Wonderfully weird weekend

Mannequins, leopard print dressing-gowns (and slippers), chocolates in every room, pink radiators, purple carpets, flouncy dresses, stuffed animal heads, genuine Biba fabric, space invaders, shells, old violins and a tiger skin rug....

What more could you want from a weekend away?

I went, two weekends ago, for a few days with friends from university, to Priory House in Long Bennington.

You know, Long Bennington.   Yes, well, it's just off the A1 in Nottinghamshire, between Newark (surprisingly nice) and Grantham (never got there, but Trish can recommend it highly I'm sure) and was chosen on the basis that it was equally inconvenient for everyone (including the one who came, unannounced, from Vancouver.  There were tears), and that it looked, from the pictures on the Oliver's Travels website, brilliantly, extraordinary, surreally, decadently weird.  With added sequins.

We weren't wrong. 

It was all of those things (except the sequins) and more.  The pictures, taken on my phone, don't do it justice at all, but round every corner there was something else unusual, or scary, or interesting, or quirky or, yes, beautiful.

It's a Georgian house so the bones of it are beautiful too and the rooms spacious and very comfy, with ensuite bathrooms (more chocs and oddities) and the aforementioned dressing gowns (we failed to take a team photo, foolishly (though my co-conspirators are probably relieved)).  It is also, quite astonishingly given the sheer amount of stuff, clean.  We also had the run of the medieval brewhouse, with timbered ceiling, small but well-equipped kitchen (I was required to ring up in advance and check there was a cafetiere. There was), and big living room where we could blether into the wee smalls undisturbed.

It's owned by Roger and Carol, equally unusual and welcoming.  She's the blue-haired designer of the dresses (no pictures, because they (the pictures) simply weren't good enough, but think frills and furbelows; taffeta and lace; pink and green and purple and the sort of thing L would design as her wedding dress if I told her money were no object and she could have anything she liked), and wears clothes (even to the supermarket, she told me) to match.  She made one of our number (nameless, to protect the not-so-innocent) scream when she walked out from behind a mannequin unexpectedly.  We ran away in giggles, like a bunch of teenagers, and  had to come back to apologise later.


They were lovely though, kind and friendly: chatty almost to a fault, full of information about the village (two good pubs and a coffee shop which we didn't try) and equally good at leaving us alone to get on with our drinking, eating and catching up.  They even found several spare mattresses so we didn't have to share double beds if we didn't want to (there are four big double bedrooms, some of which they let on a B&B basis too).

I can't say much about what there is to do locally because we didn't do much of it. It's amazing how much talking eight women who haven't all been in the same room since the last one of us got married can do in the space of a weekend.  But we did have a drink and a meal in the pub and a potter round Newark, and those of us that weren't watching the Gherkin run the marathon (he did it in 3:24:36, raised over £12,000 and made the 10 o'clock news!) went for a walk on the Sunday morning.

There are plenty of people who would hate Priory House.  It's cluttered and crazy and has antlers and curios and bits of old toys on every surface, and what look like shrunken heads (I didn't inspect too closely) and a real tiger skin on the piano.  The screamer among us (who is also, as an aside, afraid of peas), refused to go into the main house because she couldn't walk past the mannequins.  We, however, with eight good friends, years to catch up on, the best possible online supermarket delivery, sunshine, no children and something interesting and quirky round every corner, loved it.  C is already planning to take her mum...

Disclosure - Friend L and I found the house online, booked it through Oliver's Travels and paid for it with our own money (and that of the other six people who came with us, we're not that nice).  While there I found a piece of paper saying that Oliver's Travels would pay me for a blog post about our stay there.  So I'm blogging about it, because you would, wouldn't you. But the pictures (taken in advance of realising I'd be using them on the blog - they'd be a bit better if I had) and the words are all mine and are all honestly what I think.  Although really there aren't words to describe it....

Read with mother

What's your favourite bit of the day?

Clearly it's the five minutes after they're all in bed.  Isn't it? 

 

No.  Scratch that, it's the five minutes after they're all in bed and have stopped coming downstairs with spurious excuses about imaginary spiders and empty stomachs.

But apart from that bit, what's your favourite bit of the day?

When I stop to think about it, and am not racing through in the hope of bringing the previously mentioned moment forward by forty-eight seconds, it's the one in the picture.

 

 That moment, or something a little like it, because actually they each get individual stories (ish, S and A share, as they do a bedroom, but they do get two), happens in our house every day.  It happened every day for me when I was little too; it's just part of our bedtime ritual.  It would never occur to me not to do it, any more than it would occur to me not to clean their teeth.

But apparently that's not true of everyone any more. I hesitate to come out with a statistic, because if you google it, you get numbers varying from only one-fifth to a slightly better but still, to me, surprisingly low one-third, but whatever the true number, many, many parents don't read to their children every night, and many children are turning to screens rather than books to fill their leisure time.

