November 2014 - the one where they test boundaries.

[MrsAukerman]

New thread ladies. Jump on board.

DD thought she had a birthday when we took her to the In the Night Garden live show. She got a goody bag and we bought her a pinkyponk balloon. When we came back home she kept repeating "Happy birthday to Strawberry jr!".

Sleep wasn't too great first few hot nights, then we adapted to the hot weather and she was sleeping through.

As with potty training, not much progress. She likes her fairy potty with music and last night before bath she was sat on it for a while to produce a micro poo, no wee. The way it goes, she will be still in nappies on her first day in the school.

We're experiencing unintended consequences of potty training.
He absolutely wants to be dry at night and can be but the feeling of needing a wee is waking him up and, in hindsight, probably has been for ages!
He insisted shortly after potty training on moving to the big boy bed. Cot has now been dismantled. He can get in and out of the bed to use potty but we've found he won't until 5am then can't get back to sleep.
We've taken to taking him to the loo (awake) when one of us goes to bed.
I hope he doesn't start wetting though if we forget or he's drank loads.
Some people seem to say "lifting" can cause them to think it's OK to wee asleep, just hope he's awake enough to realise.

The thing to be sure that he is fully awake & remembers the nexct day and also still little so wouldn't worry about lifting too much now but wouldn't want to be using as a solution once school age.

Have just booked weekend legoland trip for August probably be crazy busy but ds1 has been asking since ds2 came along so now he is old enough we have booked

We are giving potty training another go this weekend, after DD was naked most of the day on friday and suddenly jumped up from a jigsaw saying "oh I need a wee wee!" and promptly sat on the potty and produced a huge wee. 50/50 success so far since then and we are putting her back in nappies for car trips and naps. Timing wise it's great for me - today she is being looked after by my parents, tomorrow and weds she's at nursery, so I miss out on three days of piss puddles and picking up turds. Yay! She actually goes hours between wees so she is good at holding it, and means few accidents even if she does miss the potty every singe time, but she doesn't seem to get the concept of "try and have a wee before we go to the park/in the car/to the shops" etc. Hopefully with time.

Managing to get my head around having twins slowly... got a 9 week scan tomorrow then I think we'll start telling select people when we see them, as it's too exciting to keep to ourselves. Told our parents so far and they were over the moon, really far too excited TBH. Much preferred the reaction of my best NCT friend: "fuck, what are you you going to do?!!" DH spending most of his time researching new cars... boys eh...

Moggle that's good on the potty training and hey least DH is being practical even if it is car shopping 😁

Does anyone use cash back sites for shopping online I used to use quidco but over past year been using kidstart
www.kidstart.co.uk/r2/1742084 you get cash back to save for your children then move into savings accounts which I have yet to link up. You can give your account to friends and family to use as well when theory shop online.

Bonus is kidstart give cash back on eBay & Amazon which I use loads.

I often forget to use it though but got nrly £6 cashback on our legoland holiday booking.

Same as you eastmids I use quidco but it is frustrating to not have it on amazon and ebay - perhaps I'll look into kidstart - thanks!

MrsA We had/have that with training as well but now she seems ot be able to hold it better and isn't waking so early. This is 3 months since we trained.

moggle we went looking at bigger cars at the weekend, we just have a Micra and it's ridiculous.

We're thinking about the Rav4 which everyone seems to have around here but the Hyundai Tucson seems cheaper and just as big.

We went to a dealership in Sunday do have a recce and DS got very excited. Unfortunately that translated into running off and not returning and basically being conveniently deaf. So we gave him 1/2/3 warnings and he very sullenly came over to us but then started kicking the window of the dealership whilst scowling. And basically we gave him plenty of warning that if he didn't stop being naughty we'd go home and he didn't so we had to follow through.

WELL. We picked him up and put him in the car and the mother of all tantrums commenced. Ear splitting screams. Horrific. All the way home. Then continued in the house. Flinging himself around trying to get out the front door again. The whole street must have heard. Absolutely traumatic. DH and I behaved ok, we stayed calm but we were very shaken. Eventually he wore himself out but refused to say sorry for about an hour! We just left him alone. Then eventually he felt remorseful and we all had a little chat about no shouting and no screaming and he said sorry. But god, half the afternoon was gone with this shit!

The next morning when I got him up he said "No shouting. No shouting with cars. We go home" So I think he must have been dreaming about it.

DH thinks he's getting much more sullen around boundaries now, whereas before he just needed to be corrected. I told him they don't call it being a threenager for nothing!

