Please get in the pram - please

The great thing about being part of a close knit community, as I am lucky to have in the small town we live in, is there are always plenty of other mums to give reassurance when you are faced with a new challenge. My latest one is the pram – he no longer wants to go in it and will kick up quite a fuss when he sees any plans of putting him anywhere near it.

While I can understand that, after months of being taken here and there with no say himself, he is asserting his tiny independence but it wears a little thin when, having abandoned the pram, I end up carrying him halfway to the park with the other half spent running around in circles, examining drain covers and almost treading in dog poo (he did tread in dog poo in the end, and so did I when I tried to stop him treading in dog poo).

When I arrived at the park, red-faced and late, I was greeted by a sympathetic welcome from all my lovely mum friends, each one confessing that they had been through exactly the same and offering suggestions on the best way to tackle it. One admitted getting hold of her daughter’s ankles and yanking her down into a sitting position before she knew what had hit her, while another said that she would let her son walk alongside the pram and when he asked to be carried would insist on continuing the journey on four wheels or not at all.

This was all good advice and much-needed but the best thing I took away was the feeling that I was not alone and it was this that gave me comfort as I spent the evening scraping dog poo off our shoes.