My 4 year old has to earn his treats

Kieran putting the eggs away

What a mean Mummy! Kieran has a star chart and he knows that he has certain things that are his responsibilities throughout the day and that if he achieves these, and is well behaved, he will get a sticker. It used to be that when he got all the stickers, he could get a treat ie a 90p car from Tesco but now he gets cash. He asked if he could have some pennies instead of a car or small toy so he could save his pennies and buy something BIG! I was overjoyed when he approached me with this, clearly we’ve done something right!

The sorts of jobs he does are simple mostly, he makes his own bed and opens his curtains, helps make his own packed lunch, puts his uniform in the washing machine after school, does some tidying etc and any little jobs that I want him to do. Nothing too strenuous, but he is taking on responsibility for looking after his own things / room and is encouraged to help others.

I’m all for letting kids be kids but I don’t see anything wrong in this. Kieran is growing into a helpful & well-mannered boy who is keen to save up for the things he would like and hasn’t got that “I want/I need / I MUST have” attitude that I see so often nowadays (in both children AND adults to be honest!). I really don’t think wanting to “work” for what you get is a bad thing at any age.

What do you think? Am I pushing him to grow / mature too quickly?

*Incidentally – he is currently playing with his Lego vehicles which he made with the big box of Lego wheels we ordered from Amazon after he gave me £8 that he had saved up to pay for them.

Nicki x

Weaning, what age and method?!

As a first time mum, you don’t ever know when the right time is to do things. Each baby is different and each parent believes things should be done at different times. So when it comes to weaning, when is the best time?

The government are now saying nothing until 6 months, yet all the packaging in the supermarkets sells food in from 4 months plus and if your baby needs bulking out, you can feed it baby rice earlier. Also, I had read up on baby led weaning, which is giving your baby solids, and basically what you eat from 6 months, without giving them pureed foods.

I had planned to do the baby led weaning route and had been told you can give them food slightly before 6 months (which my daughter is) and when she grabbed out for my food, I knew that she was ready, but it is scary to do, especially during the day when I’m ion my own as they do gag on the food sometimes and I’m worried she will choke and I won’t know what to do. So, being a bit of a cop out I went and got some pureed food and mushed up some rusks which she absolutely loved and gobbled a plate full straight away.

I’m going to introduce a bit more solid food, like pasta and rice and potato, all the things that can’t completely break off and choke her but she will be tasting more things and not having everything mushed up for her. So, tonight she will try a bit of fish pie and see how she gets on!

Has anyone else been frightened by the baby led weaning or not sure when to introduce things? I’d love to hear other people’s stories about what worked best for them and at what age.

Emily x
Image: federico stevanin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Use it or Lose it!

Do you use your local library? When was the last time you visited? Do you realise it’s FREE!

Recently North Yorkshire County Council announced plans to chop library services across the county, to save money basically. I was horrified. We use the library regularly and a swift email to my local MP thankfully confirmed that our library wasn’t one up for the chop. Phew! It got me to thinking though. Our local services, which many of us take for granted, are not bullet-proof and could just as easy be taken away if we don’t utilie them!

I am an avid reader, as is Roy and I regularly borrow books to enjoy in those stolen moments of peace and quiet (if you are a parent, you know what I mean!). it is important to me that Kieran, who is 4yrs also has the opportunity to enjoy books. They open so many doors, to so many world, and help him with his reading, build his experience and knowledge and indulge his imagination. If the local library was taken away we would be bereft. Do you know what one book costs – I had a quick gander in WHSmith the other day £7.99 for an adult paperback, £8.99 for a hardback kids book (with 12 pages, 12!). Bereft and skint!

Libraries are not the quiet and solemn places they once were, there is no stern librarian glaring and hissing “shhhh!” at regular intervals. Ours has a large children’s area with low tables and chairs, beanbags, and a few toys. Children are actively encouraged to visit and they run regular storytelling sessions. We have book crawl where you collect stickers and stamps for continuing to visit and take out books. Kieran LOVES visiting! The staff are friendly, more than happy to answer his 30,000 questions and he would really miss not going. We can even rent DVDs from there (think poor weather and half-term bribery) for just £2 a week.

With the exception of DVDs you can access your library account online (yes seriously!) and renew your books up to three times so there is no excuse to run up fines or anything like that, It really is an invaluable service and one I will continue to use and support.

So if you haven’t visited recently, do pop in, make sure you use the library else you might find that when you do, it’s no longer there!

 Niki x

Formula vs Boob

I started off breast feeding my daughter and having thought it would be weird and I wouldn’t like it, I found it to be very natural and, to me, it was the best start in life I could give her.

