Our routine #2

Back in January I shared our current routine with you, fully with the intention on writing a new one once a new one was established - well, nearly 5 months on and we now have a new routine :) But like with any baby, it's massively subject to change - anyway - here's a peek at our day.

8:00am

Squidge wakes up, usually on his tummy with his arms extended and smiling at me (first smiles of the day are amazing). I get him dressed into day clothes & change his nappy.  We go downstairs and he has a 9oz bottle of formula (usually leaving an oz or two) and a small bowl of banana porridge. (sometimes I'll give him a couple sticks of toast instead).

Then he plays for a bit, starting off in his Jumperoo, then onto his play mat.

9:30ish

Nap time - I put him in his cot when he's awake and he falls asleep (usually) after me picking him up and putting him down for about 10 mins.  He'll usually sleep for about half an hour, sometimes longer.

10:30am

Nappy change and a 9oz bottle - again, he'll probably leave around 2-3 oz (sometimes he drinks it all).

More play time, now he tends to spend more time on his play mat playing with his toys now that he can sit up :)  He prefer's that to his Jumperoo at the moment.

He'll have another nap around midday for half an hour to an hour.

1:00pm

This is just a food feed, I've dropped this bottle as he was barely having any of it, and I've upped how much food I give him instead.  Typically he'll eat either a jar of food, or a pouch, or ideally, food I've prepared for him - it could be steamed veg with garlic, or some food put aside from our meal the night before (cooked without salt of course).  He'll also have some finger food, like cucumber or fruit (pineapple) or red pepper.

Then he'll have another nap, again, typically half an hour, sometimes longer.

3:30pm

Here he'll have another 9oz bottle (again, always leaving some of it - he does occasionally empty them) and some more dinner - either left-overs from lunch or I'll crack open another bottle/pouch or prepare some more veg.  Then he'll have some dessert - typically a stick or two of fruit, like pineapple, plum or peach.

Then after more play - maybe a story, maybe we'll go sit in the garden for a bit, or I'll get my bubbles out (he loves it when I blow bubbles).  Then he'll hopefully have another nap around 4:30/5pm.

6:00/6:30pm

Last bottle (9oz) which he'll have most of, and before he goes to bed we give him some more porridge as it helps to bring on the sleep hormone.

You may think it's strange that we get him to have a nap right before bed time - but we've found he falls asleep easier and sleeps better at night if he's had a late nap - it has the opposite effect that you might think.

Other tid-bits

*  He gets bathed every 3ish days, this is either first thing in the morning or late morning

*  Every Thursday we go to mummy club

*  Every weekend we always try to take him out somewhere as he always loves it

*  He's pooping about 3 times a day, small hard little poops!

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14 Home truths about motherhood

1. Your home will always be untidy, and one day, you'll just accept this is the new norm
2. The baby will pretty much take over the entire house
3. Your clothes will perpetually be covered in baby food/sick/poop/wee/snot
4. You'll get baby poop under your nails #truestory
5. You'll be sneezed over almost every day, often baby will do this with a mouth full of food
6. Your baby will love wiping their face on you - preferably your shoulder
7. You'll be forever in debt to your baby, on that one occasion they let you have a cuppa & lunch while happily playing
8. You know that baby brain you had when pregnant? It doesn't go away
9. Do you have pets? While they might have been #1 in your house, you'll be lucky if they're #8 after a baby
10. Wearing makeup will be a luxury, and sods law will be as soon as you put foundation on, they'll become obsessed with touching your face
11. Evenings out? haha I didn't know I was a comedian either
12. You'll learn that being tired is just how you roll now
13. As much as you don't want them to grow up, you'll secretly count down the days until you can sell on the Jumperoo/Play Mat/Swing etc to reclaim a tiny bit of your lounge back (only to make way for thousands of toys!)
14. If you ever decide to take a nap when your baby is napping, you can bet that'll be the time the postman knocks the door, not with a package for you, but for your neighbour #truestory

I could go on with so many more, maybe I'll save them for another post ;)

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Fisher Price Thomas & Friends Tray Play Booster Seat

Gosh that's a mouthful of a title!  Sorry that I was a little quiet on here last week, thought I'd have myself a week off :)  Well, now I'm back and I have lots of posts to share with you! The first of which is about this lovely little high chair booster seat.

