Month: April 2016

Changing your surname after marriage.

I have seen many articles popping up on the big wide web exploring the shift in women not changing their last names after marriage. I find these articles extremely interesting. I also found it fascinating that a lot of countries lawfully do not allow women to change from their maiden names once they are wed. 

After I married my husband I did not legally change my name straight away. We were travelling and I did not wish to get a new passport. However on return from our travels (approximately 6 months after our wedding) I changed my surname and what a pain in the backside that turned out to be. There are so many places you need to go to change your name and they all want to site your marriage certificate or have a certified copy sent to them. It is long process, one I am glad will not be happening again. 

Before we were married we discussed if I was going to take my husbands name or hyphenate (haha – my maiden name was ten letters long, I think not!). Keeping my maiden name once I was a wife was not something I ever considered. I come from a traditional family, my mother took my fathers name, my grandmothers their husbands. I knew we’d eventually have children and I wanted to have the same surname as them. To me that made it a simple case. I will admit it wasn’t easy to leave my maiden name behind. I am proud of who I am and where I am from. I love my maiden name and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss it because I do. 

I want to know your opinion, did you take your husbands name? Why or why not? It’s such a personal decision and as far as I can see there is no right or wrong answer. 

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5 reasons your child needs a dog

In our family we have a beautiful dog that is now 3 years old. She is playful and energetic and is an extremely special part of our home. Watching Rhemy with her has shown me that every child needs a dog and I thought I would share my top 5 reasons why.

1. It teaches the child to be nurturing! Encouraging your child to show their dog love and compassion is teaching them a wonderful trait to take through their life with them. 

2. It encourages your child to share!  This can be especially helpful for only children or children with much older siblings, who do not often have to share their belongings. The dog can encourage them to share by simply playing with them. Games such as fetch means the ball must go between dog and child. 

3. It encourages your child to exercise and be outside. Pretty self explanatory but when there is an animal outside running around, when your child goes to play with them, they too are running around in the fresh air. How wonderful for an era where kids are obsessed with all things related to a screen. 

4. It teaches your child responsibility. Giving your child the “chore” of feeding the dog of an evening (supervised of course) allows the child to gain some responsibility for looking after another living thing. It allows them to learn that if they do not fulfill their obligations there are consequences. 
5. Last but certainly not least, having a dog for your child gives them friendship and companionship with a living thing, that quiet frankly thinks they are the bees knees! That will never leave them out of playtime and won’t ever decide they are no longer their best friend. To me, there is simply no better reason to have a dog for your child! 

  
Comment below tell me what you think! 

10 baby names we love but won’t be using! 

I thought it might be fun to share my top ten baby names I loved while naming Rhemy but we won’t be using, no matter how many children we have in the future. I’ve seen blog posts like this before and thought they were really fun! It can be a great convo to have with other parents, kind of cool to learn what names they loved but just didn’t make their final cut and why. 

Anyway, here’s mine:
  Our dogs name is Tilly and we refer to her regularly as Tilda. Therefore this name was out for us, before we even had a chance to consider it. 

  I personally love this name! I never suggested it to my husband, it is too close to our surname and quite frankly sounds silly with it. 

  Our friends had a baby 5 months before us and called their beautiful daughter Indiah! We can’t have two Indi’s running around together. 

  My favourite boys name, I guess you could say I have outgrown it. Lucky we didn’t have a boy.

  We both liked this name at the start of my pregnancy but I guess we never really loved it, so it never really became a contender. 

  I love Josephine in its entirety, I dislike it shortened. Too often I found this to be the case, the full name beautiful, the nickname not my style. 

  I loved it, Sean did not. Case closed! 

  Same as above! This tends to happen a lot, it sure is difficult agreeing on names, when you have such a different tastes from your partner. 

  My husband especially loved this one, but it’s been used too often, by too many people we know. 

 Sean loved this name, I wanted to but never really did, I just couldn’t imagine myself with a daughter named Piper. 

Now tell me, what names do you love but won’t be using?