That Which We Call A Hen Do...,

 Right, I've seen these called Hen Dos for years and I've seen American's call them bachelorette parties for years, too, but I saw it referred to as Stags and Does the other day and I don't know where that's from but it just doesn't sit right with me, to be quite honest. I don't know what it is, but I heard it and my only thought was, ew, no thanks. 

My image of a hen party has always been the 'classic' thing of Blackpool, getting drunk, wearing plaid skirts with plastic bottoms glued on (because I saw them in Blackpool once) and again it was one of those things that was like, yeah... no thanks, it's not for me. My future husband and I did consider just renting an Airbnb somewhere, having a few drinks with close friends and a bit of a games night but when we wrote out a list of people we would like to invite it started to get a little bit crazy and then get away from the idea of it being just a holiday of friends and more into typical stag or hen parties which are banned from some big houses because of the damage that previous drunken parties have done. The bigger it got, the more it felt like a mini wedding party before the wedding or we worried that there would be people we were inviting out of obligation rather than a desire for them to be there and so that went out of the window. I had thought before a spa day with just my mum or something might be nice, but even that didn't feel quite right, so it was back to the drawing board again. 

In the end I thought I would do the same thing as we have done for the wedding and take an approach of it's my party and I'm going to do what I want. 

One thing I did realise with it was that my ability to organise is shocking, and my ability to understand dates has got worse since having my son because I don't need to know what day or date it is most of the time, so there were a few people that I realised last minute that had I sat down and thought about it properly, I would have invited, but inviting people on the day of felt like an afterthought, which it wasn't but I think I've found the reason that the hen do is organised by your maid of honour or bridesmaids and it's because splitting focus between the wedding and the hen means you kind of do everything wrong.

I had desperately wanted to go to a certain Italian restaurant in Manchester, but when I came to book it, getting a table before 9pm wasn't possible, and we were meeting up earlier than that so I wasn't really up for going out for drinks and then going there because it was a group of neurodivergent friends and I, and we can get loud without realising it when we're sober, and I didn't want to interrupt other people's dinners, especially not there and especially not when the place was having a busy night, so instead I chose an Indian place which I love and got to introduce my super foodie friend to it. That never happens! There's also something very apt about it being a hen night and chaat bombs, because giving people warnings that they will go everywhere if you bite them. How is it that EVERY TIME someone does not heed the warning? So the night started with yoghurt everywhere and went from there. 

It wasn't a traditional thing in any way shape or form, because it was me and my male friends, I hated the white dress I had been planning on wearing so grabbed something black instead (and my green Doc Martens, so got to feel so like myself that it was incredible), and instead of doing the somewhat popular activity, food, drowning your liver in your tipple of choice we started with drinking at dinner and it all escalated from there. The lads hadn't known each other at the start of the night, but one of the great things is that they will now know each other at the wedding and that makes me feel a lot calmer, because people coming on their own who don't know anyone else there makes me worry. I don't want anyone to feel left out during the wedding, so it's good that they've got someone they vaguely know and once got drunk with.

It's also not lost on me that the people who were able to make it are those who don't have children, and those who couldn't make it have, because I know that had it been someone else's night and my son was ill, or he'd been a live wire for the day and I was exhausted, I wouldn't have made it either, and even though I do bring him up in conversation quite a bit, it was nice that the hen do wasn't completely about being his mum.

The night ended with my very soon to be husband picking up three of us and driving us home whilst I was insufferably drunk, and putting up with me as he does so well, and only partly because I've promised to do the same for him after his stag do.

I don't know whether it's that the hen do has happened or by sheer proximity, but everything for the wedding is feeling a lot more real now and whilst I love that, it is making me very nervous about things arriving on time or getting everything packed and to the venue, getting last things like hair cuts and nails done (why am I suddenly a person who cares about getting my nails done!) and I have genuinely considered starting to pack suitcases of bits we need but I keep telling myself that that is a bit neurotic, but I probably won't be able to hold off that long because it's getting very close now. 

