Silent sunday #6

Point+shoot #2

On Saturday we had a couple of viewings plus a second viewing! 

They all seemed to go really well, so hopefully we will get some positive feed back from our estate agent today. (fingers crossed)

I'm excited about getting a new house but I am quickly getting fed up of randoms looking around my house ..... Yup I've turned into an anti social grump and do have to hold back the "evils" as people come looking round at 7pm weekdays! 

On Sunday we made the most of the lovely weather and took the boys for a walk on Headley Heath.

We had a great time, we saw some beautiful horses, gorgeous doggies, hunted some dinosaurs, collected sticks and Oscar had a good old look at some horse poo! 

Some lovely people offered to take our photo, I'm sure if they knew it would take forever to actually get us all looking straight at the camera and sat still they would have just walked on! We are grateful they didn't, even though it's not a super photo it is the only one of all 6 of us! 

Once we got home Noah finished off his homework then completed his first toucan box - his box was to make two racing jellyfish! 

He was really proud of his little jellies and is looking forward to his next toucan box! 

What did you get up to this weekend?? 

Why don't you join in with this great linky?!

Pop on to snowingindoors blog and find out how! 

 

To find out more about the .toucan-box click on the link! 

Headley Heath

Silent Sunday #5

Our daily routine

Living with four little monsters I really need to be one step ahead or i end up wanting to run away and hide under a rock! 

Of course this actually does happen a few times a week ( I'm not perfect and I slip on the odd occasion ) 

Our typical day usually goes like this.......unless we have play dates or the boys are at nursery or it's a weekend

* 6.30am. Mummy get up time, shower and dress 

* 6.45am first coffee of the day, Jon goes to work

* 7am. Get Noah and the twins up and down stairs 

* 7.15am breakfast time 

* 7.30am get Ru up, changed bum and first bottle 

* 8am dress twins, Noah gets dressed

* 8.20 am get everyone's shoes on and out the door

* 8.50am drop Noah off at his class

Sometimes depending on the days I'll take the boys to the park or do some extra food shopping (constantly shopping for more food, thanks boys) or just go straight home and let boys do as they please

* 11am snack time - usually fruit sometimes some choccy biscuits, coffee time for mummy

* 11.30am feed Ru then get on with the house work. 

* 12pm lunch time for the twins and mummy if I'm hungry.

* 12.10pm coffee time for mummy 

* 1pm usually around this time the twins will nap, other wise we will go in the garden or attempt to do an activity, if all 3 nap I get on with house work 

* 2pm coffee time for mummy 

* 2.30pm feed Ru 

* 2.45pm get shoes on, in the car head to school 

* 3.20pm collect Noah 

on the odd occasion will take all of them to the park 

* 4.30pm feed Ru some purée, then once finished start on boys dinner 

* 5.15pm dinner time for the boys, another coffee to get me through to dinner! 

* 5.45pm Jon home 

* 6pm start baths - Ru then the twins then Noah 

* 6.45pm daddy does story time whilst I feed Ru his last bottle 

* 7pm twins in bed!

I listen to Noah do his reading then myself or Jon will read to him 

* 7.15pm Noah in bed

* 8pm mummy and daddy dinner time 

Then chill out time lol! 

What's your daily routine like, or do you just go with the flow? 

Ella's kitchen - first tastes review

I have used Ella's kitchen foods on all my boys, the twins still eat the snacks and have the squeezey fruit smoothies such as the purple one, the red one and the green one! 

........now it seems it's little Ru's turn to try it out. 

I wanted to wait till Ru was 6 months (the recommended age to wean), but my chunk is ready now :( it's sad that he's growing up but it's also exciting to be on to an new adventure with him. 

I weaned Noah early and the twins didn't really wean till they were over 6 months.

I've had enough little ones to know what signs to look for and so on.

Your baby is ready to start weaning when they can do three key things:

• Sit up - with their head held steady
• Feed themselves - look at food, grab it, and put it in their mouth by themselves
• Swallow food - babies who aren't quite ready for solids often push their food back out with their tongue

It's always a good idea to talk to your health visitor before you wean, specially if you do it before 6 months.

I emailed the lovely lovely people at Ella's Kitchen about doing a review on their pouches and they were ever so helpful. 

