Mummascribbles – Mummascribbles meets…Mamamim – Mummascribbles

Today I meet the gorgeous Mim from Mamamim. I’ve been lucky enough to be featured over on her blog so it’s an absolute pleasure to have her on mine. Thanks so much for taking part Mim.

Tell me a little bit about yourself and your family
I live in NSW in Australia with my husband, 2 year old daughter (Miss M) and baby boy (Mini M). I’m from the UK but moved to Australia in 2007 and after a brief return to the UK in 2014 & 2015, we’re now settled back here for good.

I met Mr M (yes, another M) in 2007 in Beijing – I was volunteering in China at an orphanage and he was working overseas and holidaying in China – he’s Australian. After a whirlwind romance over the next few weeks of meeting up in the Philippines and Thailand, he asked me to move to Sydney with him and I said YES. You only live once, right? Now 8 years later, we’re married with 2 beautiful babies.

What do you like doing to be you, when you are not parenting, working (if you do), or blogging?
Well my new favourite thing from the past 2 years is blogging! Apart from that and aside from spending time with my beautiful family, I love catching up with friends over a glass of wine and a good old karaoke session. Ah, I do miss nights out pre-children sometimes!

When I’m not attempting to be Taylor Swift, I’m also very close to my parents and spend a lot of time with them.

What is your biggest achievement to date?
Having my 2 wonderful, beautiful children. I’m so lucky and privileged to be a mum and I adore them and my family.

I’m also so happy I took the plunge to leave my previous well-paid career to go travelling – I had no idea that I’d meet my future husband on the second day and that my life would change so dramatically and get even better! I’m glad I followed my heart.

From your own experiences, what do you find the hardest part of parenting and what is the easiest/most rewarding part?
I’ll start with the easiest – having fun! If you just let yourself go, your eyes are opened to so much fun and the possibility of fun that you can only see through the eyes of a child. My toddler finds the fun in every situation and it’s delightful to watch and to be a part of.

The hardest part is getting them to sleep when you want them to! Just kidding (a bit). The hardest part for me is the worrying. I’m turning into my Mum as I get older and I worry about a lot, often unnecessarily. I try my best to go with the flow as much as possible but I’m always worried about my kids and I expect I always will be.

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?
I’m VERY lucky to have wonderfully supportive family and friends who help to look after the babies when I need them to. They also attend a local daycare and love the social and learning aspect of it.

My husband is very hands on and has been from day one. He has always done ‘bedtime’ with Miss M and he also gets up with her when she wakes in the morning. Like I said, I’m VERY lucky.

I’m a routine-loving person and my kids are too so far so we try to plan our days according to a loose schedule – mainly around the kids naps and mealtimes. It works great for us J

The laundry and cleaning is never finished – I have a tidy house but it ‘could do better’.

Why did you decide to start blogging?
I started blogging on my first mat leave in 2013 with the odd post and review but stopped as I had no time. I started again when I got pregnant with Mini, mainly to track my weekly pregnancy updates.

Tell me a bit about your blog?
From when I restarted blogging, I’ve gone to posting 3-7 times per week about my pregnancy, births, parenting, reviews and what we’ve been up to as a family. It’s so much fun to share our life and to feel a part of the very supportive parenting blogging community.

As well as writing my own posts, I spend a lot of time, especially during baby feeds, reading other family and lifestyle blogs and earlier in the year I started posting about some of my favourite posts and blogs from the previous week – my #mamamimmention of the week. The very lovely Lisa at mummascribbles.com was one of my first featured bloggers! I thought it would be a nice way to share my favourite blogs with my own readers – to share the blog love.

What do you want your blog to achieve and where do you hope to see it go as it grows?

I want my blog to continue to be primarily about me and for me. I started it as my own personal outlet and it’s grown from there but it still remains a place for me to write down my own thoughts and for others to read if they want to. Of course I want them to though!

I do not have any goals specifically other than to keep blogging while I enjoy doing it.

What advice would you give someone who is thinking about starting a blog?
Absolutely do it – be yourself, write like you’re chatting to your best friend or writing in your diary and just get started. Everyone has their own personal reasons for wanting to write and I’ve found blogging very therapeutic, rewarding and I’ve made some lovely blogging friends along the way.

Blogging has rekindled my passion for writing and helped me to find my voice. I always knew I wanted to write, I just didn’t know what. For now at least, mamamim.com is it!

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

1. Jon Bon Jovi

2. Gary Barlow

3. David Beckham. 

I don’t think I need to say why

Tell me three random facts about you

1. I love country music

2. I’ve seen ghosts

3. I can’t snap my fingers.  The latter is very distressing, I’ve practised for years and never mastered it.

You can find Mim over at www.mamamim.com and also on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Google+