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

Hi guys. How are you today? I'll see how are you today?

What's going on in your world?

I have just come back from, had a nice day today actually.

Well, actually, let me kind of contextualize that little.

The morning was really stressful.

But can I give a shout out and a whoop, whoop, to the lovely folk at the London passport office? You weren't expecting that,

were you? No, because basically, clever old me, we are hoping, although it's, you know,

I've managed my expectations with this, hoping to possibly go away somewhere during the

summer holidays, but, you know, let's see what happens. Anyway, a friend of mine was around and saying,

oh, you know you've got to have six months clear on your passport before you travel anywhere in Europe,

and I was thinking, hmm, and I was mentally going through all the passports and your mind was fine,

your riches was fine, but you know what it's like with kids passports they go up in fives rather than tens because you

only have a five year passport bear with me this is going to get well actually no not very

interesting in a minute anyhow turned out jesse's passport my five-year-old had expired in january

so i honestly if that friend hadn't mentioned

that, I don't think I would have noticed or known until we probably got to the airport. And then it

would have been one of those things where, you know, one of us has to stay behind. Or as my 12-year-old

...