June 2013; Toddling into our second year!

[BeanCalledPickle]

New thread ladies:-) I think we filled about ten threads when pregnant and this is only our fourth post natally!

Milk, not mother in laws, obvs

Soya yoghurt isn't liked here! There is lactose free milk, which is great. Twice the price of normal milk, but at least it's there.

We keep saying we are going to drop the bedtime milk, but because she's so bad with teething we don't want her to lose the comfort from it.

We will just have to take it away from DS at 12 months and hope she follows suit!

Fair enough. It's not unusual for toddlers to still have milk at bedtime (our ds is the odd one in this case!). It makes sense to stop bedtime milk for them both at once

We have a stash of Ella yoghurty pouches for hellish teething patches. Though useless for avoiding lactose... so not v helpful!

Ha, yes...yoghurt was the first thing on the milk ladder that DD couldn't tolerate. She's fine up to there!

I've been watching Frozen since 5.30. Bloody teeth. :-/

:-( Oh dear. to you Hungry.

DS was given a swirly straw in a party bag yesterday. He loves drinking milk from a cup through it! However a 4yr old birthday party is scary. Our toddlers will never be that old will they???!

What a pain having to go lactose free again, hungry. Hopefully it's something that she'll grow out of (soon). And oh dear re the early start.

DD bypassed bottles too (bottle refuser) but she now happily drinks milk from a sippy cup. She can now drink from an open cup by herself too. I tend to give her the full cup with the lid on and then remove it when it's half full just in case. She has milk before her bath and I imagine that will carry on.

DD went to a 3yr old party a couple of weeks ago. It was hard work. It involved me spending an hour climbing up a giant inflatable slide and being on a bouncy castle non-stop. At 6 months pregnant. I'm surprised that didn't bring my pgp back! Can't wait to get fit again.

Polly tends to have milk with breakfast and dinner. Water the rest of the time. All from sippy cup. Never thought anything of it until nursery asked me if she still wanted it, in a tone that implies that we should have moved on by now!

There are too many things we need to do aren't there, to transition small babies into proper little people with beds and bowels that behave. This all feels like hard work!

Two months till bean #2. My main concern is how will this affect polly. I rarely give the baby itself a thought! It's only in retrospect you realise how EASY babies are. They just don't do anything! Knackering yes but in need of constant controlling and entertaining not so much...

There's nothing wrong with drinking milk. The NHS say that between 12-24 months they should still be having a least 300ml of whole milk a day www.healthystart.nhs.uk/food-and-health-tips/milk/ and make it sound like it's still normal for them to drink it between 2-5. It's still DH's drink of choice in his 30s (he doesn't do tea/coffee/alcohol)! DD has it in the morning and after her nap as well as before her bath. She drinks water the rest of the time.

I'm hoping DD will be ok. She's so excited about this baby. I'm worrying more about the baby as DD was almost permanently attached to me as a baby during the day. I find her so much easier as a toddler and she entertains herself a lot. Just shows how different they all are!

DD will only drink water from her various lidded / spouted cups (plus a Camelbak one that's officially mine, but she's adopted and a kids' one that is hers). It's like she doesn't link the cups with milk, so won't drink it from them. Strange child.

I've bought her a mug with 2 handles, so I need to try to get her into using that. All good fun!

To be honest, we are only doing lactose free from yoghurt upwards on the milk ladder (a list of foods you trial your child with to see if they still react). So it's only really yoghurt, cheese and normal milk that she can't have. It's still a pain though. It seems to be working, thank god, as if it hadn't we were told to trial wheat free which is a whole different ball game.

She very much entertains herself, thank god, though interspersed with toddler tantrums / tears for no apparent reason!

We went to the squirrel woods at Formby today. DD collected about 25 pine cones on the way round which are now in a bag in the car! I remember collecting things like shells as a child, but I didn't know it started so early. :-)

When you say they entertain themselves what do you mean? So on my day off or at the weekend she's up at 730 ish. We play on the floor with happyland or something interspersed with episodes of peppa until she goes back to sleep at 11-1 then lunch. Come 230 she is climbing the walls, rattling the key in the lock and shouting for play, which is soft play, or snap snap, which is the play ground (it has alligators on it). We have to go out and do stuff.