I'm sure that a few people who have read this blog for a while will be glad when the wedding stuff goes off, but when it's so close and it's such a big thing in your life, it's obviously something you're going to talk about a lot of the time, and even when I don't, people ask.

I May Have Mentioned This Before,

 But I'm tired and I'm trying so let's just go with it.

One of the "fun" things about getting married is that it changes the way that you register the birth or births of any future children. When our son was born it was assumed that I was his mother, but because my partner and I weren't married at the time, until we went and formally registered his birth and put my partner's name on the birth certificate, he didn't have any legal parental responsibility for him. How that would have worked had something gone wrong I don't really know, but thankfully one of the things that happens following a marriage is that a child is assumed to belong to both the birthing parent and their spouse. (As far as I am aware it is the same for non-binary or same sex couples.)

I'm just going to note that I'm saying I was assumed to be his mother because there are a few legal sticky bits if there's been surrogacy involved or any mix ups at fertility clinics, though I believe they are thankfully very few and far between!

Naturally, that only impacts any future children we have as opposed to the little guy we have now, so what happens with him? Well, we have to re-register his birth as a child of our marriage. Before you say, well he's not, I know. Before you say it's stupid, I know, it is. But it is a legal requirement and what gets even more ridiculous is that it's not even because he's under a certain age. No matter - as I understand it - the age of the child (even if they're an adult) their birth has to be re-registered. And yes, legally you have to do it, even though there is no specific timeline on which you have to do it. (Or a penalty for not doing, as far as I understand.)

And as with a lot of things, I had a bit of an emotional reaction to this, because it feels a bit like re-writing history as though I'm embarrassed that my partner and I weren't married at the time that we had my son and as though that means something about my son. I know in the past it has and there have been some names which people use to describe children born outside of a marriage, and the reason is - at least in part - the inheritance law which was why this appointment existed, but the really stupid thing is, that has been changed! But the marriage law or the registration part wasn't and I don't understand why. To me, it seems like it's just giving the registry office something more to do, as though they're not actually busy (which they are) and stopping these appointments, which are done for free, would free up time to do other things like marriage notice appointments (which are paid for) or marriages (which are paid for) or register births. When we registered little man's birth we registered him in the local authority he was born in (which you have to) and we were able to do that when he was 3 days old, but in the one we live in, you couldn't get an appointment for a few weeks, and there are certain things you need the birth certificate to do, like open a bank account or get a passport, so it seems crazy to have to offer needless appointments which take time away from very important ones!

Even if you're not a big believer in marriage or it's not something you are particularly fussed about, there are things which make it sensible, like thinking about inheritance if something happened to one of you, or for ensuring that if something bad happens, you are the legal next of kin. I realise that all seems to be for planning "if something bad happens" but in those situations, marriage becomes important and not being married is just another stress on top of an already stressful situation. For some, it's the protection of if you split, assets are divided and there is the ability to have the situation looked at from the outside, because if there are kids involved, one of you likely had to pause your career in order to look after them, even if it was for a short time, and financial contributions wouldn't look 50/50, but that's not all there is to family life. 

I think this went in a different direction than I was originally intending, but that happens when you write a blog in two halves. 

Insomnia Hits Different Now,

Before I got pregnant - God, that seems like such a long time ago now - I used to get really aggravated when people would tell me that I didn't know what tired was because I wasn't and never had been a parent. It honestly bugged the hell out of me. Now that I am a parent, it still bugs the hell out of me. 

Here's the thing. I've had sleep issues for a long time and when I was writing over one of the summers after I was in college, I got into this fabulous routine where I was going to sleep around 2am and getting up around 10am and I was wildly more functional as a person than I have been in a long time. All of a sudden I was getting enough sleep and getting through sleep cycles so I actually felt rested and it was just glorious, but it's a sleep pattern that doesn't fit in with work or with a lot of things and it certainly doesn't fit in with my son, partly because he is still working on the idea of a sleep routine...

