random asides – Page 3 – sea.ess.em.jay

Changing The Inner Monologue, From The Outside

Bear with me as I tell you a little story. I have a point.

Last year, about halfway through the year, I popped out to our local grocery store to pick up some fruit, with which I wanted to make smoothies. As is the usual way of my life, I was not dressed to the nines nor particularly made up. I’m a writer. I write. My butt is in my chair most days and – some days, if I’m lucky – I don’t have to be beautifully turned out because I don’t need to attend meetings. This was one of those days. I was committing a allegedly heinous “fashion crime”. I was wearing leggings as pants.

As I picked through the bananas, grapes and melons, a most charming fellow (that was sarcasm) leant across to me, quite conspiratorially and smiled as he said:

“Leggings aren’t pants”

Because I’d had my coffee that morning, my head was in the right space to respond. If you know me personally, you’ll know that – sometimes – the words tumble out of my mouth before I can configure them for public consumption. I’m not proud of what I said in response, but in some ways it had to be said:

“Well, asshole isn’t a personality”

It had the intended effect: he turned and left me alone to peruse the fresh produce, after giving me a sneer.

Here’s the thing though – so what? What right does he have to police what I’m wearing? In fact, what right does anyone have? In hindsight, I giggled to myself, and immediately texted my friend Jane to tell her of my witty retort. We laughed over it and moved along in our conversation.

That incident though, has played over in my head a thousand times since. I have a million questions over what gives people the right to tell me (or anyone!) that. I really don’t care what your feelings on fashion are, but seriously, channel your energy towards something useful instead, thanks.

I’m still not at my point. It’s coming.

I have found that, over the past few years, I’ve policed myself. I’ve held back on responding to something that affected me, or tried to find less direct ways of responding. The experience left me uninspired, and almost fearful to say something. I was frustrating myself to such a point, that I ended up feeling disconnected from people. I’d policed myself into a corner and I didn’t like it very much.

For this year, I’ve decided to try and “unpolice” myself. To say what I mean with purpose, and to stop apologising for having an opinion on something that has affected me. So far, it’s been interesting. I’ve been told I “used to be a nice person” and had many a barbed insult catapulted at me. One person called me hysterical for typing a tweet in capital letters, and another asked me if I was “perhaps hormonal”. It’s been an interesting experiment in speaking my mind and just letting the words tumble out.

There’s another reason why I’m doing this.

My daughter is going through an interesting time in her life – where she begins negotiating and mediating her relationships and friendships with other people, without mummy making all the decisions for her. Call it part-letting-go, part-personal development, but we regularly end up reflecting on her friendships together, and I use examples from my own life to help her out when she hits a sticky spot. The biggest piece of advice I can give her? It’s this: Always speak your mind, so long as you are not hurting anyone.

I am, by nature, a shy person. Put me in a room of people I know, and I’m fine. Put me in a room of people I do not know, and you’ll get more conversation out of the water jug. I clam up, big time. She’s like this too, but it’s an area of self-confidence that I want her to feel better managing than I ever have. The one tool I’ve found to help me feel more settled in a room of people I don’t know is speaking my mind and asking questions. Being investigative and interested is half the job of feeling okay in a room of unknown territory. Nobody gets across the desert without looking at the Sun for some sense of direction.

So this year, I’m looking at the Sun. In a world that’s determined to tell me what pants to wear when I pop out to buy some bananas, I need to keep looking at my Sun for direction. And that’s why, this year, I’m not policing my speak.

Disconnection and Reconnection

I was relatively verbose about taking a true break from this wild streets of the Internet during then holiday season. It took a lot of willpower to work myself towards the place where I uninstalled apps, turned off a bunch of notification settings and eased my eyes away from the screen.

Deadlines and The No Game
Because work is a fluid, and often flurried, attempt at making things happen and ensuring we’re all still eating, it goes against my nature to turn things down. But I was determined to and – to be really honest – it sucked, because it felt like I was disappointing people. To turn down a job that entered my inbox about ten minutes before I said I was shutting up shop for the year was a turning point for me – but it was one I had to take. Had I accepted it, I would’ve ended up working through the holiday season and, for yet another year running, have locked eyes with my daughter over my monitor, and not the Monopoly board. On that note, I probably disappointed a few people this holiday season. But the truth is, I didn’t disappoint the life in front of me.

