by iamcrabstix | Jan 27, 2017 | general parenting
As of 17th Jan, RLT is on stage two of his weaning journey. I’ve not really written much about weaning, because some of the other mamas are rocking it with the baby-led weaning journey and we’ve taken a different path altogether. Baby food / purees you say? Kind of, he’s been given finger food too – but I guess you could consider our journey more of a vegetable-led one!

For stage one, we introduced organic porridge and cereal for breakfast and pureed vegetables for lunch and dinner. After around ten days of this, I wanted to introduce him to chicken etc but I hold my hands up and say that I am not a cook at the best of times – so we’ve used jars and pouches to introduce meat, in addition to home-cooked and blended veg.
I’m not an advocate of filling a baby with things they don’t need – therefore I have steered away from products which are pasta based. We as a general rule, don’t eat gluten in our house, it offers nothing nutritionally, so we will try to keep away from pastas and breads. Although if something contains wheat flour, for instance, as a thickener, I’m not going to that extreme to avoid it.
We also don’t eat pork. It isn’t a religious thing, it is a respect for pigs thing. They have been found to be as intelligent as dogs, and I wouldn’t eat a dog, so why would I eat a pig? I also don’t agree with halal meat as I think it causes unnecessary suffering to the animals.
Babease have a great selection which fits with my views and flavour options I would like RLT to enjoy for stage two, but I have to order them online for delivery to our local Boots, this takes some organisation – when I return to work there is a larger boots store in the town, so maybe I will be able to pick them up with ease.
So thus far on our stage two journey we have opted for Ella’s Kitchen pouches. I was originally deterred by the price of Ella’s Kitchen pouches compared to the glass jars from Cow and Gate and Heinz, but you pay for what you get – quality ingredients and 100% organic.
My original interest in Ella’s Kitchen products was sparked before Christmas, when I noticed that they were offering a child friendly Christmas Dinner pouch with all of the trimmings and as an added bonus they were donating 30p from the sale of each Ella’s Kitchen jingle belly (as they branded it) pouch to Save the Children’s Families and Schools together programme . This programme aimed to promote the importance of family meal time and the positive impact family meal time can have on a childs’ development. I thought this was an excellent cause for them to link up with, I do like when companies do corporate social responsibility well. Sadly RLT was too young to try these on Christmas day, but as the best before dates were October 2017, we snapped some up for January – who doesn’t want to extend Christmas for as long as possible (I also wanted him to get used to eating sprouts from a young age!).

Ellas Kitchen Jingle Belly pouch

When we ventured to Tesco in a neighbouring town there was a Tesco Baby Club event on and they were giving away free testers of a dip made with the Ella’s Kitchen Parsnip, Parsnip, Parsnip and a few other ingredients such as garlic (wow it was garlicky!). I tried it, as I don’t eat a lot of garlic I found it too much, but RLT thought it was amazing! He got it all over as he was eating it from a carrot stick, but he didn’t care – he was so happy! We were given a sample of vegetable risotto to take with us and as this Tesco had a massive selection and it was on offer 5 for 4, I decided to stock up!

RLT with the Tesco Baby Club Event dip all over his face
Infact, when I think about it, I try all of his food and would pretty much have a bowl full of all of it (except for the stuff with cumin in, can’t abide that!) as I don’t like seasonings – so maybe I need to go on a baby food diet?