DD woke up crying her eyes out on Sunday morning, she'd had a nightmare and just kept saying 'I had a big dream, it was scary, makes me feel sad...' it took a good 5 minutes of cuddling to stop her crying. So roll around to last night and as soon as she started to fall asleep she remembered and started crying 'I had a big dream again'. Took over an hour to get her down but poor thing, I felt so bad for her. In the end I told her to just tell the bad dream to go away, seemed to work and this morning she said she'd done that and it had worked.

Their little brains

Lady dolly ds2 quite often has bad dreams screaming put no its mine obviously replaying the nursery day in his mind.

We have next week left of school and then school hold so planning a week days out to neighbouring counties amusements while the school term continues elsewhere I book that week off and we have a manic week but means places are not rammed most break up 25/26th around the midlands, Staffordshire etc, I know east Sussex break up early this yr on 20th.

eastmids if you want to visit the West Midlands, we break up on 21st in Birmingham. I think some local schools are breaking up a day or two earlier, presumably having the end of the week as inset days.

Is anyone else attempting to apply for 30 free hours of nursery for January? I don't know if it is only our nursery or everywhere that says you have to apply now if your child will be eligible in the next year. The deadline for our nursery is tomorrow but they only gave us information about how to apply last week. The website wasn't working to generate the code that proves we are eligible so DH had to spend part of his working day trying to do that, then nursery has given us another form as well as the one from the city council which is ridiculously complicated. We wanted her to go 3 days a week instead of the 2 she does at the moment when she is in the pre-school room. We did that with DD1, because we thought it would be a big jump going from 2 days of nursery to 5 days of school, and nursery had no problem with that, but for DD2 they are saying that, even if we don't increase the days until September 2018, they only have space for a few months then she would have to go back to 2 days. So, with 2 years to go, I am already worrying about how she will manage the change from 2 to 5 days when she starts school. She, however, is desperate to start school. When we drop DD1 off, DD2 says excitedly 'I go school later.' She can't wait!

Everyday now she also says 'go seaside later.' I don't think she remembers last year in Cornwall so I don't know how she knows about the seaside. We haven't booked a holiday for my week of annual leave in August and the car has broken and will cost a lot to fix (DH rang me at work the other morning to ask if we are in the AA or RAC as it wouldn't start, I wondered why I should know as I can't drive it), and we live too far from any seaside for a day trip, so I don't know how we are going to afford to fulfill her wish to go.

I'm no help, cos it seems here in Ireland it happens automatically through the crèche. I guess they declare the child and get the money accordingly. He has moved up to the slightly older room this past week. Not sure what criteria it uses as some are 3, some are not, and many including DS are still in nappies though it has a prominent toilet attached. But they do older crafts like leaf rubbing and stuff. He loves it.

He's very poorly at the moment. Temp has been blazing for two days and he's sleeping a lot. Calpol is barely touching the temp. Took him to the doctor this morning and she says it's an ear infection though he has no pain in it and he seems quite dramatically sick for that. But regardless we're home with that vile yellow penicillin drink that we're going to have countless battles over. Meanwhile DD has another bout of bronchiolitis.

So between the two DH and I have been averaging 3 hours sleep a night each. They are both waking up every couple of hours, him with temp and her with cough. And of course they wake each other up crying!

This is one of those weeks I think "one would be so much easier, we were mad". But then I think this is temporary and we just have to keep swimming.

Ours ( county council) is only accepting applications for those that turn 3 before 31st Aug so am guessing we will apply between sept & DEC we already do 4 days a week pay for 40hrs generally use 34-36hrs of those. Nursery haven't mentioned it I found this out for myself

It was the government site I looked at we def don't apply yet its on!y those 3 before end Aug www.childcarechoices.gov.uk

eastmids we were confused that the website said that when nursery had said we had to apply this week, but DH answered the questions on the website and it gave him the code we needed anyway. The process also emphasised my lack of organisation as it took me several hours to find DD's birth certificate which nursery need to see to confirm she will be the right age.

anna hope they are both better soon.

Oh shit yes must locate birth certificate 😁

We went to the Peppa Pig world last weekend. DD really enjoyed it, and it wasn’t too bad for the parents either. Definitely better than I expected and the weather was good as well. In our hotel there was a family with another little girl around 3-4 yo. So they were spending quite a lot of time playing together while we were chilling outside with a drink. But I can’t get the image of the girl out of my head... She had eyebrows all made up a la Marlene Dietrich, not so sure whether they were plucked out, but there was definitely drawn fine line of a permanent make up over them. And her little child’s hair looked really damaged at the back as if they have been styled with high heat on daily basis. Can’t stop thinking what will be with her self confidence in 10 or 20 years if she already has been subjected to all sorts of “treatments”.

Glad it was good strawberry! I looked at cbeebies hotel at alton towers, 476 a night the weekend in november. So might park that for a little while!

