Strop of The Day

Had a run in with school today.  Oops.  As a rule I make an effort to be friendly and polite in all circumstances, but anyone who knows me will also be aware that I can also be a complete strop-bags if my buttons are pushed.

The dreaded words ‘Mrs Wilkinson, can we have a quick word please?’ were spoken, I expected to be told that my son had said ‘Pooh!’ too often or eaten play doh or something….but no.  I was taken to a little room and whilst Sausage stood there, hat back to front, scarf haphazardly tied – they told me that he wasn’t making enough progress and that I needed to do more work at home with him.  Apparently his home-work bag hasn’t been returned often enough and his reading skills are below par.  He is also not very clear with his speech although that is improving.

Up until now I have humoured them, I have returned his book as and when it is convenient.  When the chaos hasn’t been too bad at home, I’ve sat and read his ‘Kipper gets muddy’ books and have filled in his book to be returned to school.  I have tried to keep up with his homework just so that they won’t hassle me to be honest.   I have put up with this because although I don’t think homework is appropriate for children at such a young age, it is their school and I should at least try to do as requested. But he is four years old, not fifteen.  I think they ask too much of me and him.

This time I lost it.  I told them that I make sure my son is clean, tidy, in uniform, cared for, loved and that I don’t need any more pressure.  I said that in many countries children of his age weren’t even given homework and it made no difference to them.   Then another member of staff came over to back up her colleague, so I felt ganged up on if I’m being honest.  I didn’t know whether to swear or cry, so I just said very abruptly that I wasn’t even willing to talk about it, that my son is fine – and then walked away from them.

Feel free to correct me, but I’m of the ilk that disagrees with homework for primary school age children. I’ve read here and there about how studies have shown that homework at such a young age does not make any difference to a childs’ educational standard when they are older.  There’s no doubt other studies to contradict this, you can find whatever information you like if you look for it long enough on the internet……but my gut instinct is that they learn at their own pace.  As long as they are encouraged, given books, given opportunities – they learn.

Apart from anything else, their Ofsted report was quite literally less than satisfactory, and to throw it all back at me is frankly offensive. Plus, today they had lambs in school.  This might sound a daft comment, but it really annoyed me. That’s my job.  I take my child out into the wide world, I show them animals, flowers, teach them to jump in puddles, how to tell jokes, the best way to use a knife and fork, how to be considerate, how to cook and all those other practical skills.  They are there to teach my child how to read and write, and that should be paramount to everything else.   That can be made fun, and that is their job.  I know that it’s good to teach kids about nature, especially in inner city schools – but this is Lancashire.  They are surrounded by hills, fields, cows, farms and in spring there’s more than a couple of lambs gambolling in the hills.  Any child of primary school age that doesn’t know what a lamb is needs more help than your average hassled school teacher can give them.

Well, I’m digging my heels in here.  My husband has decided I’m just off on a strop and has said he’ll take on all homework duties from now on, because I refuse to.  If they want to discuss homework they can speak to him or send him notes because I’m having nothing to do with it.  I’ll continue to read to Sausage (and Darlek of course) at bedtime, to encourage him to speak clearly, to spell out shop signs and the names of things on packages: but I will not do set homework.  He will learn things when he’s good and ready to.  He’s bright as a button and just takes his own time.   All official school humouring duties have been passed to my husband.

I know there’s two sides to every story, but this is how I feel and this is my gut instinct.  Have you ever had to take a stand about something you believe passionately about as regards school?  How did you deal with it?

Beware of Blank Envelopes

Last week I mucked up, Darlek came out of school sobbing her little heart out.

She told me in the morning ‘Mum I have swimming lessons today, but my swimming costume is too small’ – this was at about 8.30am.  I hurriedly dug out a tenner, shoved it in a blank envelope labelled it ‘For Swimming Costume’ and told her to buy one from the sports centre when she got there.  Last time she wore the costume it was cutting into her shoulders so I figured I couldn’t just ask her to put up with it.

It turned out that swimming costumes were £17.50 so she didn’t have enough and she was the only one out of her class who couldn’t go swimming.  Darlek told me she just sat on the side crying watching them all.  I felt like crap when she told me.   I suppose we can’t be perfect all of the time, but I did really let her down….in more ways than one it turns out.  I apologised to Darlek for being rubbish and promised to try harder.

The tenner was returned to me in a small envelope with a note saying that Darlek hadn’t got enough for a swimming costume which was fair enough.  But, they also sent back the original envelope with my ‘For Swimming Costume’ note on.  On it the teacher had written ‘This hair was found inside the envelope with Darlek’s money?’ which made absolutely no sense at all, until I looked inside it.

