iBlog Friday: The ultimate parenting slap down and Christmas chaos

Louisa Simmonds of My Midlife Mayhem delivers the ultimate slap-down to those who criticise her parenting style in her post Helicopter vs Satellite Parenting.

There has been a surprising amount of accusation levelled at me by both the old man and the teens about my mode of parenting recently.

The minute I am caught stalking, probing, over-organising, suffocating (NC’s words), or indeed ‘parenting’ (my words), NC starts making patronising whirring noises above my head.

Read the rest of Louisa's post here.

Raychael Case of Ms Mystery Case was all set for Christmas until something terrible happened (but they ate it anyway). She explains all in her post Day Nine: Confessing Sweet Treats.

What went wrong?  A number of things and all my doing I suspect! It was the placement on the coffee table for starters. Placed by my friend so my 1, 2 and 3 year olds, could get a good look.  Can you see where this is going? I left the room every so briefly to attend to opening a bottle of wine a pressing matter and left my three girls admiring the gingerbread house with my single no kids on board friend "Nigella" and well let's just say she may have been a goddess in the kitchen but she was no super nanny.

Read the rest of Raychael's post here.

Tania Condren of Rowdy Fairy shares the wonder (horror) of some popular foreign foods in her post Food Trends in America we don't get in Australia.

I love food and I think it is amazing how different countries develop different food tastes and trends, and I would love to share some of the different foods that you can find in America but you will not find in Australia. Some of these I love and others I am a bit unsure of! Here is my list of American food that we just don't get over here in Australia!

Read the rest of Tania's post here.

Stephanie Rogers of She Said What? invites us to join her on an important journey in her post On a scale of hungry and skinny to fat and miserable where am I?

I was reading The Body Issue, which is a wonderful series being published on The Invisible Princess. It got me thinking, my entire life has been spent somewhere along that continuum between hungry and skinny and fat and miserable. I have this socially constructed image in my head of what a beautiful person should look like. I need to challenge that once and for all.

Read the rest of Stephanie's post here.

Lauren Matheson of Create Bake Make writes a letter to her son explaining why she isn't always the mum she wants to be in her post To My Big Boy.

I had been feeling particularly guilty lately for not spending as much ‘fun’ time with Liam as I used to.  In between trying to get him to sleep in his own room through the night, our half hearted attempt at toilet training and the day to day trials of having a toddler and a baby it’s been tough.  To try and ease my guilt, I decided we’d go along to Rhyme Time at our local Library, confident that Liam would enjoy himself and we would have a fun morning out together. This is a letter I wrote to him after our day.

Read the rest of Lauren's post here.

Shelley Marsh of Money Mummy managed to cut her electricity bill by $160. How?????? She explains how she did it in her post How to cut your electricity bill.

I hate to think about it, but our electricity bill is high, really high.  I opened it recently and was shocked to find it was $1400 for the last quarter!  Ouch! Okay our house is all electric with no gas, but really?  It is not even a big house, it is a small house.  We don’t even have hordes of people living with us.  It is just the 3 of us.  Yes, the bill was for over the winter period but even then it seems ridiculous.  Surely I could get a better deal?

Read the rest of her post here.

Samantha Stone of A Life on Venus continues her discussion about daycare and separation anxiety in her post Brave Little Man.

After writing last week of our little misses separation anxieties and feeling totally, completely and utterly overwhelmed, I backed up this week with our little man's first visit to daycare. This would be the first time I would leave him there with the other bubs and carers, while I went off and had a nervous relaxing time at the supermarket. The daycare is at the same place as little misses preschool class, so he has been there many times and seen the carers and some of the bubs too.

Read the rest of Samantha's post here.

Dragana Lolic of Love.Light.Soul hangs up her superhero cape in her post When stopping is the only option.

The truth is my body had given me plenty of signs that I was pushing (and being pushed) too hard. It seemed that the harder I worked, the more work came my way. And so did various ailments. It starts with the good old neck and shoulder tension. And when you pay absolutely no attention to that, a nice little package of throat infections and colds comes. But the trooper I thought I was, I kept pushing on. The workload wasn’t getting any smaller and the expectations were ever-growing. Mine as well as others. And with every new stress, I popped a new vitamin, ate even healthier and went to a yoga class. I thought I was doing everything right. Until my body and mind told me otherwise. As per my last post, they basically boycotted me. Seriously, they staged a protest and for every push to complete just one more task, they crumbled even further.

Read the rest of Dragana's post here.

Alisha Forbes of Naughty Natruopath Mum gives us brilliant advice on dealing with stress in her post One foot in front of the other.

We think that by worrying or planning, we are helping ourselves down the track by having everything ‘pre-thought’ and ‘pre-planned’ but guess what? Later’ is going to come anyway and we will probably think about it all over again when it does. So what have we lost?

Moments that we won’t get back…..to put it simply, our life.

Read the rest of Alisha's post here.

Caylie Jeffery of Distractions of a Busy Mother gets a REAL education of the lives of some Australian's in her post Let's talk about TED and Positive Disruption.

But there are always beams of light. You just have to open your eyes wide, open your ears wider and unlock the closed doors of your mind to let them in.

Yesterday, I listened to women and men shake the status quo on a variety of different subjects. From Rape Culture to Maternal Infanticide. From Ageing Beautifully, to Dying Happily. From Time-wasting Personal Grooming to Schoolyard Bullying. From Sexism in Gaming to Multi-Linguistics and Rudeness in Remote and Indigenous Australian culture. From wanting a Healthy baby to only needing a Happy baby.

Read the rest of Caylie's post here.

Amanda Reboul of My Champagne Daze gives us a new appreciation of one of our favourite choices of bubbly in her post Cutting Edge - Veuve Clicquot.

And yet, this young widow was particularly innovative and is partially responsible for champagne looking and tasting the way it does for us today.

She is credited with creating the first recorded vintage champagne in 1810. She also invented the riddling table – a process still used today to make the wine crystal clear. Not content to sell her wines only in France, she even overcame the continental embargo ravaging Europe as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, to ship her champagnes to St Petersburg, in Russia, where it was triumphantly received.

Read the rest of Amanda's post here.

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