 

So, to help me read with our children at bedtime, and yes, this is a sponsored post, M&S sent me some new pyjamas, and some lovely books.  The asked, too, why reading to the children was important to me, and what I felt we all got out of it.

 Now, clearly there's an element of preaching to the converted here: they're not getting me to do anything I wasn't already doing after all, but that's why I was happy to take their pjs. 

As I say, though, M&S haven't brilliantly converted a non-reading parent to a reading one with the bribe of a pair of Thomas pyjamas and a book of fairy stories, but what they have done is made me sit and think about why I read to them and what I think it does for all of us. 

And I think it varies as they get older.  For S and A still, and certainly M (who was, if the truth be told, much more chuffed with the pjs than the stories), there is, I suspect, an element of the story serving mainly to stave off the hideous prospect of having to go to bed, and it is their stories I more often race through unthinkingly, but it is also a calm time, a quiet time, a time which can redeem an awful half hour of whinging in the bath and help make the transition into bed just that little bit easier for all of us. 

For L though, it's increasingly about the love of the book.   At six and a half, she is beginning to understand that books can take her places she can never otherwise get to, and for me reading to her (and the fact that I won't let B do it is telling, I feel) is properly precious time.  We cuddle up in bed together and share something as equals, often something I remember from my own childhood: we're reading The Dolls' House at the moment, complete with my (approximately) seven year old handwriting in it, and last week I sobbed my way through the final chapter and a half of Charlotte's Web, while L looked utterly bemused (she's not got the whole loving books that make you cry thing yet, clearly).   She honestly said to me today (and I realise this is going to sound insufferable, but she really did say it): " I think reading is my favourite thing to do".

And there's the rub.  Because reading is my (or one of my) favourite things to do too.  And I couldn't be more delighted that she loves it.  But she's beginning to love reading more than she loves being read to.  She didn't get a story tonight because she said she'd rather read to herself instead.  This may partly be because she's got a Rainbow Fairy book (truly as hideous as it sounds) out of the library and I just can't bring myself to go anywhere near them (hence the library), but I think also she's just beginning to get the pleasure of losing herself in the book of her choice.

I don't think her time of being read to is coming to an end, but I do think, sadly, that it is time limited and I am not, as I had rather hoped to be, going to be the female version of the father who read to his daughter every night until she turned 18.  I hope we'll get to 10, maybe a little longer, but there will come a time when I no longer read to any of them, and I will miss it.

Still, at least I've got three more goes at Charlotte's Web before then.  Who knows, I may not even need tissues when it's M's turn...

The plastebo effect

I'm sure it used to be a kiss.

You climb a tree and scrape your knee, your dress has got a tear.  And what do you need (other than Julie Andrews)?  A kiss. Obviously.

Only not for the modern child, apparently.  Oh no, the panacea for all ills is not Mummy, or Daddy; not a cuddle, or a kiss.

It is, as any parent knows, a plaster. 

Blood not required.  No break in the continuity of the skin (technical legal term - don't say you never learn anything here) necessary.  Bumps, bruises, mild indignation, there's nothing that can't be cured with the application of a small piece of thin porous polymer-coated adhesive bandage (thanks wikipedia).  Ideally garishly coloured.

Or, even better, as I now know, a cool gel pack.  Preferably Mr Bump branded, but failing that the generic variety will do.

It all started with Boots, who emailed me over the summer asking if I would give them my health tips for going back to school.  There wasn't anything in it for me other than fame and glory if they used them but I wasn't busy that day (another tough day fishing the children out of the paddling pool probably) so I sent them something inspiring like:

Use a plaster for everything or
If no-one's looking  and you haven't got a cold it's fine to lick your finger and then wash their faces or
Make sure they go to bed early (then you get some peace and quiet) or
Catching vomit in your hands is better than have it go on someone else's carpet

Unaccountably, none of those made it onto the wallchart of tips and handy ideas they've produced (and of which you can see a small part below), but I do get a credit, and, even better and completely out of the blue, they sent me a goody bag (well, more of a goody massive parcel actually - does that make this a sponsored post?).

So I've got the wallchart, featuring my credit (though not, as I say, any of my tips - it's got lots of useful ones instead), some of those vitamins the children will actually eat, antiseptic wipes to save my sleeves, blister plasters (because one of us doesn't wear sensible black shoes with velcro), an enormous first aid kit (actually a bit scared to open that), and the blessed hot/cold compress, which, if I'd let her, A would be taking to bed with her.  As it is, she's inventing an ever more unlikely series of injuries all requiring it.  Munchausen's syndrome for the under fives...

So for that and for everything else (including all the bottles of own brand "calpol" and Peppa Pig sticky bandages I've bought over the years), Boots, I thank you.

How can you have the most possible fun?

Advice and thoughts needed please.

About six months back I was contacted by the brilliantly named Big Game Hunters, a company that makes garden toys and equipment, wanting to know if I wanted to review a swing.  Rather cheekily I said no, but that I was quite interested in climbing frames (rather more expensive, clearly, but if you don't ask you don't get).