I’d sent Darlek into her swimming lesson with an insufficient amount of money and a load of hair in an envelope.  Only then did I remember that when I cut Sausage’s hair for the very first time, I’d put it safely in an unmarked envelope which had then been put with my other stationary because I’m an idiot.  In the rush I’d not checked what was in there.  Consequently I now look like I’ve tried to pay for Darlek’s swimming costume with a tenner and blonde tangled human hair.  Normal people try to make up the difference with spare change lying around the house, not me.  I suspect Mrs W now thinks Darlek’s mum is absolutely insane.

Darlek’s teacher will no doubt check any envelopes sent from our house for toe-nail clippings and other such loveliness from now on.  I mean, human hair for starters, what’s next?  I feel, as they say, a complete tit and will have to explain myself the next time I go into school.

Mind you, I once received a letter from school asking me to bring in ‘Willies’ instead of ‘Wellies’ so they must be fairly used to finding odd things in jiffy bags and envelopes sent in by parents?

Inspired Just a Little

Inspired Just a Little

It’s 10.30am, the kids are in school, I am alone with a keyboard and a cup of tea.  Dangerous territory.  Should I abandon the keyboard and do another load of washing, should I scrape the crumbs from the breakfast table and go empty the bin?  Hell no.  I’m going to sit here and write.  I’ll do that stuff later when the blood has stopped pumping through my veins.

I’ve been reading ‘Sirens’ which is the book that inspired the TV series if any of you have seen it.  It was originally a blog and it is written as such in the book, with all the visceral passion, humour and heartbreak plain to see.  The writer is an ambulance driver in London and documents his daily life with all the blood, sweat and tears – all the laughs, the sad bits, the funny bits and the thoughtful bits.  Love it, love it, love it!  It has reminded me of the power of blogging.  You see someone else’s life, feel what they’re feeling and look through a window into their world for a while.  I’ll tell you something for nothing, I’m no ambulance driver, I don’t deal with life and death on a daily basis and I don’t fart carelessly in the face of HIV and  heart attacks, but goddamit, I have my own world which is worth writing about.

I’m inspired to write again just for today at least.  I want my own housewifey mini dramas and sick bug traumas recorded and written down and stamped on paper.  Just because.  I will record these days, I will keep up with diarising everything, I will bear my soul for you to laugh at and sympathise with. (I hope!).  I can’t even hope to write as well as that author or be as exciting as him but fekkit, I can write with passion. So here you go, a heartfelt promise that I’ll keep up with this blog of mine.  I do hope you’ll stay with me for the journey.

I don’t have an ambulance, but I do have these legs of mine to carry me from place to place, and today I’ll be using them a lot I suspect.  Both kids have gone into school, one with belly ache and the other with a dodgy tummy.  Sausage has a spare pair of pants with him due to an unfortunate incident that must have nearly gassed his classmates yesterday and Darlek has had a lot of hugs and some Calpol to keep her going.  I’m sat here waiting for the phone to ring, I’m fairly sure I’ll have to amble down the road to pick one or the other of them up some time soon.

‘Mrs Wilkinson, your son smells very bad and we don’t want to go near him.  Please pick him up, we’ve left him in the playground and have closed all the windows and doors so the smell can’t get back in.  Thank you.’

I’m expecting a message that goes something along those lines anyway.  Yesterday I had to go and pick him up early, along with a plastic bag full of soiled clothes, poor love.  He’s not had an accident for months now, his tummy must have been so upset.  Horace drove me up the road to get him, the journey back involved me literally hanging the plastic bag outside of the car window, hooked on an index finger.  I swear if I’d have carried it in the car it would have knocked us unconscious within 2 minutes.

Darlek was in tears on the school run this morning, so we walked holding hands most of the way.  I didn’t want to take her in, but it’s only week 3 back in the old routine and after last year I want to make sure her attendance is as good as it can be.  She got very good at ‘being poorly’ last year and I had the fleece pulled over my eyes more times than I care to mention, so I’m being more assertive this year.

‘Can you walk?  Well, off to school you go!’

I felt like a complete bitch.  At least the teacher knows that if Darlek feels any worse she can come home. Honestly if that phone rings, I shall pounce on it!

OK, so I said I was inspired to write.  I’m also inspired to have a cleaner, tidier home.  Now I’ve done my ‘ I’m a mum, I SHALL write about the sh*ts and the giggles.  Hear me ROAR!’ thing’………I really should go do something vaguely useful.

