My boy’s first fight with a friend.

I don’t know if you watched the programme The Secret Life of 4 Year Olds? I saw some of it. I was especially interested as, while my son is 3 he is a June baby so one of the youngest in his year who are all turning 4 this year.

One of the episodes I saw showed the children’s reaction to conflict in their friendships. They fell out with each other and made up, or they fought with each other (sometimes physically) and made up, and sometimes they were left out of the games the other children were playing. I found it quite heartbreaking to watch and, while I know it will happen for my two and needs to happen for them to learn about friendships and navigating relationships generally, I hate the thought of my two wonderful, adorable, perfect little ones feeling that heartbreak that I saw on the programme.

On Monday night my son came home from school so upset. I haven’t seen him quite so upset before. He was inconsolable for a long time. He would not say much about what happened that day other than that one of the other boys had hit him. He just needed a lot of cuddles. It was a great opportunity to talk to him about always being able to talk to mummy and daddy about things that happen and that there was never anything that he could tell us about his day that would upset us, and that if he talked to us we might be able to help him. I think he understood that. But he didn’t want to tell me what happened with this other boy.

Now it could be that the other boy went home similarly upset, they may have been fighting with each other. My son may have been the one who started things off, I have no idea. So I can’t talk about the specifics of what happened with him-unless his teachers know. Hopefully he and the other boy will be able to resolve what happened between them. In any case his teachers now know (if they didn’t on Monday – I didn’t know until he was away from school as he had held it in until he was away from it all) that there was a bit of an incident between them.

My poor boy. I know he has to go through this himself and that he is fine really, but I do wish I could do it for him!

Review: Hide and Squeak Eggs

These Tomy Hide and Squeak Eggs were a Christmas present for my daughter who was 8 months old in December. A month on from Christmas and she still plays with them most days. They are one of the toys I will get out for her if I am doing something with her brother and she is getting frustrated with my lack of attention for her. Of course as soon as I do get them out, as seems to be the way with all of her toys, her brother immediately stops whatever he is doing and starts playing with them instead, often taking them over to the other side of the room. “I’m just tidying them up for her Mummy” he says.

 

So, how do they work. Well they come in an egg box and there are 6 eggs in the box. As you can see from the pictures above the eggshells are split and they crack open to reveal different coloured chicks. The chicks hiding inside the egg squeak when you press down on them, and each eggshell has a corresponding coloured face on it. There are different shapes on the bottom of each egg which correspond with a shape on the bottom of the carton. There are, then, several games that can be played with the eggs depending on how old your child is.

 

At 9 months my daughter is just about managing to squeak the eggs herself when she manages to hit one, she loves tipping them out of the carton and rummaging around in the carton. She also does a very good line in chewing on the eggs and the poor chicks too.

 

My 3 year old likes to “tidy” them away, so he is shape marching with the bottom of the carton, and he does like the eggshell to be the right colour to match the chick inside. He likes to tell me that they are now matching.  His fine motor skills are used when he’s putting the egg into the carton and the eggshell on top of the chick. Of course as he is 3, this is pretty easy for him, but it will help my daughter develop these skills as she gets older and starts doing more with toys than just shove them straight into her mouth! I think it’s a toy that will last her  while. Perhaps not until she is 3 (but my son is just playing with them because she is and as we all know, there is nothing like seeing someone else play with a toy to suddenly make it seem like the best thing in the world ever) but probably the next year or so.

 

The Hide and Squeak Eggs can be bought for around £8.

Being a stay at home Mum

C and I popped out to town this afternoon to get out of the house. While there I bumped into someone I used to work with when I was a lawyer. He asked how things were going as did I. He is expecting his first child very soon so we talked a little about children.

