Archives

Listography – Inventions

Jun21

This is my first entry into Kate’s Listography linky over at Kate Takes 5.  This week the theme is Inventions we would invent to make our lives easier.  As you can imagine a lot of them are “new baby” related.

1.  The Complete Baby Steriliser.

This fantastic gadget would pick your bottles up (by some clever magnetic radar thing) and draw it into the sterliser.  It would then proceed to disassemble all the bottles into its varioues components, wash them thoroughly and the finish the job off by stertilising them.  It would even have a timer on it so you’d have freshly sterilised bottles waiting for you when you woke up or came home from an outing.

2.  The Baby feed maker

This not only makes up a baby’s feed for you but self fills itself when baby has decided he wants more.  How many panicked trips to the kitchen would that save.

2.  The self washing and cleaning car

No car would ever need washing again, ever.  Inside or out.  As soon as it detected you had left it would scan itself and hoover up, get rid of all the empty bottles, toys, wrappers etc and clean itself inside and out.

3.  The Meal Dispenser

You pick from the gadget (or even the app on your iPhone) what you want to eat and the Meal Dispenser goes about making it.  Completly nutrional and healthy.  It even washes up once you’re finished!

4.  The Ultra Light Baby Seat

How heavy are they! Are they filled with cement?  Anyway, this ultra light baby seat would be just as safe and weigh about the same size as your clutch or handbag.  It might even just clip itself into the car so no more faffing with seatbelts or bases.

5.  The Tummy Firmer

A magical pill that snaps your tummy back to EXACTLY what it was before you were pregnant.  No more need to excercise like crazy or watching what you eat.

What Happened Last Night

Jun20

Last night was a bad night for baby. He had spent the evening throwing up owing to a nice little bug that’s going around. It then took till 9pm to settle him down completely. I dropped into bed by 11pm, tired, hoping we would both have a good night.

What happened next was a bit of a blur, but it goes something like this…

Baby was completely unsettled most of the night and crying on and off. I decided to cradle him in my arms and sleep sitting up. I’d just about dropped off when the OH started sleep talking.

“Let go of my arm.” I ignored it. He sleep talks quite a lot and I’ve learned to filter it out, whilst keeping an ear open for any funny bits. Tonight wasn’t funny and so I ignored it and tried to settle to back to sleep again.

He repeated it, this time tugging at me. He’s also done this before too. Ignoring him again I carried on trying to sleep.

“Let go. Wake up!” Tugging harder now he suddenly shook me out of sleep. I sat up in bed puzzled. I looked over to the basket where baby had been sound asleep all this time. It dawned on me I’d been dreaming but hugging the OHs arm tighter and tighter thinking it was the baby.

I think I need some proper sleep.

Blimmin ‘Eck – 6 months!!

Jun17

So yesterday I came home with you in my arms, a teeny tiny bundle all lost in the baby grow that was too big for you, and big wide eyes silently soaking up the brand new world. And in what feels like a few weeks, you’re a 6 month old!! A cheeky little 6 month old at that!!

This month….

1. You now know your name. You whip your head around, all ears, as soon as someone calls you. And we call you a lot! Just to watch you all alert. I know it’s a bit mean. Hehe, sorry!

2. You have learned to jump like a little jack in the box in the jumperoo. But you will occasionally stand so poised you remind me of a little ballet dancer. Other times you look like you’re doing a little jig.

3. You can now scream from about 7am till 8pm in the evening. Blimey, it isn’t half deafening. You don’t seem to tire of it at all! Whilst it’s cute (well, ok not so much anymore), I won’t miss this phase when it’s over!

4. You can give hugs!! (hurrah hurrah!!). It’s not really a full blown proper hug. More, you grab my face and either burrow your own into it, or you try to bite my cheek, complete with a generous layer of drool. I class it as a hug. Muslins are good!

5. You’ve started enjoying fruit, phew. I did worry a bit at first and had visions of you living off veg (mainly the smelly stuff!) and porridge but I think we’re both getting there! Let’s try a bit of baby led weaning next month.

6. You love the theme tune of This Morning. It has a similar effect as saying your name. You whip your head around and will stare happily at the TV and then go about your way when it’s finished. I haven’t noticed you do it to anything else yet but I’m sure it’ll happen.

7. You love being picked up. By anyone! A smile flashed in your direction and you’re anyones.

8. Having said that though you constantly turn around to check your Daddy or I are in the same room. Else a little nervous laughter comes out. Shortly followed by “get me out of here” whinging.

9. My manager came to visit you this month and you spent the whole time pulling his hair, smacking his face and tugging at his shirt. Thank god he has 3 boys of his own. He loved playing with you. I think!

10. You can now put your dummy in your mouth perfectly. The HV said once you could do that you’d be ready for BLW. Hmmm, so next month is going to be interesting!

What Not To Do When Weaning

Jun10

I’ve linked up to Flashback Friday. I started weaning Baby Z about May last year and it was very interesting at first…

Well, we’ve been weaning for about 4 weeks now. I’m still no expert and as expected its all a bit of trial and error and generally experimenting with lots of flavours. And, my god, the poo, the POO!! I thought one could not get anymore obsessed with poo than I already was. I had obviously never weaned before though.

