Sept 08: last year they were cute little bundles that smelt of milk and vanilla, but now they've been replaced with a babyzilla!

[ILikeToMoveItMoveIt]

A new thread for us as the last one was running low.

I definitely think he's up to no good Pacita! I also think that is in on it too!

Today I secured my second Childminding client, the contract is signed and hours have been negotiated, I'm buzzing! I now just need to find one more person, well I've interviewed and chosen who I'd like but I just need to contact her to make sure she'd still like to come, interviews between parents and CMs are as much me interviewing them as they are me, all very nerve wracking!

Elizabeth is erratic with her daytime nap too, sometimes she'll have 30mins or like today she'll have 3 hours! I even had a cheeky nap too today, totally knackered after going to Devon to see the in-laws for the weekend (even though I didn't lift a finger! )

Loving the smileys [bbiscuit] (that one doesn't work thugh does it?) They are all very cool.

I am ashamed to admit though tht despite remembering yesterday that it's burns night tonight I forgot by today and we had steak pie for tea.

Well done lollipop on the childminding, hope the kids you've got are nice and their parents bring them on time, collect them on time and pay you on time!

Had parents night tonight so thought I'd do a quick mn and email check once i'd done. Shame I can't get on faceboko here though.

Thanks Debi, I hope they pay up on time too! I'm not so bothered about the on time part as I have a late pick-up fee that I will have no problem in invoicing them for .

Tonight we're having curry - what is the traditional Burns Night food then?

That's brilliant news Lollipop! Glad you've managed to find some nice people. By the way, since you're here, talk to me about nappies - what are you using on E now? I've just forked out for some Wee Notions side snaps (one new, one second hand, one all in 2) and they're great. Have you come across anything else that might do for a power wee-er? T is a relatively heavy wetter, but the biggest problem seems to be that he goes a long time between wees, so they're enormous and come out the side of most nappies before they can absorb! Any recommendations?

I don't use cloth anymore , I had to change from my large Ittis and WNOS and I just couldn't muster the energy to go to two-parters when I knew that I'd have to get bigger clothes to fit over them as well. Uhhg. I miss cloth dearly, far nicer than dispo's but far more hassle!! I found Upsy Daisy soy nappies very absorbent, big pocket, fleece lined, slim, I was going to get them and then DF told me to pack it in as I was never going to be able to keep up with the washing when I started childminding and I was getting in a flap about choosing a different type of nappy (too much choice, not enough money!!)

Blimey NC, what a shock. I can defo see M doing that as well. They're like little Houdini's aren't they?

Mama - I had chorizo and olives to start (lush), roast chicken for main (ok but the roasties were far too dry) and banana sticky toffee pudding for dessert (tres lush). However I woke up at 2 this morning with d&v , but no idea whether it was food poisoning or a bug.

If you watch the Hairy Bikers tomorrow you will see where I live. I live in the village where the stately home with the big rotunda is But I think I may have waffled about this before, so apologies for being boring.

Hurrah for your ds Digi

Burns night? Is that when you're supposed to eat haggis? I did a roast chicken that unforeseeable events prevented me from cooking on Sunday.

Liking the chorizo and olives for starter, ILTMIMI, very Spaniard of you.

nc How scary! Unfortunately DD is nearly at that stage. The other morning she was quietly gurgling to herself so I left it a while before getting her up - only to walk in and find her playing with a jar of Snuffle Baby (i.e. Vicks vaporub!) in her her cot. She had had some trouble breathing in the night so DH had put some on her, then left the jar on the bedside table in her room. She had somehow reached hold of it through the end bars of her cot and god knows what would have happened if she'd got the lid off. Needless to say, now nothing is allowed on that table!

Oh, and she delighted us tonight by doing a poo in the bath.

muchas gracias Pacita! Bueno! Muy bien!

I used to HATE olives but since ds was born I adore them. They're great if you really fancy something savoury. yum yum.

I think Burns Night is the whole ode to the haggis thingy and drinking lots of wiskey

Re cloth nappies - I'm finding Bumbles with booster pads are still absorbent enough - Ittis only just cut it. A Blueberry is a great stuffable with an extra booster in it, but they're hard to find second-hand and cost a fortune new. Kushies AIOs are good but take forever to dry, which is a pain as A now goes to nursery 3 days so can't dry in between.

