Author: Sarah

- Sarah 7 Comments

Watching TV (The Ordinary Moments #18)

It’s time to link up with Katie at Mummy Daddy Me for another Ordinary Moment. This week’s Ordinary Moment is something I have to admit I’m not entirely proud of! Toby has been fascinated by the TV since he was tiny. He will usually sit with us on the sofa quite happily (for a little while at least) and watch whatever it is we happen to be watching.

watching TV with dad

 

But recently I have actually succumbed to the lure of CBeebies! I was never one of those parents who said ‘my child is never going to watch TV!’. After all I’m a bit of a telly addict myself. But I didn’t think I’d be putting on kids’ TV shows to keep him quiet just yet.

Actually we have the TV on much less now than before Toby was born. If I had a day at home before I would literally turn the TV on when I got up and it wouldn’t go off until it was time for bed. But now Toby is so enamoured with watching TV that it is impossible to feed him (milk or solids) with it on because he gets too distracted. So with that and starting this blog I seem to have a lot less time for watching TV these days.

Anyway, there never seems to be anything good on CBeebies when I turn it on so I’ve recorded a few episodes of Raa Raa the Lion and Waybaloo so there’s something to stick on if I need to keep Toby’s attention and keep him out of trouble for five minutes. He seems to be transfixed by it and so it stops him rolling and wriggling all over the room!

watching TV

So there we are – watching TV is a very ordinary moment in our house. I’m actually quite looking forward to Toby being old enough to concentrate on TV and films, and actually understand what’s going on, so I can start sharing some of my favourites with him.

- Sarah 5 Comments

Spring

Spring flowers
A combination of lack of time, computer access and inspiration has meant that I have missed the last couple of weeks of The Prompt. However, I am still loving this linky from Sara at mumturnedmom and I’m pleased I am able to join in again this week.

This week’s prompt is a quote and it seemed to come at such a opportune time for me as this week has been all about making new plans.

Spring is the time of plans and projects.
 Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Last Saturday my friend Claire came to babysit for the evening so Barry and I could go out for dinner. It was only the fourth time we’ve been out without Toby since he was born so we wanted to make the most of it. We went out, tried not to talk about Toby too much, and we made some plans. We’ve both been a bit fed up about various things lately, life has just kind of being plodding along, so we decided it was time to make some changes. None of them are massive changes but hopefully things that will make things better for all of us.

First up, we’re going to buy another car. At the moment Barry gets up at 6 am, he leaves the house at 6:30 am to walk to the train station twenty minutes away. He then gets the train to Edinburgh (another half an hour) and at the other end has another half hour walk to his office to start work at 8 am. He leaves the office about 4 pm usually and walks back to the station to get the train and then we pick him up at the other end. He pays £160 a month for the pleasure of getting a train which is often delayed and sometimes cancelled altogether. We did some maths and if we get a small, fuel efficient car, something like a Toyota Aygo it would cost the same if not a bit less and he would knock two hours off his commute. He has spoken to his work and they have agreed he can work 7-3 most days so he would be home for not long after 3:30 pm. Which would also help me as I wouldn’t have such long days on my own with Toby. So that’s the first part of the plan.

The second part is a bit more long term. When Barry first moved to Scotland to live with me we always had a plan that at some vague point in the future we would move back to England. I’ve lived here for over ten years now and I do like it but I can’t see myself staying here forever. We’d both like to live nearer our parents in the north of England. When Toby was born, we decided on a five year plan; that we would move back before Toby started primary school. We currently live in a three bedroom house, it’s (or was) a new build about ten years old. It’s a nice house but we haven’t really done anything to it, apart from decorate Toby’s room since we moved in two and a half years ago. We had a vague thought that if we have another baby that we might move to a bigger house here in Scotland before our big move down south. Because of this we weren’t really making any effort with the house we have. As well as decorating there are a few other little things which we could sort out quite easily and they would make it a much nicer and more practical place to live. So after talking about it at the weekend we decided we would definitely rule out a move until we were ready to move to our ‘forever house’ in England and instead we would spend some time (and unfortunately) money sorting out the house we have now.