They also sent me a lovely box filled with 6 70g pouches for Ru to test.

On tonight's menu it's prunes prunes prunes!

No Ru you can't eat the packet!

Seeing as this is Ru's first time with food I was expecting it to go all wrong.......but the little chunk I have created ate like a pro! You would have thought he'd be eating for months the way he gobbled it up.

I was only going to feed him half but he cried when I took it away so I let him finish it!

After the pouch was all finished we were left with one happy but slightly messy bub!

I do intend make Ru's food myself but I always like to have a ready to use selection for the times when I'm feeling lazy or when I'm in a rush. 

There's nothing better than knowing you are feeding your baby the best even when it comes from a pouch. 

A little bit about Ella's pouches 

·         The First Tastes range is aimed at babies from four months and includes nine yummy tastes

·         Each pouch contains nothing but one single deeelicious fruit or veggie

·         The squishy pouches are perfect for introducing little ones to a variety of tastes right at the start of their weaning journey, encouraging them to grow up to be good little eaters and introducing healthy eating habits that last a lifetime

·         The 70g pouches are the perfect size for little tummies

·         They’re super convenient and perfect for popping in your changing bag for use on-the-go

·         Tastes can be mixed with baby rice or cereal for slightly older babies to enjoy as a scrummy snack or dessert

You can also collect all your pouches and send them back to be recycled. 

Every time I'm down the baby isle (which is a lot, it's my favourite isle to be in! Sad I know lol) I'm always noticing more and more of  Ella's kitchen range. Some look so  yummy that I would eat them! 

Our weaning adventure has started and it looks like it's going to be an exciting one!

For more info on Ella's Kitchen, head over to their fab website  https://www.ellaskitchen.co.uk 

Saving the world one nappy at a time.....my cloth journey

I have been using cloth since Ru was 5 weeks old. Someone on my instagram led me onto the baba and boo web page 

Babaandboo

Where you can buy a trail nappy with two inserts. 

The hardest part about getting a trail nappy is picking what gorgeous design you want!

There are soooooooooooooo many to choose from. 

I picked mr fox as my first ever cloth purchase!

I think I may have waited at least.....oh say an hour before I was back on the website and ordering a bundle! 

I am well and truly hooked.

I do have to stop myself buying nappies every now and then as I would happily blow all my money on pretty nappies! The point of cloth nappies being cheaper than disposables pretty much goes out the window when you see all the range you can get! 

You can sell them on as pre loved once you are potty trained so you'll make some money back off them.....that's if you can bare to part with them. 

I now have a lot of baba and boo nappies in ru's stash 

Some of my other nappies are tot bots, gnappies and some cheapies off amazon.

This is a handful of my favourite nappies

Why did I decided to go over to the cloth side? 

The amount of nappies we get through with the twins is ridiculous, we pretty much fill up one of our wheelie bins up a week with nappies! 

The smell is awful. 

They aren't as cute as reusables

And the money ...... We spend a fortune on them things that just end up in a bin then rotting away in a big hole in the ground! 

I wanted to change up my way of parenting, I'm also trying to be more Eco friendly and the benefits of reusables really won me over.

The Many Benefits of Using Reusable Nappies

During the course of infancy a baby will need approximately 6,000 nappy changes...if that baby has worn disposable nappies that is 6,000 nappies that will more than likely end up in a landfill where they will sit for hundreds of years- far longer on this planet than the baby that wore them. Shocking stuff...

Make the decision to use reusable nappies, and you are instantly diverting masses of waste from landfill sites, so go ahead and pat yourself of the back!

 Real Nappies- Better for the Planet

Around 8 million disposable nappies are used and thrown away every single day in the UK! ). 92% of these end up in landfill sites. We are a tiny island, and this is quite simply unsustainable. With such massive pressure on our landfill sites, the use of incinerators is going to increase, would you want one near you?

 

By using reusable instead of disposable nappies you can reduce your household waste by half. In the UK alone we get through 500,000 tonnes of disposable nappies every year, don't contribute to that.

 

It is estimated that disposable nappies take 500 years to breakdown, but no one is yet sure if they ever fully decompose as they have not been in existence long enough yet! That means that every single disposable nappy that has ever made its way into landfill is still there....