Burns Night - used to go to Buchans near Battersea Bridge for it. Great guy declaiming to the haggis, fab food and lots of whisky! Sadly encouranging all the customers to do the Gay Gordons over Battersea Bridge is no longer allowed after residents complained about the bagpipes. (not Scottish but expat communities always have Scots who get everyone to take it way more seriously than people in Scotland)

Thanks for the nappy advice. Lollipop you must be heartbroken! But agree with your DF that on top of childminding the laundry might well kill you . NC I find the ittis are OKish if he isn't doing power wees (although they don't last that long), but he does them more and more now. I tried a kushies one borrowed from a friend but also found the drying time a nightmare, although it was pretty good. Guess it's basically a case of spending some money then. Ah well, I can sell the large itti bittis for a reasonable price, as the next one can just use the enormous wee notions ones from whenever they grow out of the smaller size nappies. I can consider myself to be supporting the preloved nappy market!

No Burns Night for us as we're on Slimming World at the moment. Had prawns and spinach with noodles. Do love a Burns' evening though - it's really fun.

DD is moving officially into the toddler room at nursery this week. She's been going in there for the past few weeks when they've been quieter and she loves it. Am very excited for her.

Well other big news from us is that we've also decided to move to a cheaper part of London so I can look to go part time. It's a strange old time for us to be doing it though as we've just applied for schools for DS so last night we had to apply for more schools in more boroughs so we're on the list for the area we may potentially move into. So after loads of research and visits in our local borough we've had to ring friends in the area we'll move to and totally go on their recommendation with no real idea of where the schools are or what they're like - talk about disorganised. DS now has 10 school choices and will potentially get three different offers!

Hopefully - I think that if you put a microfibre booster on top of whatever you're using that might help, mf absorbs instantly but it also lets wet out like a sponge so you need a bamboo or hemp insert to lock the wet away long-term, but the mf might absorb the initial onslaught!

Gosh reuasable nappies seem like a different language
My bugaboo bee has arrived, Its gorgeous, I cant wait to use it tomorrow Ive been wheeling baby e around the house all afternoon . Errrrrrr
The toddler room is 2 years in my nursery but i think its a shame as e loved playing with the bigger boys.

How exciting sunshine which parts are you considering?

I really like the area we're in, the schools are good and we're in the catchment area for a good secondary. Only problem is our titchy 2 bed house. To move to a bigger house within same catchment area would cost hundreds of thousands. Might as well stay put till we win the lottery. Or a currently unknown wealthy elderly relative dies and leaves us a suitcase full of cash.

Mama we'll have to start calling you hun

Digi lottery win is our other option obviously!

We're looking at Nunhead actually. We have really good friends there who love it and have a ready made circle of local friends for us to join (who we already know from numerous parties at their house). Lots of our other friends are close by and there are a few good primary and secondary schools. Also close to East Dulwich which we love and close to some good private schools as we're hoping that might be an option later.

We can get something similar but slightly bigger to what we have now for £200k less than our house was worth when we bought it three years ago so it's a win win really.

Love my house though, especially the garden which backs onto a river so we have a lovely deck out there. We've just got it how we like and I've made lots of friends here but I also want to be able to spend more time with the kids. I don't know anyone who's children spend as much time at nursery as mine and I'm finding it hard and tiring.

Ooo, I briefly lived in Nunhead! Really near Peckham Rye. Some lovely houses round there. Think we lived opposite a cemetary, but it might have been a school. Either way it was nice and quiet.

lollipop, hopefully are you selling any large ittis? Can I buy some. M seems to have stayed the same size for months and so we're still fitting into them and I LOVE them but need a couple more.

digi I laughed at you not knowing if you lived near a cemetry or a school! The kids I taught this morning were very unresponsive and I could see how you could get confused!

We have a cemetary at the bottom of our new garden. Not that we can get to the bottom of the garden yet due to the HUGE pile of rotting, stinky compost.

Hopefully T's wee cycle should help you when you toilet train. It should hopefully mean you won't be running to the loo every 5 minutes with him. My ds1 is similar, he goes hours and hours without weeing. It's very handy for long car journeys.

iom I had a dream about you last night! You had moved into my best friends house in Dundee and we were visiting. All you had changed in the house was you'd taken the really nice kitchen cupboard doors off and replaced them with horrible 1980s ones. When I was leaving I almost forgot ds2, I'd left him siting up on the mantlepiece and was about to go without him!

Don't envy you having to do the school applications sunshine. We've just gone through that and it wasn't easy selecting schools even though we only have a choice of a few. UNfortunatly ds1 hasn't got into our 1st choice but did get the 2nd choice. I've gone off it though a bit but if he doesn't get to the top of the waiting list for the other one by Sept it'll have to do.

