Jolie Discusses Her Culinary Skills

Angelina Jolie has revealed that her six-year-old son Pax is a better cook than she is.

The actress opened up about her home life, including Pax’s culinary skills, in the December issue of Vogue magazine.

In the article, readers get a glimpse inside Angelina and Brad Pitt’s household with its six kids, bulldog named Jacques and nannies who speak Vietnamese to Pax and Cambodian to Maddox.

The Hollywood star said she feels her oldest son, nine-year-old Maddox, who she adopted in 2001, almost raised her. Maddox seems aware of his mother’s feelings, encouraging her when she cooks breakfast, saying “Good job!”

She also talks about daughter Shiloh, who recently found a dead bird and wanted to keep it as a pet. Angelina’s answer was to find a bird from a taxidermist instead.

The Wanted star calls long-term partner Brad “extremely handsome and the most sexy,” but said she feels most in love when she sees him with their six kids.

Source: Irish Independent

Multi-tasking Mums

Researchers have found that the average mum has to remember 25 different tasks every single day, with the majority admitting they do most of them in autopilot.

And making sure the children have everything they need for school, feeding the household pets and even remembering their youngster’s favourite cuddly toy are also included in the daily to-do list.

But nine out of ten busy mums admit they are often so snowed under, they usually forget to do something, with more than one in ten admitting this happens several times a day.

Another 30 per cent say something slips their mind once every day.

The poll of 3,000 mums found that dinner is most likely to be forgotten with almost 48 per cent of mums saying they often forget to take something out of the freezer to defrost.

Another 29 per cent forget to remember all of the ingredients they need to make the evening meal and end up having to make another trip to the shops or order in a takeaway.

Birthdays of friends and relatives, taking library books back and paying the bills are other common tasks which get forgotten.

And while 35 per cent blame their forgetfulness on simply being too busy, another 23 per cent say they are always in too much of a rush to remember everything.

Almost one in ten say they are often too tired to keep track of all the things they need to do.

But 18 per cent admit they always feel guilty when they forget something.

And more than one in five mums have even gotten into trouble with their child’s teacher or school because they have forgotten to do something.

Researchers also discovered that almost two thirds of mothers feel under pressure from their family or other mums to remember everything in their daily routine.

And 48 per cent rely on lists to remember everything they need to do, while another 33 per cent put everything on the kitchen calendar.

Sixteen per cent even leave post-it notes around the house.

Top 25 things mums have to remember
1. Birthdays of friends and family members
2. Taking ingredients out of the freezer to defrost for the evening meal
3. Paying the bills
4. Doctor or dentist appointments
5. Getting the ingredients from the shop for the evening meal
6. Having clean shirts and trousers for kiddies
7. Packed lunches are made
8. Being on time for the school run
9. Feed the pets
10. If it is raining making sure they have a rain coat
11. Getting the kids to do their homework
12. Never leave the house without wet wipes, tissues and snacks in handbag
13. A drink is taken to school
14. Homework is taken to school
15. PE kits are taken to school on the right day
16. Getting the kids to do their reading
17. Packed lunches are taken to school
18. Permission slips for school clubs/day trips
19. School events such as fetes, shows etc
20. Taking library books back to the library/school library
21. Birthday parties for your children’s friends
22. Make sure they’ve taken their medications (hayfever etc)
23. The right books/textbooks are taken into school
24. Money for children’s school lunch
25. Making sure the child has their favourite comfort/cuddly toy

Top ten things mums are most likely to forget1. Taking ingredients out of the freezer to defrost for the evening meal
2. Birthdays of friends and family members
3. Getting the ingredients from the shop for the evening meal
4. Taking library books back to the library/school library
5. Paying the bills
6. Doctor or dentist appointments
7. Never leave the house without wet wipes, tissues and snacks in handbag
8. PE kits are taken to school on the right day
9. Permission slips for school clubs/day trips
10. Having clean shirts and trousers for kiddies

Source: One Poll

Top Tips For Happy Marriages After Children

Parents should remember they are also a couple, and offers advice on how to keep relationships firing on all cylinders

As well as bringing lots of joy, the arrival of children actually increases the stress on the parents’ relationship. While in the long term, parents can report that children bring them closer, the transition from being a couple to being parents together is fraught with problems such as dealing with the huge demands of a new baby and working out differences in your parenting roles.

Sunny Day or Rainy Day Crafts

Here are some crafts to keep little people busy, if you end up in again, on another rainy day.

RAINDROP PAINTINGS.

What You Need:

• A rainy day!
• Heavy white construction paper
• Powder tempera paint ( various colors)
• Shaker bottles ( old spice shakers, salt shakers, or I used empty glitter shakers with the shake top in place)
• Good idea to have smocks or some other slip on garment to help protect clothes.

