Love, Kay

I honestly can’t believe that it’s been nearly 6 months since I made a blog entry! I have loved having this opportunity to share my thoughts and express myself and I honestly don’t think I would have kept my sanity through my third pregnancy without this! So, let’s talk about holidays!!! We are so lucky to live in Thailand and have so many amazing resorts and countries close at hand. Traveling is one of my favourite things to do and seeing new places and experiencing new things makes me so happy... however, traveling with kids (especially young kids) doesn’t really fill me with excitement. Don’t get me wrong, I love traveling with my kids and hanging out with them is my favourite thing to do but sharing a room, early bedtime, strict nap times (baby is 16 months old), the search for food they will eat and the constant “being on” is tough. By “being on” I mean keeping them from doing crazier shit than they do at home, being hyper sensitive and aware of all strangers, constant risk a...

Value yourself and the a**holes So it has  been 3 months since I wrote a blog entry. Have I lost interest in writing? Has my life been that uneventful?  Nope, I’ve been mummying, mummying hard! I have been Mary Poppinsing the hell out of summer holidays. Day trips, play dates, arts and crafts, boom!! The kids are back at school now and I’ve been thinking about what to write and then it happened. Someone said something to me and it completely floored me. Now I’m not going to say what was said or by whom, but someone hurt me so deeply within a few seconds with one throw away comment. I’m writing this today not because of the comment, but because of what it’s made me do. It’s made me completely reevaluate how I view things. I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed and it has taken me to the age of 36 to come to the realization that I can’t change people or their thoughts or what they say and do, but I can choose how to respond, I can choose what to do with that and ...

So, I did it! I survived life without Facebook for 9 days. Was it painful? No.... Was it challenging?...yes  Did I miss it?... no Did I miss anything? Yes, a few birthdays (sorry!) What I have learned from my “break” from FB is that it’s pretty clear that FB has become a necessity in our society. Without it, a lot of information is unaccessible to me; for example summer camps for my kids, social events and fantastic bargains being shared on sale boards by other mums. I hate this but I appreciate it is the world we live in and for this reason, I now only look on FB for those things. I will scroll through once or twice a day but I won’t like everything (please don’t think I don’t actually like things but if there is something that really grabs my attention or makes me feel something... I’ll message you, I’ll connect, I won’t just click anymore). I have started a FB cull. If you share pictures of people you don’t know as it’s their birthday and they have no friends and w...

My name is Kay and I am a social media addict. These words kill me but it is the truth. Facebook has become an automatic “go to” activity in my daily life.  Seeing someone’s pictures or reading their updates has become my socialising. “Liking” a picture or perhaps even “loving” something has become my connection to others. This is wrong. How can I expect my kids to stay off their iPads, if I can’t take myself away from my phone? (Please note the painting my son did of me last year. It’s so beautiful and colourful and he’s even included the baby in my belly but there’s the other addition, my phone!!) I dread to think how many hours I have wasted following links, reading random posts about pointless things and crying at videos of soldiers returning home to surprise their families. Yes, these are heart warming videos but there is a time and a place for it and that shouldn’t be when my baby is staring up at me from her bouncy chair or whilst my son is trying endlessly to per...

“Hmmmmmmm... what’s the word again?!?! You know what I mean?! The thing? The thing that does that thing?? Oh come on?! You must know what I mean!!” Welcome to the inner workings of my brain! It’s a scary place and I have noticed recently that due to the 3rd baby entering our family, it’s become even scarier!  Mumnesia or “baby brain” is something I have joked about since I fell pregnant with our eldest in 2010. I used to blame my absentmindedness on the fact I was pregnant or had a new born or had a toddler or because I was pregnant again. 8 years later, I can honestly say that baby brain is real, it’s serious and I have it! It can be seen as day to day absentmindedness but forgetting where the “special” place I put things is or forgetting appointments is incredibly frustrating. More so, recently I have found that simple words escape me. I know exactly what I mean but I end up staring at the person I am talking to and in a complete panic, all the while trying to find a...

