Youngest's Birthday

It doesn't seem that long ago that we were a family of three. Now we are four and he is really adding a whole new dynamic to our lives as his personality develops.

Secrets

I quite like secrets, but I hate the fact that they are not much fun unless you can share them with someone else and then the secret is no longer secret. I suppose for maximum effect I need to tell lots of people individually before they find out from other people.

More Mundanity

Not much has happened over the last week. A trip to Glasgow with work was very pleasant - a nice way to get back into work mode from holiday. A fair bit of catching up at the office followed, with a fair bit to do still. And then just normal family stuff: a bit of shopping, a trip to the cinema to see Harry Potter and the Last Orders, Sunday school, but no gardening on account of the inclement weather. And some good news in that my eldest won some cool Simpson's stuff for inventing a humorous super pet.

Wearing pants on your head is fun.

Sorry to be so obsessed with potty training but a it seems quite a big deal at the moment. We are so pleased with our youngest's progress. When we started to try a month or so ago we had high hopes.

It all started with a trip to the shop to by him some pants. We made a big fuss of him and he was really pleased. we bought loads of stickers for his potty and made it look very special. He was still really pleased. He loved wearing his pants and sitting on his potty.

However he didn't do any wees or poos. Until... we went to my wife's mother's for tea. We took the potty and spare pants etc... and he suddenly needed a poo and a wee. We managed to get him to sit on the potty but there was no result. So he wandered off again. A short time later the urge came on him again and he ended up sitting on the potty in the middle of the living room. He did a huge long poo. This scared him a great deal. In retrospect in was a very bad idea to have the potty in such a public place. Once he had stopped shaking we praised him and encouraged him, but he was not going to be won over that easily.

From that point on he refused to sit on the potty at all. So my wife decided that the best thing to do was to leave it a few weeks. So we did.

We then decided to try again. We stocked up on pants and stopped buying so many nappies and commenced battle. For the first few days even wearing pants was not a popular move. We could put then on him but then we would suddenly find him without any and find the offending garments shoved in the washing machine. Gradually we won him over by making pants fun. Our eldest and I formed the "wearing pants on your head is fun club". He started wearing pants but wouldn't go in the potty. He would either not go all day until he went to bed for his afternoon nap in his nappy and let it all out at once or go on the floor or sofa or anywhere not waterproof.

Then we went on holiday and started the "if you do a wee on the potty you will get a sweet incentive scheme". He quickly got the hang of the whole thing after that, often pretending to do wees in an attempt to get extra sweets (to no avail). Poos came a few days later. He is still a bit confused about the difference between poos and wees - often trying many times to go on the potty with no result before the poo arrives. Hopefully now we are back from holiday and doing more things he will not lose the skill but we are fairly confident that he has got the idea.

Now the only problem is how to wean him off the sweets before he gets obese and his teeth fall out.

Proud member of the "wearing pants on your head is fun club":

If you would like to join please send a picture of yourself wearing pants on your head and having fun.

Another day in Bath

As Bath is one of our favorite places and as our youngest loves trains we took a trip on a train to Bath. The train was very full but the weather was lovely and we took a picnic and wandered about.

Eldest and youngest in a bandstand:
Costa coffee babycino poster boy: Me 'n' my boy:

A day in bath

Sign:
Southgate shopping centre:
Picnic in the park with my beautiful family:
Taking a dinosaur shopping:

A poo!

A poo in the potty. We are so proud! (I'll not post a photo).

A wee!

Today is an auspicious day. Our youngest has done a wee on his potty. Actually he has done three wees. Hopefully this is the beginning of the end of nappies.

Potty potty.

We are currently trying to potty train our youngest. As he is nearly three we think it is about time that he stopped using nappies - and besides they cost lots of money (even the cheap nasty one we use). The first hurdle was getting him to wear pants. He was not very keen on this at all. He would take them off, hide them and then demand to have a nappy put on. But now, after much encouragement from his mother (my beautiful wife), he will now wear pants. The next step is actually getting him to wee. He will not do it. He doesn't perform any bodily functions at all all day until it is nap time and we put a nappy on. He then lets it all out - pushing the capacity of the nappy to it's limit. Or again at bath time. Our eldest has, not surprisingly, started to demand to have the bath water first because of this.

Here's hoping that more encouragement will help him with this next step to adulthood.

