The #Secret to nutritional goodness

I was invited to a party yesterday. Okay, so it was only a Twitter party; but, hey, I don't get out much. It's on Thursday from 1pm to 2pm and if I'm being honest, I shouldn't brag about the invitation because anyone can come. The party theme is getting kids to eat properly and all you have to do is use the hashtag #secret goodness and you're away. Oh, plus share a few of your concerns/tips in the nutrition department.

It's being sponsored by Kingsmill, which in my mind is synonymous with white sliced bread so doesn't exactly fit my eating agenda, but I guess those slices also come in brown. (I'll gloss over the fact that the loaves also come pumped with god knows what so they last forever in your bread bin.) And, let's face it, bread is pretty handy when you've got to feed a child in a hurry. Where would the world be without sandwiches?

Food is something I think about a lot, whether it's me or Louis who is doing the eating. Somehow we've lucked out because for a two year old, Louis is a pretty fantastic eater. (I've always figured it makes up for his ineptitude in the sleeping department.) Whether it's luck or by design, he's always had a pretty adventurous palate and a hearty appetite. Okay, so he likes cake and chocolate as much as the next toddler, even though I never intended to let him know what they were! But he'll chow down lentils for dinner and a pear for pudding happily enough.

He's always wanted what we're eating (which forces me to do a lot of surreptitious chocolate munching) and recently that means he's developing a taste for some serious heat. Spice heat, not temperature. It all started when we told him he wouldn't like Daddy J's stir fry because it was too spicy. "I like spicy," came the reply, so we let him at it. The upshot was lunch on Monday at a fabulous Japanese noodles house, Koya, in Soho. After polishing off the noodles I'd hived off from my dish for him, he demanded first DJ's curried version, and then more of mine, which by now came with additional zing. Did it put him off? On the contrary, and there's photographic evidence to prove it.

Which I think all goes to show that sometimes children might eat more than their parents anticipate, greens and all.

Mea culpa: or what happens when someone reads what you've written

Odd thing, blogging: one minute it's just you, your sofa and a keyboard; the next someone half way round the world has read what you've written. Which shouldn't surprise me; after all, I make a (so-called) living writing for a national newspaper. And yet, when I got pulled up for something I'd written on bwb some months ago, it came as rather a shock to know I actually did have followers. Especially when it turned out they were somewhat closer to home than California.

So close to home, in fact, that the something I got taken to task about concerned Louis' nursery and some somewhat glib remarks I'd made about the torture that was leaving him there. (And when I say *torture*, I don't actually mean torture in a strict thumbscrew sense on the offchance I offend the same follower again; I'm exaggerating for something I believe is called poetic license, not that I'm claiming to be a poet.) Turns out, someone who knew Louis, read this blog, and, I'm guessing, knew of me, was so *worried* about me after reading a couple of my posts that instead of asking if I was okay, she - and apparently it was another mum - thought it best to show the offending posts to the head of the nursery because clearly they "had a real problem". Not with Louis; with me.

Never mind that this all blew up just as he was (finally) truly settling in. Or that it made me feel terrible, because inevitably the nursery then worried that I thought badly of them, when nothing could have been further from the truth. The only thing I felt bad about was me for dumping him there, which is a working mother's prerogative, after all. The one constant about Louis' nursery was how lovely the staff are, yet my throwaway remarks had made them feel bad. And me feel even worse.

Which I explain not for want of having something to blog about, but partly as a mea culpa for the original comments but also by way of explanation (if anyone was curious) as to why it's been nearly three months (three months?? where does time go) since I've last written a post. And for the record, an older and wiser Louis is loving nursery right now, which I'd love to report helps to ease that maternal guilt, but I'm not sure it does.

Catch 22

For me, it' s bed time. His, not mine, although there's an inevitable knock on when it's always gone 9pm before you even start thinking about dinner or snatching some down time. Should I stay, or should I go? The dilemma gets me every time. No prizes for guessing what he says. Repeatedly. So I stay, but know that if I go I'd be doing him a favour. Or would I? He certainly doesn't seem to think so when I try and creep out.

Each night is like a game of Russian roulette. Sometimes if I stay, I just prolong both our agonies because he ends up staying awake just to make sure I haven't snuck out. But if I go, he gets so upset that I just end up flying back in to calm him down. And cuddle him. Again. Except for the odd miracle occasion when leaving him is the right choice because without my presence to distract him, he'll give up on the day that much faster and fall asleep. But then again, sometimes he'll do that when I cuddle him. Although sometimes he won't.

