Inspired once again by Brit in Bosnia’s and 3 Bedroom Bungalow’s regular Dear So and So strand, here’s a second version (here’s the first) dedicated to some very little So-and-Sos; my three sons.

Dear Biggest So-and-So,

Ok, so you’re hating learning your ‘d’s and ‘b’s, seem overly fond of wrestling your friends to the floor during playtime, and refuse pointblank to eat anything yellow. (And yes, I am remembering that ‘lollipops don’t count’.) But you shared a party bag with medium so-and-so this week, without even being asked. You brought a very pongy nappy, created by tiny so-and-so, downstairs because mummy’s hands were full. And you managed to get changed by yourself every morning. My kind and generous boy, perhaps all the wrestling is just a way of showing you care after all?

Yours in hope,

Mummy

Dear Medium So-and-So,

Some of your habits aren’t particularly endearing, and there’s a limit to the amount of snot any mother will willingly allow to have wiped on to her sleeve. This week, though, you’ve managed to appear on my lap from nowhere and plant a kiss somewhere on my face every single day. I feel like the mother station with the small spaceship coming in to dock. Come by for a pitstop anytime you like, my darling.

Love mummy.

Dear Tiny So-and-So,

It’s not possible to put ten pieces of carrot in your mouth without choking, vomiting, or both. Yet you still persist. I’ve decided to admire your fortitude, because this determined streak often manifests in more positive ways. You’re only one-and-a-half years old, but yesterday you managed to take off all your clothes (albeit with a bit of help with poppers and buttons) before bathtime. You never need any help eating at mealtimes. And few things are so high they put you off trying to climb them. Which, admittedly, is worrying, but I do admire your desire to get to the top. Clever you, my tiny maelstrom.

 Love mummy

So, Tana Ramsay is Tesco Celebrity Mum of the Year. With this  kind of award, I’m always a bit, “so what?”. The mother of four beat off a host of other yummies, including Patsy Palmer, Natasha Kamplinsky and Linda Lusardi. Tana talked about a good parent needing the “patience of a saint”, something that it’s hard to imagine she doesn’t also need as a wife; although she was keen to say that her husband’s onscreen f***- it persona wasn’t the one he brought to a home that “wasn’t a stressful environment”.

But what does a “celebrity mum” award mean? Surely you’re a mum first and foremost, so why get an award just because you also happen to be in the public eye? Especially in the case of someone who only became a celebrity because she is married to one, the globetrotting and marathon-running chef Gordon. Yes, she’s forging her own career: she’s dancing on ice, and has written three bestselling family cookbooks. She’s bringing up four children, and managed to keep the family together when faced with tabloid rumours of her husband’s infidelity. Well, yes, good on her, but does all that deserve an award? Previous winners include Katie Price and Kerry Katona, two mothers I’d personally put on the bottom of the list for any kind of maternal awards.  However, reading on I stopped feeling it was quite so pointless when I learned that Tana supports numerous charities, and has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds to support them. So more than just a pretty face, then.

The overall Tesco Mum of the Year award went to Jane Gates, whose son Sebastian died of a rare form of kidney cancer. Her son’s dying wish was to build a holiday home for sick children and their families. Mrs Gates has raised over £1.2million for Sebastian’s Action Trust, and hopes to accommodate over 100 families a year when the home opens in Hampshire.

So while the jury in my head is still out on the subject of awards for celebrity mums, I can’t help but admire Tana for raising all that money. And I am naturally full of admiration for Jane Gates making such a positive contribution out of such a tragic event. But the mothering skills of Katie Price and Kerry Katona? It might be interesting to ask their children what they think in a few years time.

Inspired by Brit in Bosnia’s and 3 Bedroom Bungalow’s regular Dear So and So strand, here’s a version dedicated to some very little So and Sos; my sons. Of course I love them. Of course they make me laugh. And, of course, they drive me completely mad. One for them to look back on when they have children of their own, while I sit cackling in the corner nursing a granny-sized g&t.