Then he asked what I was doing these days. I pointed at my daughter in the pushchair. He asked what I was doing aside from being her mum. Maybe I should have said that this was enough, being her’s and R’a Mum. But I didn’t. I mentioned a course I have just finished to him and a possible new career to fit around he children. I didn’t really need to explain any further, but then saying I am a stay at home Mum both is and isn’t the truth. It is more than enough for me now and I am lucky that I could make he decision to stay home while the children are small, but I am doing various things to try to start earning some money and contribute to our living costs. I also have one eye on the children both being in school and making sure I have something to do with my time that keeps my brain working. So I can’t absolutely say that I am a stay at home Mum, but equally I am not earning any money. My baby is under a year old but I am not on maternity leave as I wasn’t working before having my daughter. I have completed a training course, but have not yet taken on any jobs related to that field.

I found the change in my identity and my role in the world quite tricky to adjust to after having my son, and it is no easier now really nearly 4 years on.

Cervical cancer awareness week

It is cervical cancer awareness week this week and I have seen a lot of Facebook posts advising women to go to their smear test.

I recently went for mine after a long hiatus from attending. I went after my 6 week post natal check because I figured I was more used to having my bits looked at. That coupled with the fact that I had had so very many sweeps in the last 2 weeks of my pregnancy I thought the smear test would be nothing.

The smear test is not pleasant. At all. It’s uncomfortable, but I don’t find it painful. It is such a good screening programme though that it is so worth going. If caught early cervical cancer is not only treatable, but curable.

In a previous life pre- children I worked as a clinical negligence solicitor, one of the saddest cases I worked on was a case involving a missed cervical cancer case. In that instance the woman wanted a smear test but was denied one and by the time her cancer was diagnosed it was too late for treatment to do anything than try to buy her some time. She was a young woman with three small children and she was so sad and angry knowing that a simple smear test would have saved her life and allowed her to watch her children grow up. After she died it was clear how broken the family was without her. I do not want that to happen to my two beautiful children over something that can be treated if I just go for a test that will last for a few unpleasant, uncomfortable minutes but that could save my life.

Last night it was my turn to read R his story and stay with him while he went to sleep. He asked for a cuddle to get him off to sleep and so I lay down next to him. He chatted away (largely trying to put off going to sleep I think) about everything and nothing. Mostly nothing to be honest! Number 1 is a long number etc. etc.

As he cuddled into me he held on to my arm and stroked my head the way I often stroke his head when he is going off to sleep. He said my name several times with no following statement or question. And within 20 minutes he drifted off to sleep.

Now I know that many people may think that I and my husband have created a rod for our own backs by staying with him while he goes off to sleep, and certainly we are a long way off from the way TV and films portray putting a child to bed. TV would have us believe that putting a child to bed is as easy as reading a story to them and kissing the top of their head, possibly you ruffle their hair. You stand up and walk to the door, making sure the nightlight is on and say night night. You then stand in the doorway for a minute as your child lies down immediately, closes their eyes and goes straight to sleep. That is if you ever get to see the child at all. Most of the time the only concession to having a child a character makes is carrying a baby monitor around. In any case it is rather lovely to have the time with my son while he will still let us. I know there will come a day when he doesn’t want us to stay with him while he goes off to sleep, so I am going to enjoy it while I can.

Bedtime routine

We have recently slightly changed our bedtime routine for our two little ones. Up until Christmas we were giving them a bath together, then taking the youngest out and letting the eldest play a little longer. The youngest would be taken downstairs and got off to sleep in our front room where she would be put down in her Moses basket for the evening. Sometimes she would last an hour or so in there before she woke up again, often far less. My eldest would have stories and then we would stay with him until he went off to sleep. Most of the time he would be asleep within 20-30 minutes.

I thought before Christmas that we may be disturbing our girl as the door to the front room where she slept was not closed, and my husband and I had to whisper to each other all night so we didn’t wake her. Added to that, at 8 months old she really was getting too big to fit into the Moses basket. We weren’t reading bedtime stories to her either, and that was a shame because it is so much part of her brother’s bedtime routine.

