Great Blog!

I don't normally do this, but this blog is just hilarious and brilliant: Kitty Tells It As It Is.

I found it via The Potty Dairies post for British Mummy Blogger of the Week - though, as she says, it is not your run of the mill mummy blog.

I'm home sick today - struck down with the dreaded cough/cold/how-the-hell-am-I-supposed-to-know-if-it's-swine-flu-or-not virus. In between sleeping and coughing I read all of Kitty's blog posts and I laughed, gasped and laughed again. Go and read!

Hmmm

So, I finished my Twilight reading over the weekend and normal life can resume again. I really enjoyed them but must admit to feeling a teensy bit surprised about a few bits in them, particularly in the last book. I won't go into my opinions on it - there are plenty of people out there arguing over whether it's just a harmless fantasy/love story or if it's actually telling a whole generation of teens that controlling (abusive?) relationships are ok. And that if you have sex you might die!

But from a purely entertainment, can't-put-this-book-down angle, they were ace. You really can read too much into these things, I think.

My name is Solveig and I am a Twilight Mum

There, I've said it. God, how sad...

I blame Katie entirely, I wouldn't have looked twice if she hadn't sat me down with that bottle of wine and made me watch the film. And then I bought the book and read it cover to cover in two days. Then I bought New Moon and did the same. Then I went to the cinema (with Katie...) to watch New Moon. And now I've finished reading Eclipse. I've only got Breaking Dawn to go and I'm already worried about what I'm going to do with myself once I've finished it. And then - shame of shame - I Googled Robert Pattinson.

Gah. An addiction! Adrian thinks I'm nuts.

(But I do still find this funny How Twilight Works)

Letter to a variety of cold and cough viruses

Dear Bugs

I know you really don't give two hoots as to how your near constant presence in the lives of my two children impacts on us, but I'm going to tell you anyway and ask you to just give it a rest for a while.

In the last few months, having (smugly) thought to myself about just how healthy my children had been recently, you, in all your various strains, have persisted in infecting one and then the other (and occasionally me and my husband too) resulting in what feels like a continuous presence of colds, sore throats, coughs and snot.

Not only do I not enjoy having two not-quite-well children, but I don't like sending them to childcare with streaming noses, wondering if really I ought to be staying at home with them instead. But if I was to take a day off everytime one of you paid a visit I would no longer be a working mother. There is enough guilt involved in balancing working life with motherhood without having to contend with you as well.

When you pay a visit, my children, and therefore me, cannot sleep. I can't bear listening to them coughing endlessly in the night, I hate fighting with my toddler to wipe his nose and bribing my pre-schooler to let me take her temperature. I assess them in the morning to decide if I can reasonably expect them to go to their child minder. Usually I decide they can - most mums I know agree that you can't keep your child away on the basis of a runny nose or you'd never get out anywhere. But in these swine-flu times I am constantly wondering - is it just a cold or something more ?

Today I made the wrong call. I am now home at lunch time, with a feverish and exhausted pre-schooler crashed out on the sofa, feeling guilty that I put work before her. In all honesty, I knew she wasn't 100% and perhaps I should have stayed home with her, but as a working mother it's always a case of deciding what is going to give. And when you come along that decision becomes even harder.

So, could you please just leave us alone for a while?

Thanks,
Solveig

Failed cookery attempt # 356

Like I said, I am no Delia Smith. We're off to the park.

All dressed up and ready to go

A rare photo of me with Freyja. I don't mind it because it is blurry (due to humidity, not wobbly hands, so Adrian tells me...)

Let him eat cake

Theo gets stuck in to the wedding cake

Sea View

Freyja looking out to sea, wearing the beautiful Monsoon dress that her Nainy (grandma) bought her to wear for the wedding we were going to in Dubai.

Bye Bye Dubai

We have just returned from a two week holiday in Dubai, staying with my parents. They have lived in Dubai for almost 30 years. We moved there when I was 5 (having previously been in Kuwait) and they are still there now, despite always saying they would only stay for 'another 5 years'. My brother lives there too, though my sister and I are both in England. I went to school in Dubai until I was 18, then came to England for university. After that, I just ended up staying in England. Life just happened like that - I moved to London, had a group of friends that I hung around with, spent my weekends clubbing and pubbing, then at 24 met Adrian, got married, had kids. There was no room for thinking about moving abroad and no inclination to do so.

But people always ask me why I didn't go back to Dubai. The reason is simply that my life had moved on in England and Dubai had changed for me - and not just in terms of the skyscrapers. I didn't stay in touch with any of my friends from Dubai. There wasn't really anything for me to move there for, but it felt that there was a lot I would have to leave behind if I did go.

Yet every time that plane lands, it feels like going home. Dubai now is nothing like the Dubai I grew up in, but it still feels familiar to me. Obviously when you are on holiday, everything seems perfect and I know that if I lived there, life would still have the same ups and downs that it has anywhere. But I do find myself wondering what life would have been like if I had moved back - if Adrian and I had decided after our year out, or perhaps after Freyja had been born, to move there.

I've always felt that I never really come from anywhere. When I was growing up, and particularly when I went to university, where the place you are from seems to be used as the ice-breaker in your first few weeks, I hated being asked that question. My mother is Welsh, my father is Icelandic, I was born in Surrey, grew up in Dubai. I don't really know where I come from.

Now I feel that my home, at least, is in South East London. But when I go back to Dubai, that feels like home too. I slip very easily back into life there and my life in London feels a million miles away.

I don't want to move to Dubai now - my life and my home really is here in London now. Dubai is virtually unrecognisable from the place I grew up in. I know only my family and a few family friends there. The traffic is awful, I'd never be able to drive and it's like living in a building site.

But at the end of every holiday, I still find it very hard to leave.