Georgina Wintersgill – Mums that rock – UK

what is the best advice you have been given on parenting? Don’t stress about things too much, because (almost) everything is a phase, and you’ll barely remember it in a year or two.

what are your kids’ favourite foods? The 5yo loves a roast dinner and has done ever since she was 6 months old, when she decided she wasn’t going to bother with purees and ate an entire roast dinner chopped up. I have never seen anyone eat Yorkshire puddings so fast. The 8yo loves pizza and pasta. She is not hugely keen on meat and I suspect will take after me and become vegetarian at some point.

what is your favourite meal to cook for the family? Happily for me, my husband is the chef in our family – I am more of a heater-upper than a cook. Our favourite family meal is home-made pizza, which we often have at the weekend. We have perfected this over the years: OH makes pizza dough in the bread maker and uses a pizza stone, which helps the base to cook properly. He does different things on each quarter: pepperoni for the kids, veggie for me and some kind of deli meat for him.

what are the kids’ favourite toys? The 5yo has a Baby Annabell doll called Doz Dare. I have no idea why she is called Doz – the 5yo named her when she was learning to speak. Her surname is Dare because she was always referred to as ‘Dat baby dare’. Doz Dare has the face of quite a wimpy baby but in fact she spends her time on incredibly daring missions. She is the James Bond of baby dolls. The 8yo has a brilliant black and white Jellycat cat called Ganglepuss (again, named when she was first learning to talk). Ganglepuss was a single dad to Ganglekitty (a tiny, identical, Jellycat cat) for a while, but at Christmas the 8yo asked for a girlfriend for Ganglepuss/ mummy for Ganglekitty, and now the three of them are a happy family unit.

what three items do you always have in your bag when out with your kids? Now my kids are 5 and 8 so sometimes, daringly, I go out without anything special. However this is usually a mistake. Things I usually have on a day out include (a) wipes – for cleaning hands before meals and wiping dirty/ snotty faces (OH’s usually); (b) spare clothes – happily my two don’t have accidents anymore (I’ll have jinxed that now, won’t I), but they are quite capable of sitting down in muddy puddles/ spilling milkshake down their front etc; and (c) activity or colouring books plus pencil case, to keep them happily occupied while waiting for food in cafes. ‘I Spy’ only works for so long, but we have never had a wait so long it couldn’t be successfully filled with a Frozen colouring book.

What is a good family day out in London on a budget? We live in Oxfordshire so trips to London are expensive by their very nature. Our last family trip to London was to the Science Museum, which was both awesome and free. We took packed lunches but bought ice creams. I vetoed the shop.

what have you found to be the hardest part of your motherhood journey? My youngest daughter was the most terrible sleeper until she was about 2. I was up more than I was down during the nights for most of that time: at her worst she was up about 25 times a night. It made me very bonkers – struggling to finish sentences etc – and also very bad-tempered. I am happy to report that now she is 5 she is a GREAT sleeper. I honestly never thought this day would come. *weeps*

what is the best part of motherhood? My favourite thing at present is going back to bed with the kids and a couple of books (obviously this is usually a weekend/ holiday thing but sometimes we do it after school too). I read a story to both of them (as the 5yo can’t read yet), then the 8yo reads to me, usually something from my library of childhood faves (CS Lewis, Noel Streatfeild etc). At the moment we are reading The Swish Of The Curtain by Pamela Brown, which is awesome. The 5yo isn’t that interested in this, so becomes a cafe owner, taking our order and coming back with various tea cups and plates loaded with play food and building bricks. The 8yo and I always order multiple courses of very elaborate things, and it is ALMOST as good as getting real breakfast in bed. (I’m hoping she’ll move onto that in a year or so.)