What You Do:

1. Lay out newspaper on a flat surface such as your back counter or table.

2. Have different colors of powder paint set out in the shaker containers.

3. Give each child a piece of the paper.

4. Gently shake a color of your choice onto the plain paper. Sprinkle it randomly around your paper using a light hand with the color.

5. Choose another color or two and repeat step 4.

6. Have some plastic such as large trash bags or old vinyl table cloth to lay on the ground outside in the rain.

7. Lay the children’s pictures paint face up in the rain on the plastic.

8. Depending on how hard it is raining, let the pictures stay out in the rain till desired effect is achieved.

9. The raindrops will pitter-pat on the dry paint and will create designs when the water and paint mix. My kids were very excited about this fun project, I even got in the act!!

10. Bring in painting to dry flat over night.

11. When dry, spray with some hairspray before putting on bulletin board to help keep paint adhered.

Sunny Day Footprints

What You Need:

A large roll of wallpaper

Paper Plates

Washable Kids Paints eg. Crayola Washable Paints (4 pack)

Old clothes

What you do:

You need to go outside into the garden.  Put some coloured paint onto paper plates. Dress the kids in old clothes or painting smocks. Take off kids shoes and socks.  Encourage them to run around through the plates of paint and onto the rolled out paper.

Final result:  a lovely selection of coloured footprints.

Ladybird Pebbles

What you need:

One or two medium sized pebbles.

Red Paint

Black Paint

Paint brushes

Assorted googly eyes from craft shop.

What to do:

Help your child to paint the pebbles red.

When dry add the wings head, and spots in black.

Finally stick on googly eyes

To slap or not to slap!

This argument raises its head again as a new study claims, we are undecided in Ireland as a nation.

Most couples will argue about this at some point on and off, during their parenting years. Especially as baby starts to get older and discipline comes into play.

A lot of couples find that they have very different approaches to discipline and a lot of this stems from the way each of us were disciplined at home growing up. Some parents will revert to their parents way, others are determined to try not to and seek out other methods of disciplining their children.

Over the years with the availability and power of media parents have much more information available to them than previous generations had.  No one ever really commented on this topic people just got on with it. Dealing with Grandparents and other relations opinions can also prove to be very stressful, as most people have an opinion one way or another.

The emergence of such programmes as Supernanny and 21st Century child has opened up a whole new direction in parenting. While it appears that Supernanny has all the techniques and answers but in practice does it work?

However some parents still slap their children and stand over their reasons for doing so.

One thing is for sure discipline is one of the more difficult parts of parenting and in my experience with an 11 year old 8 year old and 2 year old it does not get any easier as they get older!

It is and I believe it always will be a very sensitive topic.

Last week the following statistics were printed about the subject.

Two recent studies, carried out on behalf of the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, reveal that as a nation we are undecided about whether physical discipline is necessarily a bad thing. According to the reports, Parenting Styles and Discipline: Parents’ and Children’s Perspectives, while most parents use non-aggressive ‘inductive’ methods to discipline their child most of the time (talking to them in a calm manner, for example), 67pc also believe there is nothing wrong with giving a child an occasional smack.

Currently, it is not illegal to smack your child in Ireland, a fact just one third of participants in the study were aware of. Some 42pc felt it should be made illegal while 34pc felt it should remain legal. A further 24pc felt that whether it was made illegal or not should depend on the age of the child. And of the 1,353 parents who were interviewed for the parents’ section of the two studies, 25pc of them admitted to having smacked their children over the past 12 months.

25pc of parents say they have smacked in the past 12 months. their child

Most of these said smacked a child they on the bottom, hand or leg

67pc believe there is no harm in giving occasional smack a child an

42pc of parents feel smacking should be banned

48pc of parents have shouted, yelled or child in the past year swore at a

3pc said they shook, grabbed or pushed the past year, either a child in (1.3pc) often (1.4pc) or occasionally

One third of parents reported being hit with a slipper or a similar  instrument during childhoods, while their own almost a quarter smacked or slapped had been on the face, head or ears

64.6pc of parents believe smacking necessary to bring is not up a well-behaved child

Almost 60pc believe parents should have to smack their children the right if they so wish

51.7pc of parents thought smacking reason for stopping was a good a child from doing dangerous something

58pc of parents did not believe smacking effective in achieving was long-term discipline goals.

Results taken from an original article in Mothers and Babies

Why I lie to my children by Juliet Bridges

It’s seven months since Juliet Bridges and her husband split up and he moved out, but why have they decided against telling their daughter, nine, and son, seven?