Nurture pretend play

I always find it amazing to watch young children play, particularly pretend play. It is fascinating to see a child develop an interest in one thing over another and to see their personality grow through play.  I prefer to keep children’s toys and games gender neutral and I bring this belief in to Writing for Tiny. Children should not be pigeon holed, particularly when it comes gender.  However, sometimes little girls and little boys will live up to stereotypes and so what? If a child wants to imitate their mummy or their daddy , then let it be. Allow them to express themselves, they are who they are.

I was a born mum, as you can see from the old family photo where I am tucking my teddies in. I loved to mind things. If it wasn’t my Baby Born doll it was a guinea pig or a Sylvanian family baby at the receiving end of my nurturing tendencies.This has shaped me as a nurse, a mother and the founder of a business centered around children. As a child I also had a number of ‘enterprises’. These included a baby sitting business, a colouring book business that my sister Clare and I started, and a trendy cafe in my mum’s garage that served the finest marshmallow kebabs.

There is no doubt that your childhood and how you play shapes who you are as an adult. I loved to nurture , to draw and to run a little business as a child, and it is exactly who I am today.

Children learn so much through pretend play. Pretending helps to  build skills in the essential child development areas such as social and emotional skills, speech and language skills, and cognitive skills.

            Nurture your Tiny one’s imagination:

• • Set up an area in your home in which a shop, a post office or hospital or even a car wash could be imagined up!
  • Cardboard boxes are always a good start.
  • Dust off those old clothes, shoes,bags, hats , ski boots…all welcome
  • Pots and pans, crockery, food containers can help any little chef create a culinary masterpiece
  • Teddies and dolls make excellent patients.
  • Blankets, or old sheets provide shelter from a storm or a roof in the jungle.
  • Materials such as postcards, photos , folders,  aprons, notepads, even old toilet rolls can all be used to set  a tiny person’s imagination on fire.

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” 
― Plato

5 tips when working from home

Funnily enough , this is going to be a short post! I am posting after a long weekend of failed attempts to finish the next book whilst in the company of a teething Rosie.  I am currently working from home. I have other office space for Writing for Tiny but I feel that working from home is the best thing to do for Rosie. I own my business so I realise how lucky I am to be in a position to do so. Everybody , especially other mothers ask me how I do it. I must say it is becoming increasingly difficult as she gets older, but I am determined to make it work. Here are my 5 tips on how to make working from home work for you.

1.Set up your space: I have a little desk set up in a little alcove in our house. It is tucked away yet still in the hub of the home. It is dinky, but it works. It means that I don't have to clear my work away or risk a spill on my laptop.

2. Get dressed! I make the effort to dress as if I am going into an office setting( well, an office that allows Converse and tea dresses). I come from a nursing background and once that uniform was on I was instantly in the professional zone. How you are dressed affects your mindset. This is important not only because I sometimes hold meetings at my home office but it also gets me into the right zone. My work dresses may be covered in ink, Rosie's lunch and Sudocreme by the end of the day but that's all part of the job(s).

3.Have a routine: Babies love routine, and I don't blame them. Having a routine when working from home helps you to keep on track. A routine removes the need to make decisions daily, decisions which take up time and energy. As soon as you have set out your routine you have already made those decisions , thus helping you to stop procrastinating . Try to set out an achievable to do list too.

4. Ask for help: Working from home means that you are rather obviously, at home all day. You tend to get side tracked by the chores, the cooking , and of course the baby minding. You are not closing the door behind you in the morning and enabled to focus solely on work. That can be hard. You may feel over whelmed as your mum world and your work world collide. Ask for help. Tell your partner exactly how he /she can help. Take offers of help from others and remember you are just one being, you cannot do it all!

