Fab Feb 2009 - hey ho, hey ho, its off to babyproof we go...

[dinkystinky]

off we go again

back again... I am studying developmental psychology at the mo and have just come across this in my textbook: "Because of the size of the infant, especially the head, the birth process is not easy; most women find it quite painful"

Quite painful?
That's one way of putting it.

No shit sherlock to however wrote that sentance coco

I fell asleep on the sofa halfway through the tudors. Not happy.
Luke is restless so not expecting much sleep tonight. Dp said he was up all night last night and I slept through it all.

Been a bit stressed today because I went to the cashpoint and there was nothing in mine or dp's account. Nothing. He gets paid next friday so he had to borrow some money from his boss so the kids can eat! I'm sure we'll come out of it ok though.

dinky congrats on D's tooth

Morning all. Lovely to see you on Cocodrillo - am loving the fact that people are returning to the thread and that newbies are joining, Mapleleaf and Woozlet. Has anyone heard from or of Calico or Nkweto (Swampy - think you guys have a mutual good friend) or Herbgarden? Hope they're all ok.

Aargh LBB at the lack of cash in the bank - hopefully you'll get paid for your children's centre job soon (sounds like you've been putting in the hours and everybit helps) and your DP will get paid soon so hopefully all will be ok soon. Am sending you some virtual wine and chocolate to get over the shock.

Aargh Coco at fighting siblings - though tis a phase (a blooooooooooody long one though) and all of them going through it. I spent years scrapping with my little sister (3 years between us) when little but we're really close now and v protective of each other - will probably just take ooh another year or two for them to get to that stage. In the meantime I prescribe industrial quantities of alcohol and ear muffs for you...and possibly a couple of straitjackets and gags for the kids. DS1 was a big fan of just fruit purees and banana too - found he loved butternut squash as was really sweet and anything (e.g. broccoli or peas) mixed in with vast quantities of pear or apple.

Am like a zombie today - went out with DH last night to see Arcadia at the theatre which was lovely (and did cocktails beforehand and wore non-mumsy clothes so felt very grown up) but the cumulative lack of sleep due to Danny's teething and Danny being up last night at 11 then awake at 5 this morning (sadly I had a dose of insomnia between 2 and 5) has taken its toll. Am finding it really hard to motivate myself to do anything this morning though it looks like a lovely sunny day out there so much force myself out somehow...

PSL - hope everything all ok on the home front now.

London Mums with fledgling culture vultures - found out yesterday that the Tricycle Theatre is doing loads of puppet shows for 3 year old and upwards (though babies of under 18 months are admitted for free) in the autumn on Saturdays - you can check it out on the tricycle website. Also anyone who has a Charlie & Lola addict in the family - Hampstead Theatre at Swiss Cottage is running Charlie & Lola's bestest play in December and January - again you can check it out online.

Morning

our new bed came yesterday.... i slept soooo well.

superking is heaven with kids piling in with you aaron slept til 11.10 and dp was up with the other two so i got a lie in and everything [yippee]

Thanks dinky Dp gets paid on friday. I get CTC on tuesday. The money from the centre is being put through at the end of the month although I did tell them I'd be grateful to get it asap and they said they'd try to get me a cheque next week for the help I've given at this hard time (one of the outreach workers had an affair with the local copper, her dh found out, all the shit hit the fan, her and her dh have both resigned from their jobs at the centre so there is 1 member of staff front of house, 1 office admin person and the centre manager is on holiday so they've needed the help!)
We'll be ok though. I have some chicken in the freezer and have found some frozen left overs of meals I gave the boys last week, so am starting to relax a bit. We've got £100 that dp's boss leant him just in case and we've cancelled our little holiday we were supposed to go on at the end of the month. Was just that one from The Sun that they say is £9.50 per person but which actually cost us £94, but dp hinks it's better to just not go and put that £94 down to a loss than go and spend even more and I agree.
Hope you're feeling better anyway. I had trouble starting this morning too and have done nothing yet. Need to get to Tesco for some apple sauce and I told Jacob we could do some painting this afternoon.
I did buy a box of wine last night. It's Lambrini just because it's £5 for 4 bottles worth......

