CRESH - Crap ham, stinky Brie, gin and lol'ing at birth plan believers

[AlpinePony]

Heeyah.

poo birthday sounds FAB. Glad you had a good time and got out of clearing up (too right to!)

Sorry to hear about bansheeSqueaks curls I hope normal service is resumed soon.

Will be sending lots of ESHlove for your mum tomorrow bitey

I have found out the local pool do baby swim courses £20 for 8 weeks so that's almost half the cost and will have the added benefit of making me go each week. Also found out there is a water babies class close by but it seems VERY expensive. Has anyone done it and does it live up to the hype?

virtual candle for your mum bites.

My baby is one today! He celebrated the anniversary of the moment of his birth by falling out of bed after a good few hours singing and crawling round. If this is how he behaves when he is one, god help me when he is 18!

BTW we did bugger all today about the above. We are having cake and party bags on Saturday.

Can someone help me decide how to best pamper myself? OH and Mr Cluck bought Clucky and I a day at a spa for Christmas last year. This meant we were unable to use our Christmas present straight away as I was BFing a 3 month old and Cluck was due to give birth 6 weeks later. But the time is upon us and I am looking at the list of treatments to have. They all appeal to me - what do I have? Help me choose!

rocket If you don't send sprocket to the official waterbaybees class then you can kiss goodbye to 2026 you hateful mother.

curly I hope the drive went OK last night.

lightspaper have you really not given chocolate? We eat everything in this house. Yes, of course the celebration is for the parents - but how can you resist buying a piece of brightly coloured noisy plastic and a cake? Just don't you dare start going on AIBU with the old "and I invited my old English teacher from school and she says she can't come and I think this is horrible because I thought we were really close at school and doesn't she realise this is my first born and precious beyond all that is known of our earthly world?". Have plastic, have bubbles, move on - and that's my official line. This may work each year until 12 truth be told.

"Two Nectarines Bear" has given me the The Frites this morning.

silv How is hossy hoss Mchossicle?

pols So glad you had a lovely party - such a shame there wasn't a full ESH gathering - although I fear we'd have ended up pushing the children off the bouncy castle and lying there drunk.

box Is it my imagination or has he turned from liver chestnut to dark bay in this year? The year has indeed flown, for some reason I always think he was a December baybee.

Rocket, our mate Fish did water babies. I couldn't afford it but she taught me what she'd learnt every week. Smallboo was dipped underwater at about 4 months old after this preparation thing we had to do in the bath. He's always loved swmming (it's one of my favourite things to do with him because we both enjoy it). He is completely fearless at the pool and can swim underwater for a few strokes and do forward and backwards somersaults!

I'd say it's well worth it - smallfish is a very confident too. They also have those great underwater photos too.

Oh Curls - hairstrokes, gin and earplugs for you.

hope the drive was ok curlsworld.

Best of luck Bitey mum.

We are having a party for NCT group 1 year olds. So there will be 8 very small people and 8 slightly larger people. It is pretty damn cheap when you split the cost between 8 families. And of course, it is at a generic play place so they deal with the mess, provide shite food and we bring a cake (which will be a most excellent cake). I can't wait.

Our party was just parents, nct group and a couple of other friends. More for the adults really (there was a lot of wine and beer!) but it?s a good opportunity to get the balloons and banners out

bites hope all goes well for your mum.

Hope your mum recovers well after her surgery Bitey. Candle duly lit.

I know pone will the parental guilt never end? ( of course not)

boo I already dunked Sprout at her first vist to the pool! I've been dangling her in the deep end of the bath since week one and she loves having her face splashed so she just looked a bit surprised! I am thinking it might be good for TB to do with her, bonding time plus confidence boosting for him. I might feel like I was missing out though!

Bitey virtual candle burning for your mum here too.

Rocket we did a couple of terms of Waterbabies - we regretted signing up for the 2nd term as there was only so much singing of those bloody songs we could take, we are pretty committed to taking Squib swimming anyways, and it's nice for us to both be able to go in the pool. Their big selling point is the underwater swim training for safety, but we're just continuing with that ourselves now - basically you start of with splashing their face - in the bath etc - where you say "[name of child] ready, go!" and splash them. You then progress from there to dunking them under, to swimming along a bit under the water etc. Squib's not at all afraid of getting his face in the water so if Sprout's the same, you can probably save yourself the dosh and do it yourselves. And you don't want to know how much they charge for the underwater photos. We saw the price list and were . We have our own underwater camera housing so will do some pics of our own when we go on hols.

Alps the chances of a 50% Belgian getting his hands on chocolate when there is a significantly larger 100% Belgian in the house to compete with are slim. Daddy's "grown up" breakfast is toast with chocolate sprinkles...and of course Nutella to help said sprinkles to bettter adhere to the bread. .