Relief
But I’m glad I did it. Without the distractions of my phone bleeping every five minutes (oh the emails came in, I just didn’t read them until many days later… if you needed me during the holidays, you could text me), I slowed down. It took me about a week to really start feeling like I was no longer in hyperdrive but, when the relief hit, I swam with that current. And it was good.

Delinking
So good, in fact, that I started to realise a few things. These were them:

Not everyone expects you to reply to an email within 25 seconds. In fact, most of them can wait a day and, if not, they’ll phone you. Promise.
Absolutely nothing feels sweeter than not waking up to an alarm clock. I want to work on waking up naturally every day, if that’s even possible.
There is a lot of joy to be found in spending six hours playing Monopoly and not worrying about deadlines.
You probably need to do this a little more often than you’ve let yourself (this is the first time I’ve taken a true break and not worked – even a little bit – in many, many years).
Taking three hours to cook dinner is a delicious way of wiling away some time and not feel like you’re eating in a hurry.
The perspective gained from logging off is far bigger and more important than the one you gain from logging in every day.
Taking a day to do absolutely nothing is sublime. I used to have this rule that we would do this at least once a month… and then I realised we hadn’t done it at all for a very long time. I need to reinstate our Do Nothing Days.
I have a compelling need for things to have a beginning and an end point. Life doesn’t always work like that though, so leave some space for meandering stories and stop waiting for everyone to ‘get to the point’. Sometimes, the story is magical just because it is.
Read more books. Read way more books. You really need that.
You are enough, even when you’re not doing anything particularly productive. It is okay to not be doing something, some of the time.

I’m back now – reconnected and logged back in, but I’ve kept some apps uninstalled on my phone, and become a little picky about what I’ll let bleep at me throughout the day. Maybe it’s not that I needed to disconnect at all, it’s that I needed to reconnect, but do it on terms I was consciously aware of. After all, I realised that on the days I feel powerless to the whirls and windmills of what I face before me, I have the power to turn away from it and focus instead on the life lived in front of me.

Shoes on Her Feet

It’s almost time to head back to school. Last year was such a mind flip for me, so getting ready to re-enter the classroom and start up that homework machine is making me a little anxious. But, that’s not what today’s about.

I have a list of ‘grudge’ purchases related to stocking up for school, and usually spend a good six weeks recovering from the financial outlay required before we head to the classroom on the first day. But, as we’ve gone through the years, I’ve realised more and more that skimping on stuff just doesn’t work (we won’t talk about the year I ended up buying four pairs of school shoes because I kept going for the ‘cheap’ option).

Take a quick quiz in your head – which pair of shoes does your kid wear the most and for the longest amount of time?

I’m going to spoil this daydream moment for you and tell you that it’s not her favourite pink beach sandals or his trendy sneakers. Nope, it’s their school shoes.

It makes sense therefore to ensure that our kids are wearing comfortable, supportive and tough school shoes. And that’s why I’m putting Green Cross on my kids’ feet for the 2016 school year.

First up, a confession: I tried these on myself (my daughter and I are the same shoe size at the moment!) and they’re so comfortable that I’m actually a little bit envious. Durability and comfort are, obviously key, and these comfy shoes are double stitched and have a neat little, breathable sole to ensure maximum support.

Second confession: I love Mary-Jane type shoes. I had a pair of my own in the 90s that I lived in (long after school) and bought another pair back when I lived a power suit life. Nowadays, I’m more likely to be wearing slops than anything else, but I may pop out and get myself a pair of Mary-Janes now, just because, did I mention? These are seriously comfortable.

In her words, my kid described them as:

“These are so awesome. They’re very bouncy!”

(she’s also probably relieved I’m not forcing her into her old scuffed ones for yet another term).

I took a peek over at the Green Cross Facebook page and saw that anyone who buys a pair of school shoes can win a bunch of cool prizes before 31 January 2016.

Here’s how you can enter:

Pop across to this #VeryCoolForSchool site and enter the last five digits of your product barcode. You can then Spin to Win some of Green Cross’ prizes! There’s iPad Minis, gift cards and other sweet stuff to win. Yay!

May your first day back at school be a great one. We’re off to bounce around before we head into the classroom for Day One.

<This post is not sponsored, but my daughter received a pair of shoes to review for this post>

The Extraordinary Thing.

