Just trying to keep my balance…
A few weeks ago I took the middle child out for a lunch date to Dundrum, preceded by a trip to Claire's for some new hairbands. When I opened my phone cover to take out my Laser card, it wasn't there. Nor was my parking ticket. I had a credit card in my wallet so could ...
Oh September, you crafty devil. From opposite corners of the ring, we faced each other, eyeing each other up, ready for the 30-day bout. You picked me up, you shook me, you slammed me down - over and over. But I knew you were coming for me, and I braced myself, and I made it through in one ...
"Mum, give me three words that describe me," one of you said to me last night, as you twirled around the sitting room, fifteen minutes after you first said goodnight. "Enthusiastic, enthusiastic, and enthusiastic," I said, and you laughed. "Okay give me three that don't describe me." "World famous singer. Now go to bed." There are so many other ...
It's half past two. One child keeps dawdling behind (then running ahead) while another is sad because something happened at school but she'll tell me at home, and the third is annoyed because I keep interrupting what she's telling me - to find the one who's dawdling behind (or running ahead). It's three o'clock, and we are finally home. Somehow ...
“I think the optimal solution – just like kids – changes all the time.” Ciara Garvan wanted flexible work that could fit around her three children, and having spotted a gap in the market, founded WorkJuggle.com, an agency that matches people to flexible roles. Here, she talks about her SAHM days, her optimistic expectation of a ...
Way back in 2004, when Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, when Justin Bieber was knee-high to a grasshopper, and the boom was surely going to last forever, my husband and I said "I do", then danced the night away in Cabra Castle. For perhaps the first and last time in our lives, we were on the ...
I was driving somewhere - dropping the kids or picking them up - when I saw her. A woman, a bit older than me, kneeling at a flower bed in her garden. Weeding or pruning or sowing or tweaking, one or all of the above. And the image stuck with me as I drove past, ...
Once upon a time, we went on lots and lots of day-trips. In 2014, I put together mini-reviews of our trips that summer, including Tayto Park, Clara Lara and Rathbeggan Lakes. I did something similar in 2015, when we tried Wells House, Powerscourt Waterfall and Kia Ora Farm. In 2016, I summed up the places we'd ...
When I was about thirteen, I remember reading Flowers in the Attic and realising pretty quickly that it was a good thing my parents didn't know what it was about. I'd been stopped from reading Judy Blume's Forever a few years ago, and had learned to be more careful about revealing my reading choices. It's ...
I need to preface this post with a caveat: we went to Union Lido campsite in Italy for the second part of a two-centre holiday, the first part of which was spent in Bella Italia. We had an incredible time in Bella Italia, and had agreed that it didn’t matter that our mobile was fairly ...