Tag Archives: parenting

A Toddler’s Guide to Friendship

May 4, 2012 By in Family Tags: , , , , 12 Comments

It’s funny. I’d always assumed that friendships between boys were much less complicated than those between girls. Certainly when I was at school it always looked that way. Girls were forever falling in and out of love with each other, creating cliques, promoting and relegating each other to and from the position of ‘best friend’. It was stressful stuff.

Boys seemed to just get on with it. They were either friends, or they weren’t. No drama.

Recently, DorkySon has made me reconsider that view.
Continue reading →

About a Boy

May 1, 2012 By in Family Tags: , , , , , , , 33 Comments

I have been trying to write this post for months, but it has been left lying dormant in my drafts folder. I’ve thought about it a lot, but when it came to the writing I couldn’t get beyond the first line. At least I couldn’t until last night, when I had something of a lightbulb moment.

Here’s that troublesome first line:

“I never realised how physical it would be, having a little boy.”
Continue reading →

Project 52: Week 17

April 25, 2012 By in Family, Harpenden, Photography Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

child at picnic

Given how heavy the rain is today, you probably wouldn’t believe that yesterday was picnic weather… but it was. After a fun afternoon in the park helping DorkySon learn to ride his new bike, we pulled out the picnic rug and a few snacks, and plonked ourselves on the grass.

I hope there’s a lot more of this to come.

The One Where Mummy Goes to Nursery

April 19, 2012 By in Family, Harpenden Tags: , , , , , , 7 Comments

I’ve been feeling a bit guilty recently about not being more involved with DorkySon’s nursery. Because he only goes two mornings a week, he misses quite a lot of their big events. We did make it along to watch his nativity play before Christmas, but we didn’t make the Christmas Party or the Santa visit, and last week we missed the Easter Bonnet parade too.

So when one of the staff asked a few weeks ago if I would come in and do a twenty-minute storytelling session for DorkySon’s class, I felt obliged to say yes. We agreed a time and a theme, and I knew that with a couple of weeks to prepare I could come up with something fairly informative but entertaining too. All was well… until I shared the news with DorkySon.
Continue reading →

How do you deal with Big Questions from your children?

April 17, 2012 By in Family Tags: , , , , , , , 16 Comments

One of DorkyDad’s poems is called One of the Questions Coming – and it’s a lovely, funny piece where he imagines how he’ll respond on that inevitable day sometime in the future when DorkySon asks him if he ever did drugs.

We have not reached that stage of questioning quite yet, but DorkySon has hit me with a few curious toddler curveballs recently, and my parenting skills are being tested to the max. Never mind all that stuff about how to put on a nappy or burp your baby – where’s the chapter in the textbook that tells you how to answer when your son asks ‘Why don’t you have a penis, Mummy?’
Continue reading →