see it and they want it then it’s theirs.

Here are some prime examples:

Read more

Toddler Speech Delay: When To Worry

I often read posts in my birth groups from mums worried about their toddlers speech and whether they should be concerned about a speech delay.

I was that mum with my first.

When he was 18 months old he was still only saying a handful of words.

Mum. Dad. Ball.

He wouldn’t repeat words back to us when we tried to prompt him like other kids seemed to do and when we would read him stories or word books he would be impatient and distracted and not really paying much attention, let alone trying to say any words back. By this stage other kids were saying sentences in my birth group and the more I read about what they were saying the more of a complex I developed over where C was on the speech scale.

Read more