This week was the first week in the New Year that I am officially a working mum and Gareth is back to his day job.  We knew that my squeezing in 24 hours of work into an already busy week and only gaining 8 hours of total child free time was going to be somewhat of a challenge.  We warned ourselves that it would take a month of seeing what I needed to hand over to Gareth to find those productive hours at home and this week gave us the first glimpse of where I lack in available hours!  Thankfully it is halfway through January and the majority of Christchurch don’t go back to work until Monday or even later so it’s only me (and our bank balance) that’s noticed how few hours I’ve worked. I love working from home and working on a freelance basis.  I know it will be the best option for our family once I have work established and we’ve all got ourselves into the rhythm.  Gareth let me have the …

One of the very many things that changes when you have children is your experience, and therefore expectation, of holidays.  I categorise it in the list of changes that you hadn’t 100% signed up for when you decided to have children.  Sure you knew from friends who had gone before you that holidays wouldn’t be the indulgent luxuries they had once been but I hadn’t realised just how much holidays with children looks almost exactly like normal weeks with children! There are some subtle, and very welcome differences though…you get a sleep in until 8.30am every other day, which in turn gives you freedom to stay up past 10pm a few nights in a row.  When one or both of your children have their daily tantrum on your local supermarket floor there is another with you to share the humiliation and in fact will carry out said child so you can finish your shop in peace.  You get to be more imaginative with what you do in the day and can pack it out with …

I find being mum to two small children really stressful, I think more than the average mum because I am a certified control freak and a nearly three year old and 16 month old will not be controlled, some days they won’t even be gently guided.  I’m finding it doubly hard this week so thought I’d share a couple of funny stories from the past few weeks. First of all, the quick wit of Minnie:  I often treat her to a juice bottle that is covered in garish pink patterns and Dora the Explorer on, you know the type, allegedly water but really highly flavoured and full of trash.  I buy her the bottle as a treat and then for the rest of the week I fill it with water – how clever am I.   Anyways one dinner time I thought I would educate myself on exactly what’s in it and picked up the bottle to read through the ingredients.  My suspicions were right, seriously no natural stuff in there.  Minnie starts screaming at me, …

We went to the Farmer’s Market for our gourmet porridge yesterday morning like we do most Saturdays (I ran there so totally earned my whisky soaked raisins and vanilla custard topping).  A new thing this weekend was face painting, I was tempted but instead we spent our $2 on Minnie. This is for the grandparents, enjoy.

You don’t often get time with just one of your babies when you have two close in age.  How you do it with twins I have no idea! Most of the time I just have to sneak some time with one of them when the other is sleeping.  My eldest gets the rough side of this because when her little brother is sleeping Mummy generally has to get the dinner cooked or various other domestic duties.  Now that Minnie is going to nursery two afternoons a week I have some time with Jackson which we are both loving.  It makes me more aware that just-us-girls time is even more important to find. Last Sunday we went out for a coffee and a fluffy (hot milk with a marshmallow) and had a great time using up all her stickers in her new magazine.  It was so lovely having an hour where I had nothing to do but talk with my daughter. This week Jackson has been waking up later in the morning so I get to …