iBlog Friday is our weekly roundup of the best of Aussie parenting bloggers. This week Aussie mums talk about extreme toddler teething and toddler taming.
Joanna Lamb of Joanna Writes Here gets a surprising insight into what parenting is like for her mother in her post Mother, don’t smother.
I try to put myself in my mother’s shoes, and I think it must be a hard habit to break, mothering someone. How do you ease away from taking care of someone, gradually letting them go and learning to understand that they aren’t a child anymore? And while you never stop being a parent to your child, where is the line where you must pull back and let them be their own person?
Read the rest of Joanna’s post here.
Louisa Simmonds of My Midlife Mayhem learns a relationship lesson from a pavlova in her post Mastercheat Cooking: Pavlova For Dummies.
You see, over the past twelve months I have been forced to watch the old man shed a few kilos whilst goading me daily with his newly toned, sexy physique (his words).What can I say? Marriage is hard enough without your husband losing weight, especially in the unorthodox way he has done it.
And the changes to his body have caused him to behave in quite a peculiar fashion, particularly when he has his shirt off. He has this tendency to thrust his hairy, middle-aged chest out into my face first thing in the morning and say things like ‘just look at this body, Lou’.
Read the rest of Louisa's post here.
Lauren Matheson of Create Bake Make laments the use of two words while trying to navigate the 'terrible twos' in her post Toddler Taming.
What I’m finding is I am using phrases such as “Please don’t….” and the word “No” ALL OF THE TIME, and have started becoming conscious of how and when I use these words. Yesterday afternoon we were playing outside and he started telling me “Mum don’t throw rocks….. don’t throw toys…. don’t bite…” and it really made me stop and think. While I am pleased these messages are getting through to him (and I strongly believe this kind behaviour shouldn’t be tolerated AT ALL), I was also a little sad he was thinking about this whilst the two of us were happily playing in the backyard.
Read the rest of Lauren's post here.
Vanessa Thiele of The Phonenix HD Blog weighs in on the fat shaming debate in her post Fat Shaming vs Fit Praising: Why asking 'What's your reason ' is a better question.
So is this simple picture fat shaming us? Opinion is staunchly divided on that one. However, it highlighted a very important issue. That when we are attempting to motivate people into action, we have to be very careful about the strategies we employ to do this. As a former personal trainer, I can certainly put my hand up and admit to having used what I call PT Ra-Ra talk with clients. You know, ‘Suck it up, Princess’; ‘Sweat is your friend’; ‘Feel the burn, love the burn’ and all that. I can tell you, that doesn’t work for everyone. In fact, it really annoys a lot of the recipients!
Read the rest of Vanessa's post here.
Rebecca Stephens of Seeing the Lighter Side of Parenting deals with the extremes of toddler teething in her post Teething: How to cope when your toddler cuts 4 teeth at once.
At 2015 hours, after another 30 minutes of screaming, I enacted Plan B. While sitting on the nursery floor I inserted my arm through the cot bars and patted the subject in a soothing, rhythmic motion while providing a soundtrack of white noise: “Ssssh, sh-sssh, shhhh”.
Subject calmed and appeared to sleep, shifting fitfully from time to time.
Just as I was considering reporting back to base to declare the operation a success, the subject rolled. And giggled. And spoke: “Da daaa, teeeerrrr!”
Read the rest of Rebecca's post here.
This week's winner will receive the brilliant book Monster Primary School by Michael Paulsen and D.K. Jacobs.
Being the new kid at a school is never easy. However, when all the teachers and students at that school are monsters - well that's downright scary. Patrick McSweeney just happens to be the new kid and he's about to find out if he has what it takes to survive fourth grade at Monster Primary School.
Will Pat be able to fit in and make friends or will he need to call upon his secret weapon and defeat these monsters?
To purchase your own copy of Monster Primary School click here or like it on Facebook.
The winner of this week’s iBlog Friday will be announced on Monday and published. If you’d like to enter the competition please send your submission to info@themotherish.com by midday on Thursday.
Good luck!