Work Life Balance Archives – Making Little People

Starting School

by jessheagren | Apr 29, 2018 | Good Mum, Husband, Motherhood, Parenting, Self Employed

Husband freaked us both out this week. One of the nursery girls asked him where Girly no1 would be starting school and if he had added it to the list so he could organise some play dates (she obviously doesn’t know him very well). He ran home in a panic-stricken flurry. “Where’s she starting school? When? Have we applied? Why didn’t you talk to me about it? The list! We need to add her to the list!”…

I laughed affectionately as he counted the months on his fingers. He confirmed with me that she started when she was 4 and that the school term starts in September. His face was flooded with relief as he realised we hadn’t missed anything. Being a September baby, she doesn’t start school til next year, a full 18 months away. I briefly asked myself whether he thought I was that bad I would miss something so monstrous. Does he not know how anxious I am about her starting school?! Starting school sucks! It’s the worst! We still have a year a half, but already it makes me feel a bit nauseous.

Big Baby

Parents of older children will laugh at me for this. Parents of younger children will (mostly) nod in sympathy. My mum will cover her face and laugh. She will laugh because I hated starting school. Hated it with a passion. And I hated every September starting a new class.

I especially hated having a new teacher in a new room and new people. In fact, the only thing I liked was the new books, especially in senior school when we got to cover them in sticky back plastic. That played perfectly to my slightly autistic need for perfection. I go into a trance-like state of admiration in the library if I come a across a neatly covered book with no bubbles, a smooth plane and perfectly folded corners. (I’m such a weirdo, I probably shouldn’t share this stuff).

The night before going back to school after a long hot summer I would cry all night. In my teenage years, the tears were replaced with a face of thunder, grunts and lots of stomping (more than usual). I struggled to shake it off as an adult. I would get that same ‘back to school’ feeling most Sunday evenings and every time I returned from holiday. If I happened to have PMT on my first day back I would definitely cry as I left the house. Yes! I am the personification of what you would call “a big baby”. It’s probably why I’m so happy now I don’t have to go to work on a Monday morning. Just to my sofa! No more back to school feeling (virtual high fives with myself).

The Lunchbox

My first few years of school were nothing less than traumatic for my poor Mum. After prising me away from her leg and ‘jollying me along’ into class she would go back to the car to cry into the steering wheel because I had sobbed since waking up. Clock watching until an acceptable amount of time had passed, she would call and check how I was. Inevitably I was fine. Well, almost fine. One time I was still in tears because I had missed my snack at break time as I couldn’t open my new lunchbox. Cue many future years of making me practice opening my lunchbox every day for two weeks before going back to school. This story story can still make my Mum cry if you catch her on a bad day now.

My own memories must not rub off on Girly no1. I’ll do everything I can to not let this happen. But I also know that she is a carbon copy of me. She is very sensitive and any ruffling of her feathers results in tears first, other feelings afterwards. Yesterday she cried for 25 minutes because her hair band broke (it was from Poundland, I don’t know what she expected). The week before she moaned for a whole day about why her best friend didn’t want to kiss her goodbye (she wants to marry this friend but I’m not sure her family are as open to lesbianism as we are). It took her 6 months to settle into nursery, then it has taken a good couple of months to settle each time she has changed groups (you know, moving from one side of the room to the other…having to climb an extra set of stairs…big changes). She’s not great with change.

Ow, My Heart

I didn’t used to like change either, though strangely now I fall into the early adopter category. I quite like change and am willing to give most things a go. This may be all my years of project management. That doesn’t help me with Girly no1 though, whose worries, reactions and concerns feel like physical pain in my heart.

It’s my job to help her through this though. There have been times in my life when I have questioned Mum’s ‘meanness’ to me when I was little – her constant reiteration of “you need to toughen up” and “just stop crying and get on with it” – but now I’m in the thick of things with my own offspring, this is what I need to do more of. Tough love. It’s probably what has led me to being a fairly robust adult. Without it, I wonder whether I would I have competed in tennis tournaments to jeers from mean girls from school. Would I have been able to hold my own in a boardroom of much older men? Would I ever have started Making Little People or That Works For Me? I doubt it.

