September 2014 - Babies turn 1!

[lilone1234]

First birthdays are starting to arrive and our babies are becoming toddlers! What will the next year have in store?

Happy mothers day! Hope you have all had a lay-in and some nice cards! xx

Oh my, if any of you ladies get a chance you should read 'AIBU to start a thread for the Mother's Day pissed off influx' or something. So much bitterness! Apologies in advance if any of you have posted there, I haven't RTFT!

Hi all

Happy Mothers Day. I hope you all have a lovely day.

How was everyone's Mother's Day? Hope everyone was spoiled!!

Question for those who have been abroad with baby recently or will be going soon. What did you do about car seat? We are going to Paris and Sicily in June and DD is in a big car seat now (joie stages) rather than one of the group 0 ones with a handle so we can't and wouldn't want to take it with us. Any experiences of hiring car seats or taxi firms having them or just not using them?! DP is so blasé about it, so annoying!

I had a great day thanks Lil. Hope you did too.

We went to Ireland in January and hired a car seat. It was about £30 extra, but saved us trying to carry our car seat from the car-park to the airport and back. I found the seat pretty good quality (can't remember which brand it was, but I had heard of it). My only issue was that as I had requested it when booking the car hire (a good few weeks before we flew), I assumed it would have already been fitted into the car when we got there. As it turned out, we were handed it at the car hire desk and we then had to figure out how to get it in the car, whilst trying to entertain A and load the other luggage into the car. I don't think it helped that it was trying to rain and blowing a gale

Early. Mornings. Killing. Me.

How do I get this child to sleep?!?

I'm having a similar dilemma over the car seat abroad issue. Of you do take yours with you, you can buy a protective bag on Amazon.

Me and E are going to Canada in April, luckily we are flying out to see my sister who has a car seat we can use!

team what is the wake time? Or do you mean sleep through the night?

cumbrian that is ridiculous especially as you pre-ordered it! Did they at least give you an instruction manual??

I think lots of people refuse to fit them so they aren't held responsible if it's done wrong. I'm taking DD in car seat in my hired wedding car but the driver won't put the seat in so I have to do this in my wedding dress?!

Car seat stuff is a bloody minefield

Ah good point Lil I hadn't thought of it like that. I don't envy you moving seats around in your wedding dress though!

No instructions Cookie which made it more difficult.

I have a poorly boy at the moment. He is so full of cold and has a rattly chest. He isn't eating much at the minute either. Hope he starts feeling better soon because I don't like not being able to make him feel better

DD is on antibiotics at the mo. A bit of a sinus / chesty infection thing going on with her. Hope your DS gets well soon too Cumbrian.

How early are you being woken Team?

Re: car seats we are going to Spain again in June. We also went last year. We hired a car seat out there last year and will do the same this year, although the quality wasn't great last time.

We are usually up at about 5.15-5.30 ish. But one day last week it was 4am!!! She's actually doing great sleep wise other than the early rising, so I should be grateful, but working having been up with a grumpy DD since 4am is not fun!

I hope all the poorly babies get better soon.

5.30am - blimey! I wonder what is waking her that early? I think I'd be grumpy too waking at that time.

I keep expecting early mornings to start because my DD is still having two naps a day and I've read that a morning nap can be a cause of very early mornings. I'm waiting for night times to be affected before I push her to drop the morning nap, so I will probably need matchsticks for eyes from early mornings at some point.

5.30am is the norm in our house too and he is down to one lunchtime nap now too. I swear I've aged 10 years in 18 months!

Actually, I've been thinking about it, and it isn't so much the 5.30 starts to the day that are the issue.

Night before last she slept through beautifully until 5.35 and I felt human!

Last night is a good example of what is killing me. She went down beautifully, we went to bed at 9.30. She started crying at 11.30, didn't settle so I ended up going in, giving her a little water and put some teething gel on her. 3am, she cries for about 30 seconds, which wakes me. 4.30 am, same thing, but now I can't get back to sleep

So often I'm awake from around 4am. It isn't good. Wish I could just get back to sleep!!!

Oh, and she's down to just one nap of 1-2 hrs now too.

Team thats exactly what we have too. Ive turned the sound down to low on the monitor so I dont hear as much but as he is next door to us its a bit pointless. We are up and down for super quick settling but its broken sleep. He did a week of sleeping through until 6am and my god it was amazing but the wind changed again or something!

We don't use the monitor upstairs. Our house is small with virtually no sound proofing! I can hear when DD is moving around in bed from our room, even with both doors shut. We just keep the monitor in the kitchen as that is the furthest from her room and if the extractor is going we can't hear her. Other than that, it's not needed anywhere in the house!

I rarely actually have to get up and settle her actually. She just cries out for a few seconds and settles herself. But it then wakes me but not DH!

I've started leaving a sippy cup of water by her cot where she can reach it, as sometimes she wakes herself with a bit of a dry cough. This morning she had it in the cot with her, but I have no idea when she grabbed it. Probably just first thing.

When she sleeps well, she wakes up in such a lovely mood, but when we have an interuppted night, oh she's a whinger!!!

18 months old today - I can't believe how quickly time has passed and that we now have a walking, talking, singing, giggling little cuddle monster

Ahh Team that's hard. You must be exhausted.

