June is mad. So says everyone. Teacher presents and end-of-term nights out and inductions for junior infants. Sports tournaments and school summer fairs - and barbecues every time it stops raining for more than six hours. I woke up this Monday morning and let out a long breath - another manic weekend done, and finally time to ...
There are some platitudes that annoyed me as a new mother more than others, though I think it often depended on who the platitude-giver was and how little sleep I'd had the night before. My personal blood-pressure-raising one was "sleep when baby sleeps". I wanted to cry every time I heard it, and ask how that would help when ...
Three kids. Two locations. Two drop-off times. Three pick-up times. I do the math. Over and over. It's nine separate car journeys a day. Forty-five car journeys a week. I am broken. We're only two weeks into the school-year and my new work from home life, and I am broken. Almost literally. My knees hurt. My ...
His favourite pastimes are chasing pigeons, raiding cupboards and eating bagels. At lunch-time, he ignores what everyone else is having and goes his own way, even if that’s Ready Brek with fives spoons. At dinner-time, he gets up from the table and walks off to play with toys. I bring him back and he looks up at ...
I'm going to sound like a killjoy now. I'm going to sound like the girl who always came last and never caught the ball (I was indeed the girl who always came last and never caught the ball.) But is it time to look at refreshing sports day? Could we come up with something that's more ...
“It is usually women… who see the raised eyebrows when they actually have to leave their desks to go and pick up their children and can’t stay late, but who maybe then put in another few hours on the laptop when the children go to bed” Originally from west Clare but living in Dublin, Joanne is ...
Walking back to the car after the school run, I called to Sam to hurry up, then caught myself, realising that for once, there was no reason to hurry. It was 9am. We had just dropped Clara and Emmie to school. And both were invited on playdates after school – both being collected by other mums. ...
Coffee in one hand, keys in the other, I lock the car and make my way up the street towards the gates - not too early and not too late. I continue on into the school-yard and scan the area. Some familiar faces, standing together in a group. Mums from one of the other classes ...
I get to be a stay-at-home mum once a week, so I know exactly what it's like. No, not really. In fact not at all. My one day per week of SAHM-dom is Friday, so it's not quite a representative example of true stay-at-home parenting. On Friday, the traffic is lighter, the moods are lighter, ...
One day last week, Clara looked a little sad coming out of school. The kind of sad face most of us see from time to time - the one that makes you think "Please let this be because she didn't like her sandwiches and not that she's decided she hates school." I gave her a big ...