Tag Archives: Mummy blogger Dubai

What not to say to first time mums
Motherhood

10 things New Dads Should Never Say to their First Time Mums.

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Ten things a new dad should never say to his new first time mum even if you are trying to make her feel better.  Remember her patience with the lack of sleep has more than halved.

#You look tired, you should get some rest.  I think no mum that wakes up all night needs to be reminded of the fact that she doesn’t look her best.  Just give her a kiss on the forehead rather than make any comment.

#Don’t worry the baby weight will fall off soon.  Most real women still hold onto their baby weight for a couple of months after delivery.  It is always a sensitive subject so leave it.

#Why is the baby crying?  She probably has been tearing her out figuring it out herself.  Try saying, ‘Give the baby to me, why don’t you have a break?’

#What’s for dinner?  Try,’ What can I organise for our dinner?’  She has just carried your baby in her tummy for nine months, feeds the baby throughout the night, changes diapers at 3.45am and probably hasn’t slept since.  You can easily rustle up dinner even if it is beans on toast.  She is probably so hungry, it will taste like a gourmet meal.

#I am exhausted, I have been at work all day.  The lack of a whole night’s sleep is a slow means of torture for any new mum despite the unconditional love for her little dumpling.  Your wife has faced the same thing all day so don’t start a competition.

#What have you been doing today?  You married her, and asked her to raise your children.  Don’t sound like you doubt her.

#Do you mind to pick something up for my mother as she is coming to visit?  Don’t ask her to do unnecessary chores in the first 3 months.  Go out, do it.  She is your mother.

#I am going out with the boys tonight.  I need a break.  You would have to have a very understanding wife to get away with that one especially in the first two months.

#Are you sure you are producing enough milk?  Why is the baby still crying?  You don’t think she already thought of it?  Lactating is a complicated business.

#Whatever you do, don’t quote your mother. “My mum thinks you should do it like that”.  She didn’t ask you for it.

Children's Products

Marmarland | Online shopping portal for furniture and other gorgeous children products created by stylish mum of 2, Maren Gerber

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Maren Gerber is a tall, stylish and striking-looking mum of two, who moved to Dubai from Germany with her husband in 2005, and the family was sent to do a short stint in Singapore, before returning back to Dubai again last year.  Maren herself, was an Operations Manager setting up businesses herself in the Middle East and Asia Pacific before the call of family life.  Maren now works with her husband and his business partner, and in the afternoon manages her two kids, Marleni aged 3 years and Marnus 1 year, and her own online children shopping website, Marmarland, selling unique children’s items from Europe and Dubai that are not easily found in your run-of-the-mill shops.  My children love so many of the items from Marmarland, and as parent, I think these toys help them with imagination, and my daughter’s favourite loves the traditionally designed doll as it is so soft to cuddle made from Alpaca Wool.  If you love traditional toys, some organic materials, with a new design edge and toys that also help with your children’s imagination, Marmarland is that online portal.  Also a great place to search for gifts especially with Christmas around the corner.  Age group: 0 – 7 years old.

What inspired you to start this beautiful online website, Marmaland.com?

I was always interested in interior design. I love to have nice things around me. My style used to be very minimalistic but of course with little toddlers running around, I had to do a few changes to our interior but I refused to put ugly, plastic, “made in China” toys in my living room or teddy bear and princess bedding in my kid’s rooms. So I started to search for products, which are stylish, of high quality, preferably organic and fun for kids and adults. I found lots of amazing brands but they were not available in the UAE.

 What are the 3 most sold items from your website?

Difficult to say but the ferm LIVING grid and halfmoon laundry baskets and wire baskets, wondermade wall sticker and currently the POMME bookshelf are very popular.

What are your personal 3 favourite items from your website?

I like all items on MarMarLand. For example, the Jupiduu slides. They are made of wood; look extremely stylish but so much fun for little kids. I also love the Miniwilla posters and soon we will have a very cool adventure rug.