So, in no particular order we are going to decorate and tile the bathroom, rearrange the kitchen to make room for a big fridge freezer, reorganise our third bedroom which we use as an study/spare room to make better use of the space, and then probably decorate the rest of the house too. Oh, and out of the blue Barry’s dad offered to buy us a shed! So that’s going to need a bit of preparation work in the garden to make space and then all the gardening stuff can be moved out of the garage and we can reclaim some of that space too.

It somehow feels right to be making plans in spring – the first flowers have come out in the garden, the days are getting longer and it feels right to be getting life organised.

mumturnedmom
- Sarah 3 Comments

Metafit Madness!

I haven’t done any exercise since before I was pregnant (Oh, apart from some very leisurely swimming for the last couple of months of pregnancy). In fact if I’m honest I haven’t really done any exercise since before I got married and I was on the pre-requisite ‘get into the wedding dress diet’! But seeing as my weight loss efforts seem to have stalled somewhat, and (although I’m feeling much better about things in general now) we all know the mood-enhancing benefits of exercise, I decided it was high time I got back on the ‘get fit’ wagon.

In my day I’ve done all sorts of exercise classes; Body Combat, Body Pump, Body Balance, Pilates, Zumba, dance classes, Bootcamp, Commando Park Training… The list goes on. I’ve been swimming, I’ve been to the gym, I’ve even tried running (but a runner I will never be). In 2007 I did the Edinburgh Moonwalk – a walking marathon, starting at midnight, wearing decorated bras in aid of breast cancer research, which involved a lot of training and did help me to become pretty fit in the process. But then a few years after that I was tipping the scales at 13 stone and about as unfit as I’ve ever been.

So, back to today. I used to go to dance classes and Zumba at a local dance studio which is run by someone who has also been involved in the same amateur dramatics group as me. When I saw her mention on Facebook last week that she was starting a new half hour ‘Abs Blast’ class, following directly on from her half hour Metafit class I decided it was now or never. I roped in my friend Claire (who has 5 month old twins!) to come and join me and along we went.

You might kid yourself that looking after a baby keeps you fit. It doesn’t. It might, at a push, have toned my arms a bit with all the picking up and carrying, but I am still very, very unfit. I have no core strength left, although luckily my pelvic floor held out! After five minutes I was bright red and dripping sweat. My glasses were falling down my nose and I had to take my inhaler! But do you know what? It was great. I probably won’t be able to walk tomorrow, and Toby might have to stay upstairs in his cot all day if I can’t pick him up, but I really enjoyed it. We made it through the hour and it’s true what they say, exercise endorphins really do make you feel happier. So we’ll be back next week and hopefully it might just start getting a little bit easier.

And just for a laugh – here’s the face of someone who hasn’t exercised for probably two years after an hour of Metafit and an abs class!

 metafit madness

- Sarah 3 Comments

Going self-hosted // How do I do it?

how to go self hosted

Right then. You’ve decided to go self-hosted. Maybe you read the first post in my series, you know what going self-hosted means and you’ve decided it’s the right move for you. So the next step then – how to go self-hosted. What do you need to do?

Your own domain name

As with all these things there are a couple of different scenarios. The first thing you are going to need is your own domain name. If you already have your own domain then you can skip right on to the next part. If you don’t have your own domain you’re going to need to buy one before you can have a self-hosted blog. It makes things a bit easier if you buy your domain name from the same provider as your web-hosting so you might want to decide who you are going to go with for hosting first. Domain registration is a little like the hosting in that you have to pay annual fee to which allows you to use the domain name you have chosen and stops anyone else from using it. You can usually pay for anything from 1 year to 5 years. You have to remember to renew the registration of your domain name (or set it to renew automatically). If you don’t there is a chance that someone else might snap it up when your registration expires and then you’re going to be in a bit of a pickle!

