Category Archives: Parenting

Newborns Are Awesome Book Launch!

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It’s been ten years since I published a book. TEN YEARS.

I don’t know where it’s gone. I don’t know where I’ve been. I don’t know what’s happened.

A woman I mention this to throws an arm over my shoulders, stares off into the distance and gently whispers, ‘Motherhood is what’s happened’, like we are just out of the trenches, back from battle.

She is just shy of throwing a ciggie into my gob and pouring us both a neat whiskey (which I could really go for right now tbh).

I’m still muddling through my feelings about it all – did I lose myself? Did I give myself over fully to my family and just park everything? No, that can’t be right, because it’s been FUN, right? And hard work, and rewarding, and all I ever wanted, and nothing like I expected – exhilarating, exhausting, nerve-racking, endlessly entertaining.

Right?

Well, of course, it’s just that whenever we mothers thought we might do something for ourselves; something nice, something.. selfish… the tendency has always been to park that if a family member has other needs that seem somewhat more important than our own. And especially when those family members are cute little ones.

But mine are getting a little more grown up now. They don’t wake me up at 5am for Shreddies and Paw Patrol re-runs any more or need my attention all day. They don’t sneak into my bed in the middle of the night for cuddles, sending my heart soaring but my back into spasms. They play independently, they walk the dogs without me.. they can make toast!

One day last summer, with that extra bit of time on my hands to have a cup of tea alone and ponder life’s mysteries.. I had an unexpected jolt to the soul. An invisible defibrillator was applied to my creative heart by the universe and I remembered with a bang –

I used to be a writer!

I’ve written almost every day since and have had so much rejection for my scripts it would make your eyes water but I am loving it. I am loving remembering who I am and what I was put on this earth to do. I am me again!

Newborns Are Awesome is the first in a series of children’s books that I have in the works. It charts the developmental phases of a newborn up to twelve months of age and is beautifully illustrated by the wonderful Sarah Marsh.

We are having a launch party at Skinny Batch Bakery on April 25th, hosted by Jennifer Stevens, Editor at the Sunday Times. All are welcome and the proceeds are going to the Gaza Paediatric Care Initiative.

RSVPs to info@raisingireland.com so we know how many cakes to make!

 

Link

Ass Monkey and I have moved house now a total of FOUR TIMES since Jacob was born. 

That’s four counts of “I am going to punch you right in the face if you don’t bubble wrap my favourite coffee mug properly before chucking it into the moving boxes” in the last eleven years.

So.. what’s wrong with us? Well, first we were renting near Dublin City Centre and fell foul of one shit landlord and one sound landlord but ultimately we were saving for a house.

In 2014 we moved into what we thought was our ‘Forever Home’ when I was pregnant with Eva in Rush, North Co. Dublin.

And while we LOVED that house and raised our two kids from babies in it AND welcomed Poochi the Wonder Dog #2 – it really never felt like we settled there and we just couldn’t put our finger on it.

Carn Hill House

Until we saw Carn Hill House for sale – an amazing 1930s home between Rush and Skerries in North Co. Dublin. It had, “I’m broken, come fix me” written all over it and you know Alan and I are suckers for a structural sob story.

Cue to almost a year of fighting with the banks (more about those pricks later), some serious doubts about the state of our mental health in taking this on (like, there’s no central heating in the house – AT ALL) and we moved the kids and dogs into their new home.

There is still SO MUCH WORK to do but we are cracking into it. You can follow the progress Here on it’s very own Insta page if you like!

8 Top Tips For Moving House With Kids and Pets:

  1. Don’t do it.
  2. Just kidding – definitely do it if and when you gotta do it.
  3. Don’t tell the kids too much too soon. The entire of Eva’s class and therefore, the town we live in, knew that we had ‘bought that house on the hill’ LONG before we had signed the contracts. Scarlet.
  4. Bring the pets for regular visits before Moving Day. They need a sniff around, they need to feel safe – you don’t want them flipping out and hopping the wall to back and take a dump at your old front door for the new owners to find on their morning commute.
  5. Don’t move in with your parents while your husband is getting things ready (more on this later).
  6. Don’t believe your husband when he tells you it will only take approx 3 weeks to get things ready (more on these ABSOLUTE LIES later).
  7. Interior Design is not and should never be, a family sport. Sometimes I fall foul of having the ‘What colour curtains would you like in your room?” chat and suffer two hours of serious pondering, group trips to Ikea, painted illustrations of all the things someone might like, instead of just going and chucking up what I wanted in the first place behind their backs.
  8. Keep this mantra alive: “You Can Only Do What You Can Do In One Day”. Set a timer, do a small bit, take a break, drink some wine, hug your kids, thank your other half – you’ll get there and it will be FABULOUS. I promise x

Jacob and Eva were so happy to see the sign go up!