on your lay in PT

Will try and read posts and catch up tonight x

hello all and welcome to the newbies and returnees

am slightly distressed at the constant references to champagne, brandy, rum, wine etc. It is making me very No doubt you'll start cooking bacon butties and roast pork soon too

maple agree with others about BF and also what Dinky said about maybe down to teething. I'm still BF my son who is 7 months (he is on 3 meals a day too) and recently he has been a bit funny when BF, keeps bobbing on and off. He has been a little rat the last few days and last night was awake most of the night and finally dozed off around 3am. He was then up from 6am this morning and slept for 10 mins during the day until just dozing off in the pram when out for a walk. It better be his bloody teeth finally coming through.

PT hope your DD is ok and isn't too bored. She will wear her shoes again soon x

LBB good to see you back, good news about the job, every little helps and at least you can take the children. Dammit, I hope your apple sauce isn't to go with roast pork tomorrow

glad all seems to be ok with bumps and she is on holiday, she certainly needs a break.
I'd been wondering about where some of the others are but they've gone back to work and are probably rushed off their feet, hopefully they won't abandon us totally.

PSL poor you with your MIL. I think I'd go mad but then my MIL doesn't give a flying f* about seeing H or DD. We popped into see them last week before returning to KSA and she flatly refused to move a few inches to have her photo taken with them. Witch
It is a difficult one as obviously free childcare is great, but not if its causing you and DH problems. I'd have twatted my DH if he'd threatened to chuck me out of the car. I hope you get it all sorted.

Just settling in back 'home' in KSA. DD back to nursery tomorrow and my baby/toddler signing classes are starting in October. Was starting to panic as no interest but in the last 2 days 4 people have signed up so thats good news and fingers crossed word spreads.

Right, off for a bath and early night to try to catch up on last nights missed sleep

take care x

I took your advice dinky and bought 4 bottles of delicious Chianti earlier . Luckily I have a teeny bit of self control in reserve so have (thus far) not tonked all 4 down in one, and tonight's wine intake has successfully contained the seething and wildly fluctuating stress levels (manic , breathe).

LBB, interesting story about the reasons for staff shortages at your local children's centre.

Dinky, thanks for that info, I wish it was easier to get to the Tricycle from here, they always have so much interesting stuff on.

Morning. elkie no one else knows the real reason these people have left. They announcement was that his removals business had really picked up so she was staying at home to help with that . No one believes it, they all know something else happened they just don't know what.

Dp's at work today. Don't know what we'll do. I keep telling ds1 we'll do some painting but never actually do. Might try it this afternoon. Think we'll go to the park this morning.

Luke is def on the mend. He slept through last night

Ds1 loved my peanut butter and banana cookies. Luke had a good old suck on one, but too hard for him without teeth.
I'm going to make myself some later. But replacing the peanut butter with chocolate and the banana with choc chip. Figure as I have all the ingredients it'll save me £1 buying some

Morning all and hugs to the sleep deprived out there especially Spotty. Hope you had another brilliant night's sleep in your new bed Pink - you definitely need some quality kip! And Coco, mmmm chianti - may need to get me some for tonight. MoS - glad you got home safely and hope you're enjoying having the nanny and houseboy and DH around to help you out with the kids and housework and getting some you time. I bet you get a last minute flurry of people signing up for your class. LBB - sorry you had to cancel your holiday but sounds like the right move - and glad you've got food to tide you guys over till pay day. The story about the childrens centre staff sounds like something off a soap! Elkie - I think you're on the overground arent you? Tricycle is all of about 5 minutes walk from Brondesbury overground stop if you - or rather DS1 - are interested in any of the puppet shows and has plenty of space indoors for parking buggies.

