Family Life Archives - Page 5 of 13 - The Only Girl in the House

Jess September, 2016

Living The Dream – On Telly

This morning over on the ol’ instagram, I proudly shared that our family had been featured in a real life TV ad. Don’t go anywhere – this is not a shameless plug for said ad or the company I spend 30 seconds waxing lyrical about during my starring role. Instead, I want to give a little “don’t give up” to the mamas who might have that nasty voice in their head saying “jack it in – it’s not worth it – you’re crap”, like I too often do. But if you do just want to see the ad – head to the bottom!

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Jess August, 2016

The Mum Challenge | Vlog

Clearly, mid summer holidays, my brain’s been a tad too frazzled by “can I have something tw’eat?” for the 63rd time in a morning, “I’m bored!” but “Eugh, do we have to go out?!”, followed by “I’m heading into the road as I can see Pikachu!” As I thought it might seem like a good idea to let the kids take charge for half an hour. Lesson learnt… DON’T! This is what happens when you let the kids have their own way! I’ve clearly been feeding them the wrong “favourite dinner” for a while and I’m not sure why I’m so thrilled that Hugo thinks LA is a country, but at least I know when Bruno’s birthday is!

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Jess July, 2016

Not Quite Adulting: My Adult Moments

You’d think that at 31, having birthed 3 sprogs, been married then divorced, mortgaged up, 2 step kids and numerous pets – that I might consider myself a fully fledged adult. WRONG! Like many people I’ve asked on this subject, it’s not that I feel like a kid, but I certainly don’t feel like I’ve reached the peak of my grown-up-ness. Worringly, even my mum – a whole generation of adultier-ness above me, still doesn’t feel there yet. But perhaps being a grown-up isn’t a state, a bit like happiness, it’s fleeting moments; moments where it really feels as though I’ve got my shit together and I can do this – without doing a silly dance, asking for a straw with my coke or throwing a (discreet) tantrum when our local ice cream parlour runs out of cherry flavour on a particularly I-need-cherry-kinda-day ).

So, here’s my list of moments when I feel top of my adult game – in the vague hope, some of you might also feel the same about our severe lack of acknowledging our responsibilities and always hoping there will be an adultier adult to deal with the crap post fan-hit.

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Jess June, 2016

Brexit: The Kids’ Questions

I usually shy away from blogging about the latest trending subject matter – fodder to soon become tomorrow’s chip paper’s just not my bag; neither, until the last few days was politics. But after Friday’s revelation that our fine and glorious country will be leaving the EU, many seem quite up in arms, upset, offended and brutally disappointed with the outcome. Panic not, I’m not about to wade into a political rant. This is not to berate or applaud either side of the argument, yes, we’ve all seen the enviable diplomacy of the Facebook friend that says “we all need to move forward together despite the decision”. This is simply to pose the questions asked by the generation this outcome will potentially affect the most – our children. On being informed of the Brexit on Friday morning, something which I’ve done my best to inform my otherwise pretty clueless sons about, these were the responses given from the 8 and 9 year old.

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Jess June, 2016

The Awe of 5 Boys

En mass, I get it, we’re not only a larger than the norm family, but luck also swung firmly in the male direction when it came to our procreative efforts generating 5 boys. We get a myriad of comments ranging from the friendly, yet sympathetic “you deserve a medal – wow, 5 boys!”, after dinner has been inhaled at a restaurant; to slightly icy stares as couples mutter “god, haven’t they heard of contraception?!”, as we herd our monsters through a packed checkout in Tesco’s on a Sunday afternoon. What none of these people realise, and why would they, is that we never set out to have 5 kids, let alone 5 of the same rambunctious sex. Mr Only Girl and I were happily bumbling along as single parents with two mild-mannered (that’s a whopping lie!) boys each, until one day, we met whilst playing football in the park, fell madly in love (not a whopping lie!), became a family with four boys and then thought we’d give the baby-sex-wheel-of-fortune one more spin at having THAT girl – ooops, there’s another boy. So, in a relatively short space of time, we went from two each to five collectively! BAM! A family of seven was created.

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