May '09 - We've had our first tooth!!

[Grumpyoldcaaaaaaaa]

Here we are, in honour of baby O and the first tooth through.

jael during the day, I've really no idea what time I'll be feeding R. The only cert is a bottle between 6.30 and 7pm. Ditto night
time. Last night we didn't do the dream feed to see whether it stopped him pooing. It did, but he woke at 1am ish and had 4 oz anyway.

Re nappies. R had a similar prob. Really yellowy and watery with bits in. As a result of a thread on here about the change in guidelines about how to make bottle feeds up, I have altered the way I do his bottles (well 75% of the time). I was preparing four in one go with cooled boiled water and adding the formula powder as an when I needed it. But I now learn thats not recommended anymore. (I know I know. Bad mummy for not knowing this) How do you make your feeds up? Could that account for his nappies? R's have def changed in the last couple of day as a result. Much much less watery.

Just back quickly between our singing and dancing class and ice skating! I plan on completely tiring DS1 out today.

jael- DS2 will settle into a new routine for a few days, then completely change it, so no routine here, apart from always bath at 6, bed at 7-7.15pm. Night feeds are all over the place. My aim is to get him on a 4 hourly cycle in the day - 2 hours awake, 2 hours asleep (as this would fit in with the school run as well) but we are not succeeding yet! Aiming for feeds every 4 hours but tend to be more like every 2 to 3 hours.

I'm in no rush to wean. Call me lazy but it is so much easier before you have to feed them food.

Actually, call me lazy if you like. I am pretty slack.

I'm excited about weaning as I love to see LOs experiencing new tastes, but agree that milk feeding is so much easier!

gosh, llare, you're lazy.

I'm not excited about weaning. call me lazy as well milk is much easier. had FF dd1&2 after 6 mos of BF and found that an additional faff. I think this time i'll BF as long as possible since i'm now working from home. bottles and real food are too difficult.

scheduled feeds- i wish i had harper on scheduled feeds as i would feel more organised. she's usually 3 hourly but lately she's needed topups within an hour. she has her '1st' feed at 6.45ish having woken up at 1am and/or4 am for quick feeds.

centiles - H had dropped 2 centiles by 12 weeks and i felt really like i wasn't feeding her right. but i found out from mn and rl friends how common that is. and H is smiley, happy, alert etc (not to mention sleeping up to 11 hours through at that time. sigh, what happened?).

it's so hard not to worry sometimes though.

Just put the phone down on DH , I'm sick of waiting for him to be here.

No-one else here had to wait this long for their pet passport

More twittering here and she keeps putting the cricket on but really, really loud. She's went on and on about forgetting to buy presents for people so I said "It's ok, I've got 2 bottles of really good local wine here, take those back". But no, she had to go stumping off to the local shop to buy over-priced non-local wine. And then complain.

It's the wittering that does me in, it is non-stop and I'm mentally exhausted. She follows me around the house.

We went to the market in the next town today, there is a bizarre little cat rescue hut in the car park I normally park in - she was very excited by that. Now today I knew I would have trouble parking because of the market. She went on and on about seeing the cats as I was driving around, trying to get a spot.

"ooh, have the girls seen the cats, shall we go and see them, why can't we park there?"
"It'll be full as it's right in the town"
"Oh I was really looking forward to it"

"look, there's a space, you missed it! Why did you drive past it"
"Because it's a blue parking space and I don't have a permit"
"ooh look a space there"
"It's a blue parking space"
"Ooh there's one"
"That is also a blue parking space"

Takes time out to glare at Gendarmes, who are reknowned for pulling English drivers over and issuing random on the spot fines and pocketing the money.

"There's one, there, God you missed it!"
"IT'S A BLUE SPACE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD".
"What a pity we can't go and see the cats".
"Girls, girls shall we see the cats?"

and so on. The girls were monumentally unimpressed by the prospect of seeing some scrawny moggies in a hut, heartless wenches that they are. My mum was very upset.