Still exhausted today as while Danny seems to be out the other side of teething and waking at 11 and 5.30 when he wants to start the day for feeds now but I have bloody going back to work related insomnia (had the same with DS1 so know very well what it is) between 2 and 5am. Need to dig out my meditation discs so I can at least switch off. So what has everyone got planned today? Danny is sleeping and DH has taken DS1 swimming so am going to have a nice long bath with a mug of tea now and then we're off to the Queens Park fair this afternoon.
Managed to drag myself out yesterday - along with 2 cranky boys who both have colds and therefore were tired and grizzly and a poor long suffering DH - and we went for a walk over to Little Venice then got a canal boat ride down to the zoo. Danny - who had been grizzly as all hell all morning - spent the entire canal boat ride smiling and charming the OAPs sat on the boat with us - was most amusing, think they were ready to take him home with them by the end.

P.s. LBB - hurrah for Luke being on the mend and sleeping through again

glad Luke is getting better LBB.

Dinky, poor you re not sleeping, and the colds. Are you full-time at work? At least you have great childcare already in place. I sympathise... I have a few months left, but dreading sorting out childcare, the hours, the commuting etc.

I have done something really really stupid... we had two 6 packs fromage frais in our fridge, the ones on top had an expiry date of 23/09, so I assumed ones underneath the same... turns out this morning I had started feeding DS a fromage frais that went out of date on the 10th. Feel terrible. Hope he doesn't get really ill . And he was gobbling it up too! Can add rancid dairy products to his list of acceptable foods.

Coco, fromage frais is unlikely to have gone rancid and be inedible, it's only 3 days past the use by date, and it's not like fresh milk. It's presumably been in the sealed container you bought it in (the little tub or whatever). I'm more careful with C but the rest of us including ds1 probably eat slightly out of date yogurt/fromage frais quite a lot.

coco.... fromage frais, cheese and yogurt all release gasses when they go off that make the packaging swell up like a balloon, there's no way you could have not noticed so don't panic... the dates on the packaging have to be for before there's much chance of it going off to cover the manufacturers arse in case of someone getting sick

Coco I'm sure he will be fine. You are not the only person to give their dc's foods past their best date. Like others have said, you'd have noticed if it wasn't good to eat.

Coco - we regularly eat food slightly past its best before date and its fine. As Pink said, the container would have swollen up if the yoghurt had gone off - I remember being told that they normally give a BB date for dairy products like yoghurt and cheese which is actually a few days before the actual one anyway.

Am back to work full time and 5 days a week from Tuesday - so not even back to work properly yet but suffering insomnia as a result of it! Think its because I've started doing my reading as the law has changed quite a bit (several bits of a new statute come into force) while I've been off and with the recession its a v different market to do deals in from how it used to be so am rather worried about getting back into the swing of things. On the plus side, Danny is now officially crawling as of today - mostly to get the computer wire to gnaw on - so at least I've managed to see that milestone by myself. In fact now Danny is on the move its probably the perfect time to go back to work and leave the nanny to chase him round the house

dinky... we caught A in the act of crawling around the bedroom this morning but he's still refusing to do it if he knows we're watching... weird baby

Hmm, A sounds rather like the posters on this thread - you wait until I'm otherwise occupied then all come out of hiding and crawl around until I'm back on line

Think Danny has another ttooth coming through - though this one has him vomming his little guts out as well as screaming inconsolably so may be teething and a bug too, poor little fella. Do not have high hopes of much sleep tonight - he's been awake twice now (once in a pool of vom) since going down at 7.

Gah! have had a glass of wine as my children have been sleeping like angels recently and now I cant remember half of what I have read!

PSL - this wont be in the least bit helpful (please blame it on the wine and not me being an arse!) but....... I cannot even begin to imagine how you feel as even just reading your post made my blood boil! I know others have said YAB(a bit)U but in my book you absolutely are NOT! There is no way in hell my MIL would take DC's out for a walk to the shops on her own let alone look after them regularly!!! But thats a different issue My mum had H the one day a fortnight that mine & DH day's off didn't cover and tbh she respected my wishes better than DH did on his days lol! I think it's as she raised me 'her way' which has now become 'my way' and MIL's way most definately isn't 'my' way Not much help I know but just wanted to say know where you're coming from - M is your baby!

Coco - like others said - dont fret. It would balloon and they are just 'advisory dates' anyhoo. I always peel the lid off, put in an ice lolly handle and freeze any yogs after near their UB Dates.