Dear little 18-month-old
You sometimes come into the bathroom with me while I’m having a shower. I try to be quick, but it’s amazing how much havoc you can wreak when I’m in there. Don’t eat the loo brush, drink bubble bath or clean the floor with my toothbrush. Desist and play with the assortment of toys I have carefully chosen for your stimulation and development, or I will have to put you in the laundry basket.

Yours, health & safetily..

Dear little three-year-old,
You probably didn’t realise that when I was getting changed yesterday morning, the neighbours were getting a lovely framed view of my rear end. I open the curtains in this house, buddy, and the neighbours thank me for that.

Yours, nakedly…

Dear little four-year-old,
You’re getting quite strong. Which I’m obviously thrilled about, because it shows all that fish pie and spaghetti bolognaise must be working. However, when I’m kneeling on the floor and you jump on my calf, it really hurts. Ditto pulling my arm behind me when I’m not expecting it. Ditto running up behind me and pushing me when I’m standing at the top of the stairs. You’re not going to get any smaller. I am.

Yours ouchily…

 Dear little 18-month-old,
My breakfast is no nicer than yours. We both had toast and raspberry jam this morning, and pointing at my plate and repeating, ‘blah, blah, blah, BLAAAAH’ 200 times, while pointing at my plate, doesn’t make for a relaxing start to the day. And won’t make my toast appear in your mouth.

Yours hungrily…

Dear little three-year-old,
I am thrilled that you are displaying such a keen interest in wildlife. We are lucky to have squirrels running around our garden for you to chase, and worms for you to dig up. But there’s a time and a place. Being woken this morning by a squashed, dead ladybird dropped in my eye is probably neither the time, nor the place.

Yours, with a crunchy eye…

Does this picture make you go "aaah" or "AARGH!"?

I’m still incensed by the Eight Boys and Wanting a Girl Cutting Edge TV documentary. And I still don’t get it. Mothers with a parade of gorgeous, healthy boys drinking cranberry juice, douching with diluted vinegar, and avidly reading online conception websites to see how many women managed to conceive a girl following such methods as using lime-soaked tampons, or having sex two days before ovulation. Others went still further, flying to America to try their luck with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), something that’s illegal in the UK, unless trying to prevent inheritable diseases. Some of these mothers seemed fraught to the point of derangement, sobbing at baby scans that revealed ‘another boy’ and regretting a life without shopping trips and helping choose a wedding dress. At the extreme end of the scale were tales of abortions, adoptions and post-birth Prozac.

Are boys really so bad?

Having a family, and deciding on the number of children you have, is clearly a lifestyle choice. Likewise, how you bring up your children is also up to you. But having a child so you can go shopping with her seems a strange priority. For every father who is overjoyed to have a little footballer in the family, there’s probably another sitting glumly on the terraces, while Tom, Dick or Harry takes himself off to learn modern dance. Who says a daughter is going to want to spend her days having facials? She might actively take against pink – especially if her mother is so keen to be girly. While most parents love their children unconditionally, that’s not to say they’re going to share the same interests.

Of course, I might just be taking the documentary far too personally. I have three boys, and the morning after watching Eight Girls and Wanting a Boy I was booked in for a 12-week scan for baby four. During my last pregnancy, I lost count of the number of people who asked me if “I was prepared for another boy”, and “Will you keep on going till you get a girl?” I’m now dreading telling anyone I’m pregnant, because the remarks are likely to be worse fourth time around. I discovered that laughing it off with a, “Pretty pleased with the boys I’ve got, thanks” made me sound defensive. Other times, after another night of pregnancy nausea and barely sleeping with the two existing children, I was less composed. Once I even said to a particularly annoying mother of three girls, “The scan couldn’t pick up on the gender – it might be a hermaphrodite”.

This desire for girls can’t just be about creating shopping companions. There seems to be a widespread malaise about boys. Research commissioned last year for Women in Journalism revealed very few positive news stories about teenage boys, while male pupils are lagging further and further behind their female classmates at school. Books such as Raising Cain and Real Boys reveal problems with young male psyches caused by narrow definitions of the ‘right’ way to behave. In a classroom, this translates as boys as young as four and five being labelled as problematic, when all they’re doing is finding it hard to sit  down because their bodies are telling them to run around.

