Posted by Babble Editors at 4:32 PM on November 20, 2009
On the fantastic UK Bad Mothers Club website, there’s this brilliant bit called Tantrum of the Week.
Sick on the bedroom floor and lazy men and working from home are our faves – makes you realise that you’re not alone in getting pissed-off with your bloke/the world around you when you’re a struggling mum.
And we love the graph at the top of the page, too. Hey! Maybe we should start something similar on Babble…what do you reckon? Would you all vent your spleens/get it off your chests/tell us what was really getting up your goat if we gave you the forum to write about it? Tell us what you think in the comments boxes below!
Posted by Sierra Black at 2:23 PM on November 20, 2009
Posted by bethanysanders at 11:28 AM on November 20, 2009
My husband and I have a very clear division of labour in our marriage: he calls Foxtel whenever there’s a problem and I don’t. That rule was created about three years ago, after an hour long phone call with a service rep that left me with a nearly permanent eye-twitch.
Other than that, we’ve got a pretty flexible system for dividing household jobs based on strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and the number of hours in the day. Since I’m a stay-home parent, much of the household work falls to me, but the man knows his way around a vacuum cleaner and is not afraid to use it. Gadgets we split: computers fall to me, iPods to him. And the dishes are simply the responsibility of the last one up every night.
Michelle Slatalla speaks affectionately about the natural division of labour in a marriage in her New York Times column, Dear Banker, Don’t Call Me.
It’s a comfort, this divide-and-conquer approach, when everything is running smoothly. In addition to protecting each of us from what we fear most (me: things with cords, him: financial ruin), it also is a daily reminder of one of the major benefits of being married: someone’s always watching out for you.
And when things don’t go smoothly — in Slatella’s case, the bank starts harrassing her husband about their mortgage — it’s nice to be able to hand a confusing and overwhelming problem over to someone who has the know-how to handle it.
Of course, not every couple manages to divide the labour equally — which can lead to stress and resentment. Not every family has two parents – and loads of two-parent families have learnt that they most definitely can’t rely on each other, even though there are two of them! Whether you depend on a partner, other family members, or yourself, what does the division of labour look like in your family?
Photo: Jaako, Flickr
Posted by bethanysanders at 8:40 AM on November 20, 2009
Yesterday we learned that it’s normal for an ultrasound to look, well, a little weird. The baby’s still cooking, after all, and as one tech once told me: “Ultrasound is kind of like trying to tell what an elephant looks like by feeling its tail.”
What’s not normal, though, is looking at your baby’s ultrasound picture and seeing the King of Pop growing in your uterus.
British couple Dawn Kelley and William Hickman were looking at a 20-week scan of their seventh child when they saw something familiar. It wasn’t Granddad’s nose or Mum’s chin — it was Michael Jackson’s face! Take a look after the jump Read more »
Posted by Sierra Black at 4:34 PM on November 19, 2009
Does your son play with dolls? It could just be his charming personality… or it could be something more sinister in the water.
A team of UK scientists has found that chemicals commonly found in some plastics can make boys more like girls.
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Rochester, showed that two types of phthalates can affect boys’ play behaviour. Boys with high levels of exposure were less likely to choose traditionally “boyish” toys like cars, and less rough-and-tumble in their play. Read more »
Posted by sandymaple at 12:15 PM on November 19, 2009
If you think you’re making a better choice for your kids by giving them fruit juice instead of soft drinks, you’re only partially right. Drinks such as orange juice, apple juice and grape juice may offer more vitamins, minerals and other nutrients than, say, Coke, but they also contain a lot of fructose, high levels of which have been linked to heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. In fact, a single glass of apple juice contains the fructose equivalent of six apples.
What’s more, juice contains more calories than soft drinks: a cup of orange juice has 112 calories, apple juice has 114 and grape has 152. The same-sized serving of Coke or Pepsi has only about 100 calories. Read more »
Posted by JeanneSager at 10:41 AM on November 19, 2009
Move over placenta loaf. Bye bye placenta pill. The new way to remain ultra close with the sac your baby lived off in utero is by smearing it on your face!
Well, sort of.
The placenta facials that are catching on are made up mostly of regular old face creams. There’s just one added ingredient: somebody else’s afterbirth. Urgh! Read more »
Posted by Babble staff writers at 8:42 AM on November 19, 2009
The Editor of UK fashion ‘bible’ Vogue, Alexandra Shulman, has been shooting her mouth off again in, appropriately, the single-mum-baiting, working-mum-hating Daily Mail (one of the UK’s biggest-selling daily newspapers).
This time, she’s banging on about women who have babies who later want to return to work, with flexi-time, a four-day week, job shares etc etc making, basically, employing mums who want/need/have to work a pain in the ar*e for employers. Read more »
Posted by Babble Editors at 4:00 PM on November 18, 2009
According to the UK’s The Daily Mail, most mums only have nine recipes up their sleeves with which to create fab family dinners week in, week out.
To which we say: “NINE? How’d they get THAT many?!”
But what about you? Are you a veritable masterchef, creating and haute cuisine-ing every chance you get – or is your idea of a new and exciting family meal trying out the new Domino’s delivery that just opened up the road? Let us know what you think in the comments box below!
Posted by Babble staff writers at 2:02 PM on November 18, 2009
Bangladeshi conjoined twins have been successfully separated by surgeons at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital.
Chief surgeon, Leo Donnan said: “To see them as separate human beings is an amazing moment.”
Sisters Krishna and Trishna were orphans, but have been looked after by guardians Atom Rahmon and Moira Kelly. It took 16 surgeons and 32 hours to separate the twins.
The twins were brought to Australia from a Bangladeshi orphanage in January 2008 when, it is reported, Krishna was close to death. Moira Kelly, whose Children First Foundation is responsible for bringing the kids over here, was said to be totally overcome with emotion. Read more »
