A New Outlet

Hello, I've not written for a little while, I found another creative outlet for my life stories. I realised I always need to have one.  I got them out in my blog when I started it in 2009 and then when I started doing stand up in 2012 I'd save my best jokes for that. But now I can't even get out of the house to do stand up, I've found a new outlet....

This time last year it was the Liverpool Comedy Festival and I did my big one hour show, which was so much fun. I loved seeing all the other acts too and went to as many things as possible, even though I was really sick from being in the early stages of pregnancy. A year on and that same baby is causing more chaos by refusing any kind of routine or taking a bottle. Maybe he just hates comedy. I feel gutted not to be part of it this year and if you're a comedian friend of mine, I really do want to see your show :(

So this is what I started doing instead of stand up... sketches. It all started when I was eating some noodles while holding Baby Eric and he proceeded to puke into my bowl. It was very gross but also kind of funny and I wondered "how can I turn this into a positive?" Then I drew it:

And yes, if you're wondering, I really did eat almost all of the noodles left in the bowl. Then I thought maybe this could be "a thing", like a thing I did regularly that made depressing moments like this a little less depressing. I remembered a moment from a few weeks back and drew it:

Then a few days later I was in a play cafe with my two boys and some other mums and their kids, and they both told me funny potty training stories which I have now drawn. So now I've got a Facebook page and an Instagram account for Mum Sketch and a list of 4 or 5 more ideas that have been sent to me to draw, some by friends and some by strangers. I've also come up with some hopefully funny but possibly borderline offensive Christmas card designs which I'm excited to share at some point.

I'm going to try and get better at drawing too. It's not like I've never done art before, but this style is not really my thing. Slightly abstract collages of depressing but vibrant urban landscapes seemed to become my thing for a while. People is something I stayed away from (artistically): they're hard! Mainly because you can tell if it's wrong, unlike slightly abstract depressing but vibrant landscape collages. 

Hands and thumbs are the hardest, especially when people are holding things and faces, especially chins, they get confusing.

So if you want to see these sketches and laugh at silly parenting moments, or send me suggestions, this is the Facebook page and this is the Instagram page.

In other news Percy has finally started nursery! Wahoo! He's not going to get it free until January. Boohoo. But I really need a bit of a break in the week. Having just one baby is so easy... apart from when it's your first and then it's the hardest thing in the world. I guess the only way to make life now feel easy would be to adopt a 3rd child for a few months and then give it back. Kind of like the tale of the wise man who tells a woman who thinks her house is too small to take in a load of animals. Then when she gets rid of them her house feels big. It's weird advice really, I'd say consider an extension, or some ikea storage before taking in a goat but I am not a wise old man.

Percy loves nursery. He just goes a day and a half a week but he's already picking up new things...like I overheard him saying "sorry babe" to his duplo giraffe. He definitely didn't get that phrase from me!

This is him after the first day, he came home saying it was great. I am really proud of him, he's coped with so much change. Since February last year he's moved house from a massive house with a family of 5, another lodger and us to just us in a new bit of Liverpool, he's moved from a cot to a bed, then his baby brother arrived in May, his Godmother Rachel lived with us off and on in June and July, Auntie Sarah moved in in August and we started potty training him, and now he's started at his new nursery.

He's working hard to try and make sense of this confusing world we live in. He's just grasping the concept that he was once a baby and before that he was in my tummy. But he assumed that as he was once a baby like Eric that Eric used to be a big boy like him. He's also very confused about where he was before he was in my tummy. He's seen photos of me and Dan on holiday years before he was born and asked "If I wasn't in the tummy, who was looking after me then?"
I tried to explain that he was nowhere, he didn't exist and after a lot of thought (mainly about snowmen) he asked "was I melted?"

Love him.