Insomnia hits differently now because I used to give myself the permission to sleep more when I could, and I don't really get to do that as much anymore because my son doesn't always love naps and sometimes by the time he gets down for a nap I'm too awake to also have a nap, but also because the point where it becomes a problem and the point where I can do something about it have swapped now. If I realise I'm hitting the point of exhaustion where I need a solid sleep, I need to take some meds to help me sleep before about 10pm, but most of the time I don't figure out that I'm actually struggling until about 1am and then it's too late to be able to do anything, because the type of meds that help me sleep can leave me slightlu incapacitated which isn't an option when I'm the only adult who will be in the house for a few hours with my son and it's also a time when he is likely to be awake and need attention.

People told me that you find a new reserve of energy and you're able to get through the day and unless I'm missing something or that doesn't kick in until you go back to work, it's not happened unfortunately, and I'm worried that it won't, but I guess I will have to wait to find out... 

My Latest Obsession,

Well, one of.

We have a "decent sized" garden, and in that "decent sized" garden, we have a number of fruit trees, and when we moved in last year the fruit hadn't been picked or collected from the ground and so there was a massive slippery carpet of rotting apples which made it very difficult for the mobility challenged being developing her own centre of gravity due to how big she was (me...) to get around the garden or to the bottom of it, which is sad because the river is at the bottom and I like the river and I missed it.

In order to address the issue of the apples, which I worried would attract floods of rats (they didn't) I wanted a composter because our lovely council are one of these that have decided you need to pay extra for a garden waste collection and it wound me up so I said no (in hindsight, massively stupid decision.) So I bought a composter and my dad dug up a patch of grass so it could go onto the bare earth, and then a rat (only one, not the armies of them I had imagined) got into it, so we dug down, pressed it into the ground a bit and then the rat got in again, and I got annoyed... but we collected a reasonably large number of apples more than once - like a couple of washing baskets full of apples on at least three occasions - and tossed them in before realising that whole apples in a composter don't rot down amazingly well, so it's like they're sitting there and waiting for the rats, so we got an apple scratter an put it on the end of my partners SDS drill. For the uninitiated, we got a drill bit with a propeller like blade on it and put it onto my future husband's REALLY BIG drill, and we minced those rotting apples like they were going to become the worst cider ever invented. And then we chucked them back into the composter with a bunch of shredded paper and cardboard and other things which get classed as "brown" no matter what colour they are. And then it was winter so nothing much composts but apple season was over and we couldn't get everything off the floor but it gave the birds something to eat, and the rodents something to eat which gave the birds something to do... And it gave the cats something else to do other than trying to get the birds. 

As the windfall apples started to come down this year (and the pear and the blackberries and the elderberries and before this gets too romantic sounding, the nettles, the thistles and all of the other weeds...) I looked at that composter and thought, well, that's crap. Let's try something else.

That bin collection I never wanted to pay for, well, we have two of the bins going spare, so why not start a composter in one of those. Because my partner said no. But then I found a great video about how you can produce compost in a wheelie bin in 30 days so I told him I was doing it and it was fine because if or when we decided to use the bin, it wouldn't take too long to clear it out. Except it's not bloody working. 

I was aiming to get it going to a good, hot composter and then I could chuck all of my seeded weeds in there and cook them and it would have been great, wouldn't it, except I did basically everything right like leaving space for ventilation - I even propped the lid open for a few hours a day to get oxygen into it, I tore up cardboard and was careful to only add the non-plasticy cardboard in, and I didn't dump all the wood ash into it - I didn't put any in - and I mixed the green and brown stuff and I added an accelerator and it is not moving. At all. I even turn it. I don't do it every day (to help it build the heat) but I turn it, I poke it, I get oxygen right into it and keep it the right level of moist and it's just not playing ball. 