Disappointingly, if not entirely surprisingly, they aren't going to send me an entirely free climbing frame, but they suggested we could trial their (free to all comers) design service to create a climbing frame just for us.

I told them our budget (up to £1,250 or thereabouts - grandparents have kindly been contributing to this fund for birthdays and Christmases), and the lovely Abby has designed not one, but four options, all of which I can tweak as desired.

The problem, of course, is that I'm not a small child and so I don't actually have any idea about what is brilliant fun for the next ten years (possibly a little optimistic in L's case, but hopefully not in M's) and what is just gimmicky and will never be played with.

Which is hopefully where you come in.  What do you think of the designs below? What did/do your children/friends/neighbours/that horrid little boy you never liked anyway enjoy?

All thoughts very welcome!


Number 1:  I think there are monkey bars going over behind the swing.  Not sure how that would work.  Like the bridge though

 Number 2:   M clearly couldn't manage that cargo net contraption yet, but should that stop us?

 

Number 3:  Where do we stand on the tunnel? I rather like it...

Number 4: ...But is a bridge more fun?  Answers on a postcard.

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 The disclosure bit - the design service is free to everyone, but they have offered to give us some money off the actual climbing frame if we buy it.  How much, I'm not sure yet!

Win chocolate!

Honestly, was there ever a better title for a post?

How about this one:

Win seriously nice luxury chocolate!

Yup, Hotel Chocolat chocolate, no less.  To be precise a selection of their stocking fillers.

Tragically, I can't tell you what they taste like, because they didn't send me any.  Instead they sent me their Purist Festive Wreath:  70% cocoa single estate dark arriba chocolate, with golden raisins, almonds and hazelnuts.  It's the platonic ideal of a fruit and nut bar.  Only better.

When it arrived it looked like this:

Now, a week later, it looks like this:

And yes, we did need the knife to get through it.

Thank you, Hotel Chocolat.

So, if you want to find out if the Tipsy Christmas Puddings or Piglets in Blankets (clearly too good for the children) are just as good, leave me a comment giving me a better title for a post (any post), and I'll pick a winner at random  next Friday (30th) and get someone's December off to a very chocolatey start.

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ps and if anyone's wondering how this fits with my self-flagellating post about food of earlier this month, consider it whatever the opposite of aversion therapy is...

Turning chutney into cheques (and dreams into dosh)

I could do it though, couldn't I?

I could bite the bullet, take the leap, make the first move towards setting up my own business, whatever that business might be.

I've sort of done it, several times.  B and I looked at premises for a soft play centre.  We registered with an estate agent.  We worked out the maths.

I set up the website for my millinery (since taken down). I worked out the maths.

We fantasised about a wine shop.

And, you guessed it, did the maths.

Because the maths doesn't add up.  My friend J summed it up in three questions when I had just started working as a consultant and was pondering a move to millinery:

How much could you sell a hat for?
And how long would it take you to make that hat?
And how much do they pay you an hour to be a lawyer?

I don't want to sound as though money's the be all and end all, but we have four children, and a house, and all the outgoings that follow those five very expensive things, and we are, at the moment, pretty well paid.  We have, at the moment, security.  We have pensions and health insurance.  We have life insurance and employee rights.  (Well,  B has all those things).  We (he) have paid holidays.  I have the ability to work when I like and as many hours as I want and still be there to pick the children up every day.

To start our own business, to say goodbye to the jobs we have, and the security (and in my case flexibility) that comes with them, is a risk too far.  At least for us.

Perhaps if we really loathed our jobs; if there were more of an impetus than a vague feeling of grass-is-greener-ness and a yearning towards creativity.  More than an unformed desire to build something that is ours.  More than an envious impulse when we watch friends go it alone, or read about this or that entrepreneur;  perhaps then we'd do it.

But for now, no.

But it doesn't stop me dreaming.  And so, when innocent, whose founder Richard Reed recently hosted BBC3's  Be your own boss, in which he searched for start up businesses in which to invest , asked me to blog about the moment that inspired me to turn my passion into pounds, I laughed.  Probably bitterly.

And I said to them (and their very nice PR who had already sent me a box of goodies):

I just wanted to (possibly) warn you in advance that I may end up writing something that's totally not what you want.  The thing is that I have lots of these entrepreneurial ideas, all of which involve me making something lovely at my kitchen table and finding there's massive demand, I get featured in Grazia and I suddenly wake up a millionairess (sp?!) but after several years of inspirational moments which lead nowhere, I'm now rather jaded and cynical about what I read somewhere were called chutney dreams. 

That's not to say that Richard Reed's story isn't inspiring, just that I don't have a passion to pounds moment at all, and I've actually been pondering writing a blog post about that very subject for a while - I've worked out, sadly that what produces the pounds is being a lawyer, even if that's far from being my passion! 

And they said, Ok, fair enough. Would you like to talk to Richard to see what he says about all this?

I told you they were lovely.