Communion? What a Waste of a Year.

Eva is now in second class. AKA ‘Oh lovely, she’s in communion year’.

Except that she’s not making her communion because we are not a religious family.

Yes she’s in an Irish Catholic school BECAUSE THEY ALL ARE (I know, I know, Educate Together are great but not always accessible to everyone) and they are genuinely a super school.

One of the best.

If it wasn’t for the religious aspect.

At age 8, Eva is in that fabulous phase of being curious about everything, reading every book she can get her hands on, making flower perfume, studying nature, wanting to know what the inside of the moon looks like, practising maths – just aching for knowledge.

And she would have acquired considerably more knowledge by now in second class if her teacher didn’t have to task her with making pictures of glowing holy chalices from teeny pieces of yellow crepe paper – y’know, to decorate the parish church.

Today I am told that the entire class went to said church by bus to run through the ceremony and the three kids who won’t be participating in the communion sat at the back of the church with nothing to do. They didn’t even have a book between them.

The saddest part is that there is a library right next door that would have enlightened their brilliant minds with stories and history and art that they didn’t step foot in.

If it is important to you that your kid goes through the motions of making their communion for whatever reasons you hold personal to you, that’s fine, you do that.

But my kid was hoping to go to school to get an education.

Is 11 the New 14?

Jacob is 11.

11. Sounds like a little kids age, right?

“An eleven year old with a dream of being an astronaut was surprised on the Late Late Toy Show with a visit from a NASA space engineer’.

You’d think, ‘Cute, that little kid had their dream come true!’. Right?

Except that Jacob is not little, in size or in typically child-like anecdotal behaviour, although he does seem to have developed a whopper attitude. What a joy.

The thing is, he’s sort of become a man and I’m not even quite sure when it happened.

He’s as tall as me and his granny, and although neither of us are supermodel height we’re still, like, average size adults.

He’s independent in a way that I wasn’t ready for – not at all interested in reading books or cooking together or, dare I say it, have a cuddle on the couch while watching a movie. He would rather eat his own schoolbag.

He’s growing up, physically, mentally and emotional rate that is so speedy, my head is spinning.

It feels like we blinked and somehow time-hopped from him building a snail motel in the garden with his sister to his needing size 10 football boots. That’s right, he’s a giant.

I’m trying not to be too emosh about it but it’s hard. Jacob was my first baby and we have been the best of buds since the day he was born.

In the ‘Wha?’ moments (you know the ones…Me: ‘Good morning honey, would you like porridge for breakfast?’ Him (blank stare): ‘Wha?’, I’m digging deep to not take it too personally.

And also to keep on loving him. Because some days, you want to take their Size 10 football boots and shove them up their…

… I’ll let you finish that sentence.

Good luck with your teens. They are going to be living with you sooner than you think.

Sharyn x

 

The Good, The Blog & The Ugly

Eva starts school this September. We got the letter at the beginning of the year, asking us to nominate our school preference for her, and I thought, ‘They have this wrong. She doesn’t go until next year, right?!’

WRONG. Our baby girl turns 5 this July and off she pops then to school after the summer holidays.

But where did that time go? And have I spent enough time hanging out with her, doing girlie things and just staring at her perfect little face?!

 

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I’m not sure if Eva likes her new dressing table @presentcompanyskerries … (she loves it!) #shoplocal #localbusiness #supportlocal

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Of course not, so I did what any normal parent would do – freaked the f*ck out, tossed and turned with mammy guilt and anguish, pondered all of my options and.. cut her pre-school hours in half to spend more time with her.

Now, instead of collecting her at 3pm every day, I cram as much work as I possibly can into a 3.5 hour morning and get her just after noon.

And we’ve been having A BALL. We’ve hit all the playgrounds and cafes in our local area, we’ve snuck off to Smyths, we’ve done each others nails, we’ve danced to the Lego Movie 2 soundtrack (it’s actually brilliant) and I’ve stared at her perfect little face a LOT.

 

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What do you think @muamakeup_x – a makeup artist in the making? (I’m still trying to get the glitter off me today!!😃😂)

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The benefits of all of this to our relationship, I know, are endless, but on a personal level I’ve gotten so much more than I bargained out of it.

I’ve stopped for a minute. And I’ve realised a few things – for starters, I’ve bloody missed writing (so hurray! Here I am!!).