 So, for the record, I genuinely don’t care if my fourth baby is male or female. I’m told the odds of having a girl after four boys are very low. Well, fine by me. My house is regularly turned upside down by jumping, running and kicking boys. They scrap, are obsessed with pirates and Lego, and don’t shirk away from mud. But they also help me bake cakes, paint endless pictures, and love being read to. Admittedly, they don’t like shopping, but the plus side is that getting them dressed takes about two seconds because none of them care about what they wear. Are girls the same? I’m unlikely to find out, but do know that healthy children are a blessing, and to be blessed four times over is nothing short of a miracle. Which is why I’ll be happy, whether I get to think pink or not.

For once, I thanked my children for waking me up nice and early last Sunday morning. We got up at around 7am, had a nice, leisurely breakfast, then sat down with Lego and cups of tea to watch Andy Murray play Roger Federer in the Australian Open final. My husband has something of a crush on the Swiss tennis giant, but wanted the snarling Scot to triumph, so we were all set for a thrilling morning. My brother and his wife were staying, which meant I had someone to gossip with between points. And gossip we did.

The subject we leapt to was Federer’s wife. They are, apparently, childhood sweethearts and it’s a rare match that doesn’t have her supporting from the sidelines (in this case, with his mum sitting next to her – the two girls look scarily similar). Giving birth to twin girls last year doesn’t seem to have dampened Mrs Federer Jnr’s enthusiasm one little bit. But instead of applauding her devotion, the sister-in-law and I got into a heated discussion about why she didn’t make a bit more effort when watching matches. The world’s press would be watching, millions of viewers seeing her every sigh and frown, so how about a bit of a blow dry? And is a grey hoodie really all she could come up with, when presumably she has the money to get someone to shop for her, and suggest the best outfits to make her look fabulous? And why oh why chew sweets all the way through the match? And the odd smile might be nice.

So much for the sisterhood. Instead of applauding her laid-back answer to the cult of the yummy mummy and WAG identikit, we sniped at her lack of style. Rather than being amazed she was still up and running in a different time zone, with twins in tow to boot, we couldn’t believe that she hadn’t focused on the important things in life: namely, making herself look as fabulous as possible. Come on, even Cheri Blair travelled with a hairdresser.

I admit it, I’m ashamed. We’re so used to seeing glamorous celebrity wives in the pages of Heat, Hello! and Grazia that we find it hard to believe that anyone famous can marry someone of less than supermodel perfection. And having a baby then posing in a swimming costume two weeks later a la Liz Hurley is so much the norm in the world of the famous, that we’re appalled when a mum in the public eye does what most of us do post-birth, and has a bit of a break.

So is Federer’s wife a torch bearer for contemporary wifedom and motherhood? She stands resolutely by her man, safe in the knowledge that it’s her he loves, and not her perfectly triple-highlighted hair. I bet his life is made unimaginably easier with her around, and I also bet she couldn’t care less if he never won another Grand Slam, as long as he was happy. It must take steely confidence to be so frequently in the public eye and not seem to care about looking groomed. I know I’d be ultra paranoid about my looks if I knew millions were likely to see the sleep-deprived bags under my eyes.

So I’m going to try and change the habit of a lifetime and think of mumsy as a compliment rather than an insult. As a far from yummy mummy myself, it seems only fair.

Are these the eco superheroes of the nappy world?

Nappies. For something that’s destined to end up in landfill, or endlessly dripping on the washing line, they don’t half generate debate. As a friend once pointed out, had Henry VIII worn nappies, they’d still be decomposing now. Which is quite a thought. But washables? I’ve younger siblings, and still shudder when I remember the fetid nappy pail sitting in our bathroom (no doubt next to the avocado three-piece).