Starting School….next year

This doesn’t help me with Girly no1 starting school though. I’m already planning – manically planning. How I can make this transition easier? We will talk about it lots. Buy an easy to open lunchbox. Meet lots of people in her class. Go there lots so she starts to feel comfortable. I wonder if we could invite her teacher to tea…..(jokes). (Kind of). I know that everyone goes through it and I won’t be the only stressing about it, I may be the only one stressing about it 18 months ahead of time though! Whichever way it goes I’m sure I will be that Mum weeping first in her car and then again at home on the sofa. Someone in this house needs to keep the back-to-school mantle burning!

Thanks for reading all the way to the end! And thank you so much to everyone for your kind words on my last post, The Miscarriage Rollercoaster. We are much, much better and as you see I have found a new thing to cry over! Believe it or not I’m actually quite a happy and chilled person, hard to get that from this blog isn’t it?! I always love your likes and shares so please do the honours if you have enjoyed. Until next time amigos!

Friends That Poo

by jessheagren | Feb 11, 2018 | Bad Mum, Good Mum, Motherhood, Multiple Children, My journey, Poo, Second child

It’s not often in your life that you buy a house, have a baby and quit your job in the space of 12 months. All this change has left me feeling reflective and I’m drawing some strange parallels. For example, friendships, if you think about it, are just like poo…

Girly no2 is having digestive issues. At 14 months, she’s really struggling with her poo. I think it’s quite common as the nurse wasn’t at all surprised when I told her that Husband and I had spent the weekend pulling poo from her bum. Nor did the girls at nursery, though they did at least pull a slightly disgusted face, much like the one on your face now. We spoke to the doctors after two gruelling days of grunting and sweating from her, and us. It culminated in us pinning her clammy little body to the floor, bicycling her legs and grabbing hold of the big brown log peeking in and out like a tortoise head, eventually pulling it out. Yuck.

It’s just not the relaxing family Sunday you picture when you imagine what life will be like. After cleaning the carpets, towels and bath mats and scooping up nappy sacks full of skid-marked nappies, we flopped onto the bed exhausted staring at the wall and wondering what had just happened. As we laid there, not speaking just touching little fingers, my mind wondered to the three pictures we have hanging above our bed.

WEDDING DANCING IN THE MAZE

Then, Then and Now

The first picture is of us at our wedding dancing happily around a grassy maze (you have to see it to understand) posed, but real at the same time. The second picture is us with Girly no1 when she is about 6 months old looking baffled by life. We all were. We (I) look pretty good in this picture, mainly due to all the fake tan, bleached hair, whitened teeth and, ahem, Photoshop-ing I demanded. I needed it, I didn’t know what was going on. The third picture is of the four of us as we are now, taken on my birthday last year looking happy, if not slightly tired and chubby (again, me). It was right before we dropped the babies off with Mum-In-Law to go out with friends for my birthday. A completely different set of friends to the ones that watched us dance in the maze at our wedding. Which I think is kind of sad.

We had a small wedding in Italy attended by just 34 people. I think there are at least 10 of those people that aren’t in our lives any more. Isn’t that really sad? I voiced this to Husband and he looked up and said “they’re all pricks, it’s not our fault” then immediately went back to making lion noises with the Girlies. I later voiced it to my besty, The Northerner, who is not known for her delicacy with words – “yeah that is bad, what you doin’ wrong?”.

FAMILY OF THREE

It’s poo

More interested in analysing it with me than Husband, who prefers to deal in facts, figures and Twitterati, we went through the list. There were some obvious reasons for some of them, the ones that sued my Dad after our UK reception (yep, that happened), one family member that hasn’t spoken to me since our connecting family member died (obviously waiting for a reason to never have to talk to me again) and a couple of people from work who should never have been there in the first place and have since placed career over friendship (enjoy that in your old age, suckers!). Then there are the less obvious people, the ones from whom we just seem to have drifted apart.