spoilt for choice
I’m returning to work soon and I know there is even less chance of me getting my act together and cooking meals for the week. I just don’t enjoy it. Therefore I am going to continue on with the pouches – it allows me to know exactly what my baby is eating and be happy with the fact that he isn’t getting pumped full of stuff he doesn’t need.
My inclination to pay a little bit more to get good quality food was amplified this week by the food standard agency’s release that some baby food has been found to contain high levels of acrylamide – cow and gate being one of the culprits named (apparently they withdrew a cereal because they couldn’t bring the levels down, do I trust them now? Not a chance!). So important to know that your baby is eating right!
We’re only a few weeks into our stage two journey, so will provide updates on his favourite tastes soon! So far, anything with cheese in it (just like his mum!).
by iamcrabstix | Jan 3, 2017 | Misc
Thanks to Care Johnson for the tag – here are my quiz of the year answers!
What was your highlight of 2016?
Having RLT on 17th June and labour only taking a few hours!
Name one thing you are most likely to remember about 2016 if asked in five years time?
RLT obvs
Sum up 2016 in one word.
Awesome.
Name one pearl of wisdom from 2016 that you will carry with you through 2017
Focus on what is important and don’t get stressed by things that I have no control over (work).
Do you have any new year resolutions?
Yes, see previous post.
How are you seeing in the new year?
Bit late, this! I was asleep!
What would you most like to do in 2017?
Win the lottery so I can be a SAHM.
What are your main goals for 2017?
Same as 50 cent’s – Get rich or die trying LOLZ THAT’S A JOKE.
by iamcrabstix | Dec 29, 2016 | general parenting, rlt
So, RLT’s first Christmas has been and gone! As usual I got massively anxious about everything, such as having people dig at my parenting methods, RLT getting overwhelmed and out of his routine, the state of the house and the cat feeling left out. Turns out, it wasn’t all that bad (with exception of the state of the house, that got pretty bad).
RLT has been sleeping soooo much better for the past three nights – it is a Christmas miracle! Last night (28th), he didn’t wake once between 7.30pm and 7am. This has never happened before in his 27 weeks and 5 days on this earth!
He has been so brilliant over the Christmas holidays, he is so nosey, he has skipped a few naps, but I’ve tried to be quite strict in putting him down at 10am and 2pm to try and keep some kind of routine for him. I’ve also tried to keep his meal times as normal as possible too. Even as an overtired baby, especially on 27th when we went to Mark’s mum’s for the afternoon, he didn’t create he simply just rubbed his eyes alot. He definitely has a brilliant temprement (although, I have seen a different side to this when he has eaten all of his chocolate pudding).
Christmas Eve was lovely spend as a family, we popped round my Mum’s around lunchtime as she was doing the annual making mince pies for Santa with the kids. We got the table set early and Mark prepped the birds for Christmas Day (as in following Jamie Oliver’s recipes, not giving them a team talk). We couldn’t find anything we wanted to watch on TV so after browsing Netflix for an hour as we do most days, we settled on some film about a blended family with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, it was alright – I cried probably more than I should have at a comedy film! We got RLT’s presents prepped, stocked with batteries and ready to go for Christmas morning. Christmas tradition dictates that you have to have new pyjamas for Christmas Eve, so we all looked very festive (my Home Alone ones are from the men’s section of Tesco, don’t tell anyone). RLT is sporting my ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS YOU FILTHY ANIMALS’ hat which I bought from Urban Outfitters in New York, last Christmas.

Christmas Eve
On Christmas morning, the house seemed freezing, so when RLT woke at about 6:45, I brought him a bottle upstairs and we all snuggled in our bed until the heating had kicked in at about 8am! I went downstairs to take a video of RLT’s face when he saw his presents, in true RLT style, he wasn’t phased! But he’s six months old, we’ll let him off with that! As i’m on maternity leave, Mark and I decided not to buy each other gifts, he did however, surprise me with a night away at Rudding Park on 7th January, which was in a card from RLT. So now I feel terrible for not getting him anything!
Back to RLT – most of his gifts seemed to be made of yellow plastic, which made us laugh. As grandparents came over, the living room was getting packed with the stuff, so we decided to designate the conservatory as his playroom, however, we haven’t quite worked out how this will work over the winter months as it is freezing with that door open!