So now we do their bath together and they both have to get out at the same time (that has not gone down too well with our eldest, but he is getting used to it now), and they have one story together. Then C is take. Off into our bedroom and settled to sleep while our eldest has another story or 2 and we sit with him while he goes off to sleep.

Amazingly, usually both my husband and I end up downstairs at about the same time. And it is so nice to have some time for the two of us, we can actually talk to each other rather than talk like one of R’s latest obsessions (currently Paw Patrol, so we have to pretend to be one of the Puppies) and hear the TV over the white noise. C sleeps better too. She sleeps usually until sometime between 1 and 3 from 8pm- and for anyone who knew me during the awful time that was 8-10 months with R, that is amazing as far as I am concerned (we hit rock bottom with his sleep at 8/9 months where he woke up every 45 minutes at night. It was dreadful, and I will probably mention that to him at regular intervals throughout his life, along with the 38 hour labour!)

What is your bedtime routine with your little ones?

Saying goodbye to my baby things

I sold some of my baby things today, big things like my girl’s crib and the baby bath I used for both children. When my son became too old for these things we put them away in the loft in case I had another child. I always wanted another, but the first year or so was quite difficult with my son who was a dreadful sleeper so I thought long and hard about whether I really wanted to put us all through that again. As it turns out my daughter is a much better sleeper at night, hurrah!

I have absolutely no intention of having any more children now though. Two is more than enough. Maybe if I was younger I might feel differently, but at 42 I can be quite confident that I will not regret not having any more children (something I couldn’t say for certain after 1 child).

I did expect to feel maybe a little sad after the baby things had gone. That’s it, no more babies. But I didn’t. I loved both of their tiny baby days. I am, however, loving my son’s developing personality and my daughter’s developing independence. I know I have loved most things about all my son’s ages, I haven’t had a favorite one yet. And frankly our house is not that big, we need the space!

A pretty picture?

If you were passing our house last night around 4pm you would have seen a very pretty picture (if you think mums and their children cuddling looks pretty). We had the TV on (Paw Patrol fever has hit), and I had one child sat on one knee watching it and relaxing into me, the other child on the other knee feeding and heading off to sleep. Sounds idyllic doesn’t it?

What you’re u wouldn’t have known is that a matter of minutes earlier I was nearly tearing my hair out because both children were sobbing. They were both tired; the eldest because it was only his second week back at school, The youngest because she had not had good naps during the day. So every little thing set them off. We had had tears over loads of things and at one point I just looked at them both and could not work out which of them needed the cuddle most.

So Paw Patrol and both children in my knee it was. And calm and order was restored. At least until dinner was served and we had the temerity to serve up something other than pasta.

Review: Snuzpod Bedside Crib

We are about to say goodbye to our lovely Snuzpod bedside crib. One of the mums from my son’s school is buying it from me for her new baby. I am glad it will have a new home, and we haven’t been using it for a few months now as C is too big, but oh how I loved this! This is one of the best things we bought for C.

For R we had a family bassinet that my uncle, my sister and I and 2 of my cousins had slept in. I bought a custom mattress for it and loved the idea that he would sleep in there too. Then he was born and he hated it. He hated his pram, he hated his Moses basket, basically anywhere that was not right next to me or on me he hated. So we got a Sleepyhead, a mattress with breathable bumpers around it that looks rather like a dinghy, and he slept in that in the middle of our bed for a few months. It was great and an absolute sanity saver at the time, and made me confident that we could not roll on top of him because of the bumpers around the side of it. However it took up a lot of room and so our bed was rather uncomfortable for my husband and I, my son was lovely and comfortable!

(I should say that I have learned in recent months that actually there are problems with baby positioners, of which the Sleepyhead is one. The Sleepyhead safety instructions do actually say that it should only be used for supervised sleep, so before you rush out and buy one to help you with that baby who just will not be put down, it might be worth doing a little research about them.)

