Mamma Kerr

Another week, another Mama Guilt Monday, courtesy of Cop Mama. I’m sorry to say that Cop Mama has decided notto continue hosting the Mama Guilt Monday meme, at least for the summer, as she has been finding it too time-consuming and stressful.  I will miss taking part in this meme.  Therefore, I may still keep it going here occasionally, when the mama guikt gets too much for me!

See the MckLinky at the bottom of this post to link up.

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Here’s today’s optional prompt:

Balancing Blogging & Being a Mom

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It’s hard balancing blogging with family time and working fulltime.   However, I try to devote an hour or so every week day to my blog, and a couple of hours blog hopping time at the weekend.

I have a laptop and a netbook, so it’s easy to work online, while keeping an eye on the girls, whether we’re at home or out at a park or soft play area.  Of course, this is not adviseable if you have pre-school children.

I tend to do most of my work online during my lunchbreak and/or in the evening, once the girls are in bed.

The mama guilt kicks in, when I’m busy trying to finish a post, during my time with the girls.  I also feel guilty about neglecting the housework in favour of going online.

Blogging (and blog-hopping) is one of my favourite pastimes.  It’s an ideal way for me to escape the pressures of everyday life!  Therefore, I try not to get too overwhelmed by mama guilt relating to it! 

Another week, another Mama Guilt Monday, courtesy of Cop Mama.  See the MckLinky at the bottom of this post to link up.

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Here’s today’s optional prompt:

Tell us about a time you did something absent minded as a Mom!

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Here’s mine:

As a very busy working mum with far too much on her plate, I am prone to absent-mindedness. Two incidents spring to mind here:

Last year, when the girls were still at nursery school, they were in different groups and so had two different teachers. I was asked to schedule two appointments to meet with each teacher to discuss my daughters’ progress. I arranged for two back-to-back appointments for first thing in the morning, so that I could meet the teachers before heading to my work (which was just across the carpark from the nursery). However, on the day of the appointment, one of my daughter’s teacher was off sick, so I had to reschedule another appointment.  This is where the Mama Guilt comes in…… I completely forgot all about this rescheduled appointment! I had been so busy and stressed out at work, working to very tight deadlines, that the appointment had went right out my head! I turned up to nursery to drop the girls off the next morning and the teacher in question apprehended me. I was sooooooo embarrassed – absolutely mortified!! Thankfully no one had mentioned this memory lapse to my inlaws, who picked the gitls up from nursery every afternoon. That would just have compounded my Mama Guilt! Anyway, fortunately the teacher was okay about being stood up and I got a very good report from her re my daughters progress at the (Third Time Lucky!) appointment.

 

• Another absent-minded Mamma Guilt episode was last summer.  While we were on holiday in sunny Florida, I received a text message, inviting my daughters to the birthday party of a boy from their nursery.  I made a mental note of it and subsequently forgot about it until my own daughters’ birthday party a few days after our return to the UK.  The boy’s mother mentioned it to me at the party and I confirmed that the girls would be there.  However, I stupidly got the dates mixed up, and didn’t realise my mistake until the actual day of the party!  I had checked back through my text messages to confirm the time of the party (which I thought was the following weekend) with Hubby.  I nearly fell off my chair when I realised that the party was on at that precise moment and we had missed it!!  D’oh!!  Here’s more Mama Guilt for you – I kept quiet and didn’t mention it to the girls!!    They eventually brought it up a few weeks later and I fobbed them off with it being cancelled!  (They were never going to see the wee boy again anyway, as he was going to a different school to them!!  (I know, I know!  I’m bad!)

Well, what about YOU?  Do you have any Mama Guilt you’d care to share?  If so, join the blog hop or leave a comment below.

 

 

 

Another week, another Mamma Guilt Monday, courtesy of Cop Mama.

Mamma Guilt Part 1

On Friday morning, as the kids assembled into their lines after the school bell had rung, I noticed that many of the other kids had jeans and other casual clothes on, rather than the school uniform.  It suddenly dawned on me that it must be a Dress Down Friday, which I had been unaware of.  I mentioned this to another mum, who said:

“Och aye! It’s Dress Doon Friday.  Did ye forget?”

“I knew nothing about it.”

“Did ye no get the note aboot it?”

“No.”

When a letter is sent from the school, in my daughters’ schoolbags, at the beginning of the week, it doesn’t always get passed on to me.  It often (not always) goes missing en route.  Mondays and Tuesdays, the girls get picked up from school by my in-laws.  They go back to my in-laws house and do their homework there.  Sometimes the notes are taken out the schoolbags and not put back in. 

And so the feelings of Mamma Guilt flowed.  I felt guilty about not being there to pick the girls up from school every day, hear about their day, help with their homework, read their notes.  I felt guilty that they would feel the “odd ones out” because they were dressed in their school uniform on a Dress Down Day.

PS  The Scots dialect above was put in to entertain my American friends (Cop Mama & Mama M.), who are eager for me to start vlogging so they can hear my accent!  LOL  Watch this space…

Mamma Guilt Part 2

Yesterday was Mothers Day here in the UK, and my lovely daughters brought their beautiful cards, gifts cuddles and kisses to me in bed around 0730.  (Why oh why can they jump out of bed early at the weekend, but practically need shoe-horned out of bed for school during the week?!)

