Reviewing I Don’t Know How She Does It, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, has been on my to do list for… well, for a while. The aim was to have it out well before its release date, which was Thursday, March 1, by the way. However, my to do list has been so out of control of late with the business, the blog and my all-important role of being a mum, that this one got pushed down a little.
Last weekend, I finally had a chance to sit down and take in the movie – with a glass of wine too. Apart from the odd Tweet and Facebook (about the movie), I even put the laptop down. Shock. Horror.
Maybe I was in the right frame of mind to see this, but it resonated – big time. As a working mum, the movie was highly relatable – the juggling of family time, with work time and everything else in between can take its strain some days. I live by to do lists and working to plans, but not everything always goes to plan.
Parker plays Kate, an investment banker with two young kids and a low maintenance husband. She gets picked to work on a big deal with Wall St fat cat Jack (Pierce Brosnan). This constantly takes her away from her family and puts her in a position of awkwardness with Jack as they begin to get closer.
OK, so my life isn’t quite like that. But the ball juggling thing is. The real hero of the movie is Kate’s dry humoured personal assistant, played by Olivia Munn. She pulled the biggest laughs for me because of her view on parenting from an outsider’s perspective.
By the end of the movie I was in tears. Maybe I was tired, but mostly I think it nailed its message of trying to find balance. Sure, it could do without the interviews which are a little distracting. And, at times, it was a little overdone (really, whose life is like that?). However, this was good fun nonetheless.
And, before I finish up, there’s a giveaway. Of course there’s a giveaway.
I have a Rom Com DVD pack, valued at $100, to giveaway. It includes Life As We Know It, The Switch, No Reservations and I Don’t Know How She Does It. One runner up will received a copy of I Don’t Know How She Does It.
I’m keeping it simple today – no forms. Just leave a short fun story below relating to the notion of “I Don’t Know How She Does It’’. Maybe you have a story about rocking up to a meeting with a head full of lice. Or have you walked down the street in your best outfit, complete with spew (I have my hand in the air for this one). Or told your boss you were having a mammogram when you were late for work? (No. Never). Whatever it is, leave it below to give us a giggle – even if it’s someone else’s story! The best stories win on Saturday, March 24 at 7.30pm.
The same rules apply though.
Terms and conditions: The Rom Com DVD pack competition will be judged on creativity and originality. The total prize value is $100. The competition opens Sunday, March 4, 2012 at 7.30pm AEST and closes on Saturday, March 24, 2012 at 7.30pm AEST. One entry per person. Australian entries only. There is one prize winner and a runner up prize. The winner will be notified via email and name published here. Entries remain the property of Three Li’l Princesses and may be republished.
Hosted by Three Lil Princesses
I’m not entering but I just wanted to say that I saw the Switch recently & it is such a fun film!
Ooh, might have to look out for that one. I haven’t seen it yet. Thanks Lou!
my mother-in-law, Halloween just gone, gets a knock on the door with a trick or treat, my sister-in-law hears a little girl crying and runs to see what has happened. My MIL has ‘TAKEN’ a mars bar from this little girl, thinking that’s what was being offered, had no idea she was supposed to give, not take! the only thing she had to give the poor girl was a block of cooking chocolate!
how could she not know about halloween, especially being English!
Up until 6 months ago, I was too afraid to drive, and didn’t have a licence. With three young daughters, it was near impossible to do every-day things like grocery shopping, etc. I would use public transport if my dear dad wasn’t available to take the girls to school and kinder.
So, I would have to ensure that I was out the door by a certain time in order to get the girls to school/kinder, whilst having my youngest (who’s not yet 2), ready to go in the pram. I knew if I missed that bus then the girls would be late to class. (No pressure!)Many times I’d be running behind time and bolt out the door, make a mad dash to the bus stop – school bags, baby bag and handbag all in one hand whilst steering the pram and holding hands with the older two!
Then on the bus, I’d do their hair, feed bub her brekkie, and if time allowed, put on a bit of make-up (even though on more than one occassion I’d be wearing my pj top under my coat!)
I finally overcame my fear of driving, and things are SO much more easier now. I look back on those frantic, hectic days and think “How the hell did I do that?”