I sat recently and thought really hard about my kids and their futures and what I want for them. Do I want them to be rich? Successful? Cure cancer? Win Olympic gold? Well yes, all of the above if I’m being honest but deep down, what do I want my children to become. I want them to be good people; Good human beings with good hearts that want to do good things for others. There are just too many assholes in this world, it’s our job to ensue we help guide these kids away from potential assholdom (pretty sure that’s a word!) and towards.... what’s the opposite of assholdom?? Non- assholdom?!?! Yep, that’ll do nicely.   This sounds so idealistic and fluffy but it’s so true. I can’t honestly prepare them for the world they will live in in 15-20 years as I don’t know what that world will look like and I can’t fully prepare them for their future careers, perhaps these jobs haven’t even been invented yet; but I can prepare them to be good people; people who live life with empathy, al...

Introvert, extrovert, chatty, aloof, confident, shy, snobby, warm, irritating...  Are any of these words ones that you’d use to describe yourself? How about other people? Do you feel that people really “get” you?  I turn 36 this year and I have come to accept the person that I am; that’s not to say I’m 100% happy with myself but I understand myself better and feel more comfortable in my own skin. Throughout my life, many people have made snap judgements about me, my bitchy resting face and introverted characteristics have made me seem aloof, snobby, unfriendly and sometimes even boring. Seriously though.... this was me having fun at a beautiful family wedding!!!!     This always bothered me as I found myself becoming increasingly worried about what people thought of me. It wasn’t until I attended a coaching course and completed the Myers Briggs test that I was able to really get down to the nitty gritty of what makes me me. I hate the idea ...

Last week I did something that I have always dreamed of doing; I bathed with elephants. I unfortunately live in a country where these beautiful creatures are tortured for the logging and tourist industry and have their spirits and bodies crushed by small people with big hooks. Fortunately, there are some people trying to solve this and there are places where these elephants are being rescued and treated with care and the love they deserve. (I appreciate they are still in the tourist industry but this is somewhere that people can be educated about elephants and hopefully reduce the amount of elephant shows/rides tourists take). It wasn’t until I returned home that it dawned on me that I could now “tick” this off my bucket list. “Bucket list”, is a term I really dislike so instead wish to call it “Kay’s List”.  I want to see the world with my husband and do all the magical things that so many others dream of; go on safari, skydive, take a hot air balloon ride etc. But I’ve de...

Every morning I wake up and grab for my phone; I check my messages, emails and then check in with the world of Facebook. This morning I read an amazing blog entry from two wonderful ladies I met in Texas. These ladies and their blog are the reason I went to the hospital to have a colonoscopy at the age of 33 & these ladies are the reason I found out that I had the colon of a 69 year old and if I didn’t sort myself out, I would eventually develop colon cancer.  Blogs are a fantastic avenue in which we can vent and share and sometimes, a blog can change your mood, perspective or perhaps even your life. (Thank you again, ladies!) In their blog today, they wrote about friendships and the kind of friends that “fan our flames”, friends that uplift us and inspire  us to be better people. This really made me think.. Again, I’m going to refer back to the latest shooting in the US. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a teacher, because I have kids in school, have a newborn...

Sometimes you can plan and prepare everything and be in the best mood and life takes a big old dump on you!! Something unexpected happens, someone says something, it can be anything; something happens to you and suddenly your day is a shit tip!  This happened to me this morning. I woke up later than usual as the baby was unsettled in the night and the house was chaos! Just as my husband was getting our son into the car, my daughter walked into my room with her pyjamas on in tears, “I can’t find my other sock!!”... and so it begins... So my poor husband was juggling the morning routine today of getting the kids up, fed and dressed as well as getting himself ready for the office and I knew in that moment that Sienna’s sock was going to bring the house down!  He’s screaming as they are going to be late, Sienna is literally running around in circles (one sockless foot was obviously knocking her off balance!?!) and the baby is throwing up all over me. This is where...

I love Christmas and my kids birthdays, they are  by far my favourite times of the year. But every year, the same question gets me, “what are the kids into just now? What toy do they want?”   Now, please please please please don’t think I’m being ungrateful or just a real grumpy bitch, they have been given some very thoughtful things in the past and I appreciate that people see things and love to buy them for our kids... but the time has come to say it loud and say it proud.. our kids need no more toys! When we had our first child, we bought him all the baby sensory toys we could find and everywhere we went we would buy something to commemorate our trip; a small memento to remind us  of that moment in time when he experienced something for the first time & we did as parents. Then we had our daughter and ofcourse she needed all the pink toys we could get our hands on as well as every Disney princess knickknack from the tea sets to the transvestite looking Bel...