Getting ready for a birthday party – less than a day’s enough time surely?

Tomorrow is Eli’s first birthday party – his actual birthday isn’t until Monday but having his party on the Saturday means all of his baby group friends can come so on the weekend it is. I love first birthday parties and Eli’s is the last I’ll be organising for a child of my own. We’ve got a semi-theme – cars as Eli likes anything with wheels – so the cake is going to be a garage with little fondant cars. Of course, since it’s us, the cake is still cooking and will have to be decorated tonight. I don’t think we’ve ever done a birthday cake at anything other than the last minute.

We’ve been fairly busy this week and not much preparation has happened at all yet, our birthday party to do list is therefore extensive:

• bake cake (nearly there)
• decorate cake
• buy ingredients for party food
• make party food
• buy the last couple of bits for the party bags (yes for sub-one year olds I know, I know)
• pack the party bags
• clean the house
• clean the house again after the kids invariably undo all the tidying I’ve already done
• panic
• check to see whether Eli still fits in the outfit I want him to wear
• try to work out how we’re going to fit everybody in the lounge as the weather looks unlikely to cooperate (60% chance of rain – Eli was supposed to be my chance to have an outdoor party!)

I’m sure it will be fine, that I haven’t really prepped at all won’t be a problem will it? I mean the party’s only at 1.30pm tomorrow – we’ve ages yet…

Of second-hand clothes and hand-me-downs

Boxes of outgrown kids clothes – some waiting for Eli, others waiting for Godot.

After almost 7 years and 2 boys and a girl we have a lot of hand-me-down clothes. As Lex outgrows his clothes we pack them up ready for Eli – Lex is currently in age 6-7 and 7-8 clothes and Eli in 6-9 months so there’s a few batches waiting! Of course Tilly’s clothes have no younger sibling waiting for them and so we have to make other plans as she grows out of them. Then there are the clothes that Eli has now outgrown, there’ll be no younger sibling for those either.

So, the question becomes what do we do with all these clothes?! I no longer have the excuse of the mythical third child to hoard them all and avoid the issue and we really could do with freeing up some really useful boxes for the clothes the big kids are steadily growing out of.

I have so far done a very poor job of passing on my baby clothes – there’s a number of reasons for this, the highlights being:

• I don’t just want to give them to a charity shop – I don’t know why but I’d like to know where they are going and hopefully get to see them in use again, especially the nicer pieces.
• I think that eBay sounds like a lot of work for very little reward, e.g. what if the person who wins the bid won’t pay, plus there’s the never getting to see them again thing as above.
• I love to receive second-hand clothes but I have this, irrational most likely, idea that other people will be offended if I offer them mine so dilly dally about and the moment passes.
• I don’t know many people with kids the right ages for the clothes I have.

Despite this I have so far managed to:

• give the 3-6 month girl’s clothes to a friend from baby group (along with the 6-12 month girl’s coats);
• give the 6-12 months girl’s clothes to an acquaintance from another baby group (and received some boys clothes in return);
• give the 2-3 years girl’s clothes to my cousin and she’s happy to have any other clothes Tilly grows out of now so I have a home for anything Tilly outgrows from now on;
• give a handful of 12-24 month girl’s clothes to a friend but there’s still two boxes left.

I think that I’m going to save lots of tiny baby and newborn clothes for Tilly to use with her dolls. The rest of it though, all the boys clothes and the 0-3 months clothes? I just don’t know, I’m hoping my friends will continue to have children and I’ll be brave enough to offer them my kids’ outgrown clothes. Although I think R is much less adverse to the charity shop idea than I am so maybe his desire to clear space in the loft will win out.

So how do you deal with outgrown clothes – do you have an aversion to charity shops and eBay too or are you able to donate and sell with abandon?

Hello friends of gNappies

Hello – if you’re popping over from the gNappies Facebook page you might be particularly interested in these posts:

• Using gNappies – putting them together and putting them on
• Our nappies – gNappies

Thanks for visiting!

Our nappies – Cheeky Wipes

When Tilly was in cloth nappies I tried to use cloth wipes as well. I say tried because I found it a bit of a pain. I couldn’t figure out a convenient way to take them out with us and so we used disposable wipes outside of the house and the containers I had at home weren’t quite the right shape nor did they keep the wipes fresh for long. It didn’t take long before we were using disposable wipes all the time and the cloth wipes were consigned to the cupboard.