As Hubby was away to work, I had to get up and make breakfast, so we all had a lovely “picnic” breakfast in bed of toast, juice and coffee (for me only, of course!)

After breakfast the girls played happily together in their room with their Disney Princess dolls, while I got showered and dressed.  While I was getting ready the girls came through to see me and tell me that they had agreed to swap their dolls’ dresses and “even their husbands!” (the Handsome Prince and Prince Charming) LOL    They skipped back through to their room to continue with their game.

Ten minutes later I rush through to their room, on hearing a distressed yelp from Sophie.  I see the two of them kneeling on the carpet beside all their Prince and Princess paraphernalia.  Sophie is crying, whilst Rachel is clutching her Princess and some dresses.  It takes me a few minutes to decipher what is wrong because Sophie is bawling her eyes out while trying to tell me what happened.  It transpires that Sophie had only wanted to trade her dress for the day, NOT forever!  Rachel is insisting that the trade is for good.  I interject:

“OK then.  You’ll have to swap back tomorrow.”

Rachel then joins her sister in bawling her eyes out. 

“Girls!  You need to play nice together and share your toys.”

*Wails* *Sobs*

“Remember this is Mothers Day!  You have to be good girls for Mummy today.”

*Wails* *Sobs*

“Remember what you  said to Mummy earlier? You said ‘Happy Mothers Day!’ and this is not making me very happy!”

*Wails* *Sobs*

“Now lets shake hands with your sister and promise to play nice and share.”

This was met with a collective:

“Uh Uh!” (translates as “No!”)

This is when I ‘lost the plot’ slightly:

“Right! If you don’t stop bickering and crying and start playing nice, I’m going to bundle up all this Princess stuff and send it back to Granny’s and you’ll not get to play with it again!”

*WAIL!*  *YELP!*

“Well, I’m going to leave you to sort it out for five minutes.  When you’ve calmed down you can come and say ‘Sorry’ to Mummy.  You can say ‘Sorry for spoiling Mothers Day’.”

I then marched out the room and put the kettle on to make a cup of coffee.  As I sat down on the couch and sipped my coffee, I felt pangs of Mamma Guilt for losing my temper and telling them they’d spoiled Mothers’ Day.

Five minutes later I was relieved to hear the girls playing happily together again.  Five minutes after that, Rachel appeared with her Nintendo DSi.  On the screen was the word “sore” and some kisses and love hearts.  I laughed out loud.

“Oh Sweetheart, that’s ok.  Come give Mummy a cuddle.”

Then Sophie appeared with a similar “Sore” message on her DSi.

After we had all kissed and made up, I told the girls how to spell “Sorry” properly, and we all laughed when I told them what they had actually written.

“It’s ok though!  I knew what you meant.  Well done for trying!”

They both then skipped happily back to their room to play, and I was left feeling very privileged to have such wonderful little girls.

Please click here to enter the Mama Guilt Monday MckLinky on Cop Mama’s website.

Another week, another Mamma Guilt Monday, courtesy of Cop Mama.

I’m taking my girls to see the X Factor Live in Glasgow this evening.  (For my Non-UK readers, X Factor is a TV program akin to American Idol.  In fact, Mr Compliments (AKA Simon Cowell) is giving up his spot on American Idol to take X Factor to the USA.)  This will be the girls’ first pop concert, and I am hoping that they are not too young to enjoy it!  (They are only 5 1/2 years old!  *blushes*)

When they started watching the program last year, they enjoyed watching the auditions, and we all had great fun giving the contestants thumbs up or thumbs down.  When the live shows started they enjoyed the singing and dancing, and soon picked out some favourites:

Jamie (Afro) Archer,

Stacey Solomon,

and…… last but not least, John and Edward (AKA Jedward).

The first bit of Mamma Guilt relating to the X Factor is that the girls were distraught and cried buckets when Jamie got voted out.  I felt awful.  I berated myself for letting them watch, telling myself that they were too young!  But the thing is, they did enjoy watching the shows and rooting for their favourites – especially John and Edward (who I personally detested!!) 

These feelings of guilt returned when, a few weeks later, their ultimate favourites, John and Edward were voted off the show.  I had already purchased the tickets for the X Factor Tour, and they were supposed to be a Christmas present.  However, I ended up having to tell them about it early, just to calm them down. 

I had yet more feelings of Mamma Guilt last week, when I realised I had left it too late to organise some unique personalised t-shirts for the girls to wear at the concert.  (January is such a bad month moneywise, and the beginning of March always catches me by surprise, with February being a short month!)

I’m sure I’ll experience yet more Mamma Guilt tomorrow morning, when the girls struggle to get out of bed for school, after their late night out!  (Still, it is only a one-off, I suppose!)

What about you? What mama guilt would you like to share on Mama Guilt Monday? Whether it’s funny or serious, blog about it today and then come back here to enter your post link into the MckLinky.

If you don’t have a blog, or would rather not take part in the MckLinky, please feel free to share your mama guilt in the Comments below.

If you’re visiting here, as part of the MckLiny blog hop, please leave a comment to let me know you were here.

Please click here to enter the Mama Guilt Monday MckLinky on Cop Mama’s website.

Please call by on Wednesday for some X Factor fun on Wordless Wednesday!…

Thanks for stopping by!