A friend told me that the “problems” you face with your children don’t evaporate. They just keep changing. This is so true. I’m finding that now that Talitha can crawl, stand and even walk while pushing something, I don’t need to hold her quite as much – a relief.

This does not translate, though, into me not needing to entertain her most of the time. So, we do end up with a lot of pick me up put me down, which is fine, but distraction is always welcome.

So the day is a long sequence of Talitha emptying the contents of a bag or splashing in a bowl of water while I wash up for, if I’m lucky, a few minutes, until she tugs at the leg of my jeans full of fuss. If she could say “bored” she would. So I can use all the help I can get.

First we tried it downstairs in the diningroom and it was OK

This rainbow maker is our current distraction. When I selected it from Find me a gift I thought it looked pretty cool. It was the kind of thing we’d enjoy but wouldn’t buy ourselves. I generally think that’s what constitutes a good gift.
Read more

Saturday marked my 26th birthday so we decided to celebrate it on the Friday. Of course. I think, actually, Laurence quite fancied taking a day off. Either that or he forgot my birth date and thought it was the 13th when he was booking the day off.

Regardless, I loved that we had another long weekend together. That in itself was a birthday present.

So, my brother Liam and his fiancee Shalimar staying with us for a couple of weeks, we decided to all go out for lunch at Frankie & Benny’s at Cribbs Causeway in Bristol. I was sent a voucher so I could test drive one of their restaurants (they’ve introduced a new menu apparently) so that’s what we did.

Four adults and one baby, we were promptly seated. About fifteen minutes passed before we were attended – a noticeable though not indecent amount of time. When the waiter came, he was courteous, friendly and professional.

A high chair was fetched for Talitha – the kind that clips to the table. A glance and I wasn’t keen on putting her in it. It wasn’t food-ridden but it was a bit grubby. As soon as I mentioned it to the waiter, though, he quickly set about cleaning it. I still thought it could use a proper going over but it was passable.

We ordered our drinks, two white wines, a cider and a ginger beer, and settled into looking at the menu. We’d been seated with a kids’ menu too so I scouted for something baby led weaning friendly.
Read more

It took me a long time to feel comfortable with leaving Talitha with anyone, including Laurence. The first time I properly left her with him, I went on a two-hour shopping trip to the Gloucester Road shops in Bristol. She was just shy of four-months-old.

I felt incomplete without a baby inside me or tied to me. And I worried the whole time. What if she was hungry? Did he know how many ounces to give her and how to hold the bottle?

Of course, they were fine. In fact, of the two of us, he’s often the more competent. I may have the equipment but I’m not nearly as methodical.

Almost six months later, he takes her out most Saturday mornings on “Daddy dates”. They go shopping for photography stuff, they visit museums and they learn new songs at Bristol Central Library’s “Rhyme Time”. Laurence always comes back complaining that “Wind the Bobbin Up” makes no sense.

I usually send them with a bottle of either formula or expressed milk (depending on whether I’ve had time to pump that week). More days than not, Talitha prefers to wait for me but sometimes if they’re gone longer than expected, she’ll take it. Laurence texts me and I pump while reading or whatever I’m doing. It makes me feel a little less on edge knowing he’s got milk for her just in case.

He’s always got the challenge of temperature though. Talitha is not a fan of cold milk, especially if it’s breast milk. So, we were happy to give the Yoomi self-warming bottle a test run.
Read more

I’m pretty laid back about baby hygiene. No, scrap that. I don’t want you getting the wrong idea. I’m the right amount of laid back. Now you decide what the right amount is and, yes, I’m that.

I’m not the mum who gets the wipes out for every toy at Rhyme Time before her precious child touches one but I do reserve the right to reject anything with food or snot dried on to it. There. That sounds pretty balanced.

This is probably why I haven’t quite made up my mind about dental hygiene pre-teeth. Brush-Baby sent me some DentalWipes and a chewable toothbrush a good while ago but because I was so insistent that my daughter was going to get teeth “any day now” I waited to use them.

Well, despite teething on and off for the last five months (hold me in your prayers) those stubborn things seem to have no intention of making an appearance.

Before you say it, this has in no way prevented her from biting my boobs – but we’ve moved on from that, for now anyway.

So I decided it was time to accept the claim that cleaning gums is important for growing healthy teeth and was helped along by seeing two infants with teeth that came in black with tooth decay.

Now, I know that that scenario is relatively rare and, as my in-laws pointed out, the generation before us didn’t bother with cleaning gums and most of their babies didn’t end up with the teeth we usually associate with bottle-mouth.

BUT, I was and am a teensy weensy bit scared, I’ll be honest. Especially since Talitha has a significant lip-tie which has been associated with milk pooling in the front of the mouth.

Read more

This is the last of my Miosolo nappy challenges for Bambino Mio. It’s been an enjoyable week, giving these nappies a go.

After all they’ve been through, it was definitely time to put a wash on.

I’ve used cloth nappies from the start so I feel like I’m a bit of an old hand at managing nappy laundry.

Read more

I wasn’t sure if I’d get the chance to complete this challenge this week as it’s quite random to ask a friend, “Would you like to change a nappy?” Generally we just do them all ourselves. I’ve not yet got to the point where I leave Talitha much with anyone else either.

The opportunity came when I ran a stonking fever on Monday and my mother-in-law popped by on baby duty so I wouldn’t want to kill myself. Bless her, bless her, bless her.

Especially bless her because when she’d got back from their walk in the park, Talitha had done a poo reflective of the berries she’d eaten the day before. Too much information? Never.

The dear woman just went ahead and cleaned up the stinker – the poo I mean. I’d never call my darling child a stinker. Unless I’m running on less than four hours sleep and she’s screaming her head off at least.

She also agreed to try out the Bambino Mio Miosolo.
Read more

So I finally got a day at home with the baby to try out the Bambino Mio all-in-one nappy, the Miosolo. And what a day.

After a night of literally waking up over and over again, Talitha woke up bawling and pretty much did that all day long.

OK, not really, but it felt like it. There were so few moments of her just being content whether it was held by me, on my lap, at the breast, on her own, at my feet, I only had a few minutes at a time before the wailing began.

At first I thought, “Ok, now the separation anxiety has kicked off in earnest.” But literally no matter how close or far we were, we got nowhere.

Oh no. I finally broke the baby.

So I stuck her in the Ergo to feel like I was doing something proactive, singing and talking while picking up the house. Which kind of helped, kind of didn’t.
Read more