Working mum

I’m back!

Published on April 30, 2017April 30, 2017 by elskenewman2 Comments

It’s been a while. A long while. A way too long while since I even logged on to WordPress, let alone wrote anything! But I’m back, well I’m trying to be (I imagine Arnie saying “I’ll try to be back” wouldn’t have made quite the same impact – ha ha).

Jacob has recently started pre-school 3 hours a day, and the weeks leading up to that, a lot of my sentences started with: “Well, when Jacob goes to nursery I’ll have a bit more time to do that…” so I planned to do a lot of things, and I mean a lot of things.

First things first though, I increased my hours at work. Working only two days a week is lovely, but it does not help ones financial situation much, so half of the hours Jacob was going to be at nursery I agreed to work. Luckily the amazing company I work for are really flexible and were happy to let me do the extra hours from home.

After taking off time that I spend walking to school and back to do the now 3 school runs a day, this leaves me with about 3 hours at home to do other things. In those 3 hours I decided to do the following:

Go for at least 2 runs every week
Cook lots of meals to go in our freezer for the busy days
Write at least 2 or 3 blog posts a week
Become a domestic goddess whose house is so clean it barely looks lived in
Catch up with some friends I haven’t seen for a while
And write a book

All of that in 3 hours a week.

I don’t think I need to explain why this hasn’t happened. Although in the first two weeks of Jacob’s new adventure (for details of this you will have to wait for my next post) I did go for 1 run, cleaned and tidied up our dining room and generally got the house in a state that, although it very much looks lived in, you don’t stick to the kitchen floor anymore. And the best bit is that I have actually finished the first draft of my first ever novel – eek!

Oh, and I have just written a blog post, but obviously you already knew that 🙂

I’m back!

Published on March 9, 2016March 9, 2016 by elskenewman2 Comments

Wow, you know you’ve been busy when writing is one of your favourite things and still you haven’t posted for 5 months! I know! Five whole months without as much as a word. Without trying to make excuses, the main reason I haven’t been blogging is that we have had a lot of illness over the last few months. I was ill pretty much from just before Christmas up to nearly the end of February with one nasty cold and/or flu after the other. And as soon as I was better, yes you guessed it, the kiddos got ill.

Jacob got off lightly the first time with just a cold that was gone within a few days, but Elisabeth was not so lucky and she was poorly for almost two weeks. We even got worried we might have had to cancel her birthday party, but she got better just in time…..or so we thought. Last week she again came down with high temperatures, sore throat and ear ache. Poor girl.

Because she is far too ill to go to school I have taken today off work (unpaid, eek!) to look after her. Normally I work from home when Elisabeth is not well because she is such a good girl and she happily lets me get on with what I need to do, but we have had so little sleep this week that I decided that and trying to work and looking after a poorly girl was just a bit too much. So a day off it is (which was a good decision because even writing this is making my eyes wanting to shut quite desperately!).

Anyway, winter won’t last forever so in theory the colds will go, and hopefully that means I will have a little more time (and energy) to write. In the next few days I would like to share with you my first ever published article about how my super brave grandmother saved the life of a Jewish girl during the Second World War, so watch this space!

Help, my brain is fried….

Published on June 26, 2012April 26, 2013 by elskenewman1 Comment

So this week is the last week of an incredibly stressful project at work, well actually there are 3 important projects going on at the same time, all with not enough time to complete them. It has been quite hard trying to fully focus on work, including working many extra hours either from home or in the office, and also making sure family life doesn’t suffer from it. I write this as if I have actually managed it…..not quite….I had just enough energy to protect Elisabeth from my foul mood, but I have been a moody old cow to my husband. Luckily (really?) he has been quite a grouch as well so neither of us blames the other, which is a good thing. But still, it is not a good thing when work gets so bad you take the stress home. But hey, in this time of recession I am grateful to have a job (well, some days I am) and I am even more grateful to be coming home to my little monkey and hear about her adventures.

She’s been having all sorts of adventures lately, most of them taking place on the green outside our house:

What are you grateful for?

To work or not to work…..

Published on June 14, 2012April 26, 2013 by elskenewman3 Comments

That is the question that I am sure a lot of mums, and dads, out there are asking themselves on a regular basis. When my older sister was born my mum stopped working, this wasn’t 100% her choice but she was more than happy to give up her career for he children, and she didn’t go back to work until we were in high school and our situation at home meant that she had to go out and find work.

Every day I came home from school (up until we were about 12) my mum was at home waiting with a cup of tea and a biscuit. This made me feel I was the very centre of her universe, whichI guess we kind of were. I am very grateful for this and even though we weren’t well off, I would not have swapped this for having a bit more money to buy nicer clothes and have holidays abroad.

Because of this I see having a stay at home mum is the right way to bring up children. No let me rephrase, as my ideal way to bring up children. Apologies, I do not mean to give the impression that I think it is wrong for mums with kids to go back to work, I say well done to them, it’s hard, I know because I’m doing it as well. I just mean that I personally would like to do it the same way as my parents did it.

However, because I went back to work part time, my husband has been able to have every Monday off to look after Elisabeth. He loves his daddy day and I am delighted that he gets this time with her without having me around. And spending one day a week with my mother in law is something that Elisabeth really enjoys. Which just leaves the worst day of the week, nursery day – yuk!

We have been having some problems at nursery, Elisabeth came home with really bad nappy rash because they hadn’t noticed her dirty nappy even though she was screaming because she was in so much pain, and we are thinking of changing to a child minder (a friend of a friend). I would love to hear anyone who has experience with child minders and whether they prefer it to nurseries or not.

Anyway, to answer the question to work or not to work, if it was just up to me, NOT TO WORK (which in my case means leave employment but become a freelance writer so I can work from home, so I won’t just be lazing on the sofa:-)) without a doubt. But as in our current financial situation this means that we would have to cancel daddy day………I guess I will just have to man up, get over it and go to work. Who knows, maybe in 30 years time Elisabeth will blog about how she loved having a day alone with her dad and how she wouldn’t have changed it for the world. Let’s hope so.

Working From Home Is My Only Option – Loretta’s Story (therealsupermumblog.com)
Conversations with Elisabeth 2 (elskenewman.com)

It’s Friday!

Published on May 9, 2012April 25, 2013 by elskenewmanLeave a comment

Yes I know it is not really Friday today. Don’t worry I am not going mad (well, not that I know of anyway), it’s just because I work Monday to Wednesday, from a working week point of view, today is indeed my Friday.

Apologies to all of you out there who still have two days left to work, I feel for you, especially all of you who are juggling work and trying to spend enough time with your families. I know it’s hard and I am very grateful that tomorrow I can wear my scruffy old jeans, which are getting worse by the day as I am on my knees 90% of my time playing with Elisabeth. Guess what I’m spending this month’s wages on…..

The weird thing is though, even though my weekend has officially started, it doesn’t feel like it. I still get very excited on Friday because that evening the actual weekend will start, not just for me, but for my husband and for most other people who are lucky enough not to work weekends. So even though today is my pretend Friday, actual Friday still rules!

Elske x

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