MOS - Made chicken today and am cooking BEEF next weekend in support of your KSA re-move. (had pork for the last 4 weeks as it's a fave here) I hate bacon though so am going to start a bit of a solidarity group for you Hope you are ok after your dickhead un-supportive incident last week (((())))

Dinky - hope you are getting a bit more sleep and D's gums aren't too sore.

LBB (tear yourself away from farms and barns [grins]) Hope your job is going ok and you managed to be fabulously scrimpy with your cooking v's buying!

Despite my keyboard snooze, which was mainly down to overstretching myself and doing too much for people outside of the family the bairnes have been fab recently. Dont know what was causing the really shite nights but they are both doing really well - S 6.30-6.30 and H 7-7.30. So am a happy bunny atm. Just need to get DH to stop coming to bed at 2.30 and wanting to chat..........

A has only just gone down for the night so i think you're doing better than us!

I think i really should make more effort to settle him upstairs from now on, he woke as i was ptting him in the cot and started crying, noramlly i just take him back down and feed him until he passes out again but i decided to see if i could get him down in his cot and started shushing in his ear and stroking his face and he went straight to sleep.... 30 seconds!

Last night i had to sit up til 3am witrh him as i'd rather stupidly put him down on the couch as we were watching a movie and he'd dozed off in my arms and i presumed he's wake again so couldn't be bothered runing upstairs to get him again... then when dp was headig up at 12 i thought he looked like he was stirring so decided to let him wake up by himself rather than picking him up and jolting him awake and ended up sitting there for 3 hours before he actually roused! He slept for almost 5 hours in the end which he hasn't done in months. I on the other hand got 4 hours during which he woke me 4 times for the rest of the night

I put the stairgate up at th top of the stairs seeing as A is most definitely on the move now... i had forgotton what a pain in the arse they are... have already stubbed my toe twice and almost dropped A trying to get it open from the stairs!

Hope Danny sprouts that tooth overnight and is feeling better soon dinky, all that vomming doesn't sound good... hopefully it's just the teeth and not another bug, the last thing you need right before going back to work is another illness in your house.

We've just done the CC settle self thing Pink and it took 2 nights of 2x 15mins of crying at 10 & 2 (this was after a week of getting up every 10-20 MINUTES!!!) No probs for the past 3 nights

morning all,
bloody nanny didn't turn up yesterday and can't get hold of her which is a PITA as have a hairdressers appointment in an hour so will have to take H which will be fun. Luckily I managed to get DD into the nursery today even though its not her day as its pretty quiet as a lot of people still on live.
Am hoping nanny is just away on holiday a little later than expected (a lot of schools here don't go back until after Eid, the holiday at the end of ramadam) Hope she returns before my signing classes start. Have 4 signed up so far and hopefully word will spread now nursery back and people returning.

dinky poor you having to return full time, hope it goes ok.

coco, as others said, don't worry about the yogurt. You know when they are really off when they explode!

H has joined the 'rolling off bed club'. Only turned my back for a second and he had three pillows either side of him
thankfully he was ok but has a bloody awful cold. FFS, its 40+ degrees out there!

spotty you are so kind ref pork I suppose I'll have to get back in the habit of doing a roast once a week but I never know whether to do it on Sunday or our Sunday which is Friday.

DD's 3rd birthday in a few weeks and trying to work out what to do for her party and whether to have it at home or in a hall on the compound. Trying to remember what DCs 1 and 2 where like at that age and whether there is any point trying to arrange games. Views?

Right, off to deposit DD at nursery and down to hairdressers and praying H behaves.

Morning.
spoty It turns out that you can't just swap ingredients in a recipe. My chocolate cookies came out as a thin rock hard mess really!

mos I don't have a 3yo, so don't know From the 3yo I know, there's enough understanding there for structured fun, it's just if they want to or not.
I'd prob be tempted to try a bit of musical statues and pin the tail on the donkey or something like that. I'd skip pass the parcel though, and prob wouldn't do much that involves them having to sit still

Luke is getting fed up of toast and scrambled eggs for breakfast so need some ideas. I don't really want to do porridge or anything too wet like that until he can use a spoon. I might try some soaked and drained weetabix or something.
What are the BLW's giving?