So I did.  And, rather depressingly, I was right.  Mr Be Your Own Boss, successful businessman and now telly star Richard Reed, co-owner and founder of multi-million pound company innocent and recent author of an e-book of tips and hints on setting up your own business , (who had, possibly misleadingly, been told I was an "influential blogger" (whoops!)), didn't say,

 "Oh yes, you should definitely go for it. Everyone can succeed in business, and everyone should set up their own business, it's the best thing ever.  Now, how would you like to spend your first million?" 

What he did say was more honest and sensible than that.  Of course it was.  He said that in creating innocent he and his co-founders had very little to lose. They were young and had no responsibilities.  They had good jobs with every confidence that they could go back to them or find another one if it didn't work out.   While it felt like a huge risk at the time, with hindsight, he said, it wasn't. 

He said business success was about finding the business idea that gave you the lowest possible risk (I looked at my outgoings) with the highest possible upside, which didn't necessarily or purely mean financial. 

The great thing about running his own business, Richard said, was that it drew on every aspect of his brain.  He said he had a creative brain but a "talentless" body: he has lots of great ideas but he's not "creative" in the way we usually think of it. Running a business, he said, was an enormously mentally creative endeavour; one that allows him to draw on every aspect of his brain, to be both ruthless and empathetic, creative and analytical and he loves that.  

That's it!  A real upside.  I could do that.  I'd love to do that.  Because I think my chutney dreams aren't necessarily dreams about macarons or t-shirts, they're dreams about creativity.  But I also think that if I were purely being creative, sitting at my kitchen table crafting, the bit of my brain that does, if I'm honest, quite like being a lawyer, the bit that relishes the wordiness of this blog and of the letters I write for clients, that secretly enjoys working out complex tax calculations, or wading through impregnable legislation, might get just as frustrated as my creative side is now.  

If a business can give me all that,  I want it.  So I thought about our various ideas, and I thought about the various upsides (autonomy, creativity, productivity, right and left brains working together), and the downsides (money, security, very (very) hard work) and I thought,  

No.  That's not for us.

Not yet, anyway.

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Innocent did, as I said, send me a box of goodies.  But this post, or something like it, has, as you can probably tell, been brewing for a while.  It's also probably not what they wanted me to write, but hopefully they'll forgive me.  

I owe them huge thanks too - for the goodies, but mostly to Richard himself for being so nice as to take the time to talk to me when he really didn't have to.  We were already massive fans of innocent and consumers of vast quantities of "moothie", but it was still a huge delight to find out that their "really nice people" image isn't just good PR.  
 

How to keep your children entertained for the whole* of the holidays

I had a shock on Tuesday.

It was the end of term.

Yes, readers South of the Border, you did read that right.  The END OF TERM.  On TUESDAY.  It's not even the last week in June and I have all of my children all of the time.

Until, even more weirdly to someone raised on English terms, the 12th of August.

As I said.  Weird. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but nonetheless, and I say this as someone whose children are still only in school/nursery half days, it has caught me unprepared.

Still, we have survived the first two days, unscathed, thanks mostly to the Toucan Box.

I was sent the Toucan Box about a month ago, and I foolishly started it then, but it is, genuinely, not only one of those "ideas I wish I'd had" but also one of the very few freebie/testy/bloggy things I've been sent that I will, honestly, be spending my hard earned cash on again.

It's a box which arrives at your door with no fewer than four (yes, four... if you eke them out, that's one a week, so 2/3 of the holidays done) crafty activities, a story book (Dazzle Duckling - I thought it was quite annoying, but that might just be because I have read it approximately fifty times in the last three weeks), colouring pictures, instructions, inspiration, and, and here's the impressive bit, all the stuff you need:  all the glue, the glitter, the paper, the funny little matchsticky things, the card, the sequins, even the bird seed. The whole bang lot.  All you provide is scissors.  For the distinctly craftily challenged, this is priceless.

Here's a little gallery of us making our stuff over the past four weeks.  Stupidly, as I've said, we started it pre-holidays, so now we've finished it and are going to have to get another one.  You, if you are five miles South of me, have three weeks to prepare. You have been warned....

How it arrived....

 We started with the peacock collage... (each of them had a different colour)

 

We did the colouring in, too

 Next up, the bird feeder.

Quite a lot of audience participation required here

In situ. Although if the truth be told, it didn't survive the combined onslaught of heavy rain and even heavier pigeons.  RIP bird feeder.

Next up, the toucan family.  This was our favourite.  I liked the very gloopy paint that didn't go everywhere when knocked over

and they liked the toucans (actually I'm quite proud of these too, although they are a little fragile for the amount of loving they've been getting):

And last but not least, we had the bird glider.

It doesn't glide:

But we enjoyed colouring it in:

The Toucan Box isn't cheap (if you sign up for one a month for a year it's £16.95 a month, and it's more expensive than that if you sign up for a shorter period of time), but it is absolutely, totally, from the bottom of my heart, worth it.   If you know me and have small children, these are your presents...