When choosing your domain name I would definitely recommend using your blog name if it is available. If it isn’t then you could try adding ‘blog’ on the end or something similar. As for choosing .com, .co.uk, .net or whatever, it’s really up to you. Some people think having .com is best; I decided to go for .co.uk for my blog as I thought it showed that I was based in the UK. Some people also recommend that you actually register all the variations of your domain name to stop other people using them – you can imagine it would get confusing if your blog was mummyblog.com but there was also someone else who had mummyblog.co.uk. I think it depends how unique your blog or domain name is. If there’s a chance other people might want to use the same name then it might be worth it, but if your blog name is more unique then it’s less likely. I took the risk that no-one else would want to use tobygoesbananas and so only registered the .co.uk domain name.

Finding a web-hosting provider

Once you have your domain name registration you need to choose who will host your blog for you (if you haven’t decided already). There are lots of different web-hosting providers to choose from. I use Tsohost as they were recommended to me by a few other bloggers and I haven’t had any problems with them. You could also try Go Daddy, 123-reg, bluehost or Host Gator to name a few. It may seem daunting to choose a hosting provider with so many out there but the best thing to do is probably ask other bloggers for recommendations and compare the prices. You probably want to choose the mid-range option. If you go for the cheapest package available you might find that you use up your storage allowance further down the line, especially if you have a lot of photographs on your blog. As a rough guide my hosting package costs £34.99 a year and I wouldn’t have thought you need to pay much more than that.

Moving your blog

So, you’ve registered your domain name, you’ve paid for your web-hosting. Now comes perhaps the most daunting part, particularly if you aren’t especially technically minded! It really isn’t too tricky though. And remember – your old blog isn’t going to disappear so it really isn’t possible to lose anything. Some web-hosting companies provide a free migration service – you simply give them the log in details of your old blog and they will transfer everything for you. If you want to do it yourself it is also pretty straightforward. If you already use WordPress, Sara at mumturnedmom has a great step-by-step guide on her blog. If you use Blogger it’s a similar process it’s just that you won’t already be familiar with the WordPress dashboard. If you get stuck at any point in the process your hosting company should have a helpline you can call and they will be able to talk you through what you need to do.

Just a note at this point – if you are already using your own domain name on free WordPress or Blogger then this might make the process of moving your blog slightly trickier. I couldn’t log in to my new WordPress dashboard because it automatically redirected me to my old one. This was quite easily solved in the end – I contacted my hosting company who set up an extra temporary domain alias where I could set up my new blog before completely switching everything over. It sounds complicated but actually they did everything for me.

I’ve moved my blog // Now what?

Once the content of your blog has been transferred you can start looking at appearance and layout. It’s worth noting that if you had widgets (blog badges, links etc) in your sidebar or footer on your old blog these won’t have transferred from the old blog. You will need to manually copy the code from your old site to the new one. As for appearance – if you used WordPress before then you might find the same theme is available and you can keep your blog looking pretty similar. If you were previously using Blogger then you get the fun of searching through all the themes to find one you like. Remember you can always change the colours, fonts and header later – I would go with trying to find a layout you like first of all.

After the that the blogging world really is your oyster! The big difference that you will have to get to grips with, whether you used WordPress before or not, is that only a few basic features (i.e. write a blog post and add a photo) are included when you initially install WordPress. Everything else, whether it’s finding out stats, sharing posts on social media, or pretty much anything else you can think of, comes via a plugin. These are essentially programs written by other people to perform specific functions and you can choose whether to add them to your blog. I know the world of plugins can be very confusing so that’s what we’ll be looking at in part 3 of my ‘How to be a self-hosted blogger’ series.

As always, if you have any questions pop them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer or point you in the direction of the information you need. You can find out more about going self-hosted in my other posts in the series:

Going self-hosted – Why should I do it?

Going self-hosted – A guide to WordPress plugins for the newly self-hosted

- Sarah 4 Comments

Review: Close Pop-in reusable nappy

I think we all know by now that I love cloth nappies so when I saw that Close had brought out a New Generation Pop-in I was really eager to give them a try. We’ve never used the Close Pop-in before, but I remember when I was first researching cloth nappies lots of people recommended them so I was super excited when the lovely people at Close agreed to send us one of their New Gen V2 Pop-ins to try out!