On with the crumbs and the dishwasher!  I might rattle the cutlery in the dishwasher a little, in a tuneful, rattly kind of manner to make the whole experience more interesting.  I’m not being sarcastic, would I do a thing like that?

The Time Thief and the Rose

How on earth did this happen?  One minute I was having a home birth and there were vests and sleepsuits everywhere and then I think I must have lost concentration, because my baby has suddenly turned into a little boy wearing a school uniform.

All I can presume is that we have had a visitation from the Time Thief. He must have sneaked in at the dead of night and nicked four years.

I must pay more attention in future to stop this kind of thing happening again.  I’ll be sure to lock the doors more carefully and the windows shouldn’t be left open.  No way can I let the Time Thief get away with this sort of behaviour.  Maybe I should ring the Neibourhood Watch or something. A big bolt on the door?  Should I install CCTV so I can keep an eye out for a shadowy figure sneaking along the back street with a really massive bag bulging with memories?

Really it’s all rather hopeless isn’t it.  Absolutely nothing can keep him away from my babies.  In just another couple of years I’ll realise that he’s been again, and that huge chunks of time seem to have disappeared into thin air.   The insurance won’t cover it either, you can’t put a price on memories and they can’t be replaced.

On the first day I took my son to school, it was raining, in fact it was tipping it down. The clouds were emptying themselves all over us as we walked up the road.  I checked behind me to see if I could spot the Time Thief so I could shout at him and tell him what I thought of him, but the streets were empty apart from a few parked cars and a couple of soaked people wandering into the local shop.  My now grown up baby held my hand as we dashed across the road, splashing in puddles (I told him to avoid the puddles, but you know what they’re like!).

The skies were grey, the wind hurried us, I felt like I was losing something.  We arrived at school, I handed him over to the teachers waiting at the door and saw him stood there framed in the doorway – dressed head to toe in his blue waterproof outfit, hood up, soaking, looking expectantly at me like he was thinking ‘What’s next mum?’

‘I’ll pick you up when I pick your sister up, it’s not for long. You know I’m coming back for you soon, just like nursery, right?’

Sausage nodded just the once to show he understood and I smiled, turned and walked away.  It was still raining and I was glad of it, that way no-one would notice me wiping tears away.

Walking down the hill, everything seemed sepia coloured.  A little bit of my life had been left in that doorway and I wanted to race back and grab it, grab him…my grown up baby.  The colours of the day drained away down the gutters with the rainwater and I felt the loss of those stolen four years as clearly as I felt the rain soaking through my hood.

As I put one foot in front of another, knowing I couldn’t go back, I spotted a flash of magenta at my feet.  It was a rose, just lying there on the pavement. Maybe someone picked it and discarded it, but maybe…just maybe…it was the Time Thief.  Perhaps he has a conscience after all, perhaps he felt sorry for me.

This is always the way it has to be.  Time must be stolen, it is not ours to keep.  He must do his job.  Everyone has to make a living somehow, right?

The rose was so beautiful I just had to photograph it, drenched in rain and with the scent of summer still on its petals.   So Mr Time Thief…I forgive you.  Thank you for letting me keep the years for as long as I did, and I surrender them to you with a grateful heart.  Maybe you’re not as mean as I thought you were.

Apologies for the rather clumsy writing style, it’s hard to put into words the loss that you feel when you have to say goodbye to the baby years.  I shall miss them desperately, but life moves ever onwards as they say. 

School Sports Day!

Darlek had her school sports day last week, luckily the sun shone, which is a minor miracle considering the weather we’ve had recently.  Sausage and I trekked over there to cheer her on complete with waterproofs just in case.  I took my shouty voice with me too so I could cheer her on, proper overenthusiasic mum stylee.

We shuffled in alongside the other parents who were watching and waving at their kids and once I’d allocated us a space I plonked myself down cross legged on our canvas shopping bag and hoped that the slightly soggy field wouldn’t soak through to my jeans.  Sausage decided I looked like a decent place to sit and perched on my lap until my legs went dead and I thought I’d fall over if I stood up.

It was lovely to see Darlek sat with a group of girls chatting and chanting the names of the kids bombing past me full belt, all legs and flailing ponytails.   Nothing makes me happier than to see her in the thick of things.