Christmas Haul
As RLT’s toys are being stored in the conservatory at the moment, foam mats seem to be a good shout on how to keep the cold out – the floor is ceramic tiles and freezing! We have an electric heater in there, but are very conscious of the electricity bill from having it on all of the time.
We even managed a night out on Boxing Day, was nice to get out. Probably shouldn’t have drank so much in such a short space of time, but I thought we may regret not going as we haven’t really been out as a couple since September 2015! Was nice to see friends too.
Here is our Christmas in pics.
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by iamcrabstix | Dec 22, 2016 | general parenting
At six months old, RLT has done three terms of baby yoga! Not bad, ey? Not your every day baby activity, so here is our review!
Firstly, baby yoga classes in the UK, are nothing like the extreme videos that you may have been of a woman in Egypt throwing babies around! OMG, I couldn’t believe it when I watched the video – how on earth can parents let this woman do this to their children? The poor babies are crying their eyes out too! The video is below, but watch with your hands over your eyes if you are a parent!
https://youtu.be/T7ihdsjIqhI
So the baby yoga we attended was (thankfully) nothing like the above! Baby yoga in the UK, according to Mamababybliss ‘builds on your baby’s physical and mental developmental milestones and will aid your baby’s brain development and your baby’s sense of co-ordination, balance and sensory and motor skills.’
I didn’t particularly fancy the baby massage course, as I had already had some experience of this from the health visitor and RLT didn’t seem to be a fan, so we opted for the next class, which was baby yoga – ran by the Mamababybliss practitioner in our area, Angela.
The sessions consist of gentle stretches and breathing exercises for mum to ease you into the sessions and then baby’s turn! The five week programmes are geared around babies from newborn stages to crawling, as there are three different stages. Newborn stage is mostly matt based, with some jumping! The songs that accompany the moves are relatively well known such as ‘Daisy, Daisy’ and ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’ as well as some others I’d never heard of such as Jumping Bean and Mr Sun (which my niece reliably informed me is on Barney the Dinosaur’ durrr).

RLT at the end of his second term of baby yoga
Angela was extremely knowledgeable, welcoming and great with the babies. If your baby was upset, needed feeding etc nothing was a problem. Most of the mums in the class were an already formed friendship group, who had already studied it once before, so my stupid thoughts of making new friends were soon out of the window. When the exercises are complete there is playtime where drinks and snacks for mums are on offer, to give everyone time to talk and the babies to play. As my class had an already formed friendship group, I felt a little bit out of place at the end, so just chatted to Angela or the one other lady who didn’t know the rest of the group. I don’t think the other lady minded the lack of chat as much as I did, I just felt very much like an outsider.
When the term ended and it was time to move up a class, I opted to do the first class again – for two reasons really, one being I knew some mums who would be doing the class so it would be more of an enjoyable experience for me and two, the next session would require the babies to be sitting up a bit more and as RLT bypassed massage he started early, so wasn’t ready for this! He started baby yoga when he was about 12 weeks old, when I think they’re usually a bit older, so at 17 weeks, he wasn’t strong enough to be sitting all of the time in the next class.
We did another five weeks, which I felt a lot more comfortable with as there were two other mums I knew. As RLT had five weeks experience on the babies, it was easy to see how much stronger he was as a consequence – as many of the babies were older than him too, this was interesting to see the difference the yoga had made to his movement. As soon as we put the babies on their feet, he knew it was time for jumping bean (you gently bounce your babies on their feet while singing a song about them being a jumping bean). It was very funny, but also great that he had such a good recollection – but by god my arms hurt by the end of it if there was a full class.

RLT at the end of term three of baby yoga
One of the mums I knew didn’t join us at the advanced class as she was going back to work, but the next stage taught great new movements based on the babies being stronger and being able to sit up a little bit more. Some of the songs and moves were the same but there were developments on how the babies moved and responded – they werent laid on the yoga mats this time, they were sat up, moving around on us, being upside down and still being jumping beans of course! It is lovely to see the babies recognise the songs and know what is coming next. There was a lot of ball and mirror work too in this stage.
I don’t think the PHD stage is available in our area yet, but I think I will definitely do the advanced course again rather than not do it at all. I would definitely recommend baby yoga to anyone with a baby. I was so glad to have found it as there is very little in my area other than what they offer at the Children’s Centres and I don’t find them suitable to my needs most of the time.