Close Pop-in

Close (formerly Close Parent) was founded by two mumpreneurs in 2004, not only do they make reusable nappies (and wipes) they also have a range of baby carriers as well as products such as bibs, playmats, car seat protectors and more, all in their trademark prints. Their website is also full of lots of useful advice and information.

The Details

Close Pop-in in action

The Close Pop-in New Gen V2 is available in four new prints (hippo, robot, russian dolls and lion) and retails at £16.99. [EDIT: Since I wrote this review there are now lots more prints available]. The Pop-in is a hybrid nappy, or an all-in-two – a cross between an all-in-one and a two part system with a waterproof outer and a snap-in bamboo soaker and booster which allow you to adjust the absorbency to suit your baby. It is a birth to potty nappy fitting from 7lb to 35lb+. Night time boosters are available separately.

Close Pop-in inserts

The Pros

  • Top of the list has to be performance – Toby wore the Close Pop-in for five hours on one occasion without a hint of a leak. The soaker and booster were completely soaked but there wasn’t even any wicking around the legs which can often happen with other nappies.
  • This lack of wicking around the legs (and waist) is down to the great design of the waterproof outer. It has gusseted legs which help to make it ‘bombproof’, and also the pop-in inserts sit underneath a flap at each end so there is no chance of any leakage their either. Finally the New Gen V2 also has an absorbent panel in the middle of the outer which helps to keep moisture in the centre of the nappy.
  • The nappy has a great fit. I much prefer velcro fastenings to poppers as I find I can get a much better fit, especially on a skinny baby like Toby. The nappy has a nice slim fit too which I like.
  • I was also impressed to see four sets of poppers to adjust the rise. All our other nappies have three sets and Toby already has them as big as they will go. With the Pop-in we are only on the third set which makes me think it might last longer as there is still room for adjustment as he grows.
  • The nappy washes well and as the inserts can be removed for drying it speeds up the drying time. The bamboo inserts were dry in about five hours in the airing cupboard or a couple of hours on low in the tumble drier (which is the same as my other nappies). The outer dried very quickly.
  • I like the versatility of the Close Pop-in – you can add night time boosters to avoid needing a different night time nappy. You could also use the outer part as a wrap over a shaped nappy, or with prefolds or terry squares. You could also use it with disposable inserts – particularly useful on holiday if you don’t have access to a washing machine.
  • Lastly, I love the prints! As you can see we got the robot print but I love the hippo and lion too.

Close pop-in fit

The Cons

  • There really are very few faults I could find with the Close Pop-in. The only slight niggle was that the laundry tabs are a bit fiddly – in this New Gen V2 Close have added a little pocket for the laundry tab to tuck into when the nappy is being worn, which is great for avoiding the velcro being in contact with your baby’s skin but I did find it a bit tricky to get them out when I needed them.
  • The only other thing is that it is slightly more time consuming to put the nappy back together after washing than it is with the bumGenius Freetime which we usually use, but even that really isn’t too much bother considering all the positives this nappy has to offer.
  • Finally – and this doesn’t affect me, or anyone else who might be using a Close Pop-in for the first time, but the New Gen V2 isn’t compatible with previous versions of the nappy. So if you had some older Pop-ins and the new one you would have to make sure you paired up the right inserts with the right nappy.

Close pop-in laundry tabs

The Verdict

I think the Close Pop-in might be my new favourite nappy! The performance is outstanding, it has a really great fit and it looks fantastic. Despite a few little niggles I can see me adding some more of these nappies to our collection in the near future.

Close pop-in sitting

**Disclaimer: I was sent a Close Pop-in reusable nappy in return for this review. All opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links.

- Sarah 4 Comments

Toby is eight months old!

eight months old

I know I say this every month but I can’t believe another month has gone already. I suppose February was a particularly short month but even so it only seems like a couple of weeks since I was writing that Toby was seven months old! But there’s nothing we can do, time is definitely moving forwards and Toby is now eight months old!