With Eli, I wanted to use cloth wipes again (to save money on buying wipes if nothing else) and knew I needed a better solution and then I found Cheeky Wipes. Basically, a Cheeky Wipes set comes with two wipe containers, one for clean wipes and one for dirty, 25 wipes (cotton terry as standard), two bottles of essential oils, again one for clean wipes and one for the dirty wipes box and two waterproof bags for carrying your clean and dirty wipes when you’re out of the house. You can get a mini-kit for cloth nappy users that excludes all the dirty wipes bits (box, essential oil, waterproof bag) as you can just pop the wipes in the nappy and into the nappy bucket. We have the full kit because we started using the wipes before we switched to cloth full-time – Cheeky Wipes are brilliant even if you’re using disposable nappies! We’ve also now bought a second mini-kit set with coloured wipes that we use for cleaning Eli up after eating – we’ve saved a fortune not using disposable wipes.

Pros

• they are much better than disposable wipes at cleaning up poo – one Cheeky Wipe can take the place of three (or more!) disposables
• long-term they are much cheaper than disposables
• they are easy to take out-and-about – I just pop the bag of clean wipes in with the clean nappies and off we go
• they don’t have any chemicals in them that irritate Eli’s skin
• they smell great (even though I’m not a massive fan of lavender usually) – I especially love the rose and geranium and use it for the hands and faces wipes
• they work just as well on faces and hands as they do on bums
• easy to wash with the nappies
• the boxes are great and the latest versions are watertight which helps when an inquisitive baby is using them as a drum and moving them around the lounge
• they are much nicer than the cheap cloth wipes I used to have – they are very unlikely to fray around the edges and the cotton terry is much higher quality

Cons

• sometimes get a bit stained (but a bit of sun can bleach that out)
• getting the dirty wipes from the mucky wipes box into the machine can be gross (if you just put the wipes in the nappy bucket that’s not a problem though)
• can seem a bit expensive initially (but they will save you money if you use them) – definitely look out for sales though, none of our kits/wipes were full price

The vital statistics for our Cheeky Wipes:

How many do we have?

• 50 white cotton terry wipes
• 5 bamboo terry wipes (came free with our original kit)
• 25 pink cotton terry wipes
• 25 blue cotton terry wipes

How long do they last?

I’ve found that 25 wipes will often last me for 4 or more days and I haven’t had any issues with the wipes smelling stale at all.

How easy are the wipes to wash?

We wash our bum wipes with the nappies and the hands and face wipes with an ordinary coloured load of clothes.

How long do they take to dry?

Not long in the tumble drier or if air-dried – they don’t need to be dried after washing if you are going to put them straight into the clean wipes container.

I’m always impressed at how a visit to A&E can make a poorly child well again – even before they see a doctor

Yesterday, at about 10.00am, Eli started throwing up. He then proceeded to sleep, wake, scream, arch his back, retch, vomit, scream, relax, sleep in a regular cycle that lasted about 20 minutes at a time for hours.

By 16.30, when it clearly wasn’t abating, I thought I’d give NHS Direct a call so they could tell me he probably had a virus and I should just keep him hydrated. Basically I wanted them to validate what I thought was the right course of action but, without access to my GP (why do these things always happen on a weekend?) figured NHS Direct would be the next best thing. They told me to go to A&E. Dammit. Of course, once you’ve been given advice like that you have to go otherwise what if it really is serious and you ignored it…

Packed up a bag with all the muslins I could lay my hands on and off Eli and I went. He finally asked for a feed whilst we waited in the waiting room and then proceeded to be violently ill about 10 minutes later. Yay to another mother in the room who helped me clear up the mess as cuddling Eli meant I couldn’t do much but stare at it. We didn’t have to wait long after that incident for a nurse to see us and she rolled her eyes when I told her what NHS Direct had said. Eli was looking ok, just a bit pale, but she had to double-check he could tolerate fluids so she started us on a fluid challenge, 5 ml of water every 5 minutes.

Poor Eli, he was so thirsty that he sobbed each time the syringe of water finished. He wasn’t sick again though and by the time we saw the doctor it was pretty clear we didn’t need to be there. Two hours after we arrived Eli was waving at other children in the waiting room and trying to talk to them. He was having 10 ml of water every 5 minutes and had had 5 minutes of milk without incident. Honestly, you would never have known he had been so ill for most of the day.

