Just trying to keep my balance…
Every year for the last four years, September and October have been a little challenging* in our house (*all-out chaotic messy nightmare). The fact that this four-year timeline coincides with my departure from my office job is surely neither here nor there - no doubt something other than my presence has caused all of this, ...
So I could couch this in all sorts of domestic and parenting terms. I could tell you a story about the challenging day I had last Thursday; dashing home at 3 o'clock to make a curry, make school lunches, and supervise baking for the school cake-sale. I could tell you about the kids insisting on making ...
Pivot. I like that word. It makes me think of a dancer, or a gymnast turning to the next move in a routine. I was never a dancer, but I did harbour gymnast dreams once upon a time - first, Olympic dreams (because why not, and because I was six), then only slightly less unrealistic ...
As I picked up my middle-child from football training tonight, she said, as is her wont when it's just the two of us, "So how was your day?" "A day of two halves," I said, thinking back. It went something like this: One half: My eldest decided to make pancakes yesterday morning, but at 8.05 she was still trying to ...
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 ...