A week in the life of iCandy mum, Zoe Griffin
Long gone are the days when becoming a parent resulted in the impending doom of your social life, or being confined to a lesser experience when meeting with friends, typically away from city centres.iCandy have provided parents around the globe with a solution, we have created stylish looking pushchairs, which are also extremely parent friendly around the cities of the world. We have created a range of elegant pushchairs which exude style but not at the expense of functionality. iCandy mum Zoe Griffin is one such mum whose life requires the perfect balance between practicality and style. Today Zoe, who runs the blog Live like a VIP, explains how her iCandy Peach helps maintain the life of a VIP. This blog post was written during a busy week in September 2016, Part 2 will be arriving shortly...
I have what most people would consider to be a dream job. I go to parties and write about the event and those that attend. I look at what the celebs wear and interview them about their beauty regimes and spill the celeb gossip on my blog Live Like a VIP as well as in the gossip columns of several major national newspapers.
As my job is my passion as well as a lifestyle choice, I couldn't wait to return to it after having a baby. However, it wasn't easy to make the transition from 'Girl About Town' to 'Mum About Town'. I don't think you fully realise how much chaos, joy, love, mess, tiredness, fun, laughter and utter bewilderment comes from the arrival of a newborn until you have one yourself.
It's definitely harder to motivate yourself to leave the house to 'work' at night when you've been singing nursery rhymes at Baby Sensory, mopping up sick and walking laps of the park to get the baby to sleep. However, I know from experience that I always feel better when I'm at the event as I get to talk to inspiring and interesting people, use my brain and experience things most people dream of. I constantly remind myself of how lucky I am and I couldn't do it without a supportive husband, who is also a journalist.
My life consists of parenthood and parties and I try to do both to the best of my ability. If I'm walking round the park, I do it in style with my six month year old son Rory sitting comfortably in his iCandy Peach. It's a gorgeous butterscotch colour and I secretly try to match my outfit to the pram. If we're at Baby Sensory, I sing with all my heart and lungs and get involved because it's much more fun that way. I sing like nobody's watching and Rory finds it funny, and then everyone else joins in (most of the time). We only live once and I don't want to waste mine being miserable!
This is what my son and I got up to during a typical week in September.
Monday-Swimming and the Bridget Jones Premiere
The highlight of Rory's day was a lesson at London Baby Swim, which involves lots of submersions and being held in the water in different positions. The trick to a crying-free lesson is to make sure that babies sleep before the session. I always walk there so Rory can have a nap in his iCandy on the way. It really is super smooth to push and little Rory James has no trouble drifting off to the land of nod.
The highlight of my day was attending the Bridget Jones premiere. I stood on the pink carpet and interviewed the stars for a report in the Mail on Sunday newspaper. The film made me laugh out loud and made me feel better about being a mum. Sometimes I feel things are a bit chaotic, but I'm not as bad as Bridget, an iCandy pushchair would definitely help in her life.
Tuesday-London Fashion Week- Aspinall Handbags
I had lots of invites that day because it was London Fashion Week. In the old days I would have accepted every invite and gone to several events, leaving each when they got dull. I can't do that now I'm a mum, meaning I have to prioritise and select the best event of the day, which happened to be Aspinall handbags' presentation at Claridge's hotel.
I didn't really want to take a baby to the party (partly because I wanted the attention on me rather than the baby and partly because the party would be overcrowded) so I took Rory to Tinseltown diner, where we met my sister who was on her lunch break from her office job. The iCandy is perfect for lunch dates, as it can be used as a highchair in world facing mode-a super little addition. In exchange for lunch, she let me have an hour at the party which was all I needed to hang out with David Gandy and Downton Abbey's Michelle Dockery.