Digi I think that's the bit of Nunhead we're looking at. On the particular road we're interested in there is a cemetary and a school (in fact the school we hope DS will get into if we move over there). Jaqui Smith lives there apparently (at least pretends to rent a room off her sister there anyway).

Debi the schools thing is a total nightmare. We've spent ages choosing in our borough - we've been looking for three months - and carefully thought about the order we'd put them in. Then we had to rush through apps for two other boroughs the other night totally based on what our friends told us as the council told us we needed to be in the system as on-time appliers. So, as I said, we don't know where most of the schools are, or what they're like. In any case, all the boroughs we've applied in are hopelessly over-subscribed and we have no guarantee of a place anywhere (there were 200 children in my borough with no place at all last year).

Reassuringly nursery have told us that DS is the sort of child that will thrive anywhere but that doesn't help with the stress of it all.

All this talk of school applications is bringing me out in a cold sweat. I can't even decide where dd will go to 4 terms of nursery, how will I ever decide on school?!

We're still happily using bumgenius nappies here, I'm even thinking of taking out the bamboo boosters as ds doesn't seem to wee much. Dd was much more of a power weer, 5 hours with nothing then soak through the lot. It made potty training hard coz she only went a couple of times a day, if she had an accident then we had to wait hours for the next opportunity!

Ds's walking is improving every day and he's coming out with lots of new words. Today was 'ninner' for 'dinner' and good attempts at several others. I asked him whether he wanted the blue or red car today, and did the signs as i said the colours. He signed back 'red' - I'm pretty sure he doesn't know his colours, but I was quite impressed!!

I'm finally over my sinusitis but the poxycillin as left me with shocking thrush and TMI

Carriebo it's shockingly difficult. I'm sure it wasn't like this when I was a kid.

DD has got lots of words now including nana (all food), milk, juice, shoe, sock, shower, bath, ball, Daisy, Piggle, Pakka, baby, car, quack quack, woof woof etc. No combining words yet (although she does attempt to sing a song DS had to sing for his nativity play) but she understands everything.

I love the DCs' nursery. I'm going to be in bits when they leave, especially if DS is still there to take part in his graduation play.

We have just had a shocking 48 hours. Robyn couldn't sleep monday night, no change there but I knew she was feeling off colour as she wanted cuddling to sleep. At about 10ish tuesday am she started wheezing, within the hour she was at Dr's as her stomach was sucking right in and it was obviously a huge effort to breathe. Doc gave us some antibio's and an inhaler to give as and when. As we left he said if she is no better in 6 hours ring back.
We gave her the inhaler which she didn't like and at 6pm were rushing back to the surgery where the doc then sent us to a&e. They gave her oxygen and then a nebuliser then decided to admit her as she would probably get worse before she got better. One doc thought it was bronchialitus sp?.
We went up to the ward where they started monitoring her. Her heart rate and breathing were a bit too fast and you could see her belly sucking right in. I gave her a feed but as she was sucking you could see her lips turning blue and her whole face getting paler. Thankfully a few mins after she had finished she pinked up but it was really scary. She had one more nebuliser, brilliant stuff sent her off to sleep.
when she woke at 3am as the baby in the next room had been sick so his mum had put her light on, she had almost stopped wheezing and was just a little out of breath.
The Doc did his rounds at 10 and by then she had had 2 slices of toast and half a bottle of water and about 3 more breast feeds. They gave her the all-clear and sent us home. They think it was a viral infection which just affected her breathing.
It was seriously scary stuff, especially as me and her dad have asthma which is what we thought it was at first and we don't want her going through nebs and inhalers and steroids every time she gets a bad attack or another infction.
Still we had a laugh. When the telly came on we put Milkshake on and she watched FiFi and Peppa Pig in bed. She was very surprised at watching tv in bed and kept smiling at me. I told her when she gets poorly agsin she can watch tv in bed and she started clapping.

In other news we are still using motherease nappies with some bumgenius. was thinking of trying one for the night time, what would you suggest lolli

debs that sounds very scary. My two have had bronchiolitis but not that bad. I'm surprised the first doc didn't send you straight into hospital. I'm so glad she's feeling better and eating well! Like you we're both asthmatic and I do worry about the kids, esp ds who has eczema and is more prone to wheezes.

Oh debs poor you and poor Robyn. DD has had brochiolitis twice but not as bad as you describe - how awful. DH is asthmatic so we have the same worries.

Could someone tell me what is the point in bothering selling things on ebay when I have 6 mins to go on a brand new pair of gorgeous baby shoes and so far the bidding frenzy has reached.. er... £1.20.