So I ask my partner to get me the water butt from behind the garage so I can check why it's empty (spoiler alert: it was cracked, which should have been expected) and then he says, why don't you make that a composter? And I say because the tap is broken and he looks at me like my label has dropped off because he doesn't give a shit about compost. And then I say, I could make it into a womery, and then it's too late because I've ordered the worms and we'll just see how that goes, right? Well, first problem, yeah, the tap is broken and in trying to remove it, we broke it worse and I then couldn't find the new tap I bought so worry that the worms, who hadn't arrived yet, would try and escape through the hole. So partner plugs the hole where the tap was. There's still the crack on the bottom so we need to place this carefully, but we manage, and then it's ah, what if the "worm tea" - not edible or drinkable, but it feeds your soil - doesn't drain quickly through the crack? No worries, I've layered ticks and leaves at the bottom and it's letting the oxygen in, too. Plus there is a big hole in the lid where the gutter used to go in... 

Then the worms arrive. So they're in situ and I'm hoping for the best, but when I went out today to check on them, one was near the top of the bin and I can't see any more of them... And then I emptied one of the hoovers into it because it's full of dog hair and a spider from the nursery which somehow survived being vacuumed up and has made clear that the wormery now belongs to it so I'm not sticking my hand in there, gloved or otherwise, to dig around and see if they're just hiding... But I'm also now worried because the hole in the top which is great for ventilation or for just dropping bits and pieces through will also let in a lot of rain and let the cold in when the weather turns, so now I'm wondering if I should attach a piece of gutter pipe with either a corner or a U shape on the top to stop the rain getting in... Before I do that though, I want proof of life on the little wrigglers and more than just the one of them.

It may be that I just haven't got the patience and I need to wait for the good bacteria and the rest of the food chain to move in, but I also kind of wanted rolling composters, but they're expensive, or a biodigester, but that's silly, and I do wonder if I need to get some cow or horse manure to get it started like you do with biodigesters, but I think they do anaerobic no aerobic breakdown which isn't what I'm going for, because it stinks, so not sure if that would help. Honestly, I've been tempted by an entire zoo of animals, but it's mainly to keep on top of the bloody garden waste. 

It's a project. We always knew it was a project and it's just proving that it is.

Worries Of An Allergy Mum,

OK, so I can completely understand how this might come across as being one of those posts that could be，you know, privileged, or tone deaf, but I don't think that it is even if it might come across that way.

This is about something which really bugs me, but in order to get into it I need to give a little bit of context. My son was diagnosed with CMPA which stands for Cow's Milk Protein Allergy. It's not hugely uncommon and it's not life threatening, and he's actually really lucky in that his skin symptoms have been pretty mild and sporadic and even his gastric symptoms which have been tough for him and for me and for his dad haven't been anything like as bad as they could have been. Thankfully we've not had any 'raspberry jam' type nappies or issues where we thought there was bleeding going on, and I'm glad of that because I think I would panic so much at something like that, because I've panicked enough with the symptoms he did have, partly because knowing how to manage them has been just a case of trying anything and continuously trying our best, but knowing that our best isn't fixing the issue and sometimes doing our best has been the hardest thing we could do.

We're finally at the point where we have a diagnosis and because of that we've been referred to the allergy clinic, we've been advised that we'll go through a process called The Milk Ladder and we have been prescribed a hypoallergenic milk which is "hydrolysed"; I'm not going to pretend that I know what that means, but Google says it's a substance that has been broken down with either water, enzymes or acid, so I guess the protein which he can't digest has been treated to make it so he doesn't react to it, or to help his body learn to process it.