Then there was the stress I hadn’t realised I’d been carrying – and ignoring – for who knows how long. I went to the dentist with a sore tooth recently to be told that I was grinding my teeth so much in my sleep that I had essentially given myself a pain in my face (!). Slowing down with Eva has made me notice and deal with that.

 

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This little lady is always treated like a VIP at @blowdrysandbigeyes ❤️❤️❤️

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My house is finally getting some attention! I had been mostly ignoring the mess and the clutter and the unfinished-ness of it all for the past two years. I don’t know why. I used to be extremely house proud and just sort of.. gave up.

From hanging out at home with Eva a bit more than I usually would, and seeing it through her eyes, I’m starting to love our home again. I mean, I’m not quite Ellen O’Keeffe level (love her) but I am really putting effort into it again. And it’s making me feel good.

 

I’ll be 42 this year and the more that I think about this ole thing called life, the more I battle with what my life should or shouldn’t be like, the things I feel I should or shouldn’t have achieved by now (constant annoying thought process), the more I realise that really, at the end of the day, I just want to be in front of the fire, dancing with my family to Everything is Awesome.

Because everything IS awesome, right here, right now xxx

Valium and the Summer Holidays..

I like the summer holidays. I do.

I like living by the beach – especially when we have summers like this one – because the age-old question in Ireland of ‘WTF am I going to do with them all summer?!’ is easily answered by packing everyone off to the seaside for a long, lazy day.

I like the ‘no school’ buzz – the NOT having to get so much done by 8.45am before battling the car parking and the wrestling with tired and uncooperative kids, bags and uniforms and F*CKING homework and reminders about fundraisers and half days and head lice alerts…

I like the casual drinking. The ‘sure we’re on summer holidays, aren’t we?’ as we chug spritzers at 3pm and ‘test’ new ciders because it’s an official summer drink.

We had the VIP treatment at Chapter One recently thanks to our friend Daniel who is the manager there!

I like the bra-and-shoeless-ness of it all – wearing vest tops and flip flops forever is my idea of absolute heaven.

I like getting into the garden finally – painting a few windowsills and popping a little flower pot on them that I will ultimately forget to water makes me feel like the house is somewhat in order. Yes, I am officially peak ole wan. I know you know that.

But. BUT! I would love the kid’s summer holidays so much more if I didn’t have other shit to do.

Like work. Like deal with my car and the NCT nonsense. Like make a doctor’s appointment. Like go see The Snapper at The Gate (ok I figured that one out – and it’s bloody brilliant!)

The 8 weeks off means that, unless you have the privilege of paying for childcare, summer camps or some helpful friends or family members around to give you a dig out… you literally have to put everything on hold until September.

At the moment, I’m doing most of my work when the kids are in bed or after Ass Monkey comes home from work. At 6 and 4, they are very cute and all but JESUS CHRIST they need so much attention.

I’m happy to give it to them. I’m happy to spend lazy days at the beach, swimming and eating sand-infused sandwiches.

I’m happy to have breakfast in the treehouse and snooze together in the hammock.

I’m happy to kick footballs around the green and go for long walks in the woods.

I know theses are the memories that my kids will carry with them forever.

But we could have done all that in about one month, couldn’t we?! There’s no way I can get my hands on enough valium to last me another 4 weeks… ;o)

What To Do When Your Kid Gets Lego Stuck Up Their Nose

Yes, this is a real post and yes, this 100% happened yesterday.

As if getting our little darlings back to school wasn’t excitement enough, Eva approached me as I sat on the couch yesterday evening after dinner, with just a tiny bit of trepidation.

“Mam, I just wanna tell you something. I just sort of didn’t mean to do it but I just sorta accidentally stuck some Lego up my nose and I can’t get it back out with my finger”

And there she was, my beautiful 3-year-old, in her flower girl dress she insisted on putting on after school, trying to stick her chubby finger up that nostril and ultimately, make things worse.

Step 1: Internal Panic. Ass Monkey is working late for all of January because he has a RIDIC number of restaurant fit-outs. Mam and Dad are at a funeral all day. If you have to go to the hospital to get this thing professionally removed – YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN, goddamnit.

Step 2: External Calm. Reassure lovely daughter that everything is fine. Enquire as to the shape of the Lego piece. “Roundy”, says she. Well, that’s either a blessing or a curse. Time will tell.

Step 3: Sub It Out. Enlist the help of Big Brother Jacob. “Could you perhaps chuck the dogs out into the back garden please?” I nod knowingly at him, like it’s a big important job. (Mostly it’s because the new puppy just LOVES to jump all over Eva and distract her and I needed him out of the jaysus scene).

