Dear NHS – On Your 70th Birthday

To the National Health Service

I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you. The NHS gets a lot of flack – as do all services we have in this country – but, without you, I wouldn’t be here. Neither would my husband and, because of that, neither would my children.

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A Year Ago We Started Speech Therapy

A year ago we started the process for Little Man to have speech therapy. It was something I’d been through as a child too and when it was first suggested that he needed help with his speech I was so emotional. I wasn’t sad that he needed speech therapy it was more that we had been working on helping him speak for so long that hearing someone outside of our family confirm our concerns was really emotional. But, it meant that he could start having the help he needed.

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And just like that it’s the Summer Holidays!

And just like that it's the Summer Holidays!

We have been counting down to this moment for weeks – maybe even months. Today is the first full day of our summer holidays and we are looking forward to cramming so much into the next six weeks – as well as plenty of lay ins, lazy days and time at home.

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How Life, and Childhood, have changed in 25 Years

How Life, and Childhood, have changed in 25 Years

I’ve been thinking a lot about how LP and Little Man’s childhood is different from my own, how it was simpler 25 years ago, things were less material and how I loved more basic things like playing outside, reading and making tents in the garden with sheets. It’s not that the children don’t love those things now, just that life is busier, has more distractions and there are just more options when it comes to entertainment than there were when I was LP’s age.

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Two Under Two – Four Years On

Siblings {January 2014}

Back when Little Man was a year old I wrote about how hard it had been having two children so close together. I wrote about how exhausting it was, how relentless it was and how all encompassing it was. There were just twenty months between LP and Little Man. There were two lots of nappies to change, two lots of routines – with milk feeds as well as dinner, bath and bed.

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How does Childhood now Compare to 50 Years Ago?

How does Childhood now Compare to 50 Years Ago?

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I look back to my childhood and it was so different to the childhood my children are currently living but can you imagine your children having the childhood that their grandparents had?

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Bullying: Why I can’t just ‘get over it and move on’

Bullying: Why I can't just 'get over it and move on'

Last weekend I decided to confront someone about the way they had been talking about me for months behind the closed doors of a Facebook group. I told them that the things they were saying were not just unfounded and with no real cause. They were vile and much the same as I had heard being bullied as a child all those years ago in the school playground. Their response?

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