5. Don't be too hard on yourself: Running a business is not easy. Being a mother is not easy. Those two jobs under one roof is ....not easy! If you're doing one thing you think you should be doing another. There is a great illustrator called Grant Snider who illustrated this perfectly ( see below).  Be kind to yourself and take breaks. After the baby is in bed it is tempting to sneak downstairs and 'just do a few hours' of work. This can lead to going to bed at 4 am. I am guilty of this. Realistically , that may be necessary sometimes, but it is not sustainable. Get rest, eat well , get out of the home/office, see your friends and spend time with your family. It is all for them after all.

What's in a name? Naming baby and naming the business.

Names are strange. We just give stuff names, we decide this name suits this thing, person, or business and we go for it. Most people I know couldn't be named anything else. I could not imagine being called Cliona, which I was very nearly called. Your name is your identity. Business names are like a person's name, can you imagine Google being anything other than Google? Well it was , it was founded as 'Backrub' in 1996! Yes, BackRub....go backrub (google) it for yourself , it's true! 

I have had the challenge and honour of naming my baby and my business in recent years.

Challenge:

A Mutual Agreement: 

First of all, the names that you had imagined calling your children may be met with tuts or even laughter. Be prepared! Your partner and you need to agree on a name, and if you are anything like us, you tend to have different tastes in most things. Having varied tastes often works well within a relationship, but when you must agree on a tiny human's name it may lead to all out war. It didn't in our case, because we came to a lovely little compromise. Her full name is her dad's favourite, while the shortened version happens to be a name that I imagined that I would call my daughter. If however we had had a boy, then this blog post would be a whole other animal! Naming your business is similar, if you have a partner, you must come to an agreement ( are you sensing a theme in my posts?).However naming Writing for Tiny was different in my case as I did it on my own. At the time I had no one to answer to, to discuss it with. I started a little website and I wrote the title that I thought best described what it is that the business does. I had other names that I played around with, most of them centered around Lady Tiny, but Writing for Tiny felt right and I believed in it. We write books for your tiny people. I have never looked back. Like my baby I could not imagine my business being called anything else. If somebody ever suggested to me that I change it, I would say no. It would be the single piece of advice that I would not even consider taking. I listen to and digest all of the feedback from my advisers and those other people that seem to just say things for no reason, but I would shut down on this one. Luckily everyone seems to love the name, and it is here to stay!

Pressure from the outside:

Mick and I did not officially know that we were having a girl until she was born. I say officially because I knew she was a girl instinctively, MIck had his doubts but I just knew. This affected our baby naming in that I never worried too much about boys' names. In fact I think I had two on the list, but only one that I really considered. Mick and I often tested the potential names out on our families and friends, I will never do that again! What I learned is this; no matter what you choose people are going to have preconceived notions, they may have had a school mate that bullied them with the name, or it may be an evil character's name in a book. Whatever the reason , it is their issue. Your baby's personality will soon flourish and the name will mean something else entirely to them. Follow your instinct!

There are lots of opinions in the start up circuit regarding how to name your business. One article contradicts the next. There is no exact science. I have taken part in two business incubators, Trinity College Dublin's Launchbox and I am currently in Enterprise Ireland's New Frontiers. I have seen businesses stress over their name, their identity and their branding only for someone to come along and undo their work because they have found it to be a business name in China already, or their message is confused or they see something that everyone else had missed. I would say, like with naming your baby, just follow your instinct. If you, as a founder are proud of your business name and it means something to you, stick with it (unless of course it is taken). It is your business, your 'baby', your name.

Honour:

Do you remember the first name that you were allowed to choose? I remember naming my first guinea pig. It felt so meaningful and even if I was 8 , I felt like a mum, Nick Nack was the name that I chose for her and it filled me with pride. Writing for Tiny has gone from strength to strength , I write this as we are about to launch our first hard backed books. The name has remained the same throughout all of its development. It has kept its meaning and its message. No  matter how big it gets it will always have been named by me, and like a mum with a child I want my business to grow up, to become independent. I have given it its roots and its wings, and it will always be Writing for Tiny.