I love organic and anything that is made from natural material, can you recommend 3 things that you think I might like?

#I think you would like the Modern Burlap swaddles, they are made of 100% organic cotton and are available in many stylish prints and very versatile. They can be used as a blanket, stroller cover or changing mat.

#You would also like the Anne-Claire Petit toys and accessories. All their products are organic and hand made. Their music boxes and rattles make perfect baby shower or newborn gifts.

#Or the Luckyboysunday knitted toys; made of 100% baby alpaca wool, which makes them incredibly soft, combined with a super cool design.

What school did you choose for your child and why that particular curriculum?

My daughter is in FS1 at DBF. I like that DBF is a small school with only FS1 and FS2. Their facilities are great and made especially for young kids.

My son is at Willow nursery Dubai Marina. Again I like this nursery because it is a smaller one, the classrooms are lovely and they have a great outdoor area. But location was also a very important factor for me. The time I save because the school and the nursery are not to far from our home I can spend with my kids. We have decided to enroll our children in English language schools and not into the German school because we think that learning other languages at a very young age is one of the major advantages of living in Dubai.

How do you juggle working for your husband in the morning, working on Mamarland, and manage your two children?

I work for my husband’s company in the morning when the kids are at school and nursery. My MarMarLand work I do in the evenings and weekends and for at least 2 hours each afternoon but my kids and I do something together nearly every afternoon even if it is just going to the playground and we always have breakfast and dinner together. The good thing about my work is that I can do a lot from home and I have a great maid who is taking care of household and helps with the kids.

But I have to say it is either work or kids, I don’t have much time to read a book, watch TV, go shopping or meet friends at the moment.

What makes you feel guilt when it comes to your children?

Sometimes the day is just too short ;). I would love to have more time to prepare amazing lunch and snack boxes or to take part at all their school’s events. And sometimes it is not easy to go to work on the weekend when you normally would spend time with the family at the beach or park. And I wish they could visit their grandparents more often.

Your children’s top 3 favourite bedtime stories

My son still does not like any bedtime stories; he prefers his white noise app ;). My daughter’s current favourites are Cinderella, Room on the Broom and Connie, a German book series.

Your favourite restaurant for a date night?

My favourite restaurants are still Zuma and La Petite Maison.

To browse the large collection of items have a perusal around on www.marmarland.com 

Health & Wellness

Kick Your Way To Fitness! | New cardio kickboxing bootcamp in Dubai

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Martial arts based fitness training and cardio kickboxing is one of the hottest fitness trends across the world in recent years and are motivating many people to get off the couch and into a fitness program.

Dubai based professional MMA fighter and former international karate gold medalist, Rafat Shawe is just one of the fantastic martial arts talent to be based in the Middle East.

This October, Rafat Shawe is launching his new kickboxing bootcamps that blend boxing, martial arts and cardio kickboxing in a fantastic total body workout. Well-known as an excellent form of stress release, martial arts-inspired workouts also improve strength, aerobic fitness and flexibility. The variety of movements used in kickboxing can sharpen reflexes and improve co-ordination and balance. Even better, most participants can expect to burn at least 600 calories during a typical cardio kickboxing class.

Rafat’s new outdoor cardio kickboxing bootcamps kick off on Sunday 11th October. The bootcamps will take place as follows:

  • Sunday 7.00pm, Palm Park, Palm Jumeirah
  • Tuesday 6.30am, Palm Park, Palm Jumeirah

Each bootcamp costs AED 100 or AED 800 if you sign up for a package of 10.

For more information about the bootcamps and to enquire about personal training, please contact Rafat Shawe on:

Email: rafat_shawe@yahoo.com or call

Mobile: +971 (0) 50 4954446.

You can also keep up-to-date with his latest news on Facebook and on Instagram.

Additional bootcamps at other locations in Dubai will be announced shortly.