I often get told “I dont know how you do it ” ! How could i NOT enter this one – Most recent child humiliation …
I took the twins to early development class thingy, with all the specialists there it was a few weeks ago.. anywho, they decided to test the twins on Animal noises … What noise does a cow make ? Mooo etc etc… Imagine all eyes on my gorgeous boys, I was so proud of they carried on Moo, Baaa, Oink, Woof etc etc.. Now, the early learning lady decided to trick them… ” Now, what noise does mummy make ”
Without Hesitation…
Jack ( Twin A ) Makes the loudest fart noise a boy can make with their mouth ( ohhh the horror ) and then without missing a beat
Jesse ( Twin B ) Points and yells RAH RAH RAH …
There you have it.. I yell and fart a lot. Thats how i do it.
That is hands down the funniest thing I have heard in ages. I don’t think I’ll bother entering now 🙂
Aww, go on, Suzi. I bet you’ve got a cracking story locked inside that head! Hehe! And remember, there’s two prizes up for grabs too! x
As i am a carer looking after my mum i put her clothes out for night and ask her just to wear what i have on the bed.In the morning when i go to bath her here she has on 3 extra pairs of pants and another nighty.i do not know how she does it especially when the nighties are up high in the wardrobe.
I suffered SEVERE baby brain with my first which lingered for a year or two after the birth. I once put my car keys in the freezer over night. I have also left them in the car door with my car parked in a main street in Balmain!
Pregnant with #2 baby brain has kicked back in. I went to buy my best friends birthday present and medication and came home with iced donuts!
I had a really disgusting night of zero sleep. Baby refused to sleep and cried all night long. So dragging my butt to work, I discovered I had put on 2 different black shoes. After a day of trying to hide my feet, I happily got home and changed. I then realised that I had put 2 bras on that morning lol. Sleep deprivation is an awful thing!
My good friend is desperate to get her son into a new child care, as she works four days and juggles school, house and husband social calendar. A really fancy new one just opened locally, so my friend was stoked. With a waiting list of 300 and many phone calls back and forward and interviews finally she got the call to come and have a look and show her little age 2.5 around…
She gets there, on her best behaviour and her son just will not let go. He starts biting her shoulder and spitting on the floor. Something he has never done before. So she left covered in drivble and thinking she has no chance of them taking such a naughty boy.
What a great movie – so got to watch this one 🙂
I remember one year driving to school – yawning the whole way there, to pick up my boys. I got out of the car and all I got was “Gee, you look a mess, and I saw you yawning all the way here” – but at least three different people…I was too scared to look in the mirror!
It was after our fifth baby was born, and everyone was taking turns in being sick..hubby was even home in bed! I hadnt slept in over 24 hours and was going into day two of not having any decent sleep..so I guess they were telling the truth!
Gotta love those “Mummy” looks – messy hair, clothes that don’t match and bags under the eyes.
Cheers
Lisa
My daughter just started prep at a Catholic primary school, although we are not Catholic. I work and hubby is the stay at home dad, looking after the day to day school things, but he insists that I look after anything to do with mass or church. A couple of weeks ago, there was a welcoming mass for the new students at the school. It was about 35C during the day and mass was at 5 pm. Hubby refused to go and I almost backed out, leaving home with Miss Five who had changed out of her bathers into a dress at about 4.50 pm. We passed the church just as everyone was going in, parked the car and headed in ourselves. It was then Miss Five tells me that she forgot to put on her undies! And I didn’t have a spare pair on me … I said to her don’t worry, just don’t tell anyone, you’ll be fine. And her dress was quite long. We headed into the church, just as the preps were returning from the front to their seats with their parents. Miss Five sees a school friend and says ‘We left home in such a rush, I haven’t got any ….’, beginning to pull up her dress. Call me a bad parent, but I pulled her dress down, spoke over her and dragged her to the other side of the church, away from her school friend. I don’t think she realised the potential consequences of flashing the whole congregation! Would have probably meant an early end to her Catholic education!
After giving birth to my twin daughters i’d become somewhat housebound for a while. I also had another daughter who was going through the “terrible twos” and the idea of leaving the house seemed incredibly overwhelming (we’d later learn that I had post natal depression). In an attempt to coax me back into the real world my mother arrived one day to take my three daughters and I to the supermarket to shop. I organised the girls, got them in the car, Mum in the passenger seat and I drove. Half way around the supermarket I felt wet. Looked down and finally realised that i’d done half the shopping with one breast still out of my bra (thankfully not exposed) and had milk dripping down my top. I’ve never felt so embarrased! I scooped myself back into position, picked up one of my babies to hide my now soaking top and hightailed it out of the supermarket! To this day, I *still* pat my boobs to make sure i’m contained and the day in question was 8 years ago!
