When you become a parent your life changes. We might want to fight this inevitability at first, but eventually we accept the inevitable and realise we need to adapt to succeed.

Obviously theres the ‘big stuff’ of bringing up another human being to attend to, but here I shall admit to some of the things us parents do, in order to make life just that little bit easier, whilst our screaming (*beautiful) children hurricane through our lives.

1: Sometimes we wear PJ’s on the school run OR we put a jumper over our PJS’s for warmth and quickness. Yes, this is rank, but you try getting out of bed on a cold winter morning, when your two year old has woken you at 4am, singing ‘Miss Polly had a dolly” over and over into your sleepy face, whilst poking you in the eyes and then asking you to get up to wipe their bum. Mornings are for  comfort!!!

2: Mums don’t brush their hair. We resort to hair up do’s like ‘mum buns’ or what I have, which is what i call a “Mummy bow”. my Mummy bow is a distraction, its any old rag I find, tied up into a MASSIVE, bright bow, that distracts from the fact I haven’t washed my hair in a week. Hurray!

3: We tell our children they can’t have any more chocolate and then sneak off and eat the chocolate ourselves. Sometimes we will eat chocolate and blame our children when our partner asks where the chocolate has gone…oh…that one might just be me.

4: We go to the toilet, just to hide from our children for 5 minutes. We won’t have too long though until one hits another or the scream of “MUMMMMMMMMMMY!!” can be heard echoing through our ears!

5: Sometimes Peppa Pig 1 hour YouTube compilations are essential and as much as we didnt want to be ‘that’ parent, when you need to create some time to get stuff done, Peppa, that annoying little pig, steps in to save the day and you thank her for that service.

6: We make up elaborate stories to get our children to do things we want them to.

• Father Christmas is watching ALWAYS (even in the summer)
• My daughter wouldn’t twist her spaghetti around her fork like I had taught her, so I invented the ‘spaghetti police’ & ‘spaghetti prison’ and this worked perfectly until she decided I was lying and told me, that I was making this up and there was no such thing.
• Sometimes when my kids argue I get out my phone and tell them I’ll watch the argument back on my camera. OK, OK I know this isn’t amazing parenting, but whilst they’re 2 and 4, it will do. It works a treat, if you want that one.

7: We use the ” lets see how fast you can go and get…” “lets see how fast you can tidy…” rouse ALL the time!

8: We get so many pictures that they draw at school, that most of them go straight in the recycling bin. *Note if they are discovered I will blame my husband, or concoct an elaborate wind based story “It was very windy last night, it must have blown right in there…”

9: We have perfected the quick tidy, which consists of shoving everything into cupboards and out of sight, so friends and relatives can come around and think you live in a calm, beautiful home (never turn up at my house unannounced, I will hate it and you might get a glimpse of the pig stye I actually live in most of the time.)

10: We bribe our children with sweets. We didn’t think we would be those parents and we hate it, but it comes in handy. As long as we balance this out with lots of fruit, veg and exercise its OK right?

Anyway, we are all just doing our bloody best and sometime these quick tips and tricks are the better of two evils. We are trying to have a bit of normality in our crazy world of being a parent and if that means that sometimes our shower is a face wipe and we re-use yesterdays make up, then so be it!

Good luck parents, I salute you all!

Share with those you think need reminding that we are all human.