Trapped toddler parents: puddlesuits splashing towards spring

[WeSearchedHereWeSearchedThere]

All guardians of toddlers welcome, we offer ideas, activities, and a shoulder to lean on when it all gets too much. We’ve conquered winter, next stop spring!

Continuing from www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/4105179-trapped-toddler-parents-of-the-fabled-winter-2020-2021-puddle-suits-at-the-ready-hello-christmas?pg=1

I very much like that the call goes out ‘I feel like a shit parent!’ And we can respond with ‘nooooo you’re completely normal’ with our tales of also dropping our kids!

Fuck the mum guilt!

Hey all, just to chime in with something that's kept my usually intensely demanding 2 year old pretty busy this week - duplo on a tuff tray or similar with water 1-2cm deep to make a "water park" (great if you have duplo slides but just building bridges or seeing what the little ones come up with has been great too). When attention starts to wane I jump in with some bubbles (just whipped up from washing up liquid) which recharges the play for a bit. The duplo people and animals can go in too and swim/splash around..

Thanks for all tips so far I love this thread :)

Good luck tomorrow everyone!

Thanks for the virtual hug @MonkeyPuddle

DD threw herself down the stairs the other day. DH was just coming out of the shower and had to launch himself naked down the stairs to catch her so luckily she only managed to go a couple of steps. He got some good carpet burn though! DD was unscathed but we very quickly bought the only expensive baby gate that fits our weirdly shaped stairs.

Morning everyone, 5am start here...I’m caffeinating myself! It looks like we may have a dry morning, shock horror, so my 3year old wants to take her pram and her Baby Brian to the park (yes, I like Monty Python 😁). She’s terrified of spiderwebs so that makes park visits difficult but maybe today it will go smoothly. Later on we are finishing extra food out of milk bottle lids for our Pringle-tube Very Hungry Caterpillar...3yr old loved making it and the toddler adores playing with it and posting “ food”through his mouth. Best art and craft we’ve done for a long while. Tomorrow we are making a papier-mâché cocoon and a toilet roll tube butterfly so we can completely act out the story. Ugh, papier-mâché and careful pre-schooler fine but my reprobate of a toddler...will be...fun.

Good morning all,

@MrsOmelette, oh no a 5am start, makes for a very long day. They sound like wonderful activities you have planned.

Hope everyone has a good weekend.

So sorry to hear many of us are having a shit time. Fingers crossed Boris will give us some hope on Monday 🤞 I've found the last three weeks the hardest time, I've been so positive this last year but for some reason the last 3 weeks I've been so emotional and the slightest thing gets to me. This thread makes me realise that it's normal to get upset and that others are feeling it too, you lot have kept me going so thank you

Anyway, forecast rain all day, I'll try get out during a dry spell, got to pick up some clothes (click and collect) for son as he's had a growth spurt! Covid vaccination for me tomorrow which I'm actually looking forward to as I will get half an hour by myself without toddler!!! I'm going to drive really slowly, sit in the car park for a bit and may even take a flask of tea, make the most of my free time

Thanks for all of these suggestions - lockdown is really lockdowning like no lockdown has before. My 19mo has become a real whinger, he even whinges about things he’s enjoying going to try the water and food colouring in a bag thing after breakfast, which I hope will be up to his highness’s standards.

I could have written your post @PinkDaydreams! I've been feeling okay about the non stop exhaustion of a 3yo and 1yo home 24/7, juggling my own work whilst DP is out 4 days a week.. but the last couple of weeks have been a slog and I've been a pretty lousy parent probably.

Question for all you tuff tray owners... do you put anything underneath it? So if your tray is on a table or even the floor I suppose do you put a towel or something down if you're doing water play? Also does the smaller one ever pull at it? I know my 3yo would really enjoy his but I think the 15mo would just yank it off the table the moment my back is turned!

@Chocolatetrifle thanks, tbh the constant early mornings are so bad - they didn’t bother me as much when I was younger but in my 40s they just leave me exhausted all day.

@MrsOmelette I completely agree, its exhausting to the point some days it makes me want to cry, especially when getting up in the night also. I was 40 last year so wonder if age has anything to do with it? Note to self: need to dye my hair in a spare moment, can see grey.

I'm sure all this will feel better when the sun comes out and it stops bloody raining!

@Chocolatetrifle I think it definitely does, I was 38 with a toddler and that felt like older ones I’d had in my twenties but now I’m in my 40s it’s bone-achingly deep tiredness. I’m hoping losing some weight will help.

Afternoon all.

Hoping BoJo has good things to say on Monday. I very much want to do a bottomless brunch with the girls from work.

We’ve had a days of highs and lows. Huge almighty row with DP this morning while getting ready to get out of the house. It’s like he clocks off from work and powers down his brain, waiting for instructions from me, but then doesn’t like it when I give him things to do. Anyway.

We’ve been to the woods and had a stomp around, DD wasn’t enjoying the sling today so we left earlier than I planned, train tracks this afternoon.

Desperately need a hair cut, postpartum hair loss is kicking in now, absolutely gutted with it. I’ve got PCOS and have really thin hair on top and I’ve had a little cry today about how bad it looks, my parting looks inches wide.