I can hear her twittering at the cricket downstairs on the tv.

I can't stand it.

Belgian I know you know how I feel, I laughed at the following you around with the phone.

Everyone else I'm sorry I've been so self-centered but I need to offload

And she made me buy her some new pants today. We are talking ginormo Granny belly-warmers. I told the check-out lady "les culottes pour ma mere", she raised one eyebrow in a disbelieving manner.

Oh and llare, you're so lazy......

tis very true.

Grumpy I am sorry but your mother stories are making me laugh.

LadyHelen I had my DD at the start of 2006, and I think they changed the "guidelines" just before that, 2005 I think, again by talking to quite a few ladies who are bottlefeeding I've found their not doing it the way "they should be" with DD I used to make up all her feeds and keep them in the fridge! the guidelines say something similar to boiliing the kettle, letting it boil for up to 30 minutes and making each feed as and when you need it, when you go out use the little cartons...some Moms can cope quite well with it, others think it's quite alot of faffing around, i'll leave the judging up to you lol, or if you prefer, carry on with what you're doing now Are you warming the feed up then afterwards? They're guidelines, they're not the rules, and no-ones going to tell you the wrong/right way to feed your baby, the research which was done showed babies getting dreadful stomach type bugs and thing's from wrongly prepared forula feeds or something like that, I'm no expert, and thaey didn't teach me that on my BTEC lol, I'm sure someone knows more than me I'm not sure what the percentages were, and I don't think they were even in this country, I wouldn't worry though, and I'd do what you felt was best...

Sorry for my spelling mistakes etc I'm in a rush, must go feed crying J XXXX

Dandy well done on your DD for reading - you must be very proud

llare your laziness is inspiring - it's the model I've chosen for my own parenting

weaning a few months ago I was full of trepidation, thinking I would have to have menu plans in operation from 26 weeks exactly. But I now think I'll keep it very gradual and relaxed. H isn't properly ready yet so I'm not giving him meals as such for a while, but as of this week I'm letting him have a little play and taste things if he wants to. Today he managed to hold and eat nearly half of a potato wedge and had a suck of a strawberry (which he loved). But that'll be it for today and I may or may not let him try something else tomorrow.

Oops H rolled over and getting cross, better go!

Back from Ice Skating. Fantastic. We both loved it! R sat in his pushchair and fell asleep so I was able to skate around with DS1 who did really really well. Once he realised that falling over was ok and didn't hurt, he was off on his own. Not skating exactly, just keeping upright and moving. So hopefully we can do it again.

Re making up feeds, I really have not much of a clue about what i should be doing now. I had DS1 in 2005 and it said to make the feeds with cooled boiled water. To start with we made the days feeds up, kept them in the fridge and then warmed up. Then we just added the powder as and when we needed a feed and warmed it up.

With R, I continued with that method but without the warming up. Being lazy I just thought that if he got used to room temp feeds, less hassle for me. No warming required. But having read the thread (its in bottle and breast feeding - should I tell my friend she's making her FF's up wrong?), and putting two and two together about R's nappies, I thought I'd give the "guideline" way ago. But I still use the old method when we go out,unless I can get the timing right on the water cooling down. I would rather use the carton stuff all the time, but its not the most cost efficient way of doing it. Perhaps I'll do cartons from now on when we are out? I don't know. Its all so complicated!!

llare LAZY!! Pot kettle black though. Exactly my feelings. Postpone weaning as long as poss and then not bother doing purees.

jael I just wondered, not knowing how you were making up your feeds, whether that could have accounted for J's nappies? That was all, but now we're on the subject....

Other FFeeders, how do you make up your feeds?

jael I really didn't mean to judge you but I felt that I had to point there seemed to be some inaccuracies in what you were saying. I'd like to leave the weaning debate at what it is now. The subject has been covered extensively recently and I'd rather leave it until some time next month when the 1st of our bubs (not including spanglet of course) will become 6mo, eek.