Eli today – if you hadn’t just read this you’d never know he’d been ill yesterday…

It’s always a bit embarrassing when you take your very ill honest! baby to A&E and they are clearly in absolutely no danger of anything except an over protective mother by the time they are seen. That said, all I have to do is remember the time I thought Lex (at 4) had a bit of a temperature and a cough and I eventually took him to the walk-in centre and he ended up in hospital for a week with pneumonia (in my defence he’s always been a bit stoic about pain, it really wasn’t obvious at all how ill he actually was!). So I go to A&E when advised even if I don’t think I should, even though I’m 99% sure it’ll just lead to a miraculous recovery and the doctor will think I’m nuts – ‘So he’s your first?’, ‘No my third.’, ‘Oh…’ – just in case!

Using gNappies – putting them together and putting them on

gNappies are great nappies – they’re incredibly slim fitting and look great on – but they do have a few idiosyncrasies that makes them not like any other cloth nappy that I’ve owned/seen. This is not a bad thing but does mean putting them together and putting them on is a bit different too – I thought a little run through might be useful for anyone considering using gNappies (or for anyone already using gNappies but struggling to get a good fit). gNappies come in three parts as shown above: the gPant, a cotton outer (not waterproof); the gPouch, a waterproof pouch to hold the absorbent layer; and the gCloth, the absorbent layer with a fleece top to keep baby comfy and hemp and cotton for absorbency. You can replace the gCloth with gRefills, which are a fully biodegradable, disposable option.

To put the nappy together the gPouch is first poppered into the gPant. This poppering makes it really easy to replace the pouch when you do a nappy change. It also makes the pouch more flexible within the nappy which helps the pouch keep a good seal (when it’s fitted properly!). The gCloth can then be laid in the pouch. The cloth is slightly larger than the pouch which causes the nappy to fold in half slightly – this is expected and makes sure the nappy fits without the cloth moving about and possibly escaping the pouch.

I tend to make up all our nappies at the same time – makes nappy changes a bit quicker. As we have twice as many pouch/cloth combos that gPants I also put the spares together so that I can change Eli into a clean gNappy and then snap in another pouch to the previous gPant. We’re all about saving ourselves a bit of time at the nappy changing station!

Right, so now the nappies have been put together, it’s time to put them onto a baby. The main points to remember when fitting a gNappy are:

1. The ‘g’ logo is on the bum – yes this means that they do up around the back.
2. The tabs must be done up straight and not too tight.
3. The pouch edges must be within the crease of the baby’s leg – very important!
4. Give the gPant a little tug at the back when you’ve finished the change.

Doing up the tabs

gNappy tabs do up at the back which must be great with a toddler – no tempting tabs to yank undone! It’s a bit strange to do a nappy up ‘backwards’ at first but you soon get used to it.

Doing the tabs up straight means no uncomfortable rubbing for the baby. Don’t be tempted to do the tabs as tight as possible – you’ll just end up with lots of leaks around the waistband as the seal will be broken at the top of the pouch.

Checking the pouch

To make sure that the pouch has a good seal around the legs you need to push it inwards so that it is right in the crease of your baby’s leg. This is definitely the most important part of getting a good fit on a gNappy – if the pouch edge is too far out you’ll struggle to avoid lots of leaks around the legs.

All done

Just give the gPant a little yank at the back (the back should be slightly higher than the front) and baby’s all set for 2-3 hours of gNappy wear.

Cloth nappy wishlist

I’m really happy with the cloth nappies that we’ve chosen for our current stash but there are so many other types of nappy out there though and I’d really like to try a few just to see what they are like, all in the interest of blog research of course…

So, each month I’m going to buy a nappy or wrap, use it for a bit and write about it here. Might need to buy a new nappy box first though since the existing two are already full to bursting…

My current fluffy wishlist is (links are to the manufacturer’s website or to retailers that I’ve used and been happy with in the past):

• Blueberry coverall wrap – they do one in the same pattern as Eli’s sling, I am powerless to resist.
• Bumgenius Freetime
• Tots Bots Flexitots – Tilly used the original version as a baby, I’d like to have a go with the latest design
• Motherease Wizard Duo 
• Little Lamb Microfibre and Bamboo
• Itti Bitti Bitti Boo
• Itti Bitti D’lish All in One
• Bambino Mio Mio Solo
• Thirsties Duo All in One
• Ones & Twos All in One
• Close Parent Pop-In New Generation
• Blueberry One Size Bamboo
• Flip Organic
• Bumgenius v4
• Charlie Banana One Size

With one a month this could take a while to get through but I’m going to try as many as I can before Eli potty trains.