I suspect this is nurseries fault. It's a constant stream of varied activities and entertainment from 730am to 630pm. I can't compete. She is obviously bored by being with just is. I have often employed play doh, drawing and singing nursery rhymes before 10am. I get bored, she gets bored. How do you avoid this? What do you do to make sure they have sufficient time with other kids and how have you got them playing without your input?

DD has always played on her own! She will faff with toys, climb the furniture, build things, sit and colour, that sort of thing.

She likes input for her jigsaws and for reading to her, but she's also happy flicking through books looking at pictures.

She's happy roaming the garden collecting stones from the gravel too!

To be honest, she is lacking in seeing other kids, but they don't play together til 3, only around each other. And last time we went to playgroup another girl whacked her on the head with a toy train! MiL is going to start taking her to Rhyme Time soon though. At least she has DS. She often chats to him and shares toys with him.

DS potters around quite self-sufficiently too. Not all day long obviously but he can do for 30-45mins at a time. He likes to know where I am, and he has small baskets of toys and some books in most rooms so there's always stuff for him to play with. He sees other children most days but not every day. We do spend a lot of time reading books (his choice) & with puzzles. I'm thinking he'll need another wave of puzzly toys before his birthday though!

DD has a lot of different toys and literally hundreds of books at home. Of course I read to her and play and sing with her etc but she will also happily sit there 'reading' books for an hour at a time or playing with her toys if I'm busy. She never watches TV at our house (we never watch live TV - we record things we're interested in and watch them in the evening)! Cruel parents but she doesn't know any different and finds the things that she has interesting enough. I thought she'd be fascinated by it when she goes to other people's houses, which isn't very often, but she shows very little interest (my parents are the opposite to us as they have it on all the time).

She loves going out on walks and to tots groups and the park however she is also happy to stay in all day every day - she is just very laid back! I was suffering badly with PGP this week and couldn't leave the house alone with her and she was fine with that! Whilst she loves her tots groups and enjoys seeing the other children (ages 0-4), none of the children there play together; they all seem to play independently, alongside each other!

I think it's down to personality; I was happy to entertain myself as a child and I'm the same now, whereas my sister always needed constant entertainment and she can't be alone for 5 minutes as an adult either! I don't think there's anything you can do to change the way they are.

Apparently I was a demanding child. I'm glad DD isn't. Hopefully DS will follow suit!

DD is the same as your DD, cup, happy whatever we do, wherever it is. Useful!

Ah ok, not too different then. Except she definitely plays with other kids. She did what they call parallel play until recently but now I often pick her up and she's playing with others. Is very sweet. I think it must be slightly confusing that some days is nursery and some days home. I like to think its a good mix but who knows. I love my job too much to stay at home and i think both of us would suffer if I did! I absolutely dread maternity leave for this reason. I really need the company of others and need to use my brain. I rather envy those who enjoy their own company.

I could happily spend weeks with no human company. Luckily my DH is the same so we spend most evenings doing our own thing. I'm a big reader; I've read over 100 books since I got my kindle just over a year ago.

I like using my brain but for things I'm interested in; I picked my degree based on what I enjoyed rather than thinking about a career (though if I were a career person I would have pursued a role in that area). I've never been interested in a career. In every job I've been in they've tried to get me to go for promotions over and over again but I've always refused. I was forced into one before maternity leave which I was not happy about. I said no over and over (I know I'm odd) but they gave me no choice in the end even though there were other people desperate for promotion and it was supposed to be a fair process. It was totally fixed as I refused to apply or be interviewed (and they told me it'd be mine if I went for an interview) so they did something so I wouldn't have to do anything and eventually I was called in and told I was starting on that day and that was it. Luckily for me my DH is very much a career person!

