Mummascribbles meets…Mama vs Teacher – Mummascribbles

Today I meet the very lovely Catherine from Mama vs Teacher. I’ve actually met her in real life so it’s a real peleasure to have her here with me today. Thanks so much for taing part Catherine

Tell me a little bit about yourself and your family.
I am Catherine, I live on the South coast with my hubby and Sprog (born August 2013). I met my husband a very long time ago when we both worked in Clarks for our Saturday jobs… I trained him to fit kids shoes when he first arrived! I’m a full time History teacher, he’s an accountant.

What do you like doing to be you, when you are not parenting, working (if you do), or blogging?
Well, I’ve been struggling with this myself as there’s not actually a huge amount of this time. It’s been about 30 minutes a day, so it has been watching trashy telly. However, over the summer holidays, I’ve challenged myself to redress that balance ready for the new term to have a bit more time for me in it. So I’ve been running more, painting my toenails, making things for Sprog’s birthday cake. I’d love a sewing machine and time to learn how to use it but that is definitely not going to happen for a while.

What is your biggest achievement to date?
Oh so cheesy but I am going to say that it is helping Sprog to be such a lovely little man, I have no idea how much of it is down to me (I work full time) and how is that he is genetically chilled out and happy but I just love the way he is so caring and loving. If I’ve had any impact (let’s hope so) then helping to create and grow another human who is that wonderful is definitely my biggest achievement ever!

From your own experiences, what do you find the hardest part of parenting and what is the easiest/most rewarding part?
The hardest part for me is not having the energy to be Mama that I want to be and also we’re at a stage where Sprog can get frustrated but he can’t verbalise it for us to be able to help him and I find that really difficult when he’s trying so hard to let us know what’s wrong. I also find it tough that a lot of the time, he wants Daddy over Mama but I do still get amazing cuddles from him!

I don’t think there’s an easy bit. The most rewarding is seeing the joy and excitement in his face when he does something new or when something makes him happy. I love watching Daddy and Sprog tickle and chase each other, that’s when my heart glows the most.

Parenting in itself is no mean feat; how do you juggle everything you need to in order to get everything done on a daily basis?
Um… I don’t do housework. My poor suffering husband ends up doing the hoovering etc most of the time. I do general stuff like washing up and washing but beyond that I’m a bit useless. I always have something that is more important/fun to be doing like marking, planning lessons, playing with Sprog, painting with Sprog, running round the garden with Sprog… you get the idea. I have to be super organised for the things that have to be done and I will always do my food shopping online now – I would have no idea where some of the stuff we eat lives in the actual supermarket.

Why did you decide to start blogging?
I wanted to balance the 2 bits of my life as they collided when I returned to work. I’d never even read blogs before, I just wanted somewhere to be able to offload my thoughts and help me to focus on the positives.

Tell me a bit about your blog?
I write about the positive things we do as a family whether it be days out, activities at home or new things that we’ve experienced. There’s also the odd rant and rave thrown in when something frustrates me in either the parenting world or my teaching world.

I run a linky which goes live every Monday and runs all week called Imagination Matters where we share ideas for creative, imaginative and free play based on a particular theme each week. I started it so that I was more focused on talking about a variety of things with Sprog rather than having the same old conversations with him. It’s really helped us to do new things and discover what he does and doesn’t know. I’ve just realised that he doesn’t really know anything about shapes yet so we’re working on that at the moment!

What do you want your blog to achieve and where do you hope to see it go as it grows?
I don’t really have any grand ambitions, just to be able to have a space for my thoughts.

What advice would you give someone who is thinking about starting a blog?
Go for it! Google and Youtube any techie stuff that you don’t know or understand as it comes up. And take part in linkys if you want to grow your audience!

If you could have dinner with three people (dead or alive), who would it be and why?

1. Michael McIntyre… he cracks me up every time we flick channels and he’s on telly.

2. Sarah Millican… same reason really, she’s totally like my Auntie and I’d love to see how funny the pairing of her and Michael are together.

3. My husband… because we don’t get a huge amount of time together and I love being able to sit down and actually see his face and talk to him.

Tell me three random facts about you

1. I have matching freckles under each arm pit!

2. I am now working back at my old school

3. I forgot to take my bouquet with me when we went out for our wedding photos so there’s no flowers in most of them.

You can find Catherine over at www.mamavsteacher.com and also on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Google+