DD here still wakes up pretty much every bloody night too. Last night was pretty good (she was only up for about half an hour) but the night before she was up between 1-3am and I had to be up at 5.30am for a 14 hour shift. [sobs] At least I will say she does tend to sleep in until 6.30-7.30ish, so at least I don't have the awful early starts you do.

I don't know what the answer is to be honest. I think me and DH are both struggling with tiredness and I really (stupidly) thought she would be sleeping through the night by now.

Nap wise DD generally just has one now around late-morning, (although sometimes if we are driving in the afternoon she dozes off in the car). Her naps vary a lot. At nursery she often only has 30-40 minutes all day, at home it's usually more like an hour and a half.

E sleeps 7:30 - 6:00/6:30 sometimes till 7:30 usually he sleeps later on the days I need him up early (sigh) he sometimes stirs and cries but I don't go in unless he is really upset!

I did a sleep training course when he was 9 months and cut out the milk and "taught" him to self settle and apart from a little blip at xmas and the occasional bad night he has pretty much slept through since. Sleep is really important to me lol!

He does around 3 hrs at home, and between and hr and 3 at nursery! I think sleep is important to him too

He is a terrible eater though, he is so stubborn, takes forever to try anything new, doesn't like picking up food, is reluctant to feed himself! He will eat jars and stuff but still won't eat bread!!

Can I just ask? What are your strategies for dealing with tantrums? My mum looks after him a lot and I want us to be consistent but don't know how to tackle it. I'm winging it at the moment!

I find it best to ignore the tantrum and read one of her favourite books or play with one of her favourite toys on the other side of the room one my own. I don't say anything to her or make a big thing of it, but once she notices what I'm doing she usually can't help but stop screaming and comes over to join in.

Not sure how long it will work for, but so far it is!

DD seems to have eaten her body weight in food today! I'm anticipating a growth spurt soon

I'd like to know more about tantrum too ; Also, ds doesn't always listen to what I ask him, even when I am firm

Sleeping wise we are just about OK, I think ... Most nights sleeping through and then 5:30 to 6:30 wakes; but some nights (like last) he wakes in the middle of night around 3 and can't go back to sleep for an hour or 1.5 hour... Oh it is hard... Those nights he sleeps till late morning

So I have two other issues that I'd like to discuss with you ladies - how sensitive are your LOs now? Ds is super sensitive and I feel he is getting worse and worse... There was a time he loved the hair dryer, it makes him really upset now; once upon a time he loved seeing and touching flowers, he is no scared of them (!!!!!), previously he always wanted to have a go with the fridge door, now he is very apprehensive about it !! I could go on with strange examples until morning... Not sure why he became like this?!? And what I should do about this- how concern should I be ?

Also once upon a time he ate everything ; he certainly gave every single thing a go and ate loads of some. He is now really, really picky and likes smaller and smaller selection of foods ; he is getting more picky every day.... Any tips ?

Again so good you ladies are around. I find it a lot more difficult to chat about these issues with friends with older children or friends with no children....

We had an I WILL NOT GO INTO MY CARSEAT tantrum, but that's my only anger-fuelled tantrum so far. Hard to ignore that one because getting into the carseat when needing to go home is necessary. But she was thankfully easy to distract out of it with a cuddle and a "Ohhhh, look at that bird!".

I recall sitting my eldest on the pavement facing a wall when she was about 3 years old and refusing to be strapped into her carseat. "RIGHT - You can sit there and face that wall until you are ready to get into the car nicely". In my defence I had a 2 year old and a 3 year old both pushing boundaries - it was a stressful time!

DD loves her sleep (and her food), but that said she is far from a docile, sleepy child. When up and awake she's like a whirlwind. Maybe that is why she sleeps and eats so much, I don't know. But she sleeps solidly 7.30pm-7.00am, 9.30am-11.00am and 1.00pm-3.00pm - every day. She can cope without the morning nap, but is always grumpy and whiny as a result so unless I have something urgent to do, she still has 2 naps a day.

Crossed post with you Nazly

Not really sure what to suggest about your DSs sensitivity. The only similar thing I can think of was a snowman toy we got at Christmas. It "shivers" (ie vibrates) as it sings a song about being cold. The first time DD saw it she loved it, but when it shivered she clearly wasn't expecting it and it frightened her. She was then weary about it the next time. But we all played nicely and gently with it with her to show her how nice the snowman was and within a week or so she was cuddling it and giggling at it shivering.

With food my DD has her clear likes and dislikes. She is willing to try new foods. But if she decides that she doesn't like something then she will not be encouraged to eat it no matter what I try. Likewise when she's had enough. She pushes her plate away and that's it, will lock her mouth shut. Because she has a good appetite though so I know she wont go hungry.

We've had a couple of days this week with evening meals I know she wouldn't be keen on. As a result she's not eaten much in that meal (curry night she just ate a little nan bread and rice, for example) but I have made sure she had a bigger lunch to make up for it.

I don't make DD (or anyone else in the house) separate meals, even if I am serving something I suspect wont go down well with the children. That wont stop me serving it every now and again though. I don't insist it is eaten, but I also don't offer alternates. Mostly I serve child-friendly, bland, unadventurous meals - which is the easiest way to ensure the children eat healthily.