Hello, I'm Sophia Lusbexter and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to

to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work.

I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years,

so I spin a few plates myself.

Being a mother can be the most amazing thing,

but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions.

I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything.

Welcome to spinning plates.

Hey-ah! How you doing? Yeah, you're right. I sound a little cheery. It's because we've had a really sunny day here today.

I am speaking to you from the past, but not too distant past. It's Saturday night. We've had a nice sunny day here in Londontown. So actually we spent

the day in the garden. I say it was sunny, but I should probably give you some context that it was

actually incredibly brisk still. It was about 11 degrees. So I wouldn't describe it as balmy. But that

didn't stop a little bit of deck chair action in the garden

and playing outside and T-shirts and we did go out without any coats, which was pretty crazy, but felt good.

And one of my kids got stuck in the tree for a minute, which I found very funny when I probably should have been helping him.

That was across the road in the park. But he's down safely now, just in case you're worried about

that. He's completely fine. That was Ray. He loves climbing trees. If you know any small people,

if you're a parent to a small person, do you're small people like scaring you by climbing up

trees? My eight-year-old Ray will climb right to the top, and I've had to rescue him a couple of times.

In fact, I probably shouldn't tell you this, but one time we were out, and he lost his footing and found himself dangling.

Probably something like 10 foot above the crowd, so I'm laughing, remembering.

And it was just me and him, and I stood underneath him and I said, Ray, look at me, Ray. Look at me in the eye, Ray. There's only one thing you can do. You're going to have to let go and I'm going to catch you. And he went, okay. And I went, one, two, three. And on three, he let go go and i found myself quickly shutting my eyes and covering my face with my arms and an instinctive thing of oh my goodness are quite a you know big eight-year-old

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