Love
St Patrick’s Festival
If you’ve got kids, and you’re living in Dublin and you haven’t made your way to Merrion Square, you’re missing out. On a whim, we took both kids in yesterday. We had been last year but found it overcrowded, but this year they have taken advantage of the park as well as the streets of Merrion Square, and it really changes the atmosphere of the event. We wandered through the park and found bouncy castles. All free much to the delight of us and the kids. Then it was on through the park in search of the next...
read moreFeed me Feed me now!
This too shall pass. I’ve long sworn it is my parenting mantra. And yet time and again I find it hard to accept. We had the most worrying time with my daughter in late December and early January. Actually it was building for months before that. Back in late August, she cut her first tooth at the ripe old age of 17 months and lost her appetite for a week or two while it was happening. Then we went to Vancouver in October to visit my brother and his family, and never a great traveller, she was off her food while we were there. I think she...
read moreBlog Awards are a Busy Business
What a month! Mama.ie has been taking a back seat because I am working behind the scenes with my fellow bloggers to organise the first ever dedicated Irish Parenting Blog Awards. The seed of an idea for the awards came about last year during the run up to the Blog Awards Ireland event in October. We had to do a little campaigning to get a Best Parenting Blog category added to the awards. For a while it seemed people weren’t convinced that there were enough parenting bloggers to warrant our own category. We knew better though...
read morePine Cone Lion Craft
When I looked back on 2014 at the beginning of January, one thing that really disappointed me was to see how little crafting we had done last year. So we decided to start having some fun with crafts again in 2015. A rummage through the “bits and pieces” box uncovered a bag of pine cones, originally set aside for some Christmas crafts, and then forgotten about! I vaguely remembered seeing some pine cone hedgehogs on Pinterest and wondered what else we could do. Some more rummaging uncovered a few small boxes and a ball of wool....
read moreLessons learned while on crutches with kids
The absolute freedom of it. I went back to the office today. While there I walked unaided – and only needed to stop to rest my leg one or two times. It is such a relief. I am not sorry to see the crutches go. I think being on crutches is difficult at any time in your life but with young kids to look after it’s a nightmare. I learned a few things during my recovery time though. 1. Walking with crutches looks much easier than it is. It is bloody hard to walk using crutches. You may start with just a sore leg, but after walking for...
read more14 from 14
We’re into the first weekend in 2015 already so I’m a bit late with a 2014 round-up, but it was a hectic Christmas “break” this year, featuring me with and without crutches, family home from abroad, a few days in Limerick, my niece’s Christening, my cousin’s wedding, and a visit from the man in red. Oh and four new teeth for the toddler. Like I said, hectic. So it’s really only since the New Year was over that I’ve had time to reflect on all that passed in 2014. In the midst of my reflections, I...
read moreJust call me Hop-a-long
Disaster! A lovely weekend away to Belfast did not go at all to plan for us. And so I find myself on crutches for the Christmas season and maybe longer, and I haven’t yet figured out how to make getting about on crutches and managing an active 20 month old mix. It happened so quickly. The toddler was sick on Thursday night, but when we got up on Friday morning she was right as rain and by lunchtime we decided it was safe to go ahead with our planned trip to Belfast for the weekend. We arrived up to the Ramada Plaza hotel at 3pm and...
read moreSleep is for the weak
The toddler and I are just back from two weeks in Vancouver, where we visited my brother, his wife, their toddler son and their scrumptious newborn daughter. Everything I worried about in advance of the trip – the plane journeys, the adjustment to the time difference on the way out, how the toddlers would get on – it was all a waste of time. Jetlag on our return – that’s what I should have been worried about! The plane journeys couldn’t have gone better. I think the fact we were taking night flights each time...
read moreI Won Best Parenting Blog!
I still can’t quite believe it. It’s funny – when I set up the Irish Parenting Bloggers group on Facebook a few years ago, I thought it would be a nice chance for the nine or ten of us who occasionally chatted on Twitter to get to know each other and offer a bit of parenting and blogging support. Last year when we were harassing encouraging the organisers of Blog Awards Ireland to add a Parenting category, we had grown to 40 strong. And suddenly this year, the group has surpassed all my expectations, and it’s now...
read moreTo my birthday boy
Five seems such a significant age. You’re a schoolboy now, full of personality and opinions. To me, it seems like such a short time ago that we brought you home from the hospital. To you, it was a lifetime ago. I look at you and can’t believe how you’ve grown. Sometimes I still expect to see that little baby or the toddler you so recently were. But you’re too busy showing me how you can ride your bike without stabilizers to notice. This year we said goodbye to Octonauts and Thomas the Tank Engine and hello to Beyblades...
read more