Step 4: Light Up. No, not a smoke, we haven’t gone that far into panic mode yet. Get lovely daughter up onto the kitchen counter so we can get a good look up that shnozz in the bright light. No sign of the Lego piece. Balls.

Step 5: Go Oprah On It. Soothingly reassure your worried maggot that everything is fine and get them to stop sniffing up OR sticking their finger back up there, which is all she wanted to do.

Step 6: Check Your Biology. This is honestly what was going through my head; “If she sniffs it all the way up, will it go into her brain? Or is that what happens if you stick a lead pencil up your nose and you whack your head off the table in school? Oh no, that’s it. The lead pencil. So if she sniffs it up will it come down and out of her mouth? WHY DIDN’T I PAY ATTENTION IN SCHOOL???”

Step 7: Breathe. Together, Eva and I practiced sniffing down instead of up, all the while watching Jacob struggling to get the two dogs out the back door (which never happened) until finally, happily, a tiny green ’roundy’ piece of Lego dropped from her nose and into the lap of her princess dress.

“Why did you put it into your nose?” I (still calmly, I was so relieved) asked her.

“Because I was holding it and I needed my hands and I had to put it somewhere” was her reply.

OBVIOUSLY, like.

Step 8: Fuck all the Lego out of the house.

Mara and Me – A Mother’s Story

On Halloween morning 2015, my childhood friend Melissa woke up to what would be a living nightmare.

Her daughter Mara, then 4, blonde haired and blue eyed and delicate in that most beautiful of little girl ways, had developed a huge lump on her neck, literally overnight.

“She wasn’t sick”, Melissa told me over a recent coffee (one that we held hands and mostly cried during).

“In hindsight, there were little things; night sweats, a runny nose, a cough – all the normal things that children get. Nothing that we were worried about”.

The journey from parental concern for Mara to full diagnosis of Hodgkins Lymphoma is rife with those all-too-typically-Irish-medical-system stories – under-diagnoses, misdiagnoses, it isn’t cancer, it is cancer, she won’t need chemotherapy, she will…

I personally knew very little about Hodgkins Lymphoma except that when Jacob started school in September last year, there was a little girl with a ‘Freddie’ in her arm because she was having chemotherapy.

Look how beautiful she is!

You burst into tears when you hear this, about this child who didn’t have cancer 11 months previously, your friend’s baby girl, the baby girl who is the same age as your baby boy…

Melissa tells me that it is the most treatable of the childhood cancers, the survival rate is higher than others but the chance that it might re-present within 5 years is also quite high.

Horribly, St. John’s Ward in Crumlin Children’s Hospital lost other children while Mara was a patient there, but our little hero Mara came through to the other side.

My friend burst into tears as she recalled how she and her husband Alex would have to help the medical staff hold Mara’s tiny body down to receive her chemotherapy, an image that I will never forget for her.

She tells me about Aoibheann’s Pink Tie. They were a huge support to Melissa and her family at the beginning – they gave them ‘Chemo Duck’ to help explain the process of chemotherapy to Mara (he has a Freddy too), as well as providing sound practical support when they needed it the most.

Mara and ‘Chemo Duck’!

My Jacob is a little bit in love with Mara, the now 6-year-old girl who no longer has a Freddie in her arm and who was aptly awarded Junior Infant Student of the Year at the primary school that they attend.

Yep, we all bawled then too..

In fact, all of the kids are quite in love with her. Even while she was still having treatment, she insisted on writing out and colouring individual Valentine’s Day cards for each of the kids in her class last February.

My heart.

Melissa and Alex are looking forward to a clear scan at Mara’s next appointment this month but are still processing all that they have had to deal with in the last 2 years.

Besides managing Mara’s illness and treatment, they also have two younger children to take care of. So not only were Melissa and Alec feeling miserable about Mara being unwell, they also had that all-too-familiar parent guilt that they weren’t giving the other kids enough attention.

Can you imagine?

“I’m still so angry”, my gorgeous, and very placid friend Melissa, tells me. “Why us?”

**If you are worried about any aspect of your child’s health, seek advice from your GP immediately. If you are not satisfied with the outcome, seek a second opinion. September is Childhood Cancer Awareness month each year but let’s always think of, and support, those families who are struggling. Melissa tells me that the nicest things that people did were the simple ones – dropping over a dinner, cutting the grass, popping in to say hi.

Take care of each other x**

 

We’re Not Feelin Ya, Ophelia

“Well..did you survive the night?!!”

