Brazenmom

I had to feel sorry for poor Broccoli the other night. My daughter (twenty months old) ate cauliflower-broccoli-pancetta mac ‘n’ cheese for dinner; she gobbled it down but not so haphazardly that she failed to delicately remove delicious Broccoli and place Him on the side of her plate.

It was not the first time my little lovely has eaten Broccoli but probably the first time that He has been so… obvious in her meal. I found it highly amusing that she pretty much has no idea what Broccoli tastes like but found Him suspicious anyway. Cauliflower did not receive the same treatment, most likely because He blended quite nicely into the cheesy macaroni sauce, but poor Broccoli was pronounced guilty with no trial. Not very democratic.

Amused as I was, I expect my child to eat her vegetables and the ‘no biscuit unless you finish your dinner’ worked a charm. Broccoli was gobbled and swallowed Read the rest of this entry »

My little girl doesn’t like Mondays. After a weekend full of daddy time, and undivided mommy attention, Monday just sucks – daddy cycles off to work and mommy’s eyes are glued to her writing tasks.

Poor Amelia… poor mommy.

Grumpy Mondays are composed of various antics aimed at drawing my attention away from my work. When Amelia’s look-at-me-mommy shrieks and now-mommy-now wails are ignored, my person becomes a jungle gym and my lap a springboard – it’s sort of hard to ignore the human chimp that is my daughter. Read the rest of this entry »

The V&A Museum of Childhood is hosting an exhibition From The Tiger Who Came to Tea to Mog and Pink Rabbit, which runs from 28 May – 2 September 2011. The exhibition offers a retrospective of Judith Kerr, whose vast body of work includes the popular Mog series and The Tiger Who Came to Tea, as well as her autobiographical novel When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, which charts her childhood fleeing Hitler’s Germany in 1933 with her family.

… which is all quite fabulous but what BrazenMom are really interested in is the exciting range of products produced in conjunction with the exhibition, from masks and stickers for children to enjoy to mounted prints to be hung on the wall, greeting cards and tiger tea and biscuits. Read the rest of this entry »

Nature can be fearsome; tsunamis, hurricanes, cyclones, volcanoes, earthquakes… rustling leaves.

The gurus of all things mommy say that sometimes children have strange phobias and that parents should never mock or belittle their children if they develop a fear of something… well, something random I guess.

I agree. Is it okay if we mock them behind their backs? I’ll say ‘yes’ for the sake of my story and make sure that my nineteen-month-old daughter only reads it when she has developed a sense of humour. Read the rest of this entry »

James Joyce, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Mary Shelly, Leo Tolstoy and Oscar Wilde.

THINK… think of a time when both war and peace abound; a time when Dorian Gray meets with Frankenstein and Huckleberry Finn under a lighthouse to discuss the portrait of an artist as a young man whilst listening to the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock…

Such a time is bullsh*t… or perhaps the makings of an M. Night Shyamalan horror film… thing. Read the rest of this entry »

My little girl loves animals, animals and insects (flies included), but the ones that go ‘quack quack’ are particularly cool.

I took my cheeky-chops to Hyde Park the other day to hang out with the ducks and swing some delicious bread their way. She had a ball and showed no fear when a rather large ducky came her way ready to peck the bread right out of her hand. Said bread was hurriedly plucked from said toddler’s hand and tossed into the lake where said duck took a rather voracious dive.

When Amelia wondered off on one of her man-on-a-mission tangents (instigated by the site of a puddle that was calling to be splashed in), I took it as a tacit sign that she was over the ducks.

Many puddles later, we discovered a herd of pigeons – yes, a herd. Read the rest of this entry »

My little girl can say please. Well… ‘peas’, if we’re going to get technical. Amelia’s daddy and I, with the help of Persistent Repetition, have taught my 18-month-old sweetheart that if she would like something, “please” is the word. She also ‘signs’ please by bringing her little hands up to her chest in a beautiful gesture of all things polite.

We started by asking her to say “please” when she gets a treat after lunch or dinner. And after a couple of days she had cottoned on to the concept… almost too well. I am now faced with the Beast of Please also known as ‘Peas’, whose best friend is Unparalleled Sweetness. Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Diary, I need to pick your brain. Desperately.

So here’s the deal: in November we’re hauling our asses on a plane to South Africa to visit family and friends. It’s a 12-ish hour stop-over flight that travels overnight. And I can think of nothing more unpleasant.

Seriously.

I prefer the thought of gouging my eye with a blunt knife (even a spoon) to imagining the tedious horror of keeping my daughter occupied for the flight’s duration. “She’ll sleep” you tell me, “HA HA” I tell you. Read the rest of this entry »

My 18-month-old daughter has fallen in love with a wooden flower. Last night, as I was reading Amelia a bedtime story, she sat happily in my lap, cradling her beloved orange tulip as she listened to the tale.

The first thing Amelia does when she wakes up in the morning is hunt for her flower. When Flower is unearthed from the rubble under which it is frequently buried, Amelia brings Flower to me for a quick sniff. Whilst extremely proud that my daughter understands that flowers smell pretty, sniffing a wooden flower again and again , other than utterly bizarre, becomes a tad… tedious. Read the rest of this entry »

A children’s book for grown-ups

Let’s not kid; sleep deprivation is hellish. One of the sacrifices demanded by parenthood is the pleasure of a good night’s sleep. Whether it’s midnight feedings, distressed cries or the worry of late night escapades, our children plan on keeping us awake for a good 18 years, and probably long after.

With this in mind, California Book Award-winning author Adam Mansbach has written a foul-mouthed, tongue-in-cheek bedtime book for parents who live in the real world. Go the Fuck to Sleep tells it like it is; that a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don’t always send a toddler sailing blissfully off to dreamland. Read the rest of this entry »