#FailFriday - 16th December 2011

One, two, one, two, one, two!! 

Hello and welcome to Fail Friday. If you want to know more about this linky, please click here. To join in, the linky is at the bottom of this post.

We are in to our third week now, and each week we have had some fantastic stories of shoddy parenting. Last week was no exception. So hang around and prepare to be dazzled by the sheer awesomeness of parenting disaster.

Last week, our very own Sergeant J had to borrow money from her own child in order to provide her troops with sustenance. We heard how Here Come the Girls was late collecting her child from school, something we have all done, or will do from time to time. The children still have a way of making you feel like a failure though. The Real Supermum linked up with her story of her toothy mummy fail, involving swellings, ice and trusty old Google.


This weeks flag-flying failure is Life, Love and Living with Boys, whose child managed to do something undercover, and well.....you'll have to see the pics. Well done, you are indeed a BIG FAT FAIL.

If you deserve the same honour, then link up your parenting fail blog post below, grab the badge from the right hand column, and display it proudly. We will all come over and agree that you did indeed fail, but will try and provide you with all the emotional support a competent and willing soldier deserves.


Also, please do visit those that have linked up and show some love. And leave us a comment below too if you can - we love them!

We will be taking a break next week due to the Christmas holidays, but please come back on the 6th January and share with us all your Christmas and New Year fail stories. Don't forget we have #MedalMonday coming up, where you can share your parenting success stories. Assuming you've got some, you pathetic little lot!!

Know your enemy: head lice

Head lice - the little creatures who decide to invade your little treasure's hair within a week of returning to school after the holidays. They are relentless little buggers who are indiscriminate in their choice of who to attack next. 

At our house, we once spent the whole of the six-weeks summer break successfully ridding ourselves of them, only for us to have to dodge another potential attack within two days of going back to school in September. Our then 6-year old daughter caught them off a certain child of a certain family (probably) at school during the last week of term. It was the first time we'd ever had them. I hadn't even had them myself as a child, and it was awful to think of my own child getting them. We tried one treatment, which was a faff. It was one where you left it on overnight, which was a real pain. Asking a six-year-old not to touch their hair while in bed and not to roll about too much is asking a bit much. I dared not even suggest trying it on my 3 year old. 

The nanny was un-fazed. She had worked with children for over ten years. She had caught every bug going, including the hair variety. I felt a bit bad that she also caught them off my child this time too, until I found a mahoosive one in my own hair - aaaarrrrrggh! Be gone you horrible multi-legged little git! I only found the one, but it was ginormous. You could see every one of it's wriggly legs. For about three weeks, the nanny and I were continually conditioning our hairs and combing through, in a combined act of defiance. 

So the nanny went to the shops and bought a better treatment. One that you applied before shampooing. It was excellent. We did everyone's hair and crossed our fingers. The solution was Full Marks. You apply it to dry hair, leave it for a few minutes, comb through and then shampoo. Then you do another treatment a week or two later. 

It worked! Just in time to go back to school for the start of the new year. Now we use Vosene nit-repellent kids shampoo religiously, and it seems to be working. We have had no more repeat attacks. Although it could also be because a certain child from a certain family has moved to another school. I still find myself itching though whenever we get 'the note' from school in one of the book-bags.

Facts about head-lice

• Nits are the eggs of head-lice. Nits take about a week to hatch and become fully-fledged head-lice
• Head-lice develop to the colour of the host's hair - which is why they can be hard to spot (for the record, all of our head-lice were ginger, which was a bit freaky).
• They can live in any type of hair, including clean or dirty.
• They are easily spread by direct contact with others - hence why school is an excellent breeding ground.
• To get rid of them, you should treat everyone in the household at the same time, and wash anything that could be contaminated, like bed linen and towels.
• They need human-blood to survive, so will not survive for long in other places, like on an animal, or a sofa.

By Sergeant J

This is not a sponsored post. I just found the above products to be a great weapon against the wriggly hair-nit army. 

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#MedalMonday - 12th December 2011

GOOD JOB PRIVATE!

Welcome to #MedalMonday. Today we celebrate all that is good in parenting. 

Last week we had parenting success stories from two of our most battle-hardened parents. First up was Here Come the Girls who was proud of her crafting success. They looked great, whatever the hell that last one was supposed to be!

Taking the victory spoils this week, is our own Sergeant J, whose success at reaching the 8-month milestone of breastfeeding twins has to be saluted. Good job! You indeed deserve the victory medal.

So this week, link up your blog posts at the bottom of this one and we'll all come by, cheer, and marvel at your parenting prowess. You might as well milk it for as long as it lasts - I know I do! Don't forget to grab the badge (on the right of this page), and tweet us @ParentFrontLine. A chosen post will lead out the victory parade next week. 

The post can be an old one or a new one. It can be on anything from baking to crafts, health to education - anything that you do as a parent, nay as a human being, that you are proud of. Read the full details of #MedalMonday here.

Thank you for joining in. You are a fabulous parent, and we all salute you!

#FailFriday - 9th December 2011

LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, AND HALT!!

Hello and welcome to our second Fail Friday. If you want to know more about this linky, please click here. To join in, the linky is at the bottom of this post.


We know that some of you are heading over to the Tots100 Christmas party this Friday. We hope you have a fantastic time, and we want to hear all about it. The karaoke and everything. Today's Fail Friday is open until Tuesday, so you have plenty of time to link up your posts. Anyway....

Last week, we met some brave, but unlucky soldiers. They told us their parenting fails in the name of making you, the reader, feel better about your own occasionally sad, little parenting existence. Our aim is to make the rest of you feel normal. We hope we can fulfil this to your satisfaction.  


Last week, we had a story of slugs from our very own Sergeant J. We heard how Here Come the Girls can't help but feel nasty thoughts when bombarded by stupid questions about her twin girls. Life, Love and Living with Boys told us how she managed to get three parenting fails into her day, before it even turned 8am. It was an epic tale of crappy nappies, flooding and activities worthy of the Andrex puppy. 


Putting us all to shame this week was Musings of a Stressy Mummy, who tried to do more than one thing at a time (ambitious!), and who's only, seemingly small failure to answer the phone to Grandad led to a tale of a locksmith, a broken door, and a not insignificant repair bill. FAIL, FAIL, FAIL. Stressy Mummy, you indeed deserve the Big Fat Fail award.

If you deserve the same honour, then link up your parenting fail blog post below, grab the badge from the right hand column, and display it proudly. We will all come over and agree that you did indeed fail, but will try and provide you with all the emotional support a competent and willing soldier deserves.


Also, please do visit those that have linked up and show some love. And leave us a comment below too if you can - we love them!

Don't get too rowdy at the Christmas party. Yes, I'm taking to you, soldier!


Roger, over and out.