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Full disclosure alert - they sent it to me for free.  But I honestly will be buying them in future.

*ish... but you could definitely call it 2/3...

Ballet for the terminally ungraceful

I posted a while back about the ballet workshop that Scottish Ballet invited the girls to, and how they had also offered B and me tickets to their production of Sleeping Beauty.

Well, those tickets were for Saturday night, and we went with trepidation. I shouldn't be admitting this, having graciously accepted their kind offer, but neither of us is what you might call balletomanes (ooh! get me!).  My brother-in-law at lunch said "the thing about ballet is I always rather think you enjoy it more if you shut your eyes", and, although I was trying to be cultured and didn't admit it to him, I rather felt he might have a point.

We'd had a had a bad night the night before with the children, so there was a suspicion too, that a comfy seat in a darkened theatre might lead to a bit more of the Sleeping than the Beauty. 

How wrong could we be? We both, genuinely, loved every single minute of it.  The music was, obviously, fabulous, but opening our eyes was even better... The costumes (no men in tights, either, always a bonus) and sets were extraordinary; an amazing orangery, with flamingoes and ferns and woods with the mist rising off an unseen lake were particular highlights, and I loved, loved, loved Red Riding Hood's ball gown, and some really witty touches on other costumes. As for the dancing, it was, honestly, captivating.  I could have watched the pas de deux (see? more technical terms...) after the Sleeping Beauty awoke for hours.  The sheer fluidity and athleticism of the dancers was extraordinary and what really came across was how much they were loving what they were doing.

Oh, and it was really funny too.

So thank you so much to Scottish Ballet, who have got a new fan - I was previously slightly dreading having to take the girls at some point, and now I can't wait.  And to everyone else, although you've now missed it in Edinburgh and Glasgow, you'll still catch it in Aberdeen, Inverness or Newcastle.  Highly, highly recommended.


Scottish Ballet: The Sleeping Beauty 2011 - Trailer from Scottish Ballet on Vimeo.

I've got a lovely bunch.... of flowers.

Every now and then someone offers you something through your blog that you just can't really refuse...

... so when Interflora said would I like them to send me some flowers, I think I might actually have bitten their hands off.

They arrived today, on their next-day flowers service (they offered me same-day flower delivery, but as we weren't here, and I wasn't generous enough to ask them to send them to someone else, I said no thanks).

And here they are - roses galore. I'm particularly loving the red and pink combination. With some funny berry-like things too that undoubtedly have a posh name but I don't know what it is.

Oh, and please ignore the arrangement.  When I win the lottery and have time to spare (the former being more likely than the latter) I'm going to go on a flower arranging course.  In the meantime I'm of the "just plonk them in" school.  I did ask Interflora if they could send me one already in a vase, but they didn't have any available (although I'm assured they do normally). So I just had to put up with these instead.  Poor old me.

Thank you very much to Interflora!

There's no such thing as a "baby essential"

When B and I got married we (I say "we", but what I really mean is "my mother") had arranged for a bus to take guests back from the reception to the various hotels they were staying at.  One couple had come with their then five-week-old daughter.  They had planned not to drink and to drive back to the hotel, but one glass of champagne led to another and 1 o'clock in the morning found them (with the baby, an achievement in itself) on the bus back to the hotel.  Unfortunately the carry cot, the spare nappies, the nappy bag, and all the rest of the paraphernalia were still in the car at the reception.

They are resourceful though, my friends, and so, finding themselves, a little tiddly, in a strange hotel with a new baby, they ransacked the cupboards for spare blankets, padded out the bath, settled her in and had as restful a night's sleep as you can have with a new born and the beginnings of a hangover.

I find myself repeating that story a lot whenever I read another press release about "Baby Must-Haves", normally shortly followed by "Top Unnecessary Buys for your Baby".   Because maybe it's just me but it seemed to me, particularly when shopping for baby things the first time round, that the entire baby stuff industry had, subliminally, one slogan:

If you don't buy this, it means you don't love your baby.

Made me cross then.  Still makes me cross now. Because, in fact, as it turns out, there is only one baby essential you can buy.

A car seat.  Because if you've had your baby in hospital they won't let you go home without one.  The midwives wanted to escort us to our car when we left with M because B hadn't brought the car seat in with him.  They did eventually concede that with three other children to control, it was understandable that he hadn't chosen to lug in a piece of reinforced plastic and it was raining so they decided to trust us, but apparently they shouldn't have. Hospital policy: no car seat; no baby.

But that aside, there is nothing a baby needs that can't be fabricated in extremis.

Cot? Bath, drawer, pushchair, blanket on the floor.  With a big blanket you can make a double bed for two babies and wedge them in on either side with pillows.  I know, I've tried it.

Nappies?  Muslin and a nappy bag with two holes in it for legs (not pretty but it will get you down the hill and into the nearest corner shop, where you can rip open an unpaid for pack of Pampers and stick your baby in one of them in the bread aisle.  It's not the best look for turning up at your husband's godmother's but needs must.)

