"Okay, five minutes reading time, then lights out," I said to my smallest, after his story. "Six minutes? Pleeeeease?" "Okay, you can have six minutes reading time," I said, earning me a best mum ever badge that was much shinier than that worst mum ever one I'd got earlier for making him come on the school run ...
17 years ago, on New Year's Eve, I turned to my husband and told him my resolutions. I can't remember them precisely now - I think I wanted to learn Italian, teach myself to cook, and break my newly formed post-work shopping habit. We were living in an apartment in Dublin 2, working in an ...
As I surveyed the entire contents of my shopping bag yesterday - two packets of similar-but-not-the-same crackers and nothing else at all - it struck me that this scene, and the lead-up to it, quite aptly summed up my parenting. It started when we realised we were out of cream crackers, and I had to go to ...
It was five o'clock Thursday, rush hour in Dublin city centre. One of those beautiful sunny Autumn evenings we get in early October every year - the Indian summer my kids didn't believe existed. I was among throngs of post-work walkers - marchers really, marching towards buses and trains and shops and pubs. Women in trainers, ...
An entire decade has passed since you rushed into the world, two and a half weeks before your due date. I hadn't finished work yet, and perhaps it was your way of setting the scene; letting me know that nothing would ever be properly planned again. And indeed, of all the things you've taught me, that's one ...
Do you ever have mornings where everything goes wrong? Where you come downstairs and last night's saucepan is still on the hob and it's not anyone's fault because we were all out late at different events and activities, but still, it's irritating? And the kids are late getting up and late getting down for breakfast, ...
"How was your summer and how does she like the new teacher and how is he settling back in?" The voices change but the questions are the same. "They're tired this week, I'm tired this week, how is it only Monday?" Stopping at the corner for a conversation worth an hour - condensed into ten minutes. Machine gun chat, ...
When I go on holidays, and I do what lots of people do – I put photos up on Facebook. It’s the modern version of the postcard isn’t it – “Having a lovely time, wish you were here!” So here’s the Facebook version of one holiday, as told through the photos I posted on social media: There was ...
When you were born, I didn't know why you cried. I carried you night and day, thinking I was doing something wrong, but now I understand, you just wanted to be near me, as newborn babies do. It's so very obvious in hindsight. And 20 months later when your sister was born, I thought you were ...
I've read many "an open letter to" posts in the last few years. Sometimes they're angry, sometimes conciliatory, and sometimes empathetic. In particular, I've read posts about supermarket confrontations - women who have been judged for their parenting, or had some kind of less than pleasant encounter. I wondered when my day would come - ...