So what to do? Many of us have stories about mothers or grandmothers who swear their child was potty trained by a year old. A neighbour’s mother-in-law even proudly produced a picture of her son (and therefore neighbour’s husband) sitting in a playpen tied up to a potty. Neither of which would get you very far today, unless it was to Social Services. And the great washable debate? I confess I used them first time around. I inherited a stash of Kushies from my brother, who inherited them from my sister. We all felt a warm glow of reduce/reuse/recyle smugness, until second babes came along, and the Kushies bit the dust. It wasn’t that they weren’t good, but in my case, first babe was born in the spring. The weather was warm, and I didn’t mind a pile of Kushies gently drying on an airer in the kitchen. It was a different story with second babe. He was born at the end of the autumn, the weather was freezing, and by that stage I had my hands full with an 18-month-old. I guess I could have tumbledried them, but that seemed to rather undo the whole eco point. So I’ve compromised with baby three, use Nature Babycare, and try to use as few as possible. I usually get through two a day (I’ve three children, and only the youngest is still in nappies). Which might sound a bit ‘bleugh’ to the change-every-few-hours brigade, but he’s never had nappy rash, and doesn’t seem to care too much about a soggy nappy. And yes, I do change him when he has a poo!

I’ve had friends who use a washables home collection service, and swear by it. I’ve even one who uses the Terry’s nappies her mother used on her, complete with those plastic pants and giant nappy pins. But her children are always so soggy that no-one ever wants to lift them up, and each has suffered from horrendous nappy wash. And the friend is endless washing and (tumble) drying nappies – my leave-em-on approach definitely doesn’t work when it comes to cotton towelling. Most people I know use a big brand disposable. They’re a lot lighter, much cheaper, and I know they’re more absorbent (I’ve borrowed them, and bought them abroad when I’ve run out). But they make me feel guilty.

I recently read about Bitti d’Lish Snap in One on the Green Baby website. Admittedly, it sounds like a girl band on Britain’s Got Talent, but it’s a range of brightly coloured, and highly absorbent, washable nappies. Bitti d’Lish claim up to four hours without a change (though that’s not going to take a heavy wetter long through the night?) Anyway, they might be worth a try, if only because the funky colours mean you might be able to get away with no skirt or trousers on during the summer, which will cut down on washing. A set costs £14, and the Bitti d’Lish come in three sizes. You’ll need about six sets per size if you wash every day, which still works out much cheaper than buying disposables. And if you plan on using them again, they really are cost effective.

Anyway, I’d genuinely love to know what you think. I’m aghast at those who don’t use eco nappies. Many friends think they don’t work, while others think they’re a greenwashing con. I wish I had the patience to try washables again. In the meantime, I’m off to tie the baby to the potty. Don’t be appalled, it’s for the good of the planet.

When is it acceptable to snitch on someone’s nanny? The simple answer is, of course, if you see her doing something unsafe with someone else’s children. You’d do the same if you saw anyone putting youngsters in their charge in danger. Wouldn’t you? Like most things in life, the answer is rarely so clear cut. A friend once called about my part-time nanny, saying ‘I don’t want to fry your brain, but… I saw your nanny with two of the boys today. They were going far too fast on their scooters, whizzed around a corner where she couldn’t possibly see them, and if anything had happened, she couldn’t have got to them quickly enough’. Horrifying images loomed, the friend felt awful, and I felt terrible. Not primarily because of the nanny, in fact, but because allowing the boys to ‘let off steam’ is the kind my husband and I do the entire time. Racing around corners on scooters is the least of it, so the friend’s comment was a wake-up call to all of us. But a nursery mother saw something similar recently, and refused to tell the mother involved because she was so embarrassed. ‘It’s like telling her she’s made a duff choice of nanny’. Another sees a friend’s nanny every day in the park looking bored and endlessly texting, but feels she can’t say anything because the mother already feels guilty about being away from the children. She also remembers another friend telling tales on a nanny she saw hustling her charges into McDonald’s. The mother has a strict no-junk policy, which the telltale knew about, not knowing that the nanny had been given the green light for a special outing while mum was in hospital having her third baby. Despite her good intentions, the friend was left feeling like a schoolgirl ‘dobber’ with far too much time on her hands to twitch the net curtains.

