5 things I have learnt since becoming a mum.

Being a parent is one of the most magical experiences but its certainly no fairy-tale story either. I has this perfect image in my head when I was pregnant about how life would be and what kind of parent I would be once baby came along. Lets just say we left that fairy-tale at the hospital. My heart has never been so full of love and my home full of laughter until the kids came along but here are some of the things I have learnt since having children...

#1 - Kids are unpredictable like seriously just give up trying to predict them now, its a losing game! They particularly like to prove this in front of other people just to make you look like an idiot. "Oh yes Evelyn can now count to 10, show our friend Evelyn.... um 2,7,9, 1 **cue clapping from Evelyn**. The same unpredictability applies for sleep and just when you think you have a good routine going along comes a growth spurt to screw that up. So yea my best advice would be to expect nothing but be prepared for anything!


#2 - Days out will never been the same again, they will be fun but never the same! Gone are the days when you can go to the zoo and admire the animals, read the facts or sit down for a picnic lunch and plan the rest of your day. Nope expect to pay over the odds to get in only for your child to find their inner Usain Bolt and dart it around the zoo as if its closing time in 30 minutes. Days out are no longer days out, well unless you count soft plays and parks as days out!? They will be completed in record time and your child will then want to spend the rest of the day in the park that they find so basically you spend £50+ to see a glimpse of a monkey and sit in a park.


#3 - It suddenly becomes acceptable to take about poo to your friends and nobody will bat an eyelid! Honestly its practically a conversation starter nowadays and we ask what's normal or not so normal (includes discussing the colour of poo!) without a care in the world. It also becomes a contest to compare eye bags and the amount of sleep you've had the night before "No seriously, I've had about 2 hours sleep and my eye bags are practically taking over my face, you can't of had a worse night that me"! Oh how meeting with our friends for a grown up coffee and chat has changed, these days its more a sip of your cold coffee and 30 laps of costa to catch a toddler.


#4 - Even when you say you have no money you will always find money for cute kids clothes! My child has more clothes right now that I think I have ever owned in my life but heck I just can't resist that glittery unicorn top or kitty cat cardigan. We kid ourselves by convincing ourselves it was a bargain in the sale even though we know the likely hood is it will be worn once and either stained outgrown before the next appearance of it. But still we buy the clothes, there must be some sort of lure to for us mums to cute kids clothes (well that's my story and I'm sticking to it!).


#5 - If you thought you and your best mate could chat for England then you are yet to meet a toddler! Evelyn can talk and talk and talk yet listening is definitely not something she has mastered yet. Sometimes she chats to me so much the words all merge together to form a buzzing noise in my ear I can't quite decipher but I stop listening and she knows. Yet I ask her to do something and suddenly listening doesn't really matter. I often wonder when she's going to come up for air when she really gets chatting and the questions ohh the questions they are the same questions on repeat but she has no recollection of asking me them before!

Even when our kids drive us up the wall, refuse to use the toilet (one word poo-nami!), get covered in dirt, sometimes even make us cry and definitely make us poor.... we still love them! Their cheeky charm, sleep cuddles and wild antics and all.

I asked some other bloggers what they had learnt since becoming a parent and here is what they said -

- Kerry - that going to the toilet will never be the same again.

- Kirsty - you can learn to drink cold tea or cold coffee, in fact, you'll even learn to appreciate it.

- Laura - that she could answer the same questions hundreds of times a day!

- Georgina - College all fighter's will seem like a lie in when compared to the 4 month sleep regression.

- Kati - The many awesome uses of baby wipes. How did I ever clean up spillages, surface clean the house, remove stains from carpets or make-up from my face?


Can you relate to any of these?? I would love to hear all about the things you have learnt since becoming a parent in the comments below.

xXx