We went through a process to get the diagnosis which included a two week "exclusion" period, so he wasn't having any dairy and he was on one version of the milk and when he was still having issues afterwards he was put onto a second version. So there's Aptamil Pepti 1, which is for babies who aren't weaning yet and Pepti 2 which is for babies who are weaning. I believe there's also a junior version which is for very small babies or premies and that is just scary as anything to me. Premie babies and their parents are going through enough without a dairy allergy or intolerance considering that milk is the only food babies have for the first few months of their lives! There are a bunch of others - SMA do one, there's something called Nutromigen - but what our doctor tends to prescribe, as I understand it, is Apatmil. 

Obviously, our situation is not unique and a lot of babies get diagnosed with CMPA or CMPI (Cow's Milk Protein Allergy or Cow's Milk Protein Intolerance - not sure what the difference is or if there really is one...) and I know some people see a difference if they move over to Kendamil Goat Milk, but we've used one lot of Kendamil before and bubs did not get along with it at all, and honestly, it is expensive as hell. Obviously if it was for the best for my son I would pay it, but our health visitor and doctor advised the route that we're currently on. I should also say, that's absolutely zero hate on Kendamil. I think they're an awesome brand and I'm pretty sure they're the closest to a local brand we could get for baby formula, but things like scale of production mean goat's milk is always more expensive than cow's and it's no different when it comes to formula. 

So, Pepti milk, on prescription. Sounds great, right? Well, it is, but it changes the game completely not in terms of some things - it's made the same way, you don't need extra equipment etc - but in others, because I like Costco and other bulk buy types of ideas, not just from the perspective of saving money but also in terms of the security. There is a security which comes from having multiples weeks of months worth of formula in the house instead of still at the shop.

In just the time of my pregnancy and the time my son has been alive we've experienced formula shortages which weren't on the scale of that which was experienced through COVID but enough to make parents feel a sort of food insecurity regarding their baby's milk, and there have been a number of recalls across multiple brands for contamination of milk with a bacteria which made several babies rather ill. Their food Made. Them. Ill. As a parent, you're going to blame yourself because you chose the brand of food and you gave them that bottle, but even if you didn't buy any of the affected batches, that food gets recalled and then there is a scarcity of it. When you get a baby onto a formula, you don't keep changing it without a reason, so to not be able to get your brand or your line of product - like the hungry baby or the comfort milk instead of the standard - is an issue, so when it's in stock, you buy a couple. When you go to the shops, you grab a can or two to put to the back of the fridge so that whatever happens, you have some to spare. COVID kind of came out of nowhere, or at least it escalated pretty damn quickly and one of the things which was massively interrupted (though maybe more for Americans, I don't know, I didn't have a baby at the time) was baby formula production and so there was a shortage. We used to keep at least a full 

Costco pack of formula ahead, so 3 700g cans, which was enough for about 18 days when he stopped having it, and we would be working through a pack of the ready made bottles because if we were out of the house it was just easier. When you're on prescription milk, you can't really do that. 

With a prescription, if you need it earlier than expected it can feel like you're having to explain yourself as to why. When I ordered our last lot I told the receptionist that our son had been drinking extra bottles because of the heat and he wouldn't drink water. It's true, but it was also because he was as angry as a baby can be that we were changing his bottle schedule from what he was used to of five bottles at seven ounces a bottle per day to four bottles a day at eight ounces a time. So I tried something different of doing two eight and three sixes, so instead of the original thirty five ounces or the expected thirty two, I had him on thirty four. But two ounces or three ounces a day makes a difference. After only two to three days it's the difference of a whole bottle and that's before you think about using it for making weaning muffins or anything else, because we still don't know if he's allergic to anything else so obviously if I'm making him anything dairy free I just want to use his own formula because - at least in theory - I know that's safe, but using that would mean that I'm making his milk last even less and I'm concerned that the doctors would tell me that I can't then have a prescription and he would have nothing he could eat, or drink, I guess. It's also not beyond the realms of possibility for me to drop a can or knock it over and the lids are CRAP, so even if it is "on" a dropped can might end up all over the floor, and then obviously would need to be replaced. It's thankfully not happened to us yet, but it could and that scares me. It's also not stocked in most pharmacies so they have to order it in and it can take a day or so.