At the moment we are going through “why is his poo like goat poo? Why!! Why!!”. Is that too much information? It is though, like little pellets. It feels like a bit of a seesaw balance of omitting foods, adding a lot more liquids, a bit of orange juice, a lot more massage and todays latest; prune juice. I think (THINK!) we are about halfway to finding the right balance, but I get the feeling that it will only be until the next new flavour, taste and texture is added. I hate you poo!

So, really, there’s no way I can class myself anywhere near masterful at this weaning malarkey. What I can tell you though, is the stuff you probably shouldn’t do. I have plenty of those. Don’t get me wrong, I am really enjoying it. I, no, we, are on what looks like a bit of a learning curve.

So here goes, what NOT to do. (so far!)

1. Don’t stand in the supermarket fruit and veg aisle staring at a Butternut squash wondering whether you should buy it, and if you do, how the hell are you going to cook it? Actually, how the hell are you even going to peel it? I have to admit we don’t really (ok, never!) have eaten the thing. So why do mums get obsessed by it for babies? Anyway, point is, all that staring will, at some point, result in one of the staff asking if you’re ok and if you need any help. Aka “move along lady, you’re blocking the fruit and veg aisle!”. At this point you’ll grab the squash anyway and scurry along sheepishly.

2. Don’t dress the baby in white. Mostly, enough said. But has anyone else noticed that even with a bib on, food will find it’s way behind it, over it, under it. Bibs seem a bit useless to be honest.

3. When making purees, make sure you peel the fruit / veg. It is very messy trying to get skin off afterwards and not really worth stress levels going through the roof.

4. Don’t puree everything in sight and then expect the baby to like it all. I made the mistake of getting “adventurous” and then getting sick of all the puree that all looked green. We went back to a flavour at a time. It works really well. And I LOVE (well baby does) the Ella range. It’s very nice. (and yep I taste everything I give to baby, especially if I’ve bought it ready made).

5. Balancing a bowl of baby porridge between your legs whilst you feed baby is a bad idea. He will knock it a clean 180 degrees straight onto your jeans. Trying to wipe porridge OFF jeans is a worse idea. It spreads everywhere and seems to dry into something looking like dried glue.

6. When baby looks like he’s going to sneeze with a mouthful of food, get out of the way quickly. Don’t start wondering if he will a) sneeze and b) will he spray food everywhere. He’ll do both and it’ll be on you.

7. Don’t put baby on the carpet immediately after eating. Food will get transferred onto toes that will get shoved into his mouth and, if you’re very unlucky, also get sicked up onto carpet.

8. Don’t exclaim “is someone doing a poo poo” straight after weaning. Slink away to do the dishes and casually call out to OH to change baby’s nappy. Then listen out for the horrified “oh my god!! It stinks!!”

9. Don’t give your baby coke. I haven’t done this but I’ve seen someone who has. It was just so shocking!! But I’ll stop mentioning it now, honest.

Come link up to Flashback Friday…

flashbackbadge1

Parcel Collection

Jun8

I usually sleep through the postman/ delivery man knocking on our door. I’m just a wee bit lazy in the mornings. I then grumble when having to pick the parcel up from the sorting office. Not as much as when I have to collect it from our greenhouse though.

Now, I’m not very green fingered at all. We inherited the greenhouse when we bought our house 3 years ago. The previous occupants obviously were very passionate about it and they left us a gorgeous garden filled with cherry trees (the flowering, not fruit kind. I never knew there was a difference!), various very colourful plants and a creeping ivy in the shape of an arch. It’s very pretty, and thankfully requires very little maintenance. Our greenhouse on the other hand screams of how little we’ve taken care of it and overtime has turned into a dusty looking shed more than anything and is now mostly crawling with spiders, cobwebs and assorted creepy crawlies. It’s something on our list of things to do this year. Once that finger has been pulled out.

Given the state of the garden I wasn’t overjoyed to see the delivery card stating my parcel had been placed in the greenhouse / spider sanctuary. After waiting for the rain to stop I decided to go rescue it cleverly avoiding all slugs and snails in my path. I peered into the greenhouse and thankfully it didn’t have anything crawling on it. Mustering up courage I whipped the package out quickly and relaxed. Mission complete. Making my way back quickly to the house, I felt a very slight, but real, pressure under my shoe, followed by a very distinctive CRRRUNNNNCH. The vision of a poor crushed snail flashed through my head as I froze for a second, then screamed like a wimp and scraped my shoe all over the patio frantically trying to remove any remains, whilst at the same time refusing to witness the crime I’d committed. More frantic scraping later I ran back into the house and tried to wipe my shoe without looking at it or being sick. It took two recorded episodes of Desperate Housewives to stop myself from shuddering. Once I’d composed myself I felt obliged to mop the floor which I’d run onto in a blind panic.

Poor snail, it’s still out there. I looked through the window before. Shudder. I need to update my delivery preferences with Debenhams. Quickly.