 

Ancient Canadian and Scandinavian forests are being felled, and animal species threatened, by deforestation in order to supply the UK’s paper pulp- the largest single component of the disposable nappy.

 

Instructions on disposable nappy packages recommend that fecal matter be deposited into the toilet before disposing of it, but less than one half of one percent of all waste from disposable nappies goes into the sewage system.

 

Instead the solids end up in landfills, the bacteria contaminating ground water and posing a threat to wildlife and the ecosystem. Not what you would necessary consider when throwing that nappy straight in the bin!

 

It is estimated that more than 300 pounds of wood, 50 pounds of petroleum feedstocks and 20 pounds of chlorine are used to produce disposable nappies for one baby each year.

Real Nappies - Better for your wallet

 By ‘going cloth’ your family can incur a direct saving of up to £500, and even more for baby number 2, 3, 4, 5.....!

 

For every £1 spent on disposable nappies, there is a cost to the taxpayer of 10p to dispose of them! Help to ease the expense on your wallet both directly and indirectly by switching to reusable nappies.

Real Nappies- Better for your baby

By choosing real nappies, you are helping to protect your baby’s very delicate skin from the harsh chemicals, plastics and adhesives that form the basis of disposables. A baby’s skin is 5 times thinner than that of an adult, and it is vital that we carefully consider what we allow it to absorb. A baby is usually in a nappy for 24 hours a day, for 2.5 years...

 

In 2000, a scientific study was conducted at Kiel University in Germany which indicated that the widespread use of disposable nappies, which heat the testes above body temperature, is a significant factor in the declining fertility rates in Western European men.

 

Wide spread nappy rash surfaced with the introduction of the disposable nappy. A review of Proctor & Gambles own studies (The Landbank Consultancy Limited, 1991) found that the incidence of nappy rash increased from 7.1% to 61% with the increased use of disposable nappies.

 

Sodium Polyacrylate is the chemical used to absorb and hold urine in disposable nappies. This chemical has been linked to toxic shock syndrome and was banned from use in tampons in 1985. It can cause allergic reactions and it lethal to cats when inhaled. Its long term safety to a child's vulnerable genitals has not been assessed. In the short term, its super absorbency draws moisture away from the skin, in some instances causing severe nappy rash, and bleeding of perineal and scrotal tissue.

 

Problems reported to the Consumer Protection Agency relating to disposable nappies include; the discovery of wooden splinters plastic melting to the skin, choking on linings and paper tabs, ink staining the skin and chemical burns.

 

The design of disposable nappies means that the child can not feel when they are wet, which often leads to delayed potty training. Real nappy wearing babies will generally potty train sooner than those in disposables.

I was worried about the extra washing, but  my washing machine is on constantly so I hardly notice that I have extra loads with the nappies. 

I had looked at cloth when Noah was still a bump but being young and not to into saving the planet I discarded it and sold on the big bag of tot bots I had bough at the baby show. 

Oh how I regret that now!

I still use disposables at night time as I have yet to find a nappy that doesn't leak. Ru is a very heavy wetter and no matter how many insets I add to the nappy it always seems to leak :( 

Here are some links to some of my other favourite nappies 

TotsBots

gnappies

My babies are big boys now!

The twins started nursery yesterday!!!

They went for an afternoon session, 12pm till 3pm. 

I knew they wouldn't cry (like Noah used to!)

They are a lot more out going than he was I think that's due to there bring two of them! 

 I wasn't prepared for them to walk in without saying goodbye or even a kiss. 

My heart broke just a little, my babies are all grown up!

I went home and felt like id forgotten them. I pretty much spent the 3 hours drinking coffee and eating. Which was nice as I didn't have 4 little hands reaching for everything on my plate. Ru enjoyed rolling around the lounge without bumping into a million toys.

Next week I'm going to spend the time a boy more wisely and take Ru swimming.

When it came to collecting them I was running out the door, they may drive me nuts but it keeps life interesting! 

They didn't want to leave and cried most of the way to collect Noah, but once in the car they crashed out! 

The teachers said they had a great time and that they were really lovely! 

I'm sure they can't wait till next Thursday, I'm also glad they loved it, makes me feel I've done the right thing putting them in before they are 3 and their free funding starts!