Because of all of this worry and this is where we come to the crux of what I have been getting annoyed about, I have been looking on Facebook marketplace and Vinted (even though Vinted technically don't allow formula to be sold there) to pick up a can or two which aren't the ridiculous Amazon prices of Pepti, just to give myself a bit of breathing space, but I get really angry at some of the listings. 

I realise this is already really long so I'm going to try and cut a lot of the venting I did when I was dictating this one, but I get people who have bought cans on Amazon selling them to try and recover some of their costs, but some people have the gall to sell their prescription tins as though they paid Amazon prices for them. They're there with the prescription label still on them or in the paper Boots bag the way they come from the pharmacy and I honestly think it's not right. I know people take opportunities to make a quick buck but these people know how hard it is being an allergy mum and then they're trying to make money off of other allergy mums. It's not even like they're doing something like creating a local bakery which makes weaning muffins and caters to allergies or something, they're just selling something that was free to them at the point of use (because let's face it, prescriptions are not free. Aptamil aren't making it out of the goodness of their hearts.)

But some allergy parents, whether they have weaned their kid or they were wrongly diagnosed or they didn't get along with that particular brand, they get rid of their full cans for free to those who need them. I love those other parents. Those other parents have given me so much breathing space by meaning I have some spare so that I can wait for my prescription to come through, or I can make a batch of muffins for Little man to destroy and throw all over my kitchen, without having to worry that I'm risking the supply that we have for his bottles. And maybe it's wrong, but if I ever did need to get more so badly that I would need to pay for some of it from someone else, I would be looking at sellers who had bought it rather than were attempting to resell what they got for free, because it winds me up that much.

And don't get me started on those who list it as free and then say "I'm going to have to charge you X per thing..." No, love, you are not.  

Getting Your Money's Worth,

I probably shouldn't write some of this, or at least I shouldn't post a part of it, but whatever...

When it comes to wedding photography I know a lot of people have opinions on how expensive it can be and there are a lot of people who claim they don't have the budget for it so could a friend or family member do them a favour or would a photography student do it for cheap or for snacks or something. I realise that it can be a pretty huge expense, especially if you're DIYing a lot of the wedding day, but good photos don't just happen.

It's worth mentioning that there is a lot of pressure on a photographer to get the perfect wedding photos, with shot lists, expectations of styles and all that as well as things like family members expecting to use the opportunity to get some free family portraits (translation: family portraits paid for by someone else). It's not just on Reddit, I have genuinely seen it happen. There's also the whole thing of giving up their weekend - photography very often isn't someone's main job - travelling, all of the correspondence leading up to a wedding and all of the editing afterwards to get a perfect or as close to perfect as possible of the happiest day of a couple's lives. When booking, it might seem like you're paying upwards of £100 an hour, or sometimes a hell of a lot more than that, but let's not pretend that the hours on site at the wedding are the only hours that a photographer is working on your wedding.

With all of that said, it's still a hefty bill, so how do you make the most out of it? 

For us, we have a couple of spaces in our house which are currently occupied with almost like stock photo sort of things, which we will be replacing with our wedding photos. We know there will be certain family members who will want a photo in their house, too, which is fine, but when you think about the number of photos you get - I think our package includes something like 300 fully edited photos or something - how do you make the most of those when you've spent as much as you have? 

I guess one good way is to make sure that other parts of the family do get to enjoy the opportunity for family portraits, as long as you feel you have enough of you as a couple and enough family photographs with the bride and groom etc. Or you could post them all over social media at literally any given opportunity? 

I'm not talking about posting just after your wedding, or on your anniversary, or even the cutesy little anniversaries that some people know, and love, and remember, like the first date, when you became "official", your first kiss and all that, but things that have NOTHING to do with your wedding, but are an excuse to trot out the photos again like no other photos of that person exist or no one else has ever got married. 

