There must be some country on earth where this is all anyone talks about, because I don't know anyone who ever makes this an issue. I went for 39 years with no kids - it was great! Now I'm 40 with a 1 year old - it's great! Carry on, there's nothing to see here. The people I feel terrible for are those who really…

I have a 15 month old little girl and my husband and I have been having conversations about how we never want to use food as a reward or as a punishment - that just seems like opening up a whole world of badness and confusion. The way we're doing it at the moment is like this - say we're giving her pasta with cheese…

Europeans don't use cup holders because nearly everyone drives a manual transmission and unless you have a third hand free somewhere (crude joke here) it's not happening. It takes me a good few days when I'm back home in the States before I even remember that cup holders exist, after which time you have to pry the…

Yes that's true - you are assessed at the beginning of your pregnancy and again throughout and you are either put on a midwife-led care path or a consultant-led care path (a consultant is a specialist, so a 'consultant obstetrician'). You can change care paths throughout your pregnancy. I was first put on…

From the top of our street we can see planes landing at Leeds Bradford Airport, the highest airport in England. It's especially harrowing on a very windy day to see planes landing sideways (I'm thinking of one in particular landing in something like 72mph winds in April of this year - it was Ryanair so they probably…

Well I say 'occasional' Friends marathon, really I mean it was only interrupted by trips to the bathroom or by having to switch the channel when the Emily episodes were on. UNITE!

My daughter is 1 too (15 months) and we've still not made it past Baby TV and the occasional Friends marathon. I'm chomping at the bit for her to be ready for Clueless and to appreciate the Parallel Lines album.

Clueless is one of those films where, even though I have it on DVD, if it's on TV everything stops and I have to sit down to watch it. I can't wait to share it with my little girl when she's old enough so she can see that Ren & Stimpy are way existential.

So I moved to the UK from the States 11 years ago, and every couple of months I get 'Why are you here? I'd love to live in America!' Reeeaaaalllyyy? And then maybe once every few years I flirt with the idea of moving back, and then a week like this past week happens and I'm like, nahhh, s'ok, imma stay right here.

I miss that tantalisingly long wait to find out if you got mail. Flirting with someone on your local BBS, signing off at 3am 'cause you have to work the next day, and then the whole way home on the train the next day you can't wait to fire up the modem to see if they sent you a message.

Aye - we're right by the Woolpack but I'm a Corrie fan myself. Stepmom visited our baby a few months ago she she saw EastEnders for the first time, I told her they were thinking of doing one based in Chicago and she was like, yeah, that's what people want to watch... Happy 4th!

South-sider in Leeds over here!

Maybe it's a regional thing, as where I live if someone says something is 'quite good' it usually means 'that's a good idea but I don't want to give you the satisfaction of knowing that and I may also quietly steal that idea'.

I started doing the saving-store-hours-as-Contacts thing a couple of years ago when I moved to a small village where everything had weird hours and no one had shop signs in the windows. For instance, the butchers has really weird hours - they close around 12.20pm on a Tuesday. One day I went to all of the stores in…

Are they all modelling for Excedrin?

I know exactly what you mean - when I moved here I sounded like one of the SNL Superfans and while my Chicago accent isn't that thick any more I definitely still sound American and I've been here 10 years. I am always wary of people who move here and six months later suddenly have an accent (I'm looking you, Madonna).…

I am from the south side of Chicago but live in a very small English village where you don't pass gas, you 'do a windy pop'. They are bemused/befuddled by how I talk and I will admit to hamming it up a bit for their benefit. The lady who runs the local village shop was telling me about how she was up for a tax…

I worked full-time for 10 years back in the States before moving to the UK. When people here hear that I'm from the States they're like 'Wow, why did you move here? I'd love to live in America!'. I have burst many a bubble explaining how you can't get away with working 35 or 40 hours a week if at least one other…

Yes. I had terrible SPD from 18 weeks and by the end of it my pelvis was so split they thought I would have a very difficult delivery. I wound up having a natural birth because I said to the midwife that there is no pain greater than what I had been feeling the last several months and I was right. You know how when…

This is interesting, I've always heard the complete opposite - why is it so much harder? Our kiddo is 10 months old and we're looking at having a second (and last) so I am very curious. I just think, well, we know what to expect, we have all the stuff, we know it will be shit for a while, so I am definitely missing…