My baby will grow up too. Despite being quite set on her name we did 'shop' around.  The search terms I used  on the baby names websites were 'old lady names' 'traditional names' or 'classic names'. Some of the potential names on the list were a little too out there but I blame the hormones for that. I showed very few people this list which I made on my iPhone. The last entry was 11 November at 15:38. She was born at 23:06. The last name on the list was hers, the full name including surname. Like a love struck teenager I practiced her name with the surname of the main man in her life...in this case her dad! I have kept the list , and it is now safely hand written in a memory journal. One day she may look at it and ask why we did not go with one of the more out there names, and I will tell her. The minute she was born she was Rosalie. There was no doubt in my mind or in her Dad's. The middle name was easy too. I have a sister. She is the kind of sister that deserves to have a baby named after her, and so she does.  We named her Rosalie Clare Carter, or Rosie for short!

Naming a baby and a business is an honour and a challenge. If it feels right to you, then it is right.

My two babies!

Someone in this world calls me Mummy (well not quite yet, she's 8 months old). It is the most wonderful and most important role of my life, and the toughest. I also have a business, a new business. People refer to it as my other baby, and they're right.

Becoming a mother and starting a business are similar experiences. 

1. Sleepless nights : It is a given that when you become a mother that you are never going to ever sleep ever again, never ever. Well the same thing happens when you start a business. They both need your attention, time, and patience and of course you worry about them at all times. People will ask me if I sleep when she sleeps, I don't. When she lays asleep, I go back to my desk and work.  I will sleep when Rosie is an adult and when Writing for Tiny is where it needs to be. Slumber is over rated anyway isn't it?!
2. If I don't do it, who will? I am still breastfeeding, so Rosie is glued to me at all times. She is a mummy's girl and although she has an amazing Dad, and we have supportive families, sometimes she just wants me and no one else will do. Writing for Tiny is the same,it needs me. Delegating is tough when you have nobody to delegate to! If I am not working, Writing for Tiny is not working. It is typical  to be stretched in the early days of a new business and it is sometimes easier to just do it yourself rather than explain it to somebody else. Prioritization is the key! My daily to do list is my best friend.
3.Social life: the lack of it I mean of course. Well I wouldn't say that I have no social life, I would say that it is a whole new social life. Two new worlds of socialising have opened up for me, with Rosie I see my friends much more now for day dates, which is lovely. Since starting Writing for Tiny I have been exposed to a huge secret start up world and culture. My big nights out and 'fly by the seat of my pants' days may be over, but these new social lives aren't too bad either.
4. The future: The worry! I worry about her all day.Most of the time it is sweating the small stuff, her next bath, what I have in the fridge to puree, is she getting a varied diet, will she be OK for my mum when I go the meeting. On top of that I worry about the world. I am not just worried about my little bubble, but the WHOLE world. I feel so vulnerable in it. I want the world to be a better place for Rosie. I worry about pollution, waste, war, child and animal rights much more now than I did before. The future needs to be carefully planned when you have a child, Mick and I must select schools, save up, look ahead. That is similar to the worry and the planning in a business. I worry about Writing for Tiny every second, again most of the time it is the small stuff, but I worry nonetheless. The future is a little hazy in the start up world, I plan as much as I can, but every day there is a new opportunity , or a new disaster to fix , so my plan is to plan as much as I can!
5. Love: Love love love! As the Beatles said "All you need is love". This song also has some other inspirational messages, they could be words of encouragement to new mums or to new businesses: 
"There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
Nothing you can say, but you can learn
How to play the game 
It's easy.
Nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do, but you can learn
How to be you in time 
It's easy."

BUT

It isn't easy, and you need a lot more than love, but it is a good place to start. I LOVE being a mum. I could not love my daughter more. She fills me and all of those around her with so much love . You also need to love your start up, and I do. It is a childhood dream to do this, to write children's books. Like a baby it can be challenging, tiring, all consuming. Nevertheless you need to be passionate about it and to believe in it. If you don't believe in it , who will? Without love, you cannot survive in this start up world or in the parent world. No it is not easy, but nothing worthwhile is.