Part of me is desperate that it's been two and a half years and still I dread bedtime. But another part of me knows that he won't want to cuddle me forever and even those two and a half years have gone quickly (if you excuse the interminable hours/days/weeks spent waiting for him to drop off). The real catch 22 is that I feel if I leave him to cry now, then I may as well have abandoned my no crying rule years. Sometime I think we'd have all been a lot happier. But then I remember how sweet natured he is, and I like to kid myself that that's got something to do with him never having had to give up on the world because no one came. Until, that is, it's time for bed and I'm in a fresh quandary about what to do again.

This post was inspired by Josie's writing prompt at Sleep is For the Weak. I've long intended to write something for it as oppose to just write words in my head and this week, for some reason, I decided the time had finally come. I hope she thinks the subject matter apt......

BMB Carnival time!

So, it's carnival time. Which for the unBritishMummyBloggersinitiated is a bi-monthly celebration of blogging posts. I had intended to suggest a theme, but didn't get the chance because entries started arriving about four weeks ago! And if you think that means I haven't pulled them all together at the last minute, well, think again. Enjoy. I know I did.

Pants with Names wonders how kids suss us out so quickly

Kate takes 5 seconds to embarrass her other half....

Muddling along Mummy wants to know if it's possible to fall back in love?

Carly at Mummyshoes on the cut throat world of baby modeling

21stcenturymummy tackles the torture that is miscarriage

A Modern Mother books in some time for herself

Mama and More bemoans how she’d rather her little girl never felt she needed make up

Smart Talkers reveals how signing can help more than just babies and toddlers

Frugal Family surprises with how much fun grown ups can have with 20 questions

A Mothers Ramblings wants you to remember how much children mean to their parents

Musings of a Busy Mum muses how to make the best of a bad soup

Baby Budgeting has some top tips for a bargain basement birthday party

Mommy has a Headache asks how you cope with that time of the month?

Maggie at Red Ted Art, on making a hobby horse for 50p

Mummy From the Heart sees red

New Mummy wants people to give mums a break

Sharon at I heart Motherhood on The big C

ebabee likes Stella’s new kids clothes

Steffi at Mummy Do That on how to make breastfeeding seem “normal”

Hot Cross Mum reveals how dads are really from mars

Mary at A Small Hand in Mine has some wise words from Dr Seuss

Rachel at Mid 30s Life on beating the gym humiliation

Northern Mum has tips on surviving Tesco - and reveals why that wine aisle comes at the end

Mission to Motherhood seeks the hidden domestic goddess within

Metal Mummy on debunking common myths

Packing T-shirts and toddlers

Just what do guidebooks have against toddlers? Or new parents come to think of it? For some reason the Lonely Planet et al seem to have decreed that toddlers shouldn't go travelling. Turn to the section about children, and it's always all about older children with absolutely no tips for the under threes. Or fours, or fives.

Yet they're missing a trick. Take Madrid. A fantastic city for young kids as it turns out, contrary to its reputation as party central. The best thing is practically every plaza comes with a playground attached, from the brilliant one on Plaza Oriente, just in front of the Palacio Real (think Buckingham Palace with slides) to the two on Plaza Santa Ana, one of the city's most picturesque. And that's without counting all the ones in the Parque del Retiro. Then there was the tapas. Snack central. (Although I would like to know if there are any guidelines on the number of salty olives a toddler should eat in one sitting?) And it's totally walkable. We didn't make a single Metro journey - and we saw a lot of Madrid. It's also largely pedestrianised; buggy nap heaven. Plus everyone went crazy for Louis. Even the lovely lady in the clothes shop who followed us out into the street and begged me to pop him on the potty inside a changing cubicle rather than make him freeze outside.

It's not that the playgrounds were hard to spot. But a line or two pointing them out might have been nice. That way, Louis could have been bouncing on a see saw on the plaza just off one of the main shopping streets while I browsed, instead brumming his car in the gutter. Some advance knowledge that it was there would have been helpful, rather than leaving us to stumble upon it after Louis fell asleep. What gets me is that we're pretty much the last generation that will use guidebooks. So their authors could bear us in mind when they're updating them. Don't they realise that those student backpackers grew up? Or were we really not supposed to pack the toddler along with the T-shirts?