This evening I came into the living room and found dd painting her toenails, she'd pulled my bag of varnishes off the shelf. She'd made a mess of her feet but not a drop spilled on the carpet THANKFULLY! But there was no way she was letting me take it off her. So I now look like that woman you saw, preening my 2 yr old!!!

strawberry I guess she might have had some kind of medical treatment that affected her hair and mum/dad were paranoid about her eyebrow appearance so drew them in. Having said that some people do do some strange things with their kids...
We've been meaning to book a trip to peppa world for a while but think we will wait until after the schools are out now. Did you do one of the package deals, which hotel did you stay at? We don't live that far away really so can't decide if it's worth it or not.

ladydolly bloody hell that was lucky!! I know lots of DD's little friends who have suddenly appeared with painted toenails, can think of lots of worse things! I'm sure DD would want me to do it on her if she ever saw me doing mine but I haven't since I was pg with her...

Famous last words but I think we have conquered potty training for now. After a week of 50/50 accidents/in the potty I was starting to feel a bit despondent as wasn't seeing much improvement. However when back in nursery last week I picked her up on the first day to be told that she'd had no accidents all day. Since then she's had no wee accidents and just a poo accident on Friday (on a trampoline unfortunately!!). Next job will be encouraging her to use the downstairs loo rather than her potty in the middle of the lounge. She uses the upstairs toilet when we're up there, but we need a higher step as she can't get onto it without help. With the potty she just takes herself off to sit on it when she needs it and I get a shout for a tissue when she's done. The funniest thing is she always tells me "Mummy I've done a yellow wee!" and "I've done a brown poo!"... not sure why she hasn't realised the colour thing is kind of redundant...

We looked at peppa pig world about £160 if you do a sun/Mon nearer £200 for sat/sun that was for 2 adults, 1 child & toddler, we haven't been but looked recently going to legoland though in Aug.

Taking boys to Alton towers on my own on Monday ds2 loves cbeebies land

We went to Peppa pig world 2 years ago. We enjoyed it, and, because we were able to go before the school holidays, we didn't have to queue too long. We were thinking of going back to that area this summer, but not sure we can afford it after doing the bathroom and fixing the car, and we have probably left it too late to book somewhere, maybe just for a night or two. I also considered short birthday holidays for each of us this year if we don't get a week away in the summer. DD2 and I both have our birthdays in October half-term. I wonder how busy Peppa pig world is then, or CBeebies land which is much nearer

Happy certainly look direct at the theme park short breaks as we got great deal for legoland £200 for 4 of us in decent hotel with bfast and 2 days in park & 2days parking at legoland (they charge £6/day as do Alton towers!!)

Is Alton towers worth staying over for you we considered cbeebies hotel its much cheaper sun/Mon than sat/sun the normal rooms are about £100/night cheaper than the proper themed like postman pat & swash buckle.

Someone took away my sweet baby and left me a bossy, short tempered toddler!! I've been so lucky up to now but now she takes over an hour to get to sleep. She destroys things on purpose (thos morning emptied her cereal into my bed) and shouts at us to stop talking and be quiet. It seems like an attention thing and I try and give her as much as I can but its exhausting!! Especially when I have to watch her like a hawk so she doesn't start throwing food, pulling out plugs, emptying my nail varnishes.

How do you guys cope with 2 kids??

Yes DS has become a bit of a pain in the arse too. Twenty million times a day: "STOP IIIT!' Often we don't even bloody know what he wants us to stop!

No willful destruction thank god though. We do have to have words on a daily basis about being bossy though. It's all a bit Groundhog Day tbh. Same strops about the same shit, every day. Constantly refusing whatever we plate up, refusing to get out of a dirty nappy but refusing any mention of the toilet, refusing to put pyjamas on etc etc.

And having two kids has been shit this last month tbh, cos DS got suddenly very unwell at the exact time DDs sleep regression hit, and her top teeth started coming through. So have had a horrendous time with two little Antichrists. For the past two weeks I've been going to bed at 7.30 cos there's absolutely zero point in going downstairs. He's sleeping through again thank God but I've been in to her 5 times already and will be in again for a couple of hours later on.

I'm only sporadically enjoying this bit, tbh.

DD has got chicken pox, the spots came out this morning. Other than that she seems all right, bit runny nose and has had 2 hours nap. Bought the Virasoothe to put on, so should be ok. On Wednesday the notice came up on the nursery door about chickenpox, so wasn't exactly surprise.
My real worry is that the child is contagious 1-2 days before the spots break out. So I must have been at least one day in the office while DD has been contagious. I have had it when I was small, my worry is if I could have passed it over to somebody yesterday because I had been in contact with DD? Colleague at the next desk to mine is 6 months pregnant with twins. I will be staying away from the office whole of the following week, but am worried sick I could be a carrier and it causing problems to the three of them...