Mia 19 month update

So my little baby is now a full blown toddler, throwing tantrums when she doesn't get her own way, learning and discovering new things everyday and becoming more independent with feeding herself, playing by herself and communicating with you.

 

This month Mia has learnt two new words:

 

'uh oh'

'choo choo' (as in choo choo train!)

 

She is still obsessed with books and will sit and look at any book, even one without pictures! She is sleeping better now, she goes to bed at 8:30pm and won't wake until sunrise the next morning. Occasionally she will wake when we come to bed but she always goes back to sleep pretty quickly!

 

She is developing her taste buds and has tried quiche, fresh yoghurt and strawberry smoothies and babybel cheese this month.

 

She is wearing 6-9 and 6-12 month clothing, but still needs a belt for any trousers that do not have the self adjustable elasticated waist. Her hair is also finally long enough for hair clips now!

 

She's becoming more independent with eating and playing now. She can entertain herself while I am tidying the kitchen or organising the changing bag. I bought a potty this month although we haven't started potty training yet. Mia isn't ready but I thought it was a good idea to get her used to it and get her to practice sitting on there before bath time.

 

 

Tips for travelling to London

These are my handy travel tips for travelling to London specifically with a baby or toddler.

1. Pack plenty of snacks and water. London is expensive and travelling is stressful. The last thing you want is a screaming toddler on the train because they are hungry! 

2. Try to take a lightweight stroller or sling. There are lots of stairs in London and the tubes don't have lifts generally so you need to be able to lug your buggy up the stairs. I would recommend using a lightweight stroller rather than a normal buggy. 

3. Pre-book tickets. If your planning a day to London specifically because you want to go to the aquarium, the London eye, Madam Tussauds etc make sure you pre-book your tickets. The last thing you want is to plan your whole day around an attraction which when you arrive is to totally booked up! I tell you this from personal experience! 

4. Be prepared to either barge your way through crowds with your stroller or be prepared to stand in one spot all day waiting for people to stop walking directly in your path. People are often completely in their own world in London, tourists busy looking at the sights to notice you standing there with your stroller and screaming toddler trying to manipulate your way through the crowds. Force your way through, people will either move or get their ankles run over! You can tell how much I enjoy a day out in London can't you?! 

5. Try to relax and enjoy your day! The biggest problem in London is people trying to get to places quickly because thery're in a rush. When you have a young child with you it's hard enough to get anywhere quickly let alone through crowds of people. Try to take the day slowly and give yourself plenty of time to get to places. 

I hope you found some of these tips useful! Please let me know in the comments your top tips for travelling into London with a toddler or baby!

Apps for toddlers

Some of our favourite toddler apps are:

Fisher price storybooks 1, 2 & 3. There are 3 apps each containing 2 stories each. Mia loves them as they are simple and easy for her to use. Also I like the fact that the lady reading the story has an English accent.

 

Fisher price giggle gang. This app has 2 games. One being basic where the baby or toddler just has to touch the screen to make the giggle gang jump around and laugh and one that is set up like a piano. Both are easy and simple to use. There is another app by fisher price with shapes and colours which is exactly the same. This is good when you want to start discussing shapes and colours with your toddler. 

Oxford Reading Tree series. I only downloaded this because they were having an offer where it was free for a weekend. But after downloading it I found it to be really good. I would say it's aimed at 3 years + as most of the activities are too hard for Mia. She can still read the stories on there as they read them to you which she enjoys. It has activities to do with phonics, blending and beginning sounds. It will be really useful when Mia is a little older.
 

Our Journey: co sleeping to a toddler bed

I was always led to believe that moving your child either from a cot to a toddler bed or from co-sleeping to their own bed was a nightmare! I had put off moving Mia for a couple of months because I was dreading it so much! However, it really wasn't that bad! What I would say that is if you are co-sleeping and wanting to transition your baby or toddler to a cot or bed you need to be firm and stick with it! Mia tried everything to get back into our bed, crying as soon as we left the room even if we had sat next to her bed for an hour waiting for her to fall asleep, thinking she had fallen asleep, but the second we moved she would wake and cry, continually waking all night - this is the hardest one as by 4am you are so tired you just want to give in and bring her in your bed as you know that at least that way you will get a couple of hours rest! Forcing her way out of the sleep sack so that she would wake up freezing and you would have to keep going in to put her back inside the sleep sack.

When I decided to stop the co-sleeping and move Mia straight to a toddler bed it was because we had previously tried to move her to the cot a few months before and tried the cry it out method (never again!) and she was so upset she cried pretty much continuously until 4am!! I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown and the whole thing was a total disaster which left Mia fearing that cot from that day on. I also think the fact she had always slept in a bed with us meant she was more used to a bed and that's why she has settled much quicker into a toddler bed. Another positive is that Mia doesn't try to get out of her bed. Never before has she got out of bed and started playing or trying to come downstairs (touch wood) I honestly believe that this is because she is used to being in a bed and is used to the fact that once we are in bed we didn't get out of our bed so why would she?!