Having a quiet rainy day today doing some crafty stuff. DH is 'making pancakes' with DD. He has cut out circles of cardboard and she is sticking on coloured pom poms (blueberries, raspberries, marshmallows) and banana (yellow card). She is flipping them in one of our small pans lol.

I am thinking of sowing some seeds with DD this week in little pots so she can watch them grow and then I can transplant them into my larger raised beds when the weather gets better. Anyone know anything about what seeds would be good to grow in little pots on the window sill? I have sweet pea, but am clueless about anything else.

Today all attempts at nap for DS failed (cot ; my bed) so took him for a drive ! Know that seems like a regressive thing to do and should just accept that at almost 2.5 he is ready to drop his nap but he’s sooooooooo cranky in the afternoon if he doesn’t sleep I’m not ready to !

@WeSearchedHereWeSearchedThere the sling lady was fab. I'm totally sorted and have been wearing the sling. Thank you so much for putting me onto her.

@jaffacakes16 welcome along.

@footprintsintheslow oh good! Slings can be a pain until someone shows you and then suddenly it all seems so simple!

@Hyppogriff my 3 year old is stuck in an awkward point where he needs a nap maybe 2-3 days a week. But for almost a year he’s only napped in the car, so our lives have revolves around regularly being in the car at 1pm... (lockdown 1 was a nightmare)

Very uneventful day here. Kids watched tv and ate most of the day, won’t win any parenting awards but hey ho they’re alive and happy and I’m not too stressed so not the end of the world!

@jaffacakes16

Very uneventful day here. Kids watched tv and ate most of the day, won’t win any parenting awards but hey ho they’re alive and happy and I’m not too stressed so not the end of the world!

Everyone fed no one dead is regularly muttered in this house too. Although I actually failed at that today as it got ro 5pm before both me and DH realised no one had fed the cats.

Glad to see eberyonis still muddling through. I too am keeping everything crossed for good news on Monday.

New to the thread here. Glad I've found it, slowly losing my mind and this has given me a bit of a gee up looking at the ideas.

This all make you all giggle...DS1 wrote me a letter about half term.
"Dear mum, I luv you. The tims we had were frere boring. We luv you."

He's 4 so I'm simultaneously pleased with his excellent phonics knowledge but also a bit sad. It was a very boring half term.

Last day of half term tomorrow so we're all walking to the skate park in town to try and finish on a high - it's 30mins/45mins away at adult pace so wish us luck.

@Hyppogriff and @WeSearchedHereWeSearchedThere snap! my 3year old still needs a nap as he gets up so early and I have to take him round the block too in the car to get him asleep now too. Glad I'm not the only one doing it. Think I need to really try him without a daytime nap but I'm stuck in the vicious circle of him getting up early then me driving him around in the car after his lunch, seems like madness more I think about it now. We carry him back in from the car asleep.

14 month old will nap in pram. Never managed either to nap in a cot in the day.

Some success here for 14 month old today playing with a spinning cog/wheel type puzzle and making a shaker with coloured craft poms poms, spent some time taking them out and putting them back in. Made some 'emotions faces ' out of paper plates and coloured them in for 3 year old, happy face, angry face, surprised face etc but today has mostly been about his angry face.

Have a relaxing evening everyone.

Hi all, have been lurking and stealing ideas for a while - my dd is really into drawing and stickers and would love to get into more crafty things with her but at 20 months what kind of glue does everyone use for sticking which is safe (if watched of course). Any recommendations appreciated - thank you! Need something new to distract from molar teething misery...

@Passanotherjaffacake I have various glues. God knows why, I hate gluing and sticking, DS just loves to spread glue about. We have standard pritt sticks, glue pens and more of them then not we use a squirt of PVA glue in a dish (not Asda’s clear one, that’s shit) and use a lolly stick to spread it around

Just need to remind everyone of....PASTA.

DD has been up since 5.40, but spent most of that time putting dry pasta in a mixing bowl and taking it out again, so I can drink tea.

@Motherofmonsters I had success with giving myself a curfew so making sure DS stayed in the cot until a certain time even if it meant picking him up and putting him down a million times, but giving myself a free pass to bring him into bed after that time, and then slowly making the "curfew" time later and later.

The other thing I did was introduce a delay before breastfeeding. So I'd feed him to sleep as normal at bedtime and then when he woke up, just cuddle him for 5 mins before feeding if he didn't settle (and he never did!) then the next night you go to 10 mins, then 15 mins etc until 30.

Also giving him a chance to see if he'd go back to sleep by himself before I went in to the room. Started out that I would wake up and be desperate for a wee so I'd go for a wee first. I realised that sometimes by the time I finished weeing (very quietly!!) he would have gone back to sleep. So I just started pretending to be asleep and then doing my wee as long as I could humanly hold on for and only if he was still awake I'd go in!

I did these a bit inconsistently and was a bit crap with it all TBH but then one night he just went back to sleep every time he woke up and the next night he slept through completely and since then he's either slept through or gone back to sleep by himself, except the night his nappy leaked. He is 2.5 so it might just have been time for it to happen anyway, but that's what worked for us! It's been a bit uncomfortable for me TBH as he'd gone from waking up 2-3 times (at least) every night and often being permanently attached for the second half of the night, to not feeding at all.