Holiday Photos

Holiday Mk 1

Well we are back from our first holiday of the summer. A dual purpose trip to go camping for our eldest's eighth birthday and to attend my parent's joint 60th party. The party was good. The camping was good. The sleeping was not so good. Our youngest did not seem to think that he should go to bed in the tent. We suspect that is was something to do with a combination of it not being very dark in the tent, a lot of noise on the campsite and a lack of normal routine. On the plus side the weather was good. Sunny for a lot of the time and only raining whilst we were asleep.
We have two holidays left this summer so lots to look forward to.

New School Uniform

We have bought our eldest's new school uniform. It is lovely, if slightly big due to growing room. It cost loads but it seems good quality and looks very smart.

It feels like a new start in many ways and so it seems appropriate to have new clothes. Though I suspect that we may well get secondhand ones from benevolent friends in the future. Just new shoes to get now...

End of Term

Tomorrow is my eldest's last day at her current school. She is sad to leave her friends but I think she is looking forward to her new school. It does help that her current teacher is leaving the school and the supply teacher she has had for much of this term is going to be teaching at her new school. I suppose I'll have to decide whether to stay on as a parent governor or not. I want to but I'm not sure if I will have enough time and also I wouldn't want to take a place that a genuine parent might want. I suppose I've got the summer to think about that.

Product Review - Mamas and Papas Pulse Buggy

We have had a Mamas & Papas umbrella fold "Pulse" buggy since last summer. I have to say that I have not been very impressed with it. Though having said that it is definitely one of the lightest and easiest buggies to push we have ever used.
At first it was nice and looked very comfortable but after a few months the raincover split and the seat began to fray and now, after less than a year, it is practically unusable.
As you can see from the picture below it is an attractive looking buggy, but unfortunately not very robust.

Here you can see the aluminium supports which have worn through the stitching on the seat.

Even the wheels have not lasted long - here you can see that the tyre is half worn through.

So in summary I would say that this is a nice looking buggy. If you value lightness and ease of pushing over robustness a good choice. Ok for light use but if you want it to last, get a different one.
Fortunately my brother and sister in law have kindly given us their Maclaren buggy that their child has grown out of so we can still get around with out causing harm to our youngest.

Actually...

Actually a few things did happen.

• My wife did the talk at Alpha, she was very good. It was on God's Guidance. And there was pizza.
• I made a pirate costume for my eldest for her "dress up like a pirate sports day".
• My youngest fell over at nursery and gave himself a huge fat lip.
• There was a really weird rain storm where is was very very sunny and absolutely pouring it down - our youngest still keeps going to the window to see if he can see another rainbow.
• I bought my eldest two new raincoats so she could choose which one to keep.
• I went to work.
• My wife worked an extra day at the nursery.

We are off now to spend the money she earned.

Nothing much happened

This week nothing much has happened.

Cake Sale Extortion

We went to a fete at the school our eldest will be starting at in September. It was really nice to see the large number of people supporting the school by attending as well as to see how many people we knew. Our youngest had a nice time and sampled some of the wares on the cakes stall, leaving sticky finger marks all over the top of a rather nice chocolate cake. We were forced to then purchase this chocolate cake at an exorbitant rate by the proprietor of the stall. At least it goes to a good cause and we got the tin thrown in.

Our eldest's new school with the cake stall in the foreground. (You can see the proprietor arranging his cakes to snare another unwary family.)

Another view of the school with a tug-of-war in preparation.

Defecting

We have defected from Tesco.com to ASDA home shopping. In order to save money and also to try out the new ASDA delivery service which has recently started in our area. On the face of it the two services seem similar. However there seem to be better safeguards in the ASDA version. When you get a different product substitute for the one you ordered you only pay up to the value of the thing you ordered, with tesco you can get charged more if your chosen product is unavailable. We'll let you know how we get on.

Duggie dug dug

We went to a church service led by Doug Horley. It was very good. Our two children loved it, as did we. It was a really good mix of action songs, puppets, teaching and fun. It was especially nice as we got to see some people who we don't get to see that often who were also attending the event. So if you are a church looking for something special to do for a Sunday morning (or any other time) I would recommend booking Doug Horley and his team.

Playing nicely

Our youngest playing with our eldest's doll's house.
She was a skater girl...