Toilet training nightmare. Wees & Poos on the floor at the supermarket checkout. I think every person I have ever met in my life managed to be there to witness our finest moment. You would have thought by everyone’s reaction that I had done the dirty myself.
Let me paint the picture for you:
7.30pm in Wimbledon, London
Dark’ish bar
A table of name tags
Mums in business arriving at my networking event
Glasses of champagne and canapes
Me in a demure outfit and heels
Greeting mums as they enter, shaking their hands and checking them in…
While all the while breast feeding x
When my friends daughter was around two,every Christmas period her grandmother would call to speak with her and as she was in the Christmas spirit grandma always started the conversation with ‘Ho Ho Ho’,one day the daughter was quicker than mum to answer the phone- mum asked her daughter who it was. She replied ‘it’s that HO again!(she actually thought that was her name!,luckily grandma didn’t know what a HO was)
I think i have seen different versions of switch cos i saw 2 dvd’s last year any way love this giveaway so wanna win it . SJP is just awesome in any god darn role she plays i recken !
There is no way I can beat some of the previous stories. I have done the shoe thing, but in navy, couldn’t figure out why i was hobbling from the car until I looked down when i got to the office – differnt heel heights of course – I think I have also done it wearing one black shoe and one navy – if i like a style for work i will buy them in different shades – i now write “n” for navy and “b” for black on the insole. Have also worn a navy pair with a black pair of shoes – I really need to stop getting dressed in a darkened room and look in the mirror before i leave the house.
*a navy pair of shoes with black pants
1 hour of getting myself, husband and baby ready,
45mins of peak hour traffic
10mins of scouring for a park
Getting out of the car and realising I don’t have any shoes on……..Priceless.
When my youngest was a newborn and his older sister was just walking I was hastily shoving dirty laundry into the washing machine to get a load of washing on in about 30 seconds flat. What I didn’t realise was that my little ‘helper’ was also busy taking dirty laundry out of the hamper and shoving it into the toilet in the next room, thinking she was doing me a huge favour! Guess she was doing the same as mummy but just into the wrong receptacle.
When we were going through the IVF process I couldn’t believe how my wife (who is needle phobic)continually persevered with the constant needles – so very many – and never complained at all. She says now it was well worth all the pain and discomfort as it gave us our beautiful son
I was travelling from WA to Launceston for work with my son who was 1yo at the time. After travelling for most of the day I was exhausted and so was he, he decided to throw up all over me just as we landed. It was horrible as the only place it landed was all over my pants and top (somehow it all missed him completely). It wasn’t just a little amount either, it was actually dripping off me!!! So there I am at Launceston airport, stinking like kid spew, unable to change/shower and I was supposed to go straight to the office. Needless to say I never went to the office – I went straight to the hotel to shower & change! I have since never taken the kids on a work trip with me again lol.
Mmy bestfriend convinced me that wearing this not too short flowy dress was the PERFECT outfit for a summer night out.
Off we went on our night out – I had my bag on my shoulder – walking down the night-clubbing strip in Perth – with a few looks and giggles – it wasn’t until we got to the club that my friend noticed that I had my caramel granny pants on full show because I had accidentally hooked my dress up with my bag!
A few years ago, I went back to work when my daughter was only 4 months old. She was breastfed and refusing to take and EBM from anyone who was looking after her at the time so whoever was looking after her would bring her into me for feeds. I was in one of the offices at work with the door closed feeding her when my boss walked in. He didn’t realise I was feeding her and just started chatting away to me. As soon as he realised, he went bright red and bolted. Then apologised profusely later. He is a young single guy with no kids so has no experience with anything like that. I assured him that it was fine and anyway he didn’t see anything anyhow! He was still embarrassed about it for weeks after!
Trying to start up your own business and dealing with a Husbands nervous break down while looking after a baby learning to crawl and a toddler who was born to run away . . . balance is key and laughter is a bonus.
I just have to say that this hard to believe, but a true story.
My children being young and me working full time, it was time for the morning drop off at childcare.
saying goodbye to my two lovelies and heading to work a normal work morning.
Had started work and just about to head to morning tea, got stopped by a customer ( always the way ). Here I was already getting a bit snarly and grumpy, just wanted my cuppa, when the customer preceded to come in my personal space to whisper….