We talked about how dynamics just change over time. Partners change, people move, babies come out. I nodded, pensively. “It’s a bit like poo really” I declared, having thought long and hard about it. Met with her blank face, I explained. “You know, sometimes a poo is really hard and difficult to get out, and you need someone else to intervene and tell you what to do. These are like those friends that are just a pain. They’re a drama. They need blood sweat and tears while they’re there, and then you’re left feeling violated afterwards.” She arched an eyebrow which I took to mean she wanted me to go on. “You need a fine white powder to fix these poos (meaning Movicol). With the friend, a fine white powder would result in a sweaty, self-obsessed fidgeting figure with verbal diarrhoea but maybe that’s what they were all along.” As my analogy drifted away from me, she laughed and urged me to go on. “The other end of the spectrum,” I continued, “are the wet, sloppy ones who just get all over the place. They come with a bit of a pain at the time and a bit more afterwards but they’re explosive. They’re your fun-time friends. Great on a Saturday night, but leave you with a hangover so you need a bit of a gap before you see them again!” By this point I couldn’t even keep a straight face but I carried on anyway. “Then there are the really good poos that slip out effortlessly. There’s no cleaning up afterwards. They’re easy. They might have some funny colours and indentations but they’re your funny bits so it’s OK. These are the Holy Grail of friends. The Perfect Turds!”

Perfect Poo

We fell about laughing and I didn’t say it at the time, but I thought about how she is my perfect poo of a friend. I wish I had recognised it at the time and made her my bridesmaid. I know she’ll be around forever. As will some of the other incredible new friends we have made in the last few years since having our Girlies. People who are so close to us it’s hard to imagine a time when they weren’t in our lives. If we were to have our wedding again now, our ‘now’ 34 would look very different to the ‘then’ 34. Life has changed a lot. But we’re a bigger unit than we used to be, and we know who we are now and what really matters. So maybe it’s OK that friends change. Poo changes too.

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New Baby Announcement

by jessheagren | Jan 14, 2018 | Business start up, Good Mum, Motherhood, Mumtrepreneur, My journey, Parenting, Self Employed, Work Life Balance, Working Mum

Everyone says it. Everyone thinks it. Next year I shall be thinner/fatter/more relaxed/more organised drier/wetter – delete as appropriate. My desire is to earn an income again, and preferably one that utilises the skills I have spent the last 15 years building, not starting over in my local Co-op. I need to think, boss, lead, debate and challenge again (I’m so fun). Husband won’t let me near his business (can’t imagine why) so with no one else to boss around, I think it’s time I started working again…it’s time to be a Working Mum!… (more…)

Best Intentions

by jessheagren | Jan 7, 2018 | Business start up, Good Mum, Motherhood, Multiple Children, Mumtrepreneur, My journey, Parenting

January is such a weird time. Fresh and hopeful new year resolutions swiftly become cold, depressing disappointments. A short dry, alcohol–free spell followed by a soaking, epic collapse and hangover. Ups and downs. Mine has been no different. No2 is walking (yaaay); no1 was been bitten by a swan and wet herself at the shock (booo); I’ve lost half a stone (yaaay); I climbed up on my kitchen cabinet in a need-chocolate-right-now frenzy (booo); booked a holiday (yaaay), had the car broken into (booo)….this could go on a while….

New Year Resolutions

Fundamentally the New Year is just another number, though this will take me 3 to 5 months to grasp. I like a New Year. My only real issue with is that it’s a year closer to old age. This year, I will be 36. Thirty-bloody-six. How do you even get that old?! I know it’s not old if you’re older than 36 but if you’re not then it seems so old. I’ve always thought 40 is the age at which you start to get old. And here I am, about to hit the downward slope to 40. If my age was being rounded, then I would be 40, not 30. If I achieve something big I won’t be talked about in a “Bright Young Thing” capacity, I’ll be that Bitter Old Mum who wanted to get her own back on someone. As an aside, I totally plan on doing this. I think I’ve got “something big” left in me to do before I get old. I’ll tell you more about that next week though. Watch this space for the reveal of my Grand Plan!