Things like, sister's birthday - here's a photo of sister and the couple or one of the couple, and it's the only one you post congratulating them on their birthday, or the first 3 of 5 are from your wedding before two random ones - a child in the family has a last day of school or birthday or other milestone, and again, the only photos used or the main photos are from your wedding... It might be just me, but I find it kind of annoying, and kind of a bit selfish or self involved. I know weddings are a big thing and it's something you spend more time planning and stressing about than you actually get enjoying it, because the typical thing is to spend between 9 to 18 months planning and the event is just a day, but I do think people can be insane about it, especially people who go on about their wedding year, or whatever. I referred to an appointment as 'the Monday of wedding week' earlier and I was nearly sick in my own mouth as I said it, because yeah, it's the week of our wedding, and yes, we're going to be pretty busy getting stuff done that week, but I don't expect anyone else other than my future husband, my son (and even that one isn't really by choice) myself and maybe our parents at a push to give a stuff. 

When it gets to the day of the wedding, yeah, I kind of expect people to give a rat's behind, and if things aren't to their taste or what they would have done, I don't want to hear it, because it's not about them. If the photographer is busy trying to get our photos and they try to interrupt, I will probably get snippy, because we have our priorities for photos and that's what's important, but I'm not going to be spending the next few years posting them all over social media because for one thing my son will be on a lot of them and we're not posting him, and for another, I just don't expect everyone to care for too long afterwards.

As a tangent from all of this as well, I don't think I know the etiquette for posting your wedding photos on social media...

It's not so much about posting ours, but for weddings we attend I wonder when is the right time to mention or remind people we don't post photos of our son and don't want them to either, especially not on public profiles. But is that just restricted to kids? We have a couple of kids in the family that aren't posted onto social media and some of it is parental choice and some of it isn't (e.g. one is technically in foster and as a blanket rule foster children cannot be posted) but what about adult who don't use social media or who don't like photos being taken of them or don't like them being posted? Do you mention it before the wedding? Surely you can't mention it during the wedding!?! How long after should you leave it? Do you wait until a photo is posted and then ask for it to be removed? Well then the permissions or copyright or whatever has already been passed to the social media company or whatever, so surely that's too late? 

I really have no idea how to navigate that. 

Parenting Fails,

I was recently talking to some other mums about parenting fails, and then it went completely out of my head until I had a corker of one today. 

The ones we were talking about are the moments that make you feel like the worst parent ever, like when the pram falls over, whether it be because you've attached things to the back of it (guilty) and miscalculated or something happens and you hit something the wheels won't go over, or kids just have a bit of an accident where they fall off of things because they don't know what gravity is or what heights are. Thankfully when the pram toppled over on me, I grabbed it pretty quickly, and could see little man was just hanging out because he was well strapped in and he actually thought it was a game...

Well, today I was trying to find out what little man weighed and the best way that I can do that is weigh myself holding him and weigh myself when I've put him down, so when I had weighed myself holding him I needed to put him down and the best place I could think of was to put him in his bath seat, because it was close by, and I didn't think about the fact that there is a dimple in the middle of the seat... which was full of water from his last bath...

So there's me pulling my kid out of his bath seat in a soggy sleep suit and a nappy that had been brand new five minutes before but was now soggy on the outside, so I had to do a full strip change on him, and because I couldn't strip him off in the bathroom I soaked my t-shirt getting him back to his nursery for a change. 

I don't know if this is just normal of parenting or normal of ADHD or normal of ADHD parenting or if it's just me being rather special because I have a bad habit of slopping yoghurt down my shirt because I accidentally tip the yoghurt bit of a Clusters too much. Hilarious stupidity is something I tend to do a lot of, though it's normally more things like falling over my own feet, falling over things I've warned other people about or forgetting to take a towel with me before getting in the shower and then having to do a mad, naked dash through the house whilst soggy.