The BritMums Xmas meet-up at the IWM

Walking up to the Imperial War Museum probably isn’t going to put you in a festive mood.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s an amazing building with an interesting past. Construction finished in 1814 and for 115 years it was the home of the Bethlehem Hospital. The museum took over in 1935.

While the 19th-century architecture – the dome! the columns! the symmetry! – might put you in the mood for a Dickens novel, roasted chestnuts and a big Victorian hoopskirt (or, is that just me?) – the 15-inch naval guns standing outside the entrance certainly don’t scream Christmas cheer. They’re more about the normal please-don’t-shoot-me type of screaming.

But, despite the pair of enormous guns pointed in my general direction, I was filled with festive feelings as I sauntered up to the museum – with Pumpkin in her bear suit and strapped to me in her baby bear carrier.

You see, we were on our way to the BritMums Xmas meet-up, which was taking place at the IWM.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about the museum itself because we plan to go back soon for have a proper look around. But it re-opened in July after a £40 million transformation and if my brief wander through the ground level is anything to go by, it will definitely be a good day out – if not massively depressing. Because, you know, war.

The BritMums event was being held in the cinema at the back of the museum. It was a lovely big room with lots of space for Pumpkin to crawl around – and there were two other little ones there too (from Pigeon Pair& Me and Mummy is a Gadget Geek), meaning she had new victims friends to harass play with.

I was really remiss in my photo taking and I really wish I’d managed to get a picture of the big huge ENORMOUSLY MASSIVE mountain of cookies that was provided. There was also a lovely selection of hot drinks, which would have been wonderful on such a dreary day – but I had a crawling baby to chase around and I’m bad enough about spilling things when I’m sitting still.

At least I did remember to get a photo of the books for the book swap.

To be honest, much of the meet-up was a bit of blur for me. I met several very nice bloggers, we chatted, ate cookies and I chased the baby some more. Unfortunately, I should have had my phone out to make notes of blogs to look up and Twitter handles to follow when I got home – because I could only remember a couple after we left.

Still, I had a good time. Since it was my first BritMums meet-up, I must say that I felt a little overwhelmed. There were so many well established bloggers. My little months-old blog felt even littler than normal. Plus, everyone seemed to know each other already – probably from other events and BritMums Live – and I’m not very good at mingling.

It was a good learning experience though:

• I must get business cards.
• I need to become more confident when talking about my blog – no more “it’s just a blog about bringing up the baby”. Geez! I’ve grown a child inside me and am now raising her and writing about it. That’s not just any old thing.
• I should try to improve my real-life networking skills. Mingling, remembering names and faces, that sort of thing .
• My phone is a great tool for making notes and taking pictures. I should use it for both more often in these situations.

At the end of the meet-up, we were invited to collect a book from the swap table. I let Pumpkin choose and she selected the one wrapped in a picture of Prince Harry – although I’ve started calling him her future Uncle Harry. 🙂

Then it was time to head home. On the way out, I stopped to consider the view from behind the guns – and decided I wouldn’t really want to live in those flats across the street.

We made our way back to the train station and I grabbed a sandwich and banana to share with Pumpkin on our way home. Even though she was exhausted, she stayed awake for most of the journey and was very pleased with herself, sitting in her own seat.

 

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