The lovely Stephen Estcourt has been working tirelessly the last few months to put together the World Party Tasmania and I’m excited to be attending!
As today went from bad to worse to slightly better to ear bleedingly bad, going out on Saturday sans children was something I was holding on to.
So Saturday! I will be in the city, maybe with my camera, attending an amazing food fair and getting to meet some more of my twitter peeps.
Are you going to be there?
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Emma from Mommy has a Headache was one of the very first blogs I ever read, and she was one of my first commenters. So when I heard she’d written a book with Gillian and was looking for reviewers, I waved my hands wildly in the air (okay, I might have emailed her) and asked for a copy.
And?
It’s brilliant. The best parenting book I’ve ever read. I was giggling before I’d even finished the first chapter.
They declare it to be a ‘woefully inadequate guide to early motherhood’ and they’re right, insomuch as NOTHING can actually prepare you for childbirth and the sudden responsibility of a baby. They send you home without an instruction manual for gods sake. How are we meant to know how to stop the kid screaming?
Some things hit home – like ‘was a student midwife having a go at sewing you up afterwards?’ because um, YES. My vagina was not right for years after that. It wasn’t a student midwife, but a student ob/gyn who while she wasn’t doing her first set of stitches, was doing her first episiotomy. Add in my tendency to skin tearing and she pulled those stitches out three times before she finally gave up with a ‘that will do, sigh’. I mean, c’mon!
It answers questions you weren’t even game to speak aloud, like ‘will I ever have sex again?’ and ‘will I ever WANT to have sex again?’ as well as telling you how to avoid early onset ‘mumitis’ (when you turn into your mother.) Sadly, the mumitis information comes too late for me, as my garden and rapidly growing menagerie catapult me firmly into Mum territory. Of course, I’d argue that I’m merely being creative with my money, but no matter.
It’s definitely the book you want to be reading if you’re a real mum: aka, not a celeb mum. It includes a handy exercise guide (weight lifting! your baby will only get heavier and will want to be thrown in the air. Ski training! Someone has spilled yogurt all over the floor and you need to clean it up, without falling in it) and a guide on how to make mum friends (don’t try to bribe them).
Cocktails at Naptime is the perfect book for new mothers because we all need to laugh about how messed up our vagina is after pushing a 3.kg blob through it.
For more info about Cocktails at Naptime, check out the website, with links to where you can buy a copy and info on the authors. OR you can do what I do and check out their blog. Every book needs a blog of it’s own.
AND! If you’d like to win a copy of your very own, then leave me a comment and let me know your funniest/stupidest/worst parenting moment. The winner will be selected via Random.org.
Annnd, the winner is!
Kim! I’ll email you Kim.
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This post sponsored by Nuffnang
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When Nuffnang rang me and asked me to participate in this campaign, I was happy to oblige. Of course, then I had to really think about times when something good came in a small package and that’s where I got a bit stuck.
The cliched thing of course is to talk about the children. At 7lb6 and 7lbs respectively, they were rather small, delicious and lovable. Of course, then Amy started to scream and scream, so she was less a ‘good’ thing and more of a ‘god I love this kid, but why is she the only one screaming’ kind of package.
And Isaac, well, it’s probably not fair to compare them, but he didn’t scream as a baby, so comparisons are hard not to make.
But hey they were small, cute and when I swaddled them, they looked like little packages.
Sort of.
I kept thinking and really, all I could come up with was baby animals (have you see the ducklings?!) and stuff like that.
Not exactly things in packages. I’m not married and not engaged, so I can’t tell a story of a ring in a box – well I could, but I’d be lying – although it would make for the perfect good things/small packages story.
I can’t do it though.
I think that maybe, my best good thing in a small package is always going to be a book. Inside of a book, I get an entire world, someone else’s life and a great story, all in a small package. That counts, right?
Anyway.
The point of all this?
Cottees Cordial is reducing their cordial sizes from 2ltr to 1ltr, but the smaller bottle is merely more concentrated. It all makes up to the same amount of cordial.