Leaving your children to be looked after by someone else is usually a difficult thing to do. Most mothers would prefer to be with their children fulltime, however much they enjoy their work (or their sanity-saving gym appointment). You want to feel you can trust your childcare implicitly, you want them to like your children, and you need them to like you. And while they’re never going to do everything in quite the way you will, it comes as a shock to hear that the nanny isn’t as saintly as she might sometimes appear. Which is why sometimes mothers look the other way at indiscretions like texting, in much the same way as they might with a husband’s regular casino (or worse) nights. In other words, they know what’s going on, but don’t want to upset the apple cart. Which means being less than happy about your insights.

If I saw a friend’s nanny clearly out of control of the children, I like to think I’d pick up the phone. But if I saw her giving them some pick ‘n’ mix, or sending the occasional text, I’d probably stay out of it. Wouldn’t you?

Quick addendum to this post. This morning, I took my own advice and snitched on a nanny. She was pushing the buggy up the hill, smoking a cigarette and yacking into her mobile. I took a deep breath, and called the mother. Her response was extremely frosty, to say the least. So now I really am scratching my head.

I was at a riproaring girls’ night recently, the kind of evening when you can’t stop laughing or talking, stay up far too late, and wake up with a hangover that takes days to shake off. The girls (and yes, I know we can’t really call ourselves ‘girls’ any longer) are all friends who go way back, some of us to the days when we weren’t even legally allowed hangovers. The rest date to an era when, no matter what we’d been up to, we’d be good to go after the holy trinity of Alkaseltzer/carbohydrates/ pint of full fat coke. We’re now all mothers, so lack of sleep is caused by something quite different – and huge nights out as rare as an unbroken night’s sleep. And instead of chat focusing on boyfriends, a lot of it is about our children. So far, so any other gathering of girls. But what made last week’s evening stand out, for me anyway, was a shock announcement by one of the mothers (let’s call her ‘Charlie’).

Fuelled up by the cocktail of the night, Charlie looked at another mother (and lifelong friend – we’ll call her ‘Becca’) and said she couldn’t let it go another second: ‘Becca should stop thinking that she, Charlie, was a bad mum because she gave her children fish fingers for tea most nights’. Becca looked surprised, and not a little hurt, and admitted that she’d always felt rather useless compared to Charlie, whose children ate masses of fruit, and seemed to prefer reading to watching TV. On top of which, Becca promised she’d never noticed the fish fingers.

It turned out that Becca created homemade fish fingers by blitzing stale bread in the foodprocessor to make breadcrumbs. A stray remark on how easy this was had made Charlie feel criticised. Becca admitted feeling a bit smug about her home-cooked food, but confessed to all kinds of other things that made her feel a bad mother, namely plonking the children in front of ‘the Cbeebies nanny’, and (bit more bizarre, this one), not wiping their noses often enough.

Soon we were all chipping in with our tales of smug motherhood. One of the girls was chuffed to bits that their household was television-free. Another felt saintly about having only ever given her children organic vegetables and milk. I personally felt a tad too virtuous about never having shop-bought biscuits in the house (and apparently, this made some of the mothers present feel I clearly had way too much time on my hands if I could make flapjacks all day). On it went, until we moved on to ways we felt less than brilliant, the secret and useless parenting skills that mean we were awful, terrible, world’s worst mothers. And once we realised that we weren’t the only ones to let the boys’ hair go unbrushed for days at a time, had all sent them to school or nursery knowing they had a temperature, but we had an important meeting/gym appointment, and felt permanently on the verge of losing it when they refused to put their shoes on, we didn’t feel such bad parents after all.

We’re all a mix of good and bad, patient in some ways, fired up in others. And no-one is perfect. What came out of the evening was all of us going home thinking that maybe we weren’t doing such a bad job after all.

So here it is, the smug mum amnesty. Fess up and tell us your best parental skill. And don’t ever give yourself a hard time, because it’s unlikely that anyone else has even noticed.