Last week my little miss and her bestie became super heros.

They had the best time!

The Little Hero Capes come in a variety of colours and patterns and you can even create your own combo! They are beautiful quality and gorgeous! She hasn’t had it long so I can’t tell you how well or long they will wear but we are loving them & the kids are having a blast :)

There were some lovely comments about these capes and so I’ve decided I’d like to give a Little Hero Cape to an Everything Is Edible reader.

I haven’t done a giveaway in a while so bear with my while I shake off the dust and try to remember how to do this.

To enter:

1. Leave a comment below

that’s it.

It’d be nice if you wanted to follow this blog in some way, but you don’t have to.

It’d be nice if you shared this giveaway via twitter, Facebook, your blog or simply by telling your friends…but you don’t have to.

Entries are open worldwide. Winner will be drawn by Random.Org on Monday 20th June and will be able to choose a Little Hero Cape for their very own super hero.

What are you waiting for?
The fine print: This is not a sponsored giveaway/post – I think this is a fun, good quality item and I’d like to share the love.

Incoming search terms:

• superhero giveaways
• superhero give aways
• superheroes giveaways philippines

When I started this blog I never dreamed where it would take me. I didn’t forsee being four years down the track with two children in tow writing about all aspects of being their Mum.

Perhaps it’s time to reflect on where we will be in another 4 years or 40 (heh!)  Because in 4 years time Bliss will be coming up to 7 and she might not like me writing about her quite so much. In 14 years time she’ll be turning 17 and definitely won’t want me to write about her. In 24 years time she may be, like me, on the cusp of having her first child. Or maybe she won’t. Either way, I wonder how she will feel about this blog and what I’ve said? If she can be bothered sorting through it all…

It’s good to think about.

If you’re not a blogger you may not realise that Mummy Bloggers are a pretty hot topic in Australia at the moment. Brands and PR companies are contacting us every day to run promotions, talk about their product or be involved in marketing them in some other way.

It gives me lots to think about.

I’ve done lots of giveaways on this blog in the past. I used to have a once a month giveaway for an email subscriber called “Subscribe and Win”, and my favourite comp was the 12 Days Of Christmas in 2008 – that was awesome! I’m giving lots of thought to the types of giveaways I might like to do going forward, and I’ve got a few things in mind. I’d love to know what you think, and how you feel about giveaways on blogs, this blog in particular.

4 years ago my space in the interwebs was barely visible; it’s still teeny tini but there’s a great big spotlight over this whole arena now…in 4 years time, or 14 or 24 it’s likely that the spotlight will have refocused in some, or many ways. Whatever happens between then and now, I intend to keep the focus on why I started this journey and why I keep on with it.

Being a Mummy changes every day, and so it seems, does being a “Mummy Blogger”. Thanks for joining me on the journey, here’s to keeping it real!

x

This post was going to be about being driven.

It was going to be about that aspect of my personality that is dogged, that meant I had my L plates on the very first day I could after turning 16, that means after Bliss was born I studied, worked and raised her as a sometimes SAHM sometimes WAHM, complete with HD grades. It was going to be about why my husband is always slightly concerned when I “suggest” something – he knows that once I’ve set my mind to something I become very single focused until it happens.

It was going to be about that, and about finding what drives you and making the most out of it.

But it’s not.

I have been reminded that being driven also means being blinkered. And that being “busy” is a bad thing.

And something that has been stirring beneath my consciousness, deeply buried but every so often bubbling almost to the surface, is a word that popped through yesterday;

Selfish.

It’s something that’s been niggling away without me quite putting my finger on it. Until now.

When you are driven, and thus blinkered, there are only so many choices you can make, only so many priorities you can have, (and blinked or not), there are only so many ways you can spend your time. And so you make those choices, and you make them for you and for the end goal you have in sight.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with that, but there is something selfish about it.

And there can be a lot wrong with being selfish.

So I’m on journey to find a path between being driven and grounded – a path that keeps my personal goals and my relational priorities in check.

I love that I am a driven person, I appreciate the genes I was given on that front but I value my relationships too much to let personal “goals” damage the things that really matter to me, and that make the achievement of those goals worthwhile.