After having enough milk to feed 10 babies at the start, my milk supply dwindled and I had to introduce formula to one feed a day, this then increased to two feeds and kept increasing until I was only breast feeding her on a morning. Then I became really ill with a tooth abscess which meant I was on really strong antibiotics and for a couple of weeks had family round to look after the baby as I kept getting severe migraines and couldn’t see, let alone look after a child. Thankfully, they went away, but after not being able to feed her on a morning my milk supply had completely gone.

By this point my daughter was over 3 months and had had all the goodness I could possibly give her, she was growing well and was in a great feeding routine and a fantastic sleep pattern so it didn’t seem to be bothering her one little bit.

I wish I had been able to feed her for longer, but I’m not ever going to beat myself up about it, because I know I have done the best for her and the best for me. I have got friends who have been miserable because they have a low milk supply and can’t feed their baby every feed and I have friends who have combated everything in a bid to breast feed for a full 6 months, whether they have to top them up with formula or not and I have friends who express and do bottle and boob. What I have learnt is that if you’re happy and the baby is happy, then do what your instincts tell you to do, never feel like you have let yourself or anyone else down and go with your gut feelings.

My daughter is the happiest little thing, she loves her bottle, she can even hold it herself now and her eyes light up when she sees it coming towards her, she is being weaned and her weight is fantastic, plus I am happier that she is actually getting food and not having a boob stuck in her face that can’t give her anything.

With my next child I will do exactly the same thing, I will breast feed for as long as I can and do what is best for that baby, not what was best for my daughter. Looking at the other girls in our NCT group, I have realised that each baby is so different, they do different things at different times and they all have their own personalities and above all, a happy mummy makes a happy baby.
Emily x
Image: Lavoview / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How did THAT happen?

In November last year I had this:

Now, four and a half months later, Ihave this:

A joke clearly? How can he have gonefrom  this small to ------- THIS BIG----------- in such a smallamount of time! And he has changed so much! His personality is reallybeginning to shine through now (he is a real giggle-pot and I have nodoubt will be a real monkey). What I realised the other day is that Ihave (fortunately) hundreds of photo of Taylor which document thischange. Unfortunately they are all digital. The only place I have him“up” is as part of a collage I did with Photobox recently.

Time to get my finger out I think andget some printed up. My printer has had it and the price of ink &photographic paper frightens the life out of me so I am going downthe “someone else can do it for me route”. I’m looking now atSnapfish, Photobox and the like to help me get my son’s firstmonths printed up and properly “documented”. Did you know thatwhen you sign up for many of these free photo developing sites youget 40-50 prints for free? They are only bog standard sizes but wellworth it!!

That is my mission for the next fewweeks – getting my photos organised, which I suspect will be amammoth task, as it’s not just the ones of Taylor but also ofKieran. I am constantly snapping him with something he has made or ina costume for school etc.

How do you all manage your pics andwhere do you store them? I’m tinkering with the idea of Flickr tohouse them unless anyone knows of anything better. Any ideas will beMUCH appreciated!! I should know how fast it goes, after all, I’vedone this before, but I don’t think any of us are prepared for howquickly our babies change and grow!

Niki x

Longing for a room she can call her own

Currently, me and my partner live in a 2 bed flat with our nearly 6 month old little girl and my 16 year old stepson. Those of you who are good at maths will have worked out that the people out number the amount of rooms available!
We put the house on the market in October, just before my daughter was born, in the hope we would have sold and be out in around 6 months. Everything was going according to plan, until our buyer decided to pull out at the last minute. She had got nervous as she was a first time buyer and wasn’t from this country originally, so everything was different and she felt too far from home. This left us in a very tricky situation as we had fallen in love with our dream house.
We may still be able to buy the house of our dreams – which incidentally, to everyone else is a bog standard house on a bog standard estate in reach of nice schools, but to us, it has potential and is somewhere we can see us staying for the rest of our days, but my main disappointment when we lost our buyer was that I couldn’t do a nursery for my little girl.

I realise this is more for me than her, as she doesn’t give a hoot where she sleeps at the moment and having her own room is not on her list of priorities, but it’s high on mine. I feel a bit cheated that I wasn’t able to do it before she was born, and now that I have got my hopes up of a new house and, in my mind, have decorated it, I want to give my daughter a space of her own, I want to put up her big cot instead of the travel cot she’s using now, I want to put up the bunting with her name on that my friend made for her, I want to put the wardrobe that was her great grandfathers but is now a shabby chic wardrobe fit for a princess and the toy box that sits and waits and my parents house that my great grandfather made. It’s all there it just needs a room to put it in and I am getting more impatient by the day to put it all together.

I know it might sound silly, but this is the one thing that in my dreams I wanted to do, I wanted to be the mum who had the nursery all ready, with a chair in the corner where I would feed her during the night but I guess I’ll just have to wait for my dream and it will be in a bit of a topsy turvy order but one day she will have a room to call her own.

