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Because Mummy Said So – Shari Low
About the author
Shari Low has published eighteen books under her own name and pseudonyms Millie Conway and Ronni Cooper. She is also one half of the writing duo, Shari King. She lives near Glasgow with her husband, two teenagers and a labradoodle. www.sharilow.com
Follow
Twitter: @sharilow
Facebook: @sharilowbooks
About the book
The era of the yummy mummy has finally gone.
To celebrate this, Shari Low has taken a baby wipe to the glossy veneer of the school of perfect parenting and written Because I Said So to show us the truth about motherhood in all of its sleep-deprived, frazzled glory.
This is a book that every experienced, new or soon-to-be parent will relate to – well, hallelujah and praise be those who worship at the temple of Febreze. For over a decade, Shari wrote a hugely popular weekly newspaper column documenting the ups, downs and bio-hazardous laundry baskets of family life.
Because Mummy Said So is a collection of her favourite stories of parenting, featuring superheroes in pull up pants, embarrassing mistakes, disastrous summer holidays, childhood milestones, tear-jerking nativity plays, eight bouts of chickenpox and many, many discussions that were finished with the ultimate parental sticky situation get-out clause…
Buy links:
Kobo: http://bit.ly/2x7ctIK
iBooks: https://apple.co/2x7x27T
Google play: http://bit.ly/2p0LdYZ
Amazon: mybook.to/MummySaidSo
EXTRACT
The Ambush
Newsflash – I’ve decided that those so-called ‘superwomen’ who claim that they can easily combine motherhood with a career are lying through their teeth. I seem to permanently tread a middle ground somewhere between calamity and chaos.
On Friday, I had an early morning meeting scheduled with a big-shot Hollywood agent to discuss plans to get my new novel adapted for film or television. It sounds very glam, but honestly it’s not. I had the same meeting after I’d finished my previous three books and none of them ever made it to the silver screen. It’ll all go pear-shaped and I’ll be down to my last tenner again by the end of the month.
But still, you’ve got to try.
And desperate, hopeless optimist that I am, I keep trying.
Every now and then I get my very best business suit out of the depths of the ironing basket, pile on the slap, dust off my briefcase and go act like I’m a professional, cosmopolitan woman who is in control of her life, her career and her future.
The morning was planned like a military operation. Unfortunately, I forgot to let Corporal Callan (aged three) and Brigadier Brad (two) in on the strategy for the assault.
Husband was taking the kids out for the morning, so the plan was that he would drop me off for my meeting at nine o’clock and then collect me afterwards.
I set the alarm early to ensure I was up and organised before the boys. By seven o’clock I had blow-dried hair, a pressed suit and my agenda firmly focused in my mind.
Then it all went to pants. Literally.
Callan has been toilet-trained for months now, but he’s not quite mastered the night-time toilet trips yet so he wears those much-advertised ‘pull-up pants’ at night. And, no, they don’t make him want to do a conga with his pals, jump up and down with glee or dance around the room in just his knickers.
However, his life had been made complete the day before when we discovered the designer pull-up pant equivalent of Armani or Versace – pants with Buzz Lightyear on the front and back of them. He was beside himself with joy. Me, a little less so, because Cal’s obsession with Buzz Lightyear has so far resulted in a compulsion to spontaneously jump from a great height shouting ‘To infinity and beyond’, two split lips, a dislocated elbow, suspected concussion and more bruising than Rocky at the end of ten rounds.
Anyway, he could barely sleep with excitement due to the new superhero addition to his night-time attire, and was still clutching the waistband when I went to wake him the next morning.
He immediately spotted that something was different. Jeans and stained T-shirt mum had been replaced by chic, suited, lipstick’d mum. Only one person could have accomplished this transformation. He gazed down at his pants in wonderment – it was amazing what Buzz Lightyear could do in just one shift.
I scooped both boys out of bed and deposited them at the breakfast table, holding them carefully in the under-arm position so that no snot or any other fluid could find its way from them to my smart togs.
With one eye on the clock, I airplane’d and choochoo’d their breakfast into them. So far so good. We were just about on schedule, with no surprises, minimal resistance (but Mum, I hate cornflakes, I want pizza for breakfast), and no casualties.
Then I was ambushed. By Buzz Lightyear.
I asked Callan to get undressed while I threw on Brad’s clothes.
‘Eh, nope.’
I paused, confused.
‘What pet?’
‘I’m not taking off my Buzz pants.’
‘Come on honey, Mummy’s in a big hurry today, you have to get ready to go.’
‘Nope. Not taking off my Buzz pants.’
Hell. The enemy was engaged, and it was a five-inch-tall action figure with a space helmet and a jaw like David Coulthard.
It was an unanticipated hitch in the battle plan. I checked the clock. I had two choices: surrender, let him keep the pants on and make my meeting in the grown-up world on time, or face the challenge and risk being trounced.
I made a split-second decision, based on years of experience at the front line. As all parents know, once you get them out of nappies there’s no going back. Weakness is fatal and likely to result in a return to lugging extra-large boxes of Pampers back from Asda and a twenty-pound-a-week dent in the shopping budget. I had to stick to my guns. Besides, he’d had the pants on all night and they were sagging down to his knees.
The way forward was clear: Buzz was coming off and nothing would deter me from my mission. Except, that is, a three-year-old boy who bolted to the bathroom like his Buzz-clad buttocks were on fire. And, of course, proceeded to lock the door.
We tried everything to get him out: bribery (new Scooby Doo video), blackmail (if you don’t come out we’re giving all your worldly goods to your wee brother) and coercion (come on, babe, show Buzz Lightyear how to open the door like a big boy). Twenty minutes, a husband who can burst a dodgy lock, and several tantrums (mostly mine) later, we finally broke through enemy lines. Buzz was cornered on two fronts, and eventually defeated, leaving only one furious wee boy who probably won’t talk to his parents again until he hits puberty and needs pocket money. But, hey… for every pants debacle, there’s a positive. Compared to the savage, danger-fraught minefield that is motherhood, breaking in to the movie industry should be a doddle.
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