Well I’ve made it to Sydney! I left in the dark at 4.30am – and managed to waltz into the Curzon Hall at 9.30am – not a bad effort considering that involved almost an hour of standstill Sydney traffic – how do you people ever get anywhere? The Digital Parent’s Conference is proving to be… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Parenting
Animal Farm
Yesterday here at Shambles Manor it was all butterflies and flowers as I wrote a lovely post to my eldest daughter in honour of her 16th birthday. Today, well the atmosphere has grown decidedly icy, you could grow stalagmites. You see, turns out I am an evil mother. At the last-minute I purchased tickets to… Read more »
Do You Need a Birth Plan?
I’m in the middle of flashbacks to childbirth. My friend had a baby. She had a carefully constructed birth plan and a mix tape of zen-like music to help create a calming environment for her little one’s arrival. Twenty two hours later the birth plan was shredded and NOBODY wanted to hear a sitar ever… Read more »
Breakfast
I nag my children about how important breakfast is and make sure they eat something as I throw them out the door of a morning, tossing lost socks and forgotten homework after them. Yet it is a case of do as I say, not as I do. I don’t normally eat breakfast. Unless it’s the… Read more »
What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
The Hippie Child goes into Year 10 next year. After that there’s two years of intensity for the HSC and then she has to head out into the big, wide world. The question of “what do you want to be when you grow up?” is starting to be asked with a serious tone. We’ve gone… Read more »
Technology in Schools – A Good Thing?
The letter came a couple of weeks ago. Princess Child is going to need an i-Pad for Year 7. That will be $498 for the actual piece of equipment, another $59 for the aps required, then so help me it’s going to need some pretty hardy protective casing if it is going to survive life… Read more »
Another Sad Goodbye
The house is a little quieter today. There’s no padding of paws up the hallway, no frenzy of barking when you arrive home, no little yap to let you know you are taking a bit too long to dish out his dinner. For the first time in 10 years we are without a pet in… Read more »
What Happened To Childhood?
I’m as guilty as any parent of rambling on to my children about how tough my childhood was, “what do you mean you can’t walk to the bus stop, I walked to school EVERY DAY and IN THE FROST”. Yet it has struck me this week that perhaps my children are experiencing a childhood more… Read more »
Team Sports – Why Do We Do It?
I am exhausted this morning. Last night I played the longest, hardest game of soccer EVER. Oh all right, I was on the sideline but I swear I ran every inch of that field in my mind. It was finals night. Five minutes from the end we were leading 1 – 0. The Grand Final… Read more »
This is What Happens When I Try To Be A Responsible Parent
It is clear that for 90 per cent of the time I’m flying blind with this parenting gig. Look we’ve survived 15 years, everyone is still here, there are only a few physical scars (Princess Child had a habit of throwing herself into activities with a little more vigour than her coordination development allowed; hence… Read more »
Janine Fitzpatrick is a personal blogger with an untidy house, imperfect children and no celebrity friends.