Clothes?  Amazing how good a look the toga is on a three month old.

You get my drift. 

But I've also found, over the last four years, that while there is nothing you need there is plenty that you might want...

So here it is, my top wish list of lovely baby things.  None of them essential, all of them delicious.  Apart from the breast pads which are most definitely not lovely or delicious, but I wish I'd known about four years ago:

Posh nappy bag.  I just bought myself, on child number four, a swanky leather nappy bag.  It makes me feel feminine and glamorous, no small feat when your nipples are at your knees and you have sick on your shoulder.

Baby Bjorn bouncy chair.  Stupidly, stupidly expensive and I absolutely refused to buy one.  Then we were lent two for S and A and they loved them and used to wail when I used the cheapy one that we had had for L.  When my sister-in-law asked me for baby recommendations I said one of these.  She bought one and about six months later I'm borrowing it from her for M. Feel a bit guilty about that...

Sling.  Doesn't matter what sort, but hands free mobility is a life saver.

Merino stuff.  I'm a complete convert to merino.  It's one of those things, along with Napisan, that Antipodean friends raved about and I thought "yadda yadda yadda, yes it's wool, so what", but then we bought merino grow bags for L and they have lasted her, S and A and are now onto M.  You don't have to worry about tog weights and they last and last and wash in the machine and I could rave about them all day.  And then the lovely people at Nature Shop  (who, as it so happens, also sell the sleeping bags) sent M a blanket (although they call it a wrap) (as modelled above) and me a dress and I love them too.  The blanket is so fine you think it won't do anything but he's slept wrapped up in it every night since he got it, and it makes a splendid toga too (see above).  As for the dress*, well, it's not designed for breastfeeding, but it works (wraparound), and, even better, it makes me look and feel good, and warm, and it goes in the machine.  Genius.

Huge muslins.  Another kiwi thing (top tip, next time you're having a baby, have it in New Zealand, they appear to have all the best stuff).  I have no idea where these came from as a Kiwi friend gave them to me but they're brilliant: muslin, blanket, wrap, tent, breast-hider and picnic rug in one.

Carry cot.  Pushchairs are controversial items. They're so eye-wateringly expensive that everyone you ask has to try and convince you that theirs is the absolutely best one, last word, bees knees thing in baby transport solutions.  Clearly, the right pushchair for me is not going to be the right pushchair for someone else who has different numbers and ages of children living a different sort of life. (Prime example: the pushchair I have now, which  I love, wouldn't have fitted through my front door in London, despite the manufacturers' claims.  Top tip: if buying a side-by-side double pushchair, please measure your door first).  The one thing I would recommend though is that your pushchair has a carrycot.  I love being able to lift M in and out, and in fact he likes his carrycot so much he sleeps in it day and night.  I also love the fact that I can get four children into a pushchair made for two, but that's a different story.

Lansinoh breast pads.  It has taken a great deal of messy market research by me but these are absolutely the best.

And on the same front, lovely dress above notwithstanding, I am a big advocate of breast feeding clothes.  There's something very liberating about being able to feed your baby in public without exposing your post-natal stomach or anything else.  There are all sorts of small companies out there making really nice clothes that don't look "specialist" and are definitely worth supporting (pun intended).

Oh, and Anita make underwired nursing bras.  Genius.

Reading through this list, it occurs to me, not only that this post has got too long as usual, but also how many of these things are for me, and not for my baby.  Now I could, in a spirit of maternal guilt, take that to mean I care more about myself than my baby, but I don't think it's that. Or at least I hope it's not.

In fact, I think I've hit on something more important here than just "lovely new stuff".  I think if there's one thing that really is essential for a baby, it's that its mother is, as far as she is able, happy and comfortable in her new life.  I think even for those of us who are lucky enough to escape any form of post-natal depression, and even fourth time round, it's a huge adjustment and one in which our own identity can easily get lost.  Now I realise that my identity shouldn't be tied up in my physical appearance, but I also know that if I look together, I find it much easier to feel together, and at a time when my identity feels fragmented into disparate parts of 95% harrassed mother and the rest varying proportions of daughter, wife, employee, friend, sister, neighbour, self; nurturing the "self" bit feels like less of an indulgence and more of a necessity.

So perhaps it's not If you don't buy this, it means you don't love your baby, perhaps it should be more If you want to be able really to love your baby, it helps if you love yourself.  Sounds like the sort of thing that you'd buy, laminated, to stick on your fridge.  Doesn't make it not true though.





* This is not a link to the website of the people who kindly sent it to me, as they seem to have taken it off there, but it is the same dress.  Ask them if they can get you one! It's brilliant.

And in the interests of disclosure, Nature Shop sent me the wrap and the dress. They also sent me a really lovely organic cotton baby grow for M.  Everything else I mention in here was either bought with my own money or a present/loan from a friend or family.