We'll I've had a fun day. Went down with cystitis last night. Haven't had that since I was 20. I remembered you have to drink lots of water to flush it out, so basically spent the whole night on the bog and generally feeling like crap. Fortunately the lovely belgian took a half day off to look after Squib while I passed out asleep this morning. Urgh.

lights the technical term for sprinkles is "muisjes", the diminutive of "mice" and its literal translation is "mouse poos". Belgians eh? ;) at least squid will get proper chocolate first time!

This is true. I expect nothing less than Neuhaus for Squib's first taste of the brown stuff. The giving of Godiva in the Belgian's family is considered an insult. And don't get him started on the inferior product that is Cadbury's

I get it, I used to love dairy milk but i'd rather chew on a dishwasher tablet these days. ;) I like leonidas, not big, not clever and no Mary's but not offensive on the pocket either. For home I like carte d'or.

well, the journey went ok! Only a little whinging and 2 hours of baby sleep. but Squeaks really isn't well. she was coughing all last night and all day today. She's been down for the last 2 hours, sleeping more soundly than she's done in days. One half of me says I should wake her, so she sleeps tonight. but the other half says just let the poor child sleep. Wish my mum would come home and tell me what to do.

Visiting grandparents tomorrow, one at home and one in hossie.
Thinking of mother bitey.

aces. Wide awake and much happier 10 mins after my post.

Poor Squeaks! Hope she is feeling better now.

We have our first case of nappy rash :( doesn't seem to be bothering her at the moment but it looks sore. What are your magic cures please oh wise ESH?

I'd probably just do the cheap local course rocket. See what it's like and then next time if you want something different you could go for Waterbabies.

I tried out the drop ins at my local pool before signing up to Waterbabies. We did dunking under water in that as well. I am only doing Waterbabies for the photos and because our local pool is a bit skanky.

As much nappy off time as you can manage leafy. Peppa had it really bad too. I let her have a day without a nappy and just moved her from room to room on her change mat. There was piss and poo everywhere but it really helped. She even fell asleep on the mat wrapped in a muslin. Metanium is also good. Just make sure her bum is really dry before you put it on.

They also teach them holding-on Lights - the sight of ten babies clinging onto the edge of the pool unassisted is something to behold.

Box - they is all too jelous to assist in your pampering choices. Go for the "Term Time Treat Day Experience" with Celestial Pure Indugence Massage and Celestial Flotation Treatment and be done with it

In news here, it appears we have a crawler. WTF. Not very fast but at least 3 months ahead of his sister. AIBU in expecting him to be running the 100m at the 2028 Olympics

Hope all goes well for you Mum Biter

Bear has a bit of a cough - I'm slightly worried that this could be "stables related" as we've been every day for the last week, however they're super clean and very well-ventilated and he's been around the horses since he was 10 days old and that was height of summer in a dust bowl. JB thinks it's because I insist on sleeping with the window open. Any ideas? Could also of course simply be "one of those things" - have given him Benylin and if there's no improvement I'll take him to the doc on Monday - I don't think it's too bad really but he did have a rought night last night the poor poppet. Then I had a reflux attack and ran downstairs to puke but JB was having a poo - luckily (!) Bear had moved a plastic bucket to the hallway (for reasons unknown to anyone else but himself) so I was able to use that. Nighttime drama and not a willy in sight!

rocket I am deeply suspicious of any of these "activities" which suggest that you, as sprout's parents, would be completely unable to achieve the goals on your own and that you need an instructor to do anything. It undermines the confidence of you, as parents, and I believe, in women in particular who end up doubting themselves and unable to i) make decisions for themselves and ii) unable to allow the children to make their own fuck ups. Not you of course. I demand you post pictures on the other place immediately of the latest shoes you've made.

Well done Clucky ! Maybe he's just trying to catch up with his sister - poor LC, she's losing her advantage fast! Did you see the pics in the paper yesterday of lil' Kai Rooney having his first riding lesson at 19 months? Soooo cute!

bitey Not sure if you'll be going over or not, but if it all does get too much inside the hospital there's an absolutely super enormous park next to the hospital good for striding purposefully across. Hence why the hospital is called the Heath I suppose.

Where are you boy mums getting your clothes from now? I have I fear fallen in to a mn middle-class trap of Boden. Can't stand leggings on tight trousers on boys, find supermarket sizing fuckenodd, Next newborn is gorgeous but then rapidly descends in to sk8terboy slogans. Nordic kids is quite frankly dull apart from the odd dolphin-photoey-style thing. Am thinking of going Etsy-direction, but is that just cheap nasty stuff with an interesting picture sewn - or worse still, ironed on? Right now, Boden is the only thing which is ticking my boxes, nice colours, animals, checks, no fucking slogans and for the love of god, he's 15 months not 15 years!

Me: tesco
TGO; Gap.

Or ebay, but you do have to scrutinise bundles carefully to avoid buying a shedload of Disney / I?m a naughty little shit crap.

That boy went to be at 7pm. Not a peep out of him till 6.35.

Hurrah.