I’m glad I’m driven, but to be a bit corny, I want to make sure I’m driving in the right direction.

What path are you on at the moment?

This post is part of the Kidspot Top 50 competition. There are some amazing other posts that you should definitely have a read of: Eden, Maid In Australia, Nikki are just some of them.

Do you find that you have little expressions you say all the time but not noticed until your child(ren) start saying them too?

Bliss starts and finishes almost every statement with the clause “I think“.

I think we should have some chocolate, I think.

I think we should go to the (mu)seum today Mummy, I think.

It’s because I say things like: “I think we should go to the Museum today, maybe?” when what I mean is Let’s go to the museum today, it’ll be fun!

or “Maybe we should go and see <insert friends name>, mmm I think?” when what I mean is “We’re going to see <insert friends name> today, how exciting!”

It’s very cute but also a very bad habit!

It’s also made it clear to me the uncertainty with which I speak. I am now really conscious of how often I say and write “I think” when what I mean is “I know” or “I believe with a degree of certainty or data supporting my thesis” or “This will”. It’s a bad habit.

I think.

Grr…

I find myself have to retrain both myself and Bliss to speak with more accuracy and confidence.

Edited to include “maybe” because that’s more accurate. See, I can’t even right the post with accuracy!

Has this happened to you?

There’s been some amazing conversation happening in the comments in these posts about my recent meltdown and then about smacking. I have loved reading the comments and the conversations that have been sparked elsewhere because of it.

The thing that is standing out to me is the amount of guilt that mother’s feel, especially about smacking. I wrote SmackDown as a kind of off the cuff comment about having smacked Bliss and naiively underestimated the degree to which parents feel strongly about this topic. I have been saddened to read so many comments both here and elsewhere about the amount of guilt Mums feel after smacking their child. Parents saying they are “terrible” that their children would be “better off without me”, that I am a “failure”. My heart breaks.

And it’s not about the smacking.

Neither was my meltdown and cry for help about the smacking. It was about the helplessness I was feeling in the face of ongoing defiance abut every. Little. Thing. All. Day. Long. (In talking to other mothers I’ve discovered this is a common ailment amongst the parents of newly 3′s.)

It seems to me that the guilt is about failure. As sense that “I failed because I made a mistake – and the mistake was just the smack but the loss of control that culminated in a smack.” .

It’s gotten me thinking about how we respond when we make mistakes as parents; how we respond internally to ourselves as parents and how we respond to our children.

One of the great lessons we can teach our children is how to respond when we stuff up – how to be gracious and humble and to ask for forgiveness. My father and I had many a “heated exchange” growing up and one of the most significant lessons he taught me was the value of an apology. He always apologised to me. I can only imagine the swallowing of pride it took for my father,  an extremely intelligent man who spent his days in court arguing for a living(!) to apologise petulant teenager who was convinced she was (always) right.

I’ve had a great example of this, and I know that I am lucky.

Where are the examples of women being kind to themselves? Of letting go of guilt and applying the same grace to themselves that they so easily offer to others. How do we do this? How do we model this, both to each other and to our daughters?

I was incredibly frustrated the other day but I didn’t smack Bliss because of that. I smacked her because the behaviour she been demonstrating for weeks on end was unacceptable and every other approach we had offered had failed. And I felt guilty.

I realise now I felt guilty because I thought I should feel guilty. Because I thought I had made a mistake. Because I saw my anger and frustration and thought #fail. Thankfully I also thought “talk” and so Bliss and I did talk. We talked about what happened and about why it happened and about how to make things different.

Talking is good. Grace is good. Having a parenting plan is good (and thanks to everyone who has shared their plans).

How else do we break down the guilt and give ourselves a break? From where I’m sitting, we need it.

On Saturday we joined our good friends in celebrating their 3 year old son’s birthday. The dads took the birthday boy and his sidekick on Puffing Billy while the Mums drove onto set up the picnic lunch with the babies.

You’ll recognise this little face…

…and this little partnership.

Heather had found these fabulous capes on Etsy by My Little Super Hero and we ordered one each for as the kids presents to one another. They had a blast!

even The Architect had to have a turn!

It was fabulous day!

What do you think their secret is…?