You spend the major portion of your adult life with a backup plan in your pocket. This isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. Life isn’t Monopoly. It’s a survival tactic that’s sewn into the fabric of your personality. Then your life does a kick-flip and you realise that you need that back-up plan less and less, because the plan you have before you is actually better. Sure, it takes hard work, learning and a bunch of really difficult curveballs to create, but this one is pretty darn cool, so you’ll stick with it. Eventually, you throw away the back-up plan because you haven’t updated it in years.

I’ve never been a huge idealist when it comes to marriage. Even just typing the word still feels foreign to me. I always just found it an impossible idea. In fact, it’s something that I had pegged as an experience I would not be going through, and I was totally okay with that. P knew that too – I like our life, with the homes, the dogs and the kid in-between. Were we to stay like this for the next 5000 years, I’d probably die from an overdose of satisfaction in my dotage.

But if there’s one thing life has taught me about this man, it’s this – that I should never expect the expected. Six years ago, when I thought he had come over to feed me baked goods and talk through a problem he was enduring, he got down on one knee with a post-it note and asked me to be his girlfriend.

Since then, it’s been six years of surprises. Of leaning, learning and loving. Of homes, dogs, parent-teacher meetings, take out menus, spreadsheets and me doubting myself, while he doubted me not at all. He has believed for, and in, me, far beyond myself, and far beyond anything I could ever have imagined.

I’d arranged a special starter for our anniversary dinner for him. Something he’d been wanting to try, and that I hoped would raise a giggle. We’ve done years of HUGE surprises for each other, and years of smaller ones. I thought this would be a very cool one.

After he finished eating and we were giggling and laughing, he engineered a conversation with my daughter that made my eyebrow do the telltale arch. He asked her what she would say if he asked her for permission to marry me, and she nearly exploded in a smile and tears with a resounding yes. Then he turned the conversation to chatting about my brother because, as it turned out, he’d asked him too, earlier on that day.

And then he turned his sparkly-eyed face to me.

This funny man, who has made me laugh (mostly at myself) when life threw the biggest wads of horrible paper at me. This human, who stands up for me whenever and however he can, especially when it’s me that’s talking me down. This one. The one who saw my life as a package deal, and signed up for it, terms and conditions accepted.

With a ring in his hand and a knee on the floor, the man I’ve given the most uphill to, who has stood by me through more than anyone can imagine, asked me to be his wife.

It’s the easiest question to answer that I’ve ever been asked.

Most people get married, find a home and have children. But there’s nothing usual about us at all, so it makes sense that we do everything in a roundabout way.

As it turns out, we are the extraordinary thing.

Love and Lunchboxes | Six Years

If you ask me what my favourite number is, I’ll tell you that it’s a multiple of 3. Usually, I plump for 12, but there’s a reason why I always live in homes whose numbers equate to a multiple of 3.

So the fact that our family turns 6 years old today is, ultimately, a very big thing to me. It’s a comfort and a delight, that started with baked goods and breaking first date rules. Oh and, of course, the post-it note, but you knew that already.

The scary thing is – this was the year that I thought would break us. At the end of last year, as we celebrated our anniversary in the midsts of moving house, changing schools and all of the craziness that went through it, I got a little scared. Generally, when you change everything about your environment, things change within you too. I have changed, you have changed, the kid in the middle of us has changed the most… but, they are good changes, and not the one I secretly feared at 2am when I couldn’t sleep. The thing is, this is the sixth year and, as it turns out – it’s been my favourite one so far.

Fast forward from five to six years in, and I’m so very aware of all the transformations our family has gone through. We’re a two dog household. We operate our lives from a place of convenience and closeness. Our routines are solid, set and sweet.

We’re even more of a team than we have ever been.

This year was tough on me for a lot of reasons, but they had to happen. The single constant that has allowed me to cling to it, has been this. This funny space where you and I meet at unheavenly hours because the dogs woke us/there’s a noise outside/I can’t sleep/you just got home. The parts where I’m bleary-eyed and hate everything. The bits where you’re being brilliant and I feel like I’m failing.

You never let me fail though – to you, I am perfectly imperfect. And yes, that includes being clueless and muddling up the lunch boxes or forgetting to cook dinner. When I panic over stupid stuff and you’re my easygoing partner in it. Between Excel spreadsheets, losing my house keys or the tell tale crash from the kitchen as I accidentally smash yet another mug to the floor. Between the noise of our days and the quiet snoozing of the nights (if we’re lucky. LOL). From my experimental cooking that scars me (haha!) to my pleas for you to just bring home takeout. Between the silly conversations and the serious talks. The parts where you let me be me, and then I come running because I just need a reminder that it’s all good. To loving each other, and to loving (or loathing!) things together.