The first month when we moved Mia we used to sit next to her bed and wait for her to fall asleep just so that she got used to her new room and new bed. She used to wake a number of times a night but we were strong and didn't give in and eventually the waking got less and less. After about 6 weeks we completely stopped sitting with her when she was falling asleep. I used to sit on the other side of the room on a rocking chair, no eye contact and browse the internet on the iPad. She had started though to get a little cheeky and just sit up in bed watching me so  decided it was time for Mia to learn to fall asleep on her own. Now I take her upstairs, change her nappy and get her dressed for bed, clean her teeth, read her 2-3 stories and say goodnight. I then leave the room. She cries (well more like moans) for 2-3 minutes and then falls asleep. She doesn't wake most nights until around midnight, usually because she has lost the dummy and then stays asleep until sunrise (I really need to sort out the blackout blinds!)

I think the most important thing when transitioning a child into a bed is to be consistent, keep a strong routine and never give in!

Ocado

I wanted to write this post to tell all my readers about how impressed I have been with the products and customer service from Ocado. 

Ocado is an online grocery store, so rather than doing your online food shop with Tesco or Sainsbury, you can try Ocado which is linked with Waitrose. I always was put off because I knew that Ocado was linked with Waitrose and I always believed that it would be very expensive to do my weekly shop there, boy was I wrong! Ocado has a great section on promotional offers where you can pick up real bargains such as fish fingers, frozen veg and potato waffles all for £5 which is pretty cheap considering fish fingers are usually between £2-£3 alone!

I have been doing really big weekly shops spending anything up to £100. A comparative shop with Tesco on this weeks groceries for example, my Ocado bill came to £94, Tesco would have been £130! That's a huge saving and in my mind enough to make me change grocery providers. 

Another thing I love is that they give you a receipt detailing all the use by date so you can easily plan your weekly meals and not risk anything going past it's use by date! I can pin this to the fridge and ensure that I use all the food before it goes off!

I would highly recommend trying Ocado for your weekly shop. There is also avarious discount codes you can use off your first shop which you can find here Ocado offers

Just to say, I have not been sponsored or paid to write this post, I am a genuine Ocado customer who was just highly impressed with the service I have received.

Cereal bars: are they really healthy?

I don't actually eat cereal bars but always believed they were a healthy snack, especially the ones full of seeds, nuts and fruits. I bought Mia a pack of cereal bars by NAKD in the flavour Apple Pie.

I was then searching google looking to get an idea of other cereal bars that are recommended for children and came across this article on the NHS website.

It stated 'Recent research by the consumer group Which? has found that most cereal bars are high in sugar and fat, making their healthy image a "myth".

I knew Mia's bars were OK as the ingredients stated were all seeds, nuts and fruit. No sugar whatsoever apart from the natural sugars found in fruit.

In the article Which analysed 30 bars from supermarket shelves and found that 29 out of 30 were high in sugar. The NAKD Apple Pie was the only bar not to have added sugars and to be the only one not high in sugar. What surprised me was this, 'the survey also found that often several different forms of sugar were used. Which? said this could confuse consumers because, by law, manufacturers must list all the ingredients on their food labels in order of quantity, with the greatest first. When several different forms of sugar are used in a product, each of these sugars is listed separately and appears lower down on the ingredients list. In the case of some of the cereal bars, this gives the impression that the bars contain less sugar than they do – the amount of sugar, if it was given as a total, would have had to appear higher on the list.' In essence people are under the impression that these bars are low in sugar when in fact they are high in sugar. 

It was also found that 11 of the cereal bars had the same number of calories as several digestive biscuits, making them not great if your on a diet! 

I think the worse part of this article was that Which found several of the bars marketed for children which all contained the highest amounts of sugar, one of these contained 11.8g of sugar in one bar. The daily guildline amounts on these bars were all for adults even though the bars were marketed for children. 

The bars given a green light for being low in fat, sugar and calories are: NAKD Apple Pie, Alpen Light Apple and Sultana, Alpen Fruit and Nut bar and the Nature Valley Chewy Trail Mix Fruit and Nut

Do you eat cereal bars? If so, which ones? 

Stretch Marks

The dreaded stretch marks. The one topic of pregnancy that you really don't want to think about especially with your first. It's like the unknown, will I? Won't I?

'It's all down to genes'

'If you use this cream or oil you won't get them' 

'It depends how big your bump gets'
 

Blah blah. I have done a post previously about my experience using bio oil which is supposed to prevent stretch marks and help them appear faded and lighter if you do get them.

Quite honestly when I found out I was expecting one of the first thing I worried about was stretch marks. Thinking my body was going to be ruined and look disgusting and that I wanted to do and try whatever might help prevent them. Call me vain if you like, quite honestly I don't care, I know pregnancy is a blessing and that in the scheme of things stretch marks are not a big deal, but I can't help how I felt about them at the time. I used Bio Oil, you can read more about that here My Bio Oil Review.

What I wanted to get across in this post is that, it's OK to worry about stretch marks and you shouldn't feel guilty about being anxious about what pregnancy might do to your body. I will tell you that now Mia is here I am less bothered by the stretch marks, obviously I would prefer to have a perfect beach body but this is the sacrifice you make to have children and I wouldn't change that for the world! But women shouldn't be made to feel guilty about changes to their body that they may not embrace straight away. It takes time to except that your body will never look or feel the same again and that if you want another child your body will change again but having children is the greatest gift and no amount of stretch marks or saggy skin will ever make you wish you had your old body back!

Have you ever felt under pressure to embrace your after pregnancy body?