[advert:mpu]Our baby has always enjoyed a nice, big poo. I imagine him age 20 - he’ll be the one in his house-share who commandeers the toilet for an hour with a copy of Viz so they're all bitching about fumiating the loo. He poos for England. And he especially likes a good poo at night time. He wakes up around 5.30am at the moment and honestly, the house smells so much like a Victorian sewer, it’s impossible to believe that fetid mess has come from one, tiny, 9 month old cutey.
There’s so much poo that it leaks out extensively in all directions so we have to wash both his night suits, his grobag, the sheet and the cover almost nightly – at least 5 times a week - sometimes there's even poo juice on the sheets and mattress cover. And yes, I’ve tried feeding him enough high carb foods to constipate a horse, and I’ve tried every variety of disposable and washable nappy known to man. But it’s the same, nasty, leaky story every morning. Ds1 and I measure a morning by how many wipes it takes to get the baby clean 'ooh! It's gonna be a nine-wiper today, Rhianon!' he says, gleefully. It dominates our morning routine, the clothes are threadbare from washing and frankly, there’s more to life than cleaning baby poo, right?
I needed to take action. Christmas shopping online I was struck by inspiration: rubber knickers! That’s what we need! Google will provide!
Yes, yes, in retrospect I appreciate it was naïve of me to run a search for ‘rubber knickers’ expecting baby accessories (WAIT! I see your finger twitching for google but I don’t want your ruined reputation on my conscience – save it till you’re home from work at least), even worse because I actually clicked on the first one, just seeing ‘precious baby wear’ not noticing it to be of the adult baby variety. No, don’t think about it.
'Plastic pants’ turned out to be a bit more fruitful – tons of forum stuff on bedwetting for older kids though. Poor kids, it must be terrible having to wear these things when you’re going to your first sleepovers. It was still tricky to find pants which are higher at the back than those designed for use with disposable nappies, but still for use with babies, but google did provide in the form of blue and frilly (I know! Great, huh?). Me, my exhausted washing machine and the Society for Abused Grobags eagerly await their arrival.
Bullying doesn’t just happen to other kids, it’s not always easy to spot and we need to give kids the confidence and the strategies to recognise and combat threatening behaviour.
Dp & I are getting married, 8 years and two kids down the line. It's less than a week away, we've got 100 people coming and we've yet to buy the rings - I haven't even found a dress - but here's ...
We've all been there - when your child makes an innocent remark (usually at the top of her voice) which turns out to be a horribly personal insult to someone within direct earshot... or worse...
Come on, I challenge you not to smile...
Watch out bugs, baby's about! Wiggle your tasty little abdomen in front of him and you're dead meat, honey!
The first person to wish me happy mother's day on Sunday was my mother in law, on my mobile, in the toilet, about 5pm. Can't get much more depressing than that...
Anyone else’s kids into this? It's like SecondLife but with penguins and for kids...
We're now halls supervisors, living in a quiet block and eating in the canteen with 230 students where every night is a potential party. It's great fun, but a bit out of the ordinary... how can the ...
After being pretty much indifferent to who gives him his presents, this year it seems that ds1 is DESPERATE to believe in Santa Claus, and the man’s lifestyle, generosity and ‘big brother’ ...
Yay! Ds2’s started to crawl at 8 & ½ months! He has been doing this thing for a while where he goes on all fours, sticks his bum in the air and then pumps up and down in a very wobbly and ...
An hour on an amphibious car round the sights of London with five four year olds yelling ‘quack quack!’ to passers by: more fun than it sounds!
It may take a while to settle my four-year-old and six-month-old into their new, German nursery.
So here we all are – we’re in our wee flat in Germany with just a few boxes, some raincoats and wellies and a couple of sleeping bags. Like Glastonbury without the mud, drugs or music....
Stagger, the ugly superhero who only comes out at night, is my son's new alter-ego...
So, the baby starts nursery on 28th August... and hasn't yet taken more than a mouthful from a cup or bottle. It's an uphill battle.
It's started: huge clumps of hair coming out when I brush my fingers through it. Plug hole totally bunged up when I have a shower. The old postpartum hair loss begins again...
So I think the happy hormones must be finally wearing off (fun while it lasted) and the incessant tiredness beginning to kick in. Or perhaps those are just my excuses for leaving the baby in the car ...
Paranoia was only made worse by horror stories from other mums: one who walked in on her older son standing in front of the new baby wielding a pair of scissors...
Son no.1 couldn't have been more pleased with his new baby brother. He picks out the cutest nappy for him to wear, and seems charmed when the baby does a poo whilst sitting on him!
We're pox-free, hooray! But a few days later ds broke out in hive-like red lumps - turns out that their wee bodies can have an allergic reaction to the chickenpox virus which causes its own rash. ...
We don’t go out trick or treating. We lie in wait for them to come to us. This year, ds dressed in his skeleton outfit and accosted passers by with sweets... All was fine until he stuck an eyeball up ...
Poor old ds really isn't looking forward to 'Big School'. “They won’t like me” he sobbed, “I’ll be in the corner of the playground on my own because I won’t have any friends of my own!” He thinks ...