As for timing of feeds, I have no idea how often C feeds. I think it's fairly often compared to some of your los, but the average would be about 2 hourly I think.

Hi dandy Nice to see you. How are the wedding preparations going?

grumpy Lol at your mum and the cats/car parking story.

Anyone who lives in London: I'm going into London this saturday to wave at my DH rowing the length of the Thames (well part of it anyway) to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the PLA. The plan is that I will go and stand on random bridges with the DCs and wave at him as they row past. I'm not sure how successful it'll be. I'm a bit nervous about trudging through London on my own with 2dcs and a baby. I'm supposed to take the Tube to follow his progress . I think I will need some luck, make that a lot of luck.

I'd also like to join llare, ladyH and anyone else in the lazy parent brigade.

Ooooooh haven't you all been busy!!!

LadyH - I SO understand your confusion re bottle feeding. I've done a bit of research about it, and am leaning towards the World Health Organisation's guidelines, who say you make the feeds up as and when they are needed BUT (and this is what I do) you CAN prepare x amount of bottles up in advance to be used within 24 hrs.... use boiled water, and then store in the fridge for 24hrs. Add the powder just before it is needed. Does that make sense?

Grumpy - soz to hear about your F#CKing mum (hahaha, loving the hash there! ) - I am at my witsend with MY Mum and DP's Mum (reetbobbybloodydazzler) Dp's parents called dp at work yesterday to say that they were in Oxford (not really that close) and can they nip in and "see the baby" (again, like your Mum!) - so dp calls me - I say no, I have a friend here who has travelled 2 hours to see me, M has her jabs this afternoon, and I have a hospital appointment in the evening. So he duly calls his parents back, relays the 'no' and they got all pissed off and hung up on him. Oooooh I'm going to have such a joyous wedding in 5 and a bit weeks! My Mum is determined to rile me at every opportunity. Am worried, too, that I will turn into her. Remember I was having a day out in London with her a couple of weeks ago? Well, we did, but she got pissed the night before, created ructions with dp, she went off to bed, me and dp had a massive row, so the next morning it was all frosty, I had to apologise to my Mum for some STUPID reason, as I had done nothing wrong, and then we went into town. Had a crap day, as Mum had one of those 'faces' on (you know, bulldog chewing a wasp dipped in lemonjuice and vinegar) and she moaned all the time. FFS. I give up.

I have to have an MRI on my gammy hip. Had an x-ray yesterday and they said 'oooh yes, we can tell its not normal, lets do an MRI to have a look at the cartilage and see if the osteoarthritis has got worse, and we could give you some steroid injections under anaesthetic. Wooh.

Still. M is lovely as ever, very snotty right now, and is now nearly out of her 0 - 3 month clothes, which as llare says, is quite emotional. Boohoo. Those little-wittle babygros

Hey ho.

Now. When's my virtual hen night, laydeez? I want a ton of vodka and champagne, and all sorts of other lush things!

Oooh that was a big post.

Forgot to say, I had a right go at some twatty git in a sainsburys car park the other day - he parked in a parent and child space and clearly did NOT have a child with him, so I shouted across at him, how dare he, he should be ashamed, depriving a parent struggling with a child a decent parking space, I'm reporting him, he'll get his £50 fine, and then he'll be sorry. God, it felt good! (I did report him - I don't know if they did anything, but STILL)

sausage poor you re your day out, parents in law, mum and hip! DId I get everything??
Thanks for the FF input. Thats more or less what I was doing , save for keeping the bottles in the fridge. Is the fridge bit important? I would be v happy to go back to that method as its the easiest by far. Well the easiest is cartons, but thats the priciest method too.

I am a trained lawyer. Why can't I get my head round this?

dandy yes I am. The clue is in my name. I don't think we are FB friends yet are we? I will go and digest your imput on the FF conundrum too.