Mrs Helicopter Writes

Here are the seven ways I fail at gender-neutral parenting:  1) I painted my daughter’s new bedroom peach and bright yellow and my 6 yr old boy’s bedroom grey and black. 2) I bought some “boy” and “girl” toys for the party bags for my son’s birthday. Including prett y stickers & hair clips vs robot stickers & cars. 3) My son loves football and my daughter loves dancing. I actively encourage both. 4) Gus had Thomas the Tank crockery when he was little. I bought Joni Peppa Pig stuff when she came along. 5) Gus’s wardrobe was lots of reds, yellows, greens as well as blue when he was little but now his wardrobe is made up of black, brown and grey. Joni has those colours too but also ALL the colours and a big dollop of yellow, pink and purple. 6) Gus had fairly neutral toys until about one but then he was drawn towards cars, trains and balls. So that’s what we bought. Joni was obsessed with dolls by the age of one. Admittedly introduced by the c...

Hello lovely people! I have done my first actual themed vlog. I have answered a series of questions about my best bits of the 90s. I've joined up with   Aby from You Baby Me Mummy & Amy from Mr and Mrs T Plus Three and their linky #Vlogstars.  You can join in too! The questions are below.... if you don't want to vlog it though, bung the answers on my Facebook post so I can be nosy!  Be warned this is a long vlog. I am sorry I find it SO hard to self edit! There is lots of visual stimulus though so hopefully it's not a total bore off. Enjoy!  1. Favourite Disney film? 2. NSYNC or Backstreet Boys? 3. Favourite music artist? 4. Favourite candy/sweet? 5. Weirdest fashion trend? 6. Favourite game console & game? 7. What would you watch after school/college? 8. Favourite book? 9. Favourite clothing store? 10. Your best 90s memory?

♥ My Momma ♥ My mum was a stay at home mum. From the day she had me, 39 years ago until the present day she hasn’t had much paid work. How LAZY. What a LUXURY. What did she DO all day? Did she spend her time going out for lunch, shopping and going to the gym like a footballer’s wife? I know she at LEAST went for coffee every morning after school drop off! All my other friend’s mums had jobs or even careers. My Grandmother and my Nana also worked. Why didn’t my mum work? As a teenager I struggled with this. Those were my judgemental, critical, ill-informed thoughts. Hark, the ignorance of youth! In my younger school years, my future career choices had varied wildly… from vet (too thick), to speech therapist (why?!) to farmer (too veggie/precious city-ite). But I had no idea what I wanted to do career-wise because what I really wanted to do was be a mum. A mum like my mum. I thought her life was BRILLIANT! She got to stay at home and play with her kids and have loads of f...

A while ago there was a ridiculous post being peddled around Facebook along the lines of “If you climbed trees, scraped knees,  scrumped for apples, came home when the sun went down,   got felt up by a paedo in a park,*insert other nostalgic, archaic nonsense here*  and you turned out alright, re-post!”. It really annoyed me. Posts that wang on about how things were better in the past really wind me up. The world we live in now is fantastic! It's far more exciting, far more accessible, with amazing communication available on an international level with the press of a button. It's bursting with information readily available at our finger tips anytime of day or night. Most importantly, however, it is SAFER. We don’t leave our doors unlocked and our kids unaccompanied in parks, or by rivers or whatever other ludicrous notions that status it promoted because we are aware of rape and murder and kidnap and paedophilia. HOWEVER. I am increasingly aware that even though ...