Why wouldn't you want to be promoted? Sorry, that's probably a bit personal so don't feel compelled to answer! I got promoted on maternity leave and it was such a major achievement for me, something I had to work really hard for for ages. It meant a lot of work during nap times etc and I was really proud of myself. The downside is that I now have to manage a big team so I can see that would be a reason to resist. But im only one step from senior civil service now and it feels achievable finally.

I'm not very child focussed as you can see. I like my own but generally don't like others. Work I understand, law I love. Parenting entirely beyond me!

No, it's fine. I get stressed quite easily so want a life that's as stress-free as possible. I want a job where I can daydream at the same time! I want to go home and not be worrying about work (though I still do!). I have no interest in the extra money (due to my hatred of socialising and drinking I've still always been able to afford luxuries like Mulberry handbags etc. And that was a bonus of having children late too I guess!). Over the years I've had colleagues that just think of the money and then then end up being miserable and a couple have even ended up off work due to stress. I just avoid situations that I know will make me stressed.

I'm not child focused either. At all! Just like you I like my own but I'm not so keen on others. I've never been maternal! So that's not even a reason. But it's been a good excuse to have a 'career break' and I'm loving every minute!

Ah yes my life is super stressful. In theory I work four days but in reality I'm always there in spirit. I have something due by ten tomorrow and clearly will have to deal with it myself. I am always having to run around thinking about where I am next meant to be. I have a commute which actually I don't mind as I get to watch TV uninterrupted! But it's constantly go and there is constant stress. To an extent it makes me thrive but I am constantly exhausted and my brain never stops so I sleep badly.

I'm not motivated by money as such, but I have a low earning DH and a house in North london so I need to work. I have no choice. That's ok in that I do love my job but I would love a more peaceful existence at some point.

I really hope our choices are appreciated by our children. I hope they take the benefits and don't wish they lived somewhere quieter!

I know what you mean about hoping choices are appreciated Bean. It's probably totally natural to worry about that in some shape or form though? I guess the main thing is that we all (generally) make what seems the best choice at the time, and what else can you do? (unless someone has a reliable crystal ball up their sleeve?!)

I find the talk of stressy work fascinating Mine is quite stressful, occasionally very stressful. I work in occupational health and so whilst as a department we have it pretty good, what we see in the bigger picture is sometimes quite scary!

Yes, thats exactly what I wouldn't want! Wages are way out of line with house prices in this particular area so we stretched ourselves to live exactly where we wanted to (we could have had a house twice the size for the same money in some areas just 10 minutes away!) but we can't complain as we've been very lucky with interest rates for the past so many years. Luckily for me DH does earn a good salary and he also got a promotion at the start of the year which has been great timing! He doesn't get stressed though, which is the big difference between us. He's very logical, i.e why worry about something that you can't change, which I agree with in theory but I just don't think like that myself.

I can appreciate both views here. I hoped and hoped that once my baby came along I'd stop being ambitious at work and wouldn't care any more. My job is difficult to do part-time given the amount of travel that's needed and the amount of support the client often demands. However sadly I'm still ambitious and still want to be good at what I do.

Until recently I'd managed to side step any supervision of others - its a small company and others seem to be far keener than me at being a line manager. Sadly in the last 6 months I've accumulated 2 staff under me which feels like far too much pressure. I get flightly when I feel trapped!

DH and I have actually been talking about setting up a business on the side. I'm attending a workshop tomorrow on setting up a small business. Its very early days and I'm probably mad for even considering in given that I'd like to get pregnant again sometime this year.

Good luck sunny, I hope it works out for you. I'd actually quite like my own little business. I'm quite driven when it comes to things that I'm interested in and that don't involve answering to other people. I've never been able to decide what I'd like to do though. I'm quite a crafty person so maybe something related to that; not to make loads of money, but more for my own enjoyment (which would also take away the pressure of possible risks).

Do either of these businesses require a lawyer to assist you, ideally working from home and not supervising anyone? I'm very good:-)