I don’t actually know what Toby weighs at the moment as we haven’t been to the clinic since the beginning of last month, but he’s definitely getting bigger. He’s been wearing 9-12 month sleepsuits and vests for a while now (in fact he’s almost grown out of some of them!) and I have just had a wardrobe reshuffle and moved him into all his 9-12 month clothes as well.

We still haven’t got any crawling but Toby can definitely move pretty much wherever he wants to just by rolling, spinning and shuffling backwards! He’s got doing a full 360 spin on his tummy down to a fine art now. He also gets up on his hands and knees on his own but just hasn’t quite figured out how to move his arms and legs so he moves forwards yet. He is much more stable sitting up now too – we’ve set up a little corner of cushions on his play mat so he can sit safely without falling backwards and banging his head (which has happened a couple of times when I’ve left him sitting unsupported – bad mummy!).

The two teeth which were just starting to make an appearance last month are now well and truly here although they haven’t been joined by any more yet. You can definitely see the top teeth and the other bottom ones sitting under the gum waiting to come through now though.

Despite only having two teeth Toby is doing really well on solids now. He has two meals a day with milk in between – usually porridge, toast or yogurt and cereal for breakfast and then for dinner he has whatever we had the night before. So far he’s had meatballs and pasta, chicken curry and rice, mince and tatties, Spanish omelette and last week he had his first pancake too! He eats anything we give him really – I can’t actually think of anything he has refused to eat so far. We are slowly finding our own way of weaning that is best for us – basically we are following the babyled weaning principal of Toby just eating the same food as us, but if he needs help to eat then we help him, whether that is by spoon feeding, or just helping him put things in his mouth. Having said that he is getting much better at picking things up and putting them in his mouth himself now – he surprised me yesterday by being able to pick up single Cheerios and get them in his mouth!

As far as sleep goes Toby is still a little star really! He has two naps a day, usually about an hour and a half to two hours each, and then bedtime is a 6 pm. He always goes to sleep on his own with no bother and most of the time he sleeps through until around 8 am, although maybe once a week he will wake up once for a feed during the night. All in all though his sleeping is great and we don’t have any complaints!

The last thing I want to mention in this month’s update is something I’ve already written about, but this month we took Toby on the swings at the park for the first time! He didn’t seem to enjoy it too much the first time but I think he was just a bit confused by the whole thing and there were lots of other bigger children running around being noisy. Today I took him to another, smaller park at the top of our road and as you can see from the photos I think he had a lot more fun this time! Let’s just hope spring has really sprung and we can get out even more in the lovely sunshine.

eight months old on the swing

- Sarah 2 Comments

Living Arrows 10/52

I can’t believe we are ten weeks into 2014 already! Where on earth is the time going? Toby is getting bigger and more active every day. I snapped this weeks Living Arrows picture whilst trying to take some photos of a new nappy we’re trying out. I put Toby down facing away from me on the rug and within half a second he had spun round on his tummy and was pushing up trying to get his little baby face in the picture! With all the spinning and wriggling he does it’s like he’s break dancing sometimes.

baby face

living arrows
- Sarah 7 Comments

Swing (The Ordinary Moments #17)

We’ve been talking about taking Toby to the park for a go on the swings for a few weeks now but either we haven’t had the time, or the weather has been horrible, but yesterday the sun was shining so we bundled him up and headed to one of our many local parks.

On the swing

I’m not sure Toby was entirely convinced about his first go on the swing – I’m sure he’ll work out soon enough that it’s supposed to be fun!

Daddy swing

We did manage to catch this little smile though…
Smile on the swing

I’m sure that going to the park will soon turn into an ordinary moment for us. I can’t wait until the weather gets a bit better, and Toby gets a bit bigger, so we can enjoy trips to the park. There are loads of little play parks all round the different bits of housing estates round here and we’ve also got a huge park in town that has got a lovely cafe and what looks like an awesome playground (although I haven’t tried it myself!).

And if you fancy a bit of video, here’s Toby in action!

mummy daddy me