A few years ago, I was at a party the day after the clocks went back, chatting to a friend of a friend. She was bemoaning the fact that her child had woken up even earlier than usual that morning. "He usually wakes at 6.30," she said, "But this morning because of the clocks changing, ...
What do you miss about life before kids? That was the question in an online discussion I read recently. Sleep. Free-time. Me-time. Money. Nights out. Lying-in. Tea that's not gone cold. Peeing alone. Not in any kind of "I wish I never had kids because I miss that hot tea so much" way. Just a list of things that we sometimes miss - if we're ...
“I think for some women their goals change when they becomes mothers and success can be defined differently. The glass ceiling questions itself implies there’s only one path to success.” Claire Rudd is an accountant and mum of three – she says she has always loved her work and remembers bringing her second child into work at ...
Once upon a long ago, I used to get the Dart into work every now and then – back in the pre-kid, pre-crèche, pre-car-space days. It was not so much an adventure as a trial by fire back then, and as I wait now (12 minutes!) for my rush hour Dart to arrive, I wonder ...
There it is. Where it's not supposed to be. A purple lunchbox on the kitchen table at 9.12am, separated from its owner who must have decided to tidy her schoolbag this morning after everything had been packed already. And I didn't notice. Slippage. "Are we late mum?" she asked me this morning and every morning. We're ...
"And then the sixteen-year-old found out she was pregnant too, and she wanted to run away with her boyfriend!" This was the sentence that left me speechless last year, when my then seven-year-old was recounting the plot of the book she was reading. It was a Jacqueline Wilson book that we'd picked up second-hand at the ...
Long, long ago, when we first moved from the heady heights of our 4th floor apartment in Dublin 2 to a rather more serious semi-detached house in Swords, we discovered the joys of flooring and dishwashers and spending Saturday afternoons looking at bathroom tiles. We were catapulted from city centre easy living to adulting hard, long before adulting ...