To the every morning kiss-you-goodbye for the day, to the times where I mumble something at you when you get home late.

It’s been six years, baby. I guess we’re growing up.

Love and lunchboxes,

Me.

You Don’t Get This Back

I am always first on the line to smack heads when someone tries to give me “advice” on how to parent my child. It’s funny, but the people who pass this advice around the most, are usually people who are not parents themselves. Oh, and you never actually ask for it — it’s foisted on you like that free sample of shaving cream some enthusiastic in-store promoter just needs to give you.

Usually though, when I am seeking advice or would like some insight on something, I head on over to my child’s grandparents for their take on it. I have memories of asking my mom for advice, but that stopped about a year before she died. Not being able to ask her or my dad is something that stings so much. But, I have a network of incredible extended family who are there, and who are always willing to jump when I ask. For that, I am ever-grateful.

But there is one addendum to this rule of mine, and it’s this:

The most powerful thing anyone ever said to me about parenting was not spoken by a parent.

It was, very simply:

“You don’t get this back”.

Now, that seems like a stupid statement to you right now, but I’ll explain:

I can work, and work, and work. Work will always happen. I can get work back. I can clean, clean and clean. Things will get dirty again, and then I’ll get to clean again. I can get cleaning back.

But the moment where my daughter read her first word will never happen again. The second where she went from crawling to walking, will never happen again. The sunny morning where I watched her win all her races in sports day? That day will not come back.

That Tuesday evening where, as I walked from the lounge to the kitchen, turning away from my daughter and she finally said the word I’d been waiting a year to hear? That was a limited edition, one time only, will never happen again moment. That word was…

Mama.

So you can tell me this is urgent, you can foist your deliverables upon me, and you can yell about how badly you need me. But those things are notlimited edition, one time only, moments. You’ll need me again, for something, or something new will arrive that’ll be just as important. What is urgent today will not matter in a year. I will get that back.

For me, right now, as I watch her, head buried into homework. Or I listen to her story about how Molly fought with Margaret and now they’re friends, but there was a bit of a situation over by the benches…

I know — I don’t get this back.

Also published here.

You can call me a woowoohead and that’s okay

She: “Mom I’m making a toy at school. It’s a project. I’m making a robot alien”

Me: “That’s so cool, babe. What are you going to call it?”

She: “424-424”.

Recently, my daughter’s been dreaming a lot about my mother. She has incredible grandparents on her dad’s side (the best!) and an amazing set of extended family. But, I’ve always mentally underplayed the role of my own parents in her life. Why? Because my dad wasn’t here for her growing up and my mother was only here for just under five years of it (thanks cancer, you really know how to mess up my folks’ plans of a dynasty… which they ended up having, but aren’t here to see it).

I realise now that this is an error. Family ties aren’t based on time spent, but rather on connection. And the woowoohead part of me thinks that my daughter actually misses my mom, and my mom is, well, making herself evident.

These incidents were few and far between in the years after my mom’s death. We’d openly chat about my mom, her illness and her journey but I imagined that these conversations would fade over time. They did, for about a year but now, over the past few months, the opposite has occurred. As time has grown longer and my own ability to assimilate feeling like an orphan in the world has minimised, my daughter’s need for her maternal grandmother has grown.

Obviously, real life isn’t able to give her that, so it’s coming out in strange places — her dreams, her projects and, I imagine, her writing. She writes a lot, a lot more than you or I realise. I find it semi-comforting that she’s finding an avenue of peace through words, even if they’re little scrawls in notebooks or fantastic stories she pieces together. There’s a sanity to be found in that world that is peaceful, if you can get past the madness of word-mangling.

That is where my mother found her peace too, in the last years of her life. It’s where my father had found his for years. It’s where I find mine.

But somehow, no matter how much I write or create, or write towards them, I know I can’t bring them back to life. My daughter is, I think, reaching for them too, in her own particular way.

Is it grief that does this? Or is it acceptance? Either way, it is an avenue of healing that she is determined to integrate into her life (or it is being determined for her). I do know that my mother would, and could always, make herself heard. She would “speak the words” so that others would have to “hear the words”. Most of her life, she spoke them for the sake of someone else who did not have a voice.

Perhaps this is her, speaking them for herself. Speaking them to her granddaughter.

Just Instinct.

When you’re 24, pregnant and everyone calls you highly neurotic about, well, everything, it seems like a really good idea to hang curtains.

