Recently in Family Category

It has taken having a baby for me to realise that I am writer. I'm not saying I'm a good one. I'm certainly not a rich one. I am a writer because I'm desperate to write.

Apart from journalism, I have not been able to get my fingers to the keyboard since Arch was born two years ago. I have been totally fulfilled in some ways but parched in another way - parched of words.

Next week will be different. I am on holiday - and I'm not going anywhere other than my study. Arch will be off doing things with his dad and I will be alone. The computer screen will be my sea, the keyboard the sand, the mouse my sangria.

I'll blog again when I get back in the week starting 7 July. I will be drunk on words, bronzed by my thoughts, sharing my snaps of the country from which I've returned.

The irony was not lost on me. At the point at which I heard that it was 'National Work from Home Day', it was 0600 and I was driving to the airport for an 18-hour daytrip to Belfast to deliver a training course.

In the same news bulletin I learnt of the Government's wish to introduce the right for flexible working for parents of all children up to 16 years of age. Great, I thought - but why stop there?

Yesterday when Arch wanted a biscuit I told him to wait.

"Yes, you can have a biscuit, but just let me finish pouring the boiling water from this kettle." He tugged my sleeve and hollered while I was doing this, but I figured that as he was now two-years-old, he could handle the ten second wait.

Being a mother of a toddler is all about delivering the message: "I will meet your needs, but sometimes I can't meet them straightaway."

It was different when he was a baby. When he was a few hours, a few days, a few weeks old, the message was: "Here I am."

I don't like watching people snog. Pecking on the cheek is fine. Kissing on the lips is OK too. When people start putting their tongues into each other's mouths I feel the need to divert my eyes and then wonder why I should have to.

This week I went swimming at a private fitness club and was more than a little irritated at having to divert my eyes for 45 minutes while a couple snogged between cavorts in the water and the rest of us had to dodge them as we breast-stroked and crawled up and down.

When I tried to make a complaint to the duty manager, I was astonished to discover that the club has no policy on snogging and therefore no action was taken.

"Can you believe it?" I said to my colleagues when I got into work the next day. "Do people really find snogging in a fitness club acceptable?"

I was in full-blown outraged-of-Birmingham mode when one of my peers said: "Isn't it a bit like the argument about breast-feeding in public?"

I need intro counselling. I nearly fell into some gruesome Judd Apatow, Farrelly Brothers trap. This time I realised the danger, but I can't guarantee it won't happen again.

Judge for yourselves. I was going to write, without really thinking about it: I've just broken my McDonalds cherry.

It shows how deeply a certain cretinous mindset has penetrated our lives when an English buspass holder and pillar of intellectual rectitude, an unashamed user of long words and lover of deep, quirky philosophical concepts as well as the more subtle kind of fart joke, contemplates using dated American high school slang.

It's been almost two weeks since my last posting - sorry about that - but I've been ill.
And being ill when you've got a not-yet-two-year-old in the house is, I've discovered, an art in itself.
There was l lying motionless in the back room when my husband slipped me a cup of tea. "Arch doesn't know you're here," he whispered.
I knew that my chances of resting would be blown as soon as the ever-perceptive toddler heard an untoward noise, so I hid, listening out for the best opportunity to sneak to the loo.
Being sick with a child, proved to be about balancing the difficulty of keeping cover against the stress of being kissed and jumped on and pulled,
By the afternoon, I decided I just about had enough strength to sing Wind the Bobbin Up and allowed myself to be discovered.
I've no doubt my recuperation was hindered as a result, but what can you do? Any tips on being poorly when you've got a little one will be gratefully received.
Meanwhile I see it is a condition worthy of psychological study. A paper has been written "Drawing on social construction theory, we explore the meaning of being an ill parent, highlighting the tension of being a parent and patient."
That's some consolation. But I just want to know how to sleep with one eye open.

The women in our antenatal group, including myself, would claim we were not competitive.
We would all agree that children develop at their own paces and that it is invidious to make comparisons between them.
And yet when would meet up, with nothing in common other than our infants mewling and puking in our arms, there was nothing else to do but say things like: "My baby has a lot of wax in her ears, does yours?"
Before we knew it, what we had intended to be a friendly gathering of women who had all had their first babies at the same time became a subtle kind of competition - all done with a middle-class niceness that could not possibly be faulted.
I would love to say that I was immune from making these comparisons and the subsequent pride of anxiety that they evoked, but I was not.
However much I wish it otherwise, there is evidently an insecure part of me that is exposed when I'm amongst women with children the same age as mine.
There is no shortage of those complaining about competitive parenting syndrome but really the problem is not with this antenatal group or that particular preschool. Most of the time we can not avoid those gatherings anyway.
If we truly felt at home in ourselves, the progress of our children's peers would be a cause not of concern, but delight. If it isn't, it's time to go gently and remember how honored and loved we really are.

In the two minutes it takes to dash to the washing machine from the bathroom with a reeking bucket of poohy nappies, Arch has managed to open the child-proof cap on the big bottle of mouthwash and drink its contents.

As I dither trying to decide whether my priority is to comfort him, make him sick or wash my hands, I recall a newsletter from a company called Real Coaching Solutions saying women are natural multitaskers. Ho ho ho! In my dreams.....

How I wish I was the kind of woman that could indeed type a report, negotiate a deal, plan dinner for the family and remember to wash the football kits all at the same time. Motherhood would be a breeze if I could. Even watching Arch and washing nappies simultaneously has me flummoxed.

Given that I'm that kind of person, in my 21 months of being a wing-and-a-prayer mum, I have tried to give up multitasking whereever I can.