The Life of a Lavery Toddler

Spot the hat. One clue: Not where it should be. Good evening everyone! I say that because obviously I am writing in the evening but of course please squeeze me into whenever suits your busy schedule. I wanted to share with you what happened the other evening.  On our walk home from nursery, Cian and I were victims of Backseat Parenting. A phrase I have coined to describe someone who offers up their opinion on your parenting without provocation. Basically, unwanted parenting advice. If I was submitting my expression to be entered into the dictionary, my definition would be: Backseat Parenting (verb) [Bak-seet-pair-uh n-ting] 'A person who offers unsolicited advice or criticism relating to your parenting.' Sounds professional right? I did work quite hard on that, so I'd appreciate some laughs. So, what happened? Well, Cian and I were walking along the road, quite happily, as we always do. I try to walk from the house to work/nursery ev...

Me and my Bro Mum enjoyed bright colours Since as early as I can remember, I knew I wanted to be a mother. I would go well and truly gaga for babies from a young young age. I actually remember regularly pleading with my mum to have another baby. Is it weird that I was broody at the age of 7? I mean, I just googled it there, and it would seem that it is weird? Who knew!  Anyway, my ideal childhood scenario would have been my mother having another child when I was about 7 years-old. Really, it would have only been smart from my mum's perspective. I would have been an absolute asset to the care-giving process. Raising a child would have been a breeze. If her back was sore, I could have pushed the pram. If she was busy with housework, I could have entertained the baby. Really, if she had only seen it from my perspective, it would have been an absolute no-brainer. Instead, my dear naive mother had other ideas. She, like many, opted to have her kids close together. What a foo...

Cian, one week old As a woman with shoulder length hair I am quite low maintenance when it comes to any hair-related grooming. I probably get my hair cut every six months in a good year. I think my last haircut was April and it is just while I write this that I am considering booking an appointment. It's not even the price that is a deterrent for me. That's only because I found a salon which is quite reasonable, and doesn't charge you a week's salary for a trim. For me, it is just not at the top the priority list of things to do at the weekend. For men however, hair grooming is a whole different ball game. For the first six years of our relationship, I was never conscious of the frequency of Jack's haircuts. I think he must have been barbering in secret. Now I realise that it's not just Jack, it's all men. My male colleagues are just as bad and my Dad is probably the worst topping the charts with at least three visits a quarter. So now having a son...

Nappy change at 3 days old I am not even going to waste my energy attempting to make this blog post high brow. This post is all about poos. You can package them up any way you want. I guess some people might find other words less offensive? Maybe saying poo-poo sounds cuter? I don't know. But in reality, you can't polish a turd, so why try. For the record my poos will not be discussed here, just my son's poos. He's only 2, so that's more acceptable right? One thing that never really bothered me about having a baby, was the poo. Actually, from birth you are encouraged to monitor your child's poos quite closely. I would always be pretty pleased when he produced one. It was far better than the alternative. Constipation is not funny. I think it helps that for as long as I can remember, talking about bowel movements has been encouraged in my family. I honestly believe that's the way to do it. Get it out in the open. The discussion, not the poo. I do know...

We are now 4 weeks into potty training. Not that I'm counting or anything. And I personally feel we have come miles from when I last wrote about this. I'll get to how far Cian has come in a minute, but I feel personally I have developed a lot throughout this project. How Zaz? How have you developed as a person and a mother? Well reader, let me tell you. I have always been a pretty patient person when it comes to Cian. It takes a lot for me to lose my sh*t. But in those rare scenarios (I'm being kind, they happen more frequently than they should) the only effective method I have found that has truly kept me from throwing my child, or myself, out the window, is the 'tag-team approach'. I'm sure many of you use it, and not necessarily with a child, maybe a pet, or a drunk friend? This approach basically has you taking five minutes to calm down, and letting someone else deal with the child, dog, or drunk friend. In this scenario my someone else is Jack, and m...

So for once, this is actually going to be a relatively serious post. Yeah, I'm going to give one of those serious posts a bash. I started my blogging journey because I wanted to share the daily pleasures and struggles of parenthood, and this post definitely falls into that latter category. I wanted to share this story because I feel pretty strongly about this one subject. I don't tend to have much I feel genuinely passionate about. I'm not opinionated on climate change, or recycling, or team sports. Does that make me a bad person? I don't know. But recently I have become extremely passionate about one thing. Febrile seizures.  Hospital after Seizure No. 1 January 2018 So, what is a febrile seizure? Very good question Mr/Ms Reader. I have taken the definition from the NHS website just for you!  A febrile seizure is a fit that can happen when a child has a fever... They most often occur between the ages of 6 months and 3 years. They are relatively c...

This is a story that many of my friends and family would have heard before. It happened before I had taken to blogging, but it is a story I have been told, is worth sharing. So firstly, I’ll set the scene. It was a lovely Sunday afternoon and the family and I had been out to the park, for lunch and to Ikea. Isn't Ikea just such a typical Sunday shop to visit? Cian's toys were starting to take over the whole flat so we needed a toy chest to hide the kiddie clutter. When we arrived home, Jack started embarking on the building work. I would have no idea where to start nor would I want to, thank god Jack thrives on building things. I thought the safest thing to do would be to get Cian away from the hammers and nails, so we went off to Aldi for our weekly food shop, just before dinner time. I love Aldi, I always have a delightful shopping experience there. It's big enough to have everything you need, but not too big that you could lose a child (I hope). So, Cian w...

After some thought of how to shape this blog and some very heartfelt advice from Jack in the words of "you're not going to write a blog every  night are you?" I have come to the conclusion that I will post twice weekly. I feel that way I should have enough material to make it interesting enough, but it won't be too much of a drain on my time, 'cause let's face it, I only have space in my life for one drain and his name is Cian. Of course he is as adorable as little drains come! So as I alluded to in an earlier blog, Cian has hit the 'Terrible Twos'. I used to ask myself, 'how will you know when your child has hit this most talked about period of toddlerhood?' But oh believe me, you know. So Cian has never really enjoyed listening to me, but recently it has become about 10 times worse. He's now so bad at listening that it has g enuinely  crossed my mind that he might be deaf. I mean not completely deaf, but maybe a little deaf? My mum wo...

Firstly, I'll set the scene. My son, Cian is now two-years old (3-years in March). And with a nudge from my parents, and the girls at Cian's nursery, I felt it was time to start potty training! My baby was going to throw away his nappies, and replace them with some big boy pants! It was quite exciting. So, anyone who knows me knows I rely on google heavily . So, naturally I started our potty training adventure on Google. The more I read, the more I felt Cian was ready to embark on this journey. Cian was ticking off all the "Is your child ready to potty train?" checklist questions which in my mind was a great first step.  So, as I like to think of myself   as quite a chilled out person (my husband,   Jack might think differently), I thought what would the harm be in taking a 'relaxed' approach to potty training. Phase 1 of my relaxed approach, was asking Cian on a random Tuesday evening if he wanted to use the potty. I know, a Tuesday? What was I thin...