Is Forty just a number?

As well as me getting older, it’s another year older for my babies. Now, I have two toddlers. Or a toddler and a child. What’s the criteria for going from toddler to child? No2 started walking at Christmas time and now follows me round the house like a happy little zombie. She’s so pleased that she can transport two rice cakes in one go, she laughs as she’s walking and does a happy little hum. There’s definitely something to be learnt from these small goals and giant celebrations! No1 (age 3) seems infinitely happier to have a more interactive sister. Admittedly she spent most of yesterday pushing her over and lying flat on top of her as she tried to crawl away. They both laughed a lot the first few times she did it so it became a game. Inevitably though, no1 didn’t know when to stop and it all ended in tears and naughty steps, but it was fun while it lasted. We established over Christmas that no1 has a whole new energy level that we didn’t know existed and is no longer exhausted by a 3-mile walk. Or she is, but then a short post-lunch re-charge leaves her bouncing off the furniture like we’re at Flip Out. On a bright day, it’s really good for us as we get out and do more. So much so that I’m thinking we should maybe get a dog…

What balls?

These words will make my husband go rigid, his eyes nearly pop out of his head and his balls jump back inside him. I have tried to convince him we should get a dog twice before. Both times it has turned out I have been pregnant. Worry not Husband! I’m definitely not. If I were this would be the most bizarre announcement! We do talk about no3. Should we, shouldn’t we? He’s already 36, I will be soon. Some days I am positive this is a good idea. “Give me twins!” I say, as though he has the power to make this happen. Other days, when I’m cleaning piss out of wellies because No1 didn’t let go of the duck food quickly enough and was distracted by a hat she liked, I think I must be mad. Where would this poor child be in the chaos? Are there enough rice cakes on the planet to keep everyone happy while I deal with no1’s latest disaster? And aren’t they like cocaine for kids? I’m sure you’re not really meant to feed them too many. Other events put me off too. The other day, a screaming match ended in a nosebleed for me because they both wanted to sit on my left knee. My left knee?! It’s not even that great! My left boob, maybe, but my knee? No. It is a conversation though, dear readers. I can’t think of many better ways to throw the towel in on this diet. Of course this blog represents a pretty accurate account of the first year and therefore a deterrent for any more. Certainly within the next 12 months anyway!

New You

So new year, new dreams. We don’t make new year resolutions in this house but we do write down some goals each year. We have about a 70% success rate, which I’m happy with. I must have been pretty pushed when I decided last year that we would all learn Japanese. I don’t even know anyone Japanese. Personally I have a few aims: send more emails to the girls’ email addresses I have set up to give them access to when they’re old enough to understand sentimentality (I have a vision or tears, cuddles, “Mum you’re so amazing”, you know like in the movies); lose 2 stone to get back to wedding weight (standard); stop eating sugar (you’re welcome family); and launch my business (see earlier note on Grand Reveal next week). I have actually made moves on all of my goals already. I am going to see a nutritionist next week. She is also my yoga instructor, and incredibly beautiful, lovely and warm. I have a total girl crush on her. So much so that the first time I spoke to her I got stuck in my own hoody. It was very embarrassing. So now we only talk over email and phone. 2017, err 18, is off to a strong start. I’ll decide on dog or baby, finally name my new business, and either make a permanent home for No1 on the naughty step or just ban her from touching her sister. As long as I stay away from swans and beautiful Yoga instructors, I’ll be fine!

Happy new year everyone! Do let me know about your new year resolutions, I mean, intentions. Even better, how quickly you broke them! All likes and shares very much appreciated (return to Facebook). Namaste ?