Has anyone else had a dream for them or their child that hasn’t quite gone according to plan?

 Emily x
Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Freecom Mobile Drive Mg U&F for Mac

Freecom has been striving to create innovative and professional digital storage devices since 1989. All of their products are designed, engineered and certified in Germany according to the highest quality standards to guarantee customer satisfaction. They have just recently launched the worlds thinnest mobile hard drive.

These thin magnesium beauties will be exclusively for Macs and will be available trough Apple Premium Resellers.

Available in three different capacities and connection options:
-320GB (10mm in height with a slim line 7mm hard drive inside, USB 3.0). RRP £69.99
-750GB (with USB 3.0). RRP £99.99
-750GB (with USB 3.0 and FireWire. 12mm in height). RRP £119.99

All the drives will feature the latest USB 3.0 interface standard, which offers rapid data transfer speeds of approximately 5000Mbit/s and the FireWire unit will transfer at maximum of 800Mbit/s. Ideal for both home and professional users who want to transfer large files quickly and carry their data on the move. The last on the list will have the addition of FireWire 800 technology. All drives are Mac formatted and 100% Time Machine compatible to make setup even easier for the user. Simply plug it into USB port and back up your data.

There is also no need to carry around a  bulky power adaptor as these units are powered by a USB port.
On the power consumption side the unit switches off while not in use for a while. The unit is kept cool in the Magnesium enclosure and don't have any noisy fan to spoil the look.

Gadget Dad Verdict:

It is always difficult to find a perfect matching external hard drive for the beautifully crafted Mac products that is made of aluminium. For a while now I have been looking around for a worthy companion to complement my iMac. I got my hands on the Freecom Mobile Drive Mg for the Mac and must say, this looks absolutely stunning next to the iMac.

The packaging was almost the sort of Apple like packaging you would get and say to yourself, wow all is included and no space was wasted. It arrived in a sleek see trough perspex container and inside the package was the USB power cable, USB 3.0 cable and the FireWire cable.
Setup was just a matter of plugging the unit in as Freecom already formatted it for the Mac.

Once up and running there was no sound to annoy you from the fan like some other external hard drives as the unit is being kept cool by the magnesium enclosure. When the unit is in its powered up state and in use there is a tiny blue light at the back that matches the light  on your Mac when a application is open. It is tiny little details like this that shows that Freecom really put a lot of thought into this product. Truly well engineered and if you have a look at the picture I took of it underneath my iMac it shouts out "made for each other!"

Backing up was very fast with FireWire and made backing up with Time Machine a breeze. This is a product that I would recommend to any Mac user and I am sure it will look just as good with the Macbook Air and Macbook.

Pros:

• Sleek and stylish magnesium enclosure
• Comes with all the cables needed
• Super quiet and power saving
• No need for bulky power supply

Cons:

• Only con with this was not finding any cons!!

Rating: 10/10


Till next time
Gadget Dad

I'm MAD and Blatantly Begging for it!

 

This is a blatant begging post, you see I am addicted to people liking me, I am a very likeable person you know... yes, really!!

Or maybe I'm like Marmite, you either love me or hate me... I'm not sure, maybe you could tell me which? I'm sure I won't take offence if you don't like me (blatantly lying).

I would like you to vote for us, yes not just me because I already know I am soo spantafulous (just joking!!!), but for all of the the My Funny Bunny Blog Family...

There's Nicki, she is very funny, witty blogger, 

Vanda aka FunnyBanana Mum, who loves to cook and shares her recipes with us all, 

Emily, she's a lovely new mummy and graphic designer,

Emile aka Gadget Dad, absolute bonkers about gadgets and all the latest stuff out

and finally moi... I am just plain flat out MAD!

Our kids also make occasional but extremely cute appearances ;)

We would love to be famous and take over the world!!!! Mwaahaaahaaa

So go on, nominate us... you know you want too... or do it because you have nothing to do for like a minute, just click on the linked image above!! 

Yes I am begging!!! Pleeeeeaaaaasse do it... or I will be soo sad.

Monica xx

PS. How could you not? I mean even the name MAD clearly describes us!!

Can you put your childs mattress in the washing machine?

No?! Why not? Far too big isn't it...

Don't you wish you could though?

You wash their clothes, their hands, their comfort blankets, their duvets, sheets and duvet covers, etc, so why not their mattresses too?

In their first two years, babies sleep for an average of 15 hours a day and spend a huge proportion of their early life in close contact with their cot mattress. However, while we excitedly choose their new pushchair or cot, we often overlook the significance of what - in terms of health - is actually the single most important purchase are are ever likely to make!

