I should explain. Officially, well according to an article in the Sunday Times, – my ilk are known as SAHMs, Stay At Home Mothers. I personally don’t like the acronym, apart from the fact it sounds a bit too posh, if you pronounce it Sarms, as no doubt they do in Clarm (Clapham – home of the yummy Mummy.) I prefer Full Time Mum (FTM) mostly because that sounds as if we do more somehow.
Full time mum should not be confused with another FTM, that is First Time Mum, of which my sister Liz is one, albeit a mostly chilled out version. However, there are still some significant differences between her first time attitude to things and my last time round perspective. My ten years into it, jadedness is all too apparent in comparison. Liz does possess a rare quality in a first time Mum, and that is the ability not to take everything pertaining to parenting too seriously. She is totally able to laugh at her own keenness and enthusiasm, for example in this email she sent me regarding Charlie’s packed lunch for nursery.
Having a little laugh at my own expense:
Charlie's lunch for tomorrow is as follows:
Peppers, carrots and cucumber with homemade curry dip
Grapes & dried mango
Rice pudding
Corn on the cob
Five raspberries
Man shaped marmite sandwich
Lady shaped marmite sandwich
And, wait for it...
Teddy-bear shaped ham slices
Tiny heart shaped pieces of cheese
Make of it what you will. Possibly too many cutters, too much time on my hands.
Love Liz x
Love it! Please compare Emilia’s begged packed lunch of last term, I made her make it herself (age 6,) as follows;
Butter sandwich (unevenly spread and cut)
Something pilfered from the fruit bowl
Some digestives from the biscuit tin
Something got from the fridge: maybe a yogurt, blueberries, raspberries or strawberries if she’s lucky
Raisins
Not quite the same. She was on a promise. September 2010 – I bargained “You can have a packed lunch for the last half of the summer term IF you go into school without the clinginess” (And hopefully by that time you’ll have forgotten about it). She didn’t.
However, the novelty soon wore off as she found it quite a chore having to make her lunch while the others were doing something more interesting, and was quite happy to return to school lunches. Hooray!!!
I know you shouldn’t see parenting in terms of winning or losing battles... but ..I won.
I don’t do packed lunches – even though my laziness costs us £800 in school dinners a year. I can’t face it every single day, either making them, three times over, or cleaning out their lunchboxes afterwards. I will, on occasion, do Mark’s sandwiches to take to work.
I have a friend of three children who counted up that in the course of a day, whether they were at school or not, she prepared in total 15 meals, not including providing the children snacks and drinks and the odd cup of tea for herself. Chained to the fridge we are.
So, no packed lunches for my kids, I don’t do ironing either, and I won’t get a dog as that would just give me something else to do.
Maybe SAHM is a better name for me, as looking at it now, in terms of my Not To-Do list, I’m not sure anymore what qualifies me as so Full Time.
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