I knew as soon as I became pregnant for the second time that I wanted to have a bedside co-sleeper crib. I did quite a lot of research and chose the Snuzpod. http://www.snuz.co.uk

It is a nice looking piece of furniture and comes in various different shades. We chose the Natural shade as that fitted with our existing bedroom furniture. It was fairly easy to put together, although I must admit I watched a YouTube video or 2 before attempting it, as even at 8 months pregnant I could put it together myself. The Snuzpod attaches to your bed with straps that are provided, and there are 2 sets of straps included to use depending on whether you have a divan or slatted bed base and the crib can be set at different heights so that the crib mattress is the same height as your bed (this is really important if you use the Snuzpod with the side down as we did). The instructions tell you how to measure so that you get the crib at the right height.

It is a 3 in 1 crib so it can be used as a normal baby crib, not attached to your bed; as a Moses basket as the top can easily be lifted off the base and it is light enough for that; and as a co-sleeper crib with one side down so that you are sleeping right next to your baby, but they have their own space and aren’t actually in your bed. It gives all the benefits of co-sleeping without risks of baby getting trapped between your bed and the wall for example, you cannot roll on top of them, you don’t have to give up pillows and duvets, which you would have to if you wanted to co-sleep in your own bed. I found it really gave me peace of mind in the early months that I could sleep next to my daughter and she would not be at risk as she would have her own sleep space. Many people slide their baby over to them to breastfeed and then slide their baby back into the Snuzpod once they are finished, but I never got the hang of it so haven’t done that. We actually used it with the side zipped down all the time as she was only in there when we were also in bed. We had the Sleepyhead in there as well so she could not roll out. (Again see comments above about the Sleepyhead.)

There are a couple of disadvantages to the Snuzpod. It is not cheap. It costs around £200 which is quite expensive for something that only lasts 6 months. We have resold ours, and if one of the mums at my son’s school hadn’t wanted it I would have put it on eBay and expected it to sell. If you use it as a bedside crib as we do it is attached to your bed. It has become quite tricky to make the bed and change bedsheets because you can’t easily access part of one side of the bed. The bedsheets can’t go over the side of the bed next to the Snuzpod as they would cover your baby if they did, so it can get chilly on the knees at times (I found it was always the knees that got chilly). You have to get in and out of the bed at the bottom and then shuffle your way up to the top to get to your pillows. This could be tricky if you had a C-section.

As I said above I loved this crib. I wish we had got one when my son was born. I remember looking at them at the time (when the reality of his lack of sleep anywhere other than in my arms became apparent!) but thought it wasn’t worth the cost- for me it so was the second time around!

Potty Training Update – By George I Think He’s Got It

We started potty training R in August last year. August. It’s now January. I think this has been one of the hardest things we have done. Harder than the back breaking months of holding his hands when he was learning to walk (which C is starting to want to do now, she has pretty much bypassed crawling).

While he got going to sit on the potty when we suggested it quite quickly thanks to our smartie based bribery, I mean incentives (cue smug parents thinking they’ve got lucky with their son’s ability to take instruction and learn quickly). However he just wouldn’t tell us when he wanted to have a wee, or when he had had a wee. There were so very many accidents for what felt like months. And often there was a wet accident that got cleaned up, followed by a far less pleasant accident.

Some time in November he finally started to tell us when he wanted to have a wee, but was still not keen on telling us he wanted a pooh. We went through so many pairs of pants. We got better at catching him just before he was about to have a pooh and getting him on the potty quickly, but he still wouldn’t volunteer that he needed a pooh. So we started a sticker and ipad game bribery scheme. My husband thought it would work immediately. It didn’t.

Finally at the end of last week he told his teachers at school he wanted a pooh, and tonight he told us at home he wanted one. We are still in early days as far as this is concerned, and I know we will probably still have a lot of accidents to deal with, but my god it is good to know that he will actually ask to go.

It has only taken 6 months, but Hurrah!!