Not too long ago we researched into mattresses and the best options that are out there, one of them is without a doubt PurFlo - a unique design, which has managed to scoop various awards across the world as well as being acclaimed by leading health experts concerned with Sudden Infant Death Sydrome (SIDs) and allergies such as Asthma and Eczema.

The PurFlo mattress is the healthiest and most hygienic cot mattress available on the market today, that is why we have decided to add it to our range of mattresses on www.myfunnybunny.com, and they are now finally available.

Unlike any other mattress, the PurFlo is completely hollow with a fully breathable, chemical-free SleepSurface, which not only provides better support than a conventional mattress, but allows free air circulation helping babies to regulate their own body temperature and preventing the re-breathing of CO².

You can just throw it in the washing machine!
Washable at 60°c ensuring any spillages, fungi or nasty bacteria (which often lurk in traditional mattresses) are completely removed! Because of this it is safe to pass down to younger siblings - a great bonus for your pocket and the environment in view of the fact that around 600,000 baby mattresses go to landfill every year!

Recently awarded Gold in the 2010 Practical Pre-School awards with one of the highest overall scores of 97.3%, testers commented: "PurFlo is amazing! How great to have a cot mattress which can be washed in the machine and tumble-dried. We really like the fact that dust mites would be greatly reduced for babies with allergies and the hollow nature of the mattress means that babies keep cooler and also prevents them from rolling onto their front. It reduces parents' worries about cot death and is perfect for travelling too as you just fold it up and take it with you. Top marks!"

You can find out more about this amazing mattress here and and purchase it from www.myfunnybunny.com

My First "Real" Mothers Day Card

Today is Mothers Day, mothers everywhere are getting treated to a sleep in, a day off the house chores and work, etc.

I am a mother of two and today I am not getting a day off, its work for me, looking after the kids too as normal and if I am lucky I will get to see my mum later on.

But today is still an amazing day for me because I received my first ever 'real' Mothers Day card from my oldest son which turns 5 this month.

Sure I have gotten cards all the previous years but they were bought in a shop by my husband who wrote some nice stuff in it and got the kids to scribble on it, still nice but this one is super special.

My son actually made this one, he painted a butterfly with his fingers, glued it on a card and wrote "To Mum, Love S... xxx", it took a lot of effort and its beautiful.

I'm going to keep it forever and it's made my day and my heart warm.

Can't wait to get my first 'real' Mothers Day card from my BooBoo, but seeing as she is only going to turn two in a couple of months, I have quite a wait, you know learning to write and all!

Have you gotten your first 'real' Mother's Day card yet?

Monica xx

Do I HAVE to have another baby?

It seems as if every day someone looks at Taylor, pinches his cheek, coo’s and says “So, when are you having another one?”. They then address my four month old baby and say “I bet you’d love a sister wouldn’t you!”. Yes, it would appear that I have committed the cardinal parenting sin – I have had two boys, we don’t have a girl to even things up. Clearly I should throw away my contraceptives immediately and work on (for want of a better phrase!) conceiving a girl.

Now the problem with this is... I’m not sure I want any more babies! Don’t get me wrong, I love my boys and I know full well how blooming lucky I am to have them! I have fertility “issues” and struggle to get pregnant, it took three and a half years of “trying” to conceive both of them. We were told we might not ever manage to have kids naturally (I have PCOS and ovulate approximately once every six months or so – needle in a haystack trying to pin those lucky three days down), so to be honest I think we’ve done pretty well all things considered!

And I love boys! That isn’t to say I wouldn’t have been just as thrilled if either or both had been a girl, but boys are great! You get what is on the tin- mischief, mud, mess but also a lot of affection! I really don’t think I NEED a girl to complete me or my family, I wonder why other people think that?

Do people who have all girls get the same? Are they almost urged to go out and have a boy?

I think your family is complete when it’s complete. Right now we are perfectly content. We have two happy and healthy *touch wood*, little men, who absolutely adore each other, and I imagine will be the best of friends, when not killing each other over stolen toys / computers / girlfriends as they grow. I can’t see me having another child, and that doesn’t really bother me, although I’m sure I’ll get twinges when Taylor goes off to pre-school, but regardless – we would never try for another child on the chance it “may be a girl this time”.

I would love to say to someone, just once “Well we got pregnant again, after your insistence that we needed a girl, and we’ve just found out it’s another BOY! Gee thanks!”. Wicked aren’t I!?

Just a random mini-rant. I have to wonder if subconsciously some of us are still programmed into the “perfect picture” of Mum, Dad, Boy & Girl. That is not a “normal” family in my opinion, each to their own – I’m one of SIX siblings (three boys, three girls lol), but that is a post for another day.

Is it just something people say then, or is there more meaning to “you need to have a *insert sex* now”? Hmm, curious!

Nicki