The joys of parenthood, from the hilarious, yet innocent honesty of children, to the all-too-familiar parent rivalry have been captured in the musings of a Suffolk mum.
Clare Free, 41, began putting pen to paper to share her experiences of parenting in short stories with her friends, using the pseudonyms of Noisy Boysie, Curly Girly and Bubba for her own children and Da Hubsta for her husband, David.
Mrs Free, who is currently on maternity leave from her job as a childminder and nanny, has three children aged six months, 11 and 12, and initially wrote the stories as a hobby while her youngest slept.
Wanting to share her stories further afield, at Easter she launched her own website on which to publish posts.
Since then she has had snowballing success, gaining more than 700 Facebook likes and rapidly building a following on Twitter, and is now considering publishing a book filled with her tales.
“Each day, while my baby sleeps, I write short stories and draw cartoons about the funny side of being a mum,” she said. “The tales are all based on real-life parenting experiences.
“Children are so much fun to be around. They have their moments when they make me want to wince, want to hide, and want to cringe. It’s these moments that have inspired the stories.
“I absolutely love being a mum and try to enjoy every minute of it. I also love writing. In the past it was song writing, which I have always enjoyed, but story writing is new to me. It’s so much fun. I love drawing the cartoons too.
“It has been the response to the stories and cartoons that I have been most stunned by.
“I set up the website and a little Facebook page, put a few stories on the website and shared it to my own friends. It has grown from there and it seems to be snowballing into something much bigger than I ever thought it would be.
“I would really love to make the stories into a book one day. That would be a dream come true for me because my dad, Peter Lapsley, was a writer.
“He worked on many books, his best known was Fly Fishing by JR Hartley which he and a couple of other authors worked on together, and I think he would be very excited to see what I am doing now.”
Mrs Free uploads a new story to her website, at www.ourfunnyfamily.co.uk, every other Sunday.
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