Children's Education

Adventures in Art with Children: knowledge and thought | Sarah Palferman | Minerva London

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Sarah Palferman established Minerva London to share her passion for culture and arts with young people of all ages and comes highly recommended from friends I know.  She likes to inspire her pupils outside of the classroom to enrich their education and to teach them life skills by helping them to formulate their own opinions and ideas as this can only increase the children’s self-confidence and to broader their minds.  Sarah developed this business on the back of an experienced history with children having worked for the last twenty years with children and young people on an individual or group basis using her background in education and psychology.  You can spend the day with Dragons at the British Museum or find scenes from Shakespeare at Tate Britain.  Sarah tells us in her own words more about how exposure to art can benefit your child.  If you are in London this summer and looking for new activities for children, join Sarah and her team for one of their tours.

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited” – Plutarch

The quality of a child’s earliest encounters with culture is of paramount importance. A poor experience of anything can alienate the most open-minded among us. Done with sensitivity, however, an introduction to art offers the perfect opportunity for children to begin to formulate their own ideas and preferences, to develop skills of critical thought and self-expression, and to cultivate a livelong enjoyment in arts and the process of learning itself.

It is tempting to regale children with facts and figures in a gallery or museum; to focus on names and dates and a chronology of artistic movements. This is an almost sure-fire method for switching them off. That’s not to say that knowledge is unimportant. Knowledge, the logic that stitches facts into a meaningful fabric of understanding, provides context from which children can begin to explore concepts and ideas independently.

Teaser nuggets of fascinating fact provide the springboard from which we can encourage young people to think about what they are seeing. We can prompt with questions and withhold our own views to provide the space for children’s opinions and judgements to feel both valid and valued.

Children encountering Monet’s Antibes, billed by the artist as ‘sweetness itself’, and Degas’s Two Dancers, who have graced many a greetings card, will be startled by the fact that these works were once decried as ‘unfinished wallpaper’; the half-heated efforts of ‘lazy’ artists. Works by these radical rebels, admired by nearly 200,000 visitors annually in London’s Courtauld Gallery, are now revered in blockbuster exhibitions (such as that recently at the National Gallery and now to be found in the Philadelphia Museum of Art) for their spontaneity and the enchanting play of natural light.

Meeting Ophelia in Tate Britain (and the unfortunate model who may have caught the illness from which she perished while lying in a cold bath as Millais’ muse) serves as an introduction to the initially secretive Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Therein lies scope for discussion of the potential clash between artistic realism and responsibility, framed by this group’s tackling of morally ambiguous subjects and the contemporary Victorians who reeled from them. Exploring moral dilemmas in art, as research shows, helps children to confront the challenges they encounter in their own lives.

Younger visitors to London’s galleries can find so much pleasure in such enigmatic works as Holbein’s The Ambassadors with its spookily distorted skull, in exploring the weird and wacky installations of Tate Modern, and in identifying the saints of the National Gallery’s abundant Renaissance panels once they have been given some simple hagiographic keys with which to unlock these (and even further delight in augmenting their vocabularies with the word ‘hagiographic’!).

With an appreciation that every creative decision made by an artist is a deliberate and conscious act, children will develop a spirit of inquiry in their encounters with visual art. The skills of independent thought thus acquired help children to develop their personalities, abilities and imaginations. They encourage them to form a sense of their own identities and to express themselves fully. All these foster an interest in the process of learning itself and have a demonstrable influence on wider academic attainment.

There is enormous pleasure to be found in exploring culture with children; in watching curiosities spark into life and fanning the flames of creative and independent thought. Far from silently contemplative spaces for adults already initiated in the joys of cultural exploration, then, art galleries should be teeming with young people and open minds.

Sarah Palferman is a private tutor and educational advisor. She is the founder of Minerva London Ltd, offering tailored adventures in art and culture to young people in London.

To find out more, please visit

Minerva London

or email

sarah@minervalondon.com