Sorry dear I just wanted to let you know that you have a green lolly frog stuck at the back of your hair!!!!
Mortified1!! hearing only the word frog arghhhhhhhhhhh
Dropping my two lovelies off with a lolly surprise and giving them a hug goodbye, my sons had stuck to the back of my hair. my locks being quite long didnt notice it!!! hahaha. and here I was ready to be nasty with this beautiful customer who found it!!!!!
it just goes to show dont always presume customers are only wanting one thing and dont give children lollies in the morning :))))
[…] Kellie from Three Li’l Princess has a giveaway of the “I don’t know how she doesn’t it” dvd at the moment, so get in quick […]
I have four children. After my first daughter, Maddison, now eleven, I had a lot of trouble conceiving and a few medical procedures done. I have had two miss-carriages, but now have three other children under six! At almost 41, I am chronically sleep deprived and not always observant first thing in the morning…! A perfect example would be the day only a fortnight ago when, after dropping off my oldest two kids at school, the third at kinder, I decided to take Samuel, aged 2, to visit his Grandmother. He ran inside to greet her and she started shrieking, “What’s happened to his eyes?!”
I went tearing in, fearing the worst, and my Mother was holding him, staring over his shoulder at me with the most horrified look on her face.
“He’s got no eyelashes!” she exclaimed in a shocked tone, and I realized in dismay, that she was right! It transpired that my five year old daughter, Jorgia, had climbed up to a top cupboard the night before to reach the nail scissors. She had then snipped off Samuel’s eyelashes, leaving only a trace of stubble! If he’d moved even a millimeter…! I felt sick, because I hadn’t even noticed! I’ve now put every pair of scissors in the medicine cabinet, which has a lock!
But then, for every ‘bad’ thing my children have done, there is always something lovely to counteract it. Like this morning when my four year old daughter, Isabella, told the checkout lady at the supermarket that I had lost my voice. She then added that I must have left it in a cupboard at home and that she was taking me home to look for it! My children are so priceless… Really!!!
And that’s how and WHY we do it!
Sometimes it is the simple things that fall down in the morning rush-like taking one black boot and one brown boot and thinking they match stride confidently into a partners meeting…
When pregnant with #3 I got into the office – after walking 1km from the car park, and looked down to discover I was wearing odd shoes (with different height heels). I was so embarrassed I had to head to DJ’s as soon as they opened to buy new shoes as I couldn’t wear the odd pair all day!!
Single mum, working full time, studying law part time, I was the epitome of tight schedules and precision planning…or so I thought!! I had to give a presentation at uni so dropped my son off at childcare, got to uni and found a park, got the the lecture theatre and set up ready to give the presentation, 100’s of fellow students waiting…only to discover that my darling son had put sticky tape and lovely ‘drawings’ all over my notes. I tried not to panic and had to wing it..and burst into tears at the end and explained what had happened. I got a standing ovation and a passing grade, just.
Always rushing out the door every morning there is always something left behind. One day it was my work shoes, I turned up with thongs on…now we are casual at work but not that much! Lol
Like most mums commenting here, I am a working mum with a toddler, husband, house and family to care for – that’s before we even get to the fun stuff every evening like wine and sewing in front of the TV! I just must remember to do the sewing BEFORE the wine next time because as I was finishing off my daughter’s new cloth dolly I realised – shock! horror! Her head was on BACKWARDS!
I wasn’t really aiming for an Exorcist sort of dolly, either!
Needless to say, I spent a few very late nights after that making her a new one… Luckily no one at work questioned my very tired eyes and lack of enthusiasm 🙂
Recently, I visited a friend and my beautiful little boy (2.5) told my friend “I stay in bed because my Mummy hits me every time.”
I was mortified AND upset because I definitely do not hit him every time! I hardly ever smack him.
Luckily my friend just laughed…
I was telling HB last night of my days goings on.,. While I was casually telling him how our 2.5yr old who is toilet training pooed his pants and then decided to take them off, try and clean himself.. only to get poo everywhere and when he realised he couldn’t do the job he came to find me and jumped on my bed telling me how yuck it all was..
I found poo all over the deck, the cat, the hallway and my bed.. not to mention he was covered in it..
HBs face while I was telling him this was definitely a;I dont know how she does it” look hahaha!