I know how important these events are to Darlek, she is extremely competitive. Dunno where she gets it from! (there’s a wry smile for you).  The day before she’d been stood in our living room whirling her arms around, jumping up and down, ‘practising’ and saying how good she was at the hurdles and about how she’d definitely win. Although I do love a positive attitude, I had to remind her that it probably wouldn’t do her any favours to tell her class mates that she was going to win, and that she was really, really good at running.  A little modesty goes a long way!  Anyway, she grinned and said she knew, but that she’d win anyway.  I have to admire her spirit, even if I do cringe at her over-confidence a little sometimes.

So, when she stood at the starting line, poised, little fists clenched, glaring at the finishing line, I wished her speed and that she’d be a gracious winner.  At the very least I hoped she’d just enjoy the thrill of the race and not be heartbroken if she didn’t come first. Either or would be fine.  Then she was off!

Ready…….Steady……..Go!!!

Darlek thundered past me, with the other kids, keeping up nicely; throwing herself over the hurdles; balancing the rubber ring on her head, swinging the hula hoop over her head and back to the ground and then headed straight for the finish line – legs all over the place like a panicked giraffe. I yelled ‘Come on Darlek!  Go go go-go-go!  You can do it!’  (obviously I didn’t actually call her a Darlek, I’d never live that one down).

To my shame, I can’t actually remember if she won that race or not, I think she came second.  I know she came first in one of the races, maybe it was the egg and spoon race.  What I do remember is how proud I was of her, giving her all.  She didn’t cheat either as far as I could see.  Totally focused on her goal, running like her life depended on it…..’Go girl!’ I’m grinning as I type.

Sausage and I mucking about with the camera on the sportsfield. I look just a little windswept!

The sun came out behind the muggy clouds and it felt like an oven had been switched on, Sausage complained that he was thirsty and bored so I had to ply him with a bottle of water I’d bought and tickle him to keep him entertained.  It was nice, although it did go on for aaaaages.  By the end of it all the canvas bag wasn’t doing its job very well, and I was looking forward to ambling off, but I did enjoy sitting out in a field for an hour or so.  Some of the kids are so cute, many parents obviously do what I do and buy oversize games kits so that the kids grow into them and they get proper use out of them, so they look tiny in huge pairs of shorts and massive floppy tee shirts.

On the way hone Darlek very proudly displayed her ‘1st ‘and ‘2nd’ stickers on her tee shirt.  She did say that she thought the teachers hadn’t judged one of the races correctly and that she thought she should have come first, but that’s just Darlek.  As she gets older I’m hoping she won’t worry so much about these things.  We lost one of the stickers on the walk and had to backtrack to find it.  Can’t be doing with losing them now can we!  I suspect she’s put them in the treasure box that she hides under her bed.  This treasure box is stuffed with the merit certificates she’s gained over the years, her certificates for fire safety training when the fire brigade visited, drawings she’s proud of and probably Squinkies. She fell out with her actual dedicated Squinkie box after her dad stuck a label on the box that said ‘Stinkies!’ to wind her up.  Bad dad!

As a final thought, I do hope she realises that these treasures and certificates and achievements are worthwhile, but they aren’t everything.  If she doesn’t always win, it’s just the way life is, the way it will always be.  The important thing is to run and live and love like your life depends on it, which it does.  Sometimes it’ll work out and you’ll be a winner, sometimes it won’t.  The trick is to keep trying and put your heart into everything, because that’s what matters.

I suspect I’m writing that as if I’m storing up a little life lesson for her when she’s older and actually reads this stuff.  Can’t help it.  I watch her pegging at full speed through her 7 year old life, and wonder at what she’s learning sometimes.  I hope it’s the character building sort of stuff that will stand her in good stead when she doesn’t have her mum stood on the sidelines cheering her on anymore. Although I’ll always be there in spirit, jumping up and down, waving my arms like an idiot and shouting ‘Go Gettem!!!!’

Cracking Coconuts and Crocodiles

And no it’s not  recipe blog.  It’d be horrible one if it was!

Today has been a bit of a caffeine fuelled day to be honest.  Last night Sausage ambled up the stairs to our bedroom in the attic at about 3am saying he had been having his usual nightmare about crocodiles so I had to try and get him to go back to sleep and stay in his bed rather than ours.  This ended up with me asleep on his bedroom floor – which he loves because he can divebomb me with teddies from the top of his cabin bed first thing in the morning.  This time I did wake up though and stumbled back up to our bed, whereupon I was snored at and woken at 6am by Sausage again saying he’d had a nightmare yet again and could he sleep in our bed?  I let him because I was desperate for sleep, so he happily lay there kicking me in my back until I finally gave up and got out of bed.  This is all after having got to bed at 12.30pm which is a late one for me.  So….today I have been mostly in a dozy daze.