Not-so-innocent Queen of P(ee) (featuring a competition!)

When innocent asked me to be their Queen of P, quite frankly I thought the P was precisely what they were taking...

Because at the moment, mid-twin-training, I am undoubtedly the Queen of Pee.  And Poo.  And Potties.  And Pants.  And washing, but that doesn't start with P.

But then I realised they wanted me, along with 25 other lucky bloggers, to Post a Picture, nay, a Photograph, featuring one of their new range of magnets.  And I got P.

And I thought about Pee, and Poo, and Pants, and Potties, and Pictures, and Photographs, and Pickles (which is the nicest word I called my children when they dropped the P magnet (it would be that one wouldn't it?) down the back of the radiator), and Picnics and Parties and all sorts of other more or less interesting words beginning with P, before I realised there was only one I could use.

Because, when I look back at April 2011, in one, or five, or fifty years time, this is the P I'll think of:

 Although I'm not sure you'd call it innocent...

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Innocent did, perhaps obviously, send me a bunch of lovely stuff when they asked me to do this, for which we are very grateful.  It included three lovely P t-shirts.  L has adopted one, as modelled left, but the other two are way too big for S and A, and so innocent have kindly said I can pass them on to any Poppies, Peters, or indeed Hermiones, Harries or Rons out there.

So, if you'd like a brand spanking new P t-shirt to fit a 3-6 year old-ish ( L will be four this month and is, I think, pretty tall for her age) , just leave a comment before next Sunday (17th) and my beautiful assistant will pick a two names out of the hat then.

You can find out more about the Innocent A-Z (and win more t-shirts with different letters and in different sizes) on their website or twitter by clicking on the links.

Twenty minutes of co-operation (featuring a review)

One of the things I'm really enjoying about S and A at the moment is watching them interract.  It's not always good interraction: the journey to my parents' last week (while, please note, they should, in any event, have been asleep) was spent with one of them putting her hand on the other's car seat, and the other going ballistic at the encroachment on her territory.  A brief bout of arm wrestling would ensue, before the roles were reversed. 

Would have been funny if it hadn't been so noisy.  Actually, scratch that, it was funny...  Today's behaviour, on the other hand, was less so...

But, for better or worse, they're very into doing things together at the moment, and, mostly, it's lovely to see.

I was watching them, the other day, with a Stacking Tree which I had been sent by Hello Baby Direct.  Now, I didn't know this website before, and there are bits of it (well one bit of it) that I think is awful.  It describes itself as "the website for parents who care", which is the sort of thing that is absolutely guaranteed to make me angry.  It implies that if you don't buy things from their website, then you don't care, and quite frankly parents are given enough to beat themselves up about already without online toy shops getting in on the action.  It's exactly the same when you're expecting a baby ("well, you could get the cheaper car seat (which, please note, meets all safety standards), but, really, for the baby's sake..." (sub-text: "if you really loved your baby...").

So, had I happened upon the website, I'd have sworn at the computer and clicked away.  As it is, they sent me something nice, so I had to have a proper look, and I'm glad I did, because not only have they got some really nice stuff, but they actually realise that parents care about more than just their own child.  So they give you the background on the manufacturers and processes that go into the making of the toys, so that you can make decisions based on that too.

Anyway, back to the toy and the babies.

They showed each other what to do:

 

They took it in turns:

 

And they cheered and clapped each other when they (jointly) got it right:

And, most importantly, they spent a good twenty minutes playing together without so much as a push or a whinge.

So thank you Hello Baby, and thank you Stacking Tree.  You made my month.  I'll be getting it out again tomorrow after the day I've had....

Confessions of a PlayDoh fascist

I love PlayDoh.

I love the yellow pots, with their coloured lids. I love the way it squishes, and squeezes.  I love the softness of it, and the malleability of it.  I even love the slightly odd smell of it.

But most of all, I love the colours.  I love the brightness, the clarity, the range.

Which is why I am a PlayDoh fascist.

Because, let's face it, your average 3-year (or indeed 19-month) old child just doesn't get it. Give them some PlayDoh and what do they do?  They squish it.  They mush it.  They roll it around and have fun with it (damn them) and you end up with a pile of sludge-coloured goo.

And I hate sludge-coloured goo almost as much as I love PlayDoh.

Which is why, I am afraid, I am unconvinced by the PlayDoh Fun Factory they so kindly sent me a while back.

Let's get one thing straight of course.  The girls loved it, especially L.  (S and A weren't so keen, but then they haven't yet quite worked out that PlayDoh isn't for eating, and so tended to get cross when I took the PlayDoh off them to put in the factory.)  It's basically a big PlayDoh press with a dial on the front with lots of different shaped holes in it, so that you can make lots of differently shaped tubes of PlayDoh.

Like this:

It comes with a red tub and a blue tub of PlayDoh, which tuck neatly away inside it along with a spatula for scraping and cutting and poking in your sister's eye (which may not be exactly what they designed it for).