That’s all we are hearing this week in the wake of Mz Ex-Hurricane Ophelia who hit the south west coast of Ireland with the MAJOR rages on Monday morning.

Us Irish, as usual, had been fairly chillaxed about it’s arrival.

Except me. I’d been flinging garden furniture and toys into the shed since Friday afternoon (thanks to my trusted bringer-of-all-the-weather-updates – Twitter – but by Saturday night at dinner, most of my fellow diners hadn’t even heard that a hurricane was about to hit.

And I thought I was the one who generally had my head up my ass.

Am I Hurricane Prepping? What made you ask me that?! 👻

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By Sunday evening, as soon as we all knew that the kids were getting the day off school, we were taking that shit seriously.

“The WHOLE day?”, cried we. “Sher it’s not even SNOWING!!”

Kids strapped to the crafts table, X-box, games board and hunkered down in forts, we braced ourselves for the inevitable cabin fever that comes from having to entertain our kids all day when the weather isn’t playing ball.

Hurricane Prep Step #1: Build a Fort 👍🏻

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That we can deal with – but throwing our PARTNERS into the mix? Ass Monkey was off and house-bound with us for at least 7 hours.

That’s just damn torture.

(Hope you all ARE ok after Ophelia. I know that lots of people are without power around the country and homes and businesses have been damaged. Thinking of you all x)

The 12 Stages Of Going C(gl)amping With the Kids

If you think I was built to camp, you can think again.

But since the summer hols are no longer anything to do with me (thank you, parenting), I conceded to 4 nights glamping in a lodge at Hidden Valley in Wicklow.

I didn’t regret it. Well, I did. But not for the reasons I expected.

Here are my 12 Stages Of Going C(gl)amping With the Kids:

  1. Smug Parent-ness. How smug was I when I made the reservation – finally, a decent parenting move; a holiday that was really fuck-all to do with my needs and all about giving the kids something to look forward to at the end of the summer break and that would create memories to last a lifetime. Go, me.
  2. Confusion. So we’re camping but we’re not camping. What do we need? Where do we eat? Hidden Valley say they have cooking facilities so I probably don’t need to do anything. Just give Ass Monkey the info and wait for him to feed us, as usual.
  3. Packing. Packing for clamping is much nicer than packing for a flight. Warm blankets, wellies, flip flops, marshmallows, downloaded movies and, most happily, BEER. You can’t bring beers on a flight, you know.
  4. Panic. You have no sleeping bags because you’ve never been camping before, you dope. Also, Ass Monkey has been so sick for the last few days you are considering having him hospitalised.  Which is a huge convenience since you have no idea how to cook for the kids over a camp fire. Thankfully, you’re not expected to pitch a tent.
  5. Cleaning. Why is there always so much cleaning to do when you leave the house for more than a minute? Also, why is Ass Monkey always threatening to be hospitalised when there is so much cleaning to be done?
  6. Relief. You’ve picked up sleeping bags from Argos and you’re on the road, entire family intact. First thing kids want to do when they get there is ‘get into the swimming pool’. Errr…
  7. Excitement. We’ve arrived. The sun is shining, the lodge is cool, the staff are beyond nice. We check out all of the activities and the kids go bananas for the playgrounds, climbing frames and slides. They also spend a ridic amount of time throwing stones into the lazy river, delirious with happiness. It’s the little things..
  8. Shame. You realise that you’re the worst glampers ever. You don’t have any BBQ utensils, plates, knives, lighters or, most importantly, wine glasses. HOW DID YOU FORGET WINE GLASSES, YOU FOOL?! (Side Note: Ass Monkey needs a commis chef/PA)
  9. Wasps. An official stage of being outdoors. The fuckers.
  10. Rain. The rain pelted down on two nights of our stay and I was never happier for our little lodge with it’s little plug sockets so that we could watch movies on the laptop with the kids. And so that I could fill my hot water bottle. Yes, I managed to pack that but not wine glasses. Yes, I am a granny. Yes, thank you.
  11. Washing. Ourselves, the car, the blankets, the thousands of socks, the wellies – everything and everyone are filthy after 4 days and nights in the outdoors. We had epic walks in forests with rivers running through it, rammed each other gleefully on bumper boats, waded in the river in search of fish, visited baby animals at Tinahealy Farm, stayed up late toasting marshmallows and drinking hot whiskeys, bounced on bungies, ran in water balls, played crazy golf.. the dirt was actually worth it.
  12. Happiness. It was a great trip, the kids had a ball, we’re totally relaxed on the back of it. My only regret? That we didn’t go sooner.

So we’re moving to Wicklow. See yiz later 😘😜

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