Darlek has been off school too, she was sent home yesterday because she’d gone very pale and was complaining of an earache and a headache.   I thought she was maybe playing it up a bit, but she got home and just put herself to bed.  So this morning I decided to keep her home and coddle her a bit.  Later I found I’d made a very convenient decision because I couldn’t have got out of the house even if I’d wanted to.  The house had eaten my housekeys.  We were locked in all day until Horace got home from work at 7pm.  After a brief search Horace found the offending keys and made me feel like an absolute idiot, which of course I am.  I cannot for the life of me keep track of those keys, or my debit cards, or my phone, or my life for that matter.

In the afternoon Darlek stopped half vomiting in her plastic bowl, and brightened up a little and then the arguments and the cabin fever started.  Sausage resorted to running laps around the living room after Darlek said he had been ‘Moopiefied’ to get him to run off and leave her alone.  To explain;  ‘Moopified’ is a new verb in this house.  Whenever Darlek wants her brother to do something, she’ll tell him, she’ll ‘Moopify’ him – which basically means that if he does whatever it is that she wants him to do, she’ll turn him into a Muppet.  Sausage, being the gullible little 3 year old that he is, believes every word and does a strange floppy, wobbly headed walk / run after his moopification.  This would be very cute, but he is rather hard to control when he is a Muppet.  I think the moopification process makes him a little hyper.

*** Warning to parents considering taking their kids to see The Muppets.  Your children may be moopified after viewing.

I did try to do some housework, honestly I did.  Someone once told me the trick to keeping up with tidying, is to make sure that you never leave a room empty handed.  I tried that, but every time I did, I ended up wandering back into the same room carrying the same item, still not knowing where the hell to put it!  I am a hopeless case.  So in all truth, today I didn’t do housework at all, I just picked things up, wandered around with them and put them down somewhere else, usually arbitrarily chosen.

The grand finale for today was the Cracking of the Coconut!  Both kids were fascinated with coconuts the last time we went Morrisons, so we got one for them.  This evening saw me on my hands and knees on our kitchen floor whacking a very stubborn coconut with a massive hammer – this is of course after draining the coconut milk and the kids going ‘Ew!’ lots at it.  I drank all of it because they didn’t want it.  It’s probably highly calorific and Jenny Craig would scold me terribly, but just don’t tell her…ok?  *taps side of nose and winks*

Anyway, back to bashing the living daylights out of the coconut…. I narrowly missed my hand several times, but eventually heard a satisfying crack and managed to use the other end of the hammer to wedge it open and finally get at the coconut.  This must have taken me about 10 minutes I think.  After all my efforts the kids chewed their wadge of coconut, pulled faces and spat it out.  You just can’t please some people!  I don’t think Horace is very keen on coconut either so I have a whole one to get through one way or another.  I might go into making knock-off Bounties or something, or I suppose I could go and find a monkey.  Do monkeys eat coconuts?  I know they chuck them around a fair bit, or is that just in Um-Bongo adverts.

So to summarise:   Point 1 – I’m tired. Point 2 – Crocodile nightmares are very annoying. Point 3 – Advice on how to Moopify your children.  Point 4 – musings on the subject of coconuts and monkeys.

I think I might need to get out more.  I’m so glad I know where they keys are now! (or do I? *looks worried and pats pockets*)

Fancy Dress Disco!

Today Darlek had a fancy dress disco at school.  She woke up early, dressed herself and came in to tip me out of bed.  I was shattered as usual, but even so, her enthusiasm for her outfit was infectious.

We had a bit of a laugh getting her ready, she was a Sparkly Pink Fairy you see. Cerise pink tights and purple leggings over the top, with a fairy dress that was probably designed for a 5 year old worn as a top  in shades of purple and pink taffeta with a matching cerise fabric rose in her hair.  The fairy look was completed with a pair of pink sparkly wings with elastic bands to keep them on her shoulders, and a little pink wand with a light rose coloured star at the end of it. She looked simply beautiful!  Really, really cute.  And yes, very girly.  For today, all thoughts of stereotyping were banished.  Pink definitely suits her, so what the heck!  As long as she doesn’t start saying she wants to be Jordan when she grows up I suppose I don’t mind so much.  That I would draw the line at.

Pretty in Pink!

A Pumpkin, A Zombie and a Wicked Fairy from last Halloween's dressing up. Darlek's Spiderweb Skirt came from the Dressing Up Chest.