Guiding hands and growing up

Eli is currently putting shapes in his shape sorter for the 5th time in a row. Each time all the shapes are in the sorter he complains until they have once more been released. It’s a bit of work for his helper – he’s still too little to find the correct hole for each shape and needs some help at points to orientate the shapes to fit them through – but the shouts of glee once the shape is in definitely make you smile.

Other than shapes, Eli most likes to play with balls. He’ll play by himself, throwing the ball and then chasing it, or with someone else, throwing the ball to them and waiting for it to be rolled back to him.

It’s in these games that his growing understanding and ability to communicate shine through. He was playing with a little toy golf ball the other day and when he threw it, it rolled under the side table next to the sofa I was sitting on. Unable to retrieve it himself Eli decided a big person should help and so he pulled himself up on the sofa, grabbed my hand and pulled it down gently willing me to get the ball for him. As we then passed the ball between each other it became my job to find the ball as it got stuck under the sofa. He’d have a good attempt at getting it himself but when that didn’t work my hand would be grabbed once more and I would be directed to do my part.

Moments like these remind me that whilst he is still my baby, it won’t be long before Eli is no longer an actual baby – toddlerhood is almost here.

It’s a recurring theme but we have a poorly boy again

A poorly (but smiley) Eli.

It is fascinating, in a completely sleep-deprived way, how each of my children has suffered teething differently. Lex’s first teeth resulted in fevers and a clingy, limp, sleepy (except at night) baby. With him Medised, now outlawed, was brilliant as it helped him sleep despite his discomfort. Tilly didn’t have the fevers, I do remember disturbed sleep but generally teething did not bother her too badly (that I remember – maybe I’ve blanked the memory!). Eli seems to be following in Lex’s footsteps and throwing in a couple of variations of his own.

It’s been a rough couple of days and nights for Eli and those of us he has been depriving of sleep and I think that he has another tooth (or two) on its way out. Of course whether or not I’m right won’t be proven for a day or so but it helps to have something to blame!

Just like last time he cut a tooth we have a feverish boy – his temperature’s been up for the last two days, at its highest reaching 38.9°C (easily controlled using paracetamol or ibuprofen luckily). A new variation on the theme was the D&V he had after his nap this afternoon. Whilst smelly and messy it was a good opportunity to end the extended play date Lex and Tilly were having with some of Lex’s friends from school who live nearby. Eli’s nappies generally have been yuck and frequent for the past couple of days.

No sign of any other illness though and there is a massive bump next to his one existing top tooth. I really hope I get some sleep tonight but I won’t expect it, pity it’s R’s turn for a lie-in tomorrow morning.

Guiding hands and growing up

Eli is currently putting shapes in his shape sorter for the 5th time in a row. Each time all the shapes are in the sorter he complains until they have once more been released. It’s a bit of work for his helper – he’s still too little to find the correct hole for each shape and needs some help at points to orientate the shapes to fit them through – but the shouts of glee once the shape is in definitely make you smile.

Other than shapes, Eli most likes to play with balls. He’ll play by himself, throwing the ball and then chasing it, or with someone else, throwing the ball to them and waiting for it to be rolled back to him.

It’s in these games that his growing understanding and ability to communicate shine through. He was playing with a little toy golf ball the other day and when he threw it, it rolled under the side table next to the sofa I was sitting on. Unable to retrieve it himself Eli decided a big person should help and so he pulled himself up on the sofa, grabbed my hand and pulled it down gently willing me to get the ball for him. As we then passed the ball between each other it became my job to find the ball as it got stuck under the sofa. He’d have a good attempt at getting it himself but when that didn’t work my hand would be grabbed once more and I would be directed to do my part.

Moments like these remind me that whilst he is still my baby, it won’t be long before Eli is no longer an actual baby – toddlerhood is almost here.