Now, I’ve been tempted to blog about Cottees before and just never gotten around to it. Simply put, they are the only cordial I have found that has natural colours and doesn’t send Amy off the rails. I can’t vouch for the other flavours, but the orange coloured ones are all coloured with turmeric and carmine, lovely natural things that don’t send Amy batty.
So Cottees are the only cordial I buy anyway. And now they’re getting smaller, which means they’ll fit in the cupboard better and I’ll be able to stock up when they come on special. Win win I think.
***
Now comes the fun part.
Nuffnang and Cottees are offering $1000 cash to the person who shares the best ‘When good things have come in small packages’ story. Obviously I’m not eligible, but YOU are my lovely readers.
In the comments, share your best ‘Good things/Small Packages’ story and I’ll select the best 3 to go into the draw. The responses across all the participating blogs will be read and the best response will win $1000 for themselves. There is nothing random about this competition, with winners selected on how well their story is told.
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The cottees post has had to be taken down, due to legal reasons – the competition terms and conditions haven’t been approved yet, so we need to wait for that. Anyone who has commented already, your comments will remain, everyone else, I’ll give you a yell when you can comment and enter the competition again.
Sorry.
Ugh.
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Mummyblogging: It sounds like a dirty word. Like something you’d spit out of your mouth, or scrape off your shoe. People say it with a snide smile, or throw it over their shoulder. Like ‘the dirty mummybloggers, bringing us all down’. It’s become the word for all that is boring and mundane in blogging.
It’s a bit of a rough deal, to be considered a mummyblogger. The rest of the blogosphere avoids mummyblogging like the plague, even as advertisers and sponsors court the hell out of you. Mummybloggers are considered to be sell outs, to be making money off the back of their children, to be blog whores.
It’s all a little bullshit if you ask me.
I spent a lot of time avoiding the whole mummyblogger cliche. I called myself a personal blogger, because I was writing about myself, with bits about the children thrown in. I wasn’t writing about poo or doing nothing but updating with photos of my kids and telling everyone how wonderful my life was.
It took a long time to come to terms with the fact I was a mummyblogger (spit, cough).
But I am.
I write about my kids, myself, my life.
THAT is mummyblogging. If you put photos of your kids on your blog, you are mummyblogging. Whinge about your sleepless night? Mummyblogging. Complain that nursing tops are hideously uncomfortable and that you tried to drown the baby in breastmilk? Mummyblogging. Remind everyone that kids are hard work and you’ve got it hard? Mummyblogging.
You might not do it all the time, but you’ve got to own the fact you do it sometimes. You might hate the term, it might make your insides curl up and die a little, but if you have ever blogged about your kids, then you’ve participated in that thing we call (spit, cough) mummyblogging.
Funnily enough it isn’t solely the genre of crap and mundane writing, in fact, some of the best writers I’ve ever read are writing about themselves and their children.
I’ve seen plenty of utterly crap blogs, written by people without children, so why don’t they get the (spit, cough) reaction that mummyblogging gets?
I share parts of my life and you guys click over to read about it. It’s a little voyeuristic, a little like being a whore, only without the need to shower afterwards. It’s also the closest thing I’ve got to a community and the most supportive network you’ll ever find.
Some people might exclaim that I’m selling out my children in exchange for Internet celebrity (hahahahahaa, cough, ahem), that children and disabilities are all currency that sells here in the InterWebs. And I’ll consider those points, probably while I tear my own hair out and the children bounce off the walls, and then I’ll disagree with them.
I’m selling myself, sure, maybe a little. After a fashion at least, but I don’t think I’m selling the kids.
Like most mummybloggers, the kids are the supporting cast to my (not-so-brightly-lit) stardom. They get their own lines, sure, but in the end it always comes back to me. Slightly narcissistic? Okay, probably. We’ll go with that.
But, that’s me, I’m the mummyblogger harlot. Taking off layers of my personality for money. Baring my soul for dollar signs. Supposedly.
I might as well own it.
And as the old saying goes, if you don’t like it, click away. It’s the Internet, it’s big enough for everyone.
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