The problem?  It's got lots of little nooks and crannies, where the spatula can't reach, and so however hard you (for which read "I" try) bits of blue stick and then bits of red, and then all the rest of the colours you've found in the back of the cupboard and want to play with too because it's so much fun and before you know it you're back at the sludge-coloured goo stage...

So, anyway, the verdict on the PlayDoh Fun Factory?  Great for kids.  Rubbish for fascists.

Ingratitude

I'm not talking about anyone else.  I'm not talking about someone I gave a lovely present to who hasn't thanked me.  I'm not even talking about the client who when I rang him up to tell him £40,000 was coming his way, told me he was too busy to talk to me...

Nope.  That's me in the title.

I'm an ungrateful so and so.

I blame it on my parents.  It's all their fault.  If I hadn't had a birthday so close to Christmas, I'd have had to write two sets of thank you letters a year instead of just one.  I'd have had twice the practice and would, as a consequence, be twice as polite, twice as effective, and probably, twice as popular.

Which is not to say that I'm not grateful.  I am.  I'm just lazy.

Which is, in fact, a roundabout way of saying that over the last (eek) three months lots of people have sent me lots of lovely stuff*, and I have yet to say thank you for it. Or indeed, tell them (and you) what I thought.

Over the next couple of weeks, that's all going to change... you  have been warned.

* though sadly no free trips to Florida, or indeed W1 here...

Beauty is a Beast.

In my case, apparently, this particular beast.  According to my ex anyway, who used to call me Captain Caveman on a regular basis.  By "regular" I mean about every six weeks, or two weeks after the date on which I should have got my legs waxed....  And if I'm honest, B agrees...

The thing is, I'm not very good at beauty.  I never have been.  I don't get my legs waxed often enough, I don't own any make up that wasn't a freebie (I keep trying to rectify that but I go into spasms of panic at make up counters and walk away empty-handed), I've given up wearing my lenses because I can't be bothered any more and I've still got polish on my toes that was put on in September.  (I worked that one out the other day, was disgusted at myself and then realised that I don't have any nail polish remover either).

I used to have a beauty routine. It went like this:

Every evening, I would:
Clean my teeth and get into bed.

I've enhanced this recently, since I looked at some pictures of myself and was horrified at how old I looked. So now I:
Clean my teeth, wash my face, put anti-wrinkle cream on and get into bed.

It's not great though is it?  Admittedly a lot of this is laziness (have caught my man and no longer need to make an effort, or something) and exhaustion (can't spare an additional five minutes of couldbeinbed time), because I definitely was better when I was single:  I used to stay in on Sunday evenings and pamper myself properly, but that went by the wayside a long time ago.

Either way, when the people at Aveeno wrote and asked if I wanted to try some of their products, my thoughts went something like this:

1. Why do I get moisturiser when other people get Green and Blacks?  I definitely have opinions on chocolate.
2. Oh, help! A sponsored post! Do I do sponsored posts? How do I do a sponsored post?  Will people hate me if I do sponsored posts? 
3. Moisturiser?  What's that....?

So it was in a tryanythingonce sort of a way that I said I would be delighted, and I have been diligently trying their products for the last month (they've probably given up waiting for me to write anything it's taken so long, but I don't really feel you can try a moisturiser once and say whether you like it or not (unlike chocolate - Green and Blacks take note)).

Now for the sponsored bit - please tell me if I've got the etiqutte of this all wrong. It's my first time. Be gentle with me.

They sent me three products.  First off I got Creamy Moisturising Oil and Hand Cream, and then later on they sent me the Daily Moisturiser.  Now the thing is that I started off using the Moisturising Oil and then they said "oh, you must have the Daily Moisturiser too, it's an essential part of the routine" or something like that, so I said I'd be delighted, got it, and then realised that I couldn't work out why I had two different products that essentially do the same thing.  They do, don't they?  And in trying them, I've discovered that to the untrained leg (I've been using them on my legs) yes, they do exactly the same thing.

And that is, well, you guessed it, what it says on the tin (aka somewhat underwhelming plastic packaging).  But they do it well.  My (overdue for a waxing) legs are smooth and moisturised, and still not presentable in public, but that's not their fault.

As for the hand cream, well, I was impressed.  It claims to last for 24 hours even through handwashing.  And probably it does if you're only washing your hands every time you go to the loo. I however, am washing my hands every time four people go to the loo. Not to mention doing about five lots of washing up a day (we don't have enough plastic plates to put them in the dishwasher), and, sorry Aveeno, it doesn't last through that much handwashing.  But it is good.  My hands always used to look unloved. Mostly because they are.  They are red and dry and cracked and sometimes quite sore. Or they were. Now they're still not very pretty, but if you close your eyes and stroke them, they feel lovely.

Now all I have to do is remember to use it.

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Picture Credits:
Captain Caveman picture from Crossfiteastbay.com, but presumably copyright Hanna Barbera.
And Aveeno picture from Aveeno. Funnily enough.