We’d just moved into the flat I used to live in (I once had a weird habit of moving back to the same homes, over and over again, I’ve broken it now) and I was determined to “raise this baby the right way”.

She was a surprise. An incredible, delicious surprise I would discover much later on, once the fog of no-sleep-new-baby and holy-shit-my-father-died lifted a few months later. I took for granted the way she would sleep through the night early and I could always get her to nap if I just laid down and let her twirl her pudgy fingers through my hair. She still does this, ten years later, except she twirls her own hair nowadays and it’s a telltale sign she’s tired (If I ask her if she’s tired, while she’s mid-twirl, she will vehemently deny it. Still)

But that’s post-fog. Let’s get back to the curtains.

It was a week before she would arrive. My alleged neuroses over EVERYTHING were at an apex and I knew I had to head to the doctor for what would be our final pre-natal appointment. Weirdly, I felt calm, even though my brain was all “hang the curtains. it has to be today. don’t let anyone else do it. yes, everyone says it’s dangerous. ignore them. you’re fine. hang the curtains”. I had my little schedule all jotted out in my head — go see dad in his hospital bed, pop upstairs to see the doc, come home, hang curtains.

On that Friday morning, surrounded by boxes and the like, I had THE URGE. I’d finished the “baby room” (what a laugh that was. I knew from the moment we came home with her that she’d use that room far less than we originally thought) and was working on getting the lounge into some semblance of a living space.

I came out of the bedroom and looked around me. I HAD TO DO THE CURTAINS RIGHT NOW. Call it pregnancy hormones, neurotics, nesting, ridiculous self, whatever. They had to be done.

So I hoisted myself onto a chair (not an easy task. I couldn’t even get out of bed unaided at that point) and hung them. My arms tiring more quickly than I wanted, but I got through it, grunting as I went.

Then I left the flat, and began my schedule. Dad, with his “darling, you don’t have to come here every day” platitudes (yes, yes, I really actually have to, sorry. it’s selfish. I don’t care) and my pseudo-pretence at “being okay” while watching the man who made me, wither away in some hospital bed with too crisp sheets and an uncomfortable pillow.

At the doctor’s, I smiled and said “I’ll be seeing you this weekend” and he chided me, again. We had a charming understanding that I was “know it all new mom who Googled too much” and he was the professional. It helped us along, as we could constantly poke each other, humorously, while he made sure I was doing okay with this gestation. He told me, laughing as he spoke, that he was going on holiday that weekend, and that my baby wasn’t yet ready to come (there’s still three weeks to go, stop Googling) so he had full confidence that he’d see me again the next week. I said:

“Call it maternal intuition. But I’m ready. She’s ready. I don’t think she knows about holidays yet. Maybe you can tell her about it when I see you this weekend”.

Leaving the hospital, I stopped in at the cafe, picked up a vegetable curry pie, and meandered home. We lived within walking distance of the hospital, with no hills to make it hard. So I walked. I loved those little walks, even though they were a skip, really — except for me, the waddling wideass who took a full fifteen minutes to get home.

As I walked into the flat, settled down to eat my pie, I looked to the right, assessed the newly hung curtains and said, out loud: “okay baby, I’m ready”.

Fast forward to that Saturday afternoon. It’s raining, he’s setting up an old school Scalextric track at his folks, I’m talking to mine. And the urge to pee is so strong, I have to go back to the bathroom three times before I’m done.

I call my doctor, and say: “Look, guy, I know you hate me but, really, it’s happening”. He laughed and returned to his fishing, after telling me to “stop Googling, or you’ll give yourself labour”.

I walk back into the lounge, and sit next to my dad who’d been discharged for the umpteenth time that morning. I look at him, grab his hand and say:

“It’s happening. I don’t know why I know but I know. My doctor says it’s not but I know — it’s happening. Can I just sit here and let it happen?”

He says:

“Your mother and I have done this three times. It’s not like we’re inexperienced”.

So I sit, and wait. The rainy afternoon happens and I’m neurotic all over again, as I feel a little kick that turns into a big one banging against my belly. My dad sees the shape of a foot against my dress and laughs.

It would be the last time I hear his golden laugh.

By the evening, I’m in the hospital. By the next morning, I’m a mother.

By the next month, I’m at my father’s funeral.

By the next year, I’m sitting in my office when everything goes dark and I don’t know why until the phone rings and then I’m rushing my daughter to the emergency room.