Her brother went off to Nursery and for two days in a row now he hasn’t wailed and clung to my leg.  Amazing!  For the last two years he’s regularly done a limpet impression every single time I’ve dropped him off. I’ve almost always left nursery with a lump in my throat thinking that I’m mentally scarring him because I’m leaving him – but today he happily toddled off into the playground after a quick cuddle and a peck on the cheek.  We had to leave his pile of sticks by his coat peg though, nursery don’t appreciate his ‘tree-house’ building sticks either particularly.

Once both kids were dropped off at their respective schools / nurseries I returned home to do a little freelance secretarial stuff for my neigbour, whereupon I gabbled about chutney a lot and didn’t really get much done.  Still I’m getting a little bit better with Excel after not having touched it for about 8 years or so.  The last time I used that programme I was working as a temp for a company that sold underwear and I spent forever cataloguing and pricing up and generally completely mucking up their Excel admin systems.  In all truth I handed my notice in after two weeks, apologised profusely, rang my agency and  begged them never to put me in a job that involved manipulating numbers in any shape or form ever again.  It was all very amicable, although I was rather upset not to have made it in the business world of ‘Pants!’ or whatever the name was.  I’m telling the absolute truth when I say they went bust about 6 months later.  I blame me and my crap maths.  I’m presuming they never recovered.

Anyway! After that I went for yet another trip to hospital for a check up for my stupid misbehaving stomach.  Apparently everything is looking very good and I just have to ‘keep taking the tablets’ which is something many people have told me over the years (except they usually have a half smile on their face at the time) – this time, the doc actually meant it.  I’m generally doing ok though.  It was a great relief to be told that diet doesn’t actually affect Colitis particularly, and that it just seems to happen – although some foods can aggravate it.  So when someone tells me rather terrifyingly that ‘Fibre is the ENEMY!’ and ‘Do not, under any circumstances use pepper on your dinner, EVER’ I am within my rights to completely ignore them.  We’re all different and react to different things.  I wish I’d been told this at the start though, I spent 3 months without even eating an orange.  It’s a shame that information can be so scrambled and confusing, depending on who you talk to really.  But that’s another rant for another day.

Luckily the appointment finished on time and my mum and I went to pick up Darlek & Sausage, both seemed a little tired and begged for TV.  I was a lame ass and agreed, they were good for a while and then Sausage commenced hitting Darlek with toy cars and there was a fair bit of squealing.  I wish they wouldn’t fight!  It makes me want to buy a taser.  Don’t tell Social Services I said that… The day ended with them reluctantly slinking off upstairs to get ready for bed.  We had one very tired fairy and a slightly obnoxious & similarly over-tired Sausage.

Pink Pirate Ahoy! Shiverrr me timberzzz!

Speaking of a fancy dress kind of day – before I go I’d just like to mention a lovely lady I know from Twitter who can be found under the username @DressingUpChest, her blog is HERE and her website is HERE!  You know when you chat to people online a lot (yes I’m addicted to social media!) and you get a bit of a feel for what they’re like?  Well Libby, who runs The Dressing Up Chest is a really friendly, nice person and someone I suppose I’ve got to know a little over the years.  So I have no qualms at all about recommending her website if you’re looking for an outfit to dress up your little darlings / demons.  The above Pink pirate outfit was one that we’ve had for a while now.  It’s really meant to be for girls I think, well, OK, it’s definitely intended for girls at least.  You can’t see too well from the photo but the edges of the skirt are cleverly gathered up to make it look like a bubble style, held up with ribbon.  The skulls motif is very piratey too! Everything I have come across that has been made by the Dressing Up Chest is beautifully finished and made with a lot of skill as far as I can see.  They might cost more than the outfits you find in some shops, but they’ll last a hell of a lot longer.

This isn’t a sponsored post by the way, I just love Libby’s stuff!

A very unusual request from school!

Have a good read of this, you may have to read it a couple of times before you spot the very unusual request…..

I think my iPhone has maybe blurred it a little so I’ve taken a close up of the typo.

Yep, it says 'willies'.....

The playground was full of sniggering mums today.  It certainly brightened my school run anyway.  We really have been asked to bring willies into school!

By the way, do any Cybermummy attendees remember the ‘How to Dispose of a Vibrator?’ post.  Well, I think this might just be the answer….

*PS. Sorry if I sent out a garbled recipe via email today,  I have corrected it now!  If you’d like to read my last post, pls click HERE, thank you!