By the next five years, I’m kissing my mother goodbye for the last time.

By the next ten years, I realise that what everyone called neuroses, was just instinct.

I finally trust it.

***

Also published here.

Living on the edge?

No, it’s not just an Aerosmith song, although you should probably listen to it now, because it’ll help me get my point across.

I read this, this week, and find myself wholly believing in it. It’s articulated the way I’ve been thinking for a while and, hey, when so many of us are stripped of ‘safety nets’ we’re taught to need, we starts thinking differently. We’re getting quickly to the point where we don’t need more money to throw at things (including problems), but we need more effort.

Reading the news this week too (I actually went out and bought the newspaper for a change, during the week), and it struck me that, well, adults aren’t the solution.

I’ve long maintained that the world would probably be in a far better state if we (aka, the adults) let the preschoolers rule us for a bit.

And frankly, the more that this year speeds by, things pile up and the anger within everyone grows, I can’t help but feel that it’d be a good way forward.

I mean, wouldn’t you?

There would be no corporate monopolies. Anyone trying to monopolise an industry would be told by their fellow playmates to share or else they would not be allowed to play with any of the toys.

Nobody would be allowed to call anyone nasty names. There would be no dessert for anyone insulting anyone else in the media.

Naptimes would be obligatory every day. Anyone who did not nap would be grumpy and well, grumpy playmates are ignored in the sandpit.

Regular, repeated watching of Gummi Bears would be a treat and the norm. In every motivational book we read as adults, we’re told to channel our inner child. What better way than to settle in and watch a little of what made our childhood great?

Our imaginations would reign supreme and, every day, we could choose to be whoever we wanted to be. Everyone wants to be a princess, right? Or a cowboy? Yep, go ahead and do it. Again, we toil away behind our monitors every day and are told to “get creative”. Our imaginations are our greatest creations. So, frankly, be a princess or a tiger, if you like.

There would be no war. Simple, really. Have you ever tried to negotiate with a five-year old? I’m willing to bet you’d end up striking a deal that left both parties happy. Negotiations around a boardroom table would run much more smoothly if they were executed with crayons, than if they were all white-papered and gazetted.

Our animals would be loved and played with, not left tied up in the garden like some adults do.

Bathtime would be our favourite time of the day. There would be no rushed showering, just so we can head back to our laptops in the evening. We’d be rubber duck-playing and blowing bubbles whilst we cleaned.

Every day would end with a good night song and a story.

Holding hands would be the most important thing to do when we’re out of the house. We’d stick together and we’d be safer.

Good manners would rule everything we do. Yes, even in traffic. No, you may not cut that guy off in the traffic, that would be rude. And rudeness means no ice cream for you.

Talking would be more about exploring a story as it unfolds in your mind, in comparison to just rushing to get your own point across, and jostling for your position in the conversation.

We’d ask more questions. We’d explore more. We’d live a little more slowly.

We’d spend more time being fascinated by the flowers, rather than wondering how we could tame them into a neat bush that doesn’t impinge upon our walkway.

We’d love more. We’d simply love more.

Bratz Are Back! (and you can win one)

Today’s the start of school holidays for us so, this seemed a fitting way to start them off. We took delivery of Cloe this morning, and she’s spent today doing meet and greets with the rest of the dolls who live in our house.

#BratzInSA

The thing is, I love it when dolls “grow up”, or their storyline evolves in some way. That’s exactly what’s happened here. Nowadays, the Bratz are suiting up to go out or overseas, snapping a selfie or – like our Cloe – settling in for a big night in. She’s definitely our kinda gal!

Here’s what Cloe got up to on our first day with us:

She made friends with the other dolls in our house

20151005_152151 — And they settled in for a sleepover party!

Win one for yourself!
It’s as easy as popcorn pie (that should be a thing) to win your very own #BratzInSA doll now too! Simply tell me where you’d take your #BratzInSA doll. You can do that by leaving a comment below, or by popping me a tweet like “I’d take my #BratzInSA doll from @primatoys to Paris! @cathjenkin”

This competition is open to all South Africans and a winner will be selected after 14hoo on Friday, 09 October 2015. Don’t forget to check out Prima Toys on Twitter and Facebook too!

This competition is now closed! Congratulations to Eve – your Bratz Doll will be on its way to you shortly!

<Disclaimer: We were sent a #BratzinSA doll to review . Our doll, Cloe, is fantastic!>