Now that we're in full swing with Squidge's weaning, a portable high chair like this is a must.  Space is pretty critical in our house, so we really liked the idea of a space saver like this.  It's still a little on the small side for him, so we have a rolled up blanket behind him, however he's now stopped falling to the side and can hold himself up really nicely (after these pics were taken).

The seat is great - it'll fit him for a long time.  Only after looking at this picture did I realise we had the table on all wrong! We've been doing it right since, but basically you just clip it into one of those red pegs sticking out depending on how big or little your baby is.  The seat gets strapped on - one strap goes behind the char and the other undeath.  The baby gets strapped in with a T trap too.

It has a Thomas the Tank Engine clip on toy that fits onto the table really well.  It doesn't need batteries or anything - the baby/child is able to move the train around the track - although Squidge's favourite thing to do is to lean down and chew the train and the yellow bar :)

The Thomas the Tank Engine higchair unit (and table) is wipeable which is fantastic.  Gosh does he make a mess! (I'm loving the bee that few into shot when I was taking this picture too - he was massive!).

Squidge loves his high chair (he is loving weaning)

This is how it secures at the back.  You can make it looser or tighter so it fits to your chair.

Plenty of room for food and a beaker.

We actually went back home to Pembrokeshire this past weekend to visit family and we took this with us.  It folded up well into the boot and clipped onto my step-dad's dining chair well.  We also got it out when we went to a cafe yesterday - their high chair was enormous, far too big for him and didn't have a bar that goes between the legs and he kept sliding out - so we got this out instead which was much easier.  The only thing was that we forgot the Thomas the Tank Engine toy that clips in - and he wasn't being fed, so he got a little bored!

The RRP is £34.99 which is feel is good value for money. It's well made, easy to use, it comes ready made, plus it's nice and colourful.  Here's some 'customer action shots' for you :)

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A Day out at Cefn Mably, Cardiff

Somewhere I've wanted to go for a long time is Cefn Mably farm park - it's not far from where we live, it's not too big and by all accounts it's very popular.  Now that Squidge can look around at things and take things in, I thought it would be the perfect time to take him there - he's already obsessed with looking at our cat, so he clearly likes looking at cute animals :)

It cost us £6 each for 2 adults, and Squidge (in a pram) was admitted for free.  You first walk into a big canteen area, with an indoor play area for kids, and a couple of sofas.  We headed straight for the animals.  It's also worth noting we went on Easter Sunday at opening time (10am), by 11:30 am it was packed - there was a constant stream of people queuing to get in.

The first animals to greet us when we went in were 2 reindeer's, they looked very young and were very cute.  Just beyond them were 2 sheep, each with a cute little lamb. 

Here's one of the gorgeous little lambs - my second favourite animal after cats <3

This guy was awesome, he was really intrigued with Squidge and followed us as we walked around the cage :)  I think this is a red parakeet?

There were also some little chicks under a lamp - by the time I took this picture they'd all gathered in a corner to sleep, how adorable!

They also had a range of rabbits.  This was actually pretty sad as they were all unwanted pets and were looking to re-home them.  So sad that they were unwanted :(

More lambs with their mummies, these looked much younger than the other ones (literally days old)

He was so happy looking at the animals - he kept smiling at them :)  This was him smiling at goats.

They also had little kids there, OMG these were SO cute!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

JUST LOOK AT THE CUTENESS!

Squidge smiling at guinea pigs - he really really loved looking at these, and they had quite a lot of them

Ignore the fact it's not in focus, I love how he was reaching out to them and the rabbit was reaching to him, so, so cute

I think they were as interested in us as we were in them :)

Outside away from the indoor shelter were pony's and horses - part of their play paddock had a 'crashed' plane in it :)

This is the horse from the picture above - he's missing his left eye :(  He had an infection in it which got out of control so he had to have it removed - his name was David :)  He was really friendly, both Squidge and I gave him some smooths on the nose :)

There was also a combine harvester in a small enclosure that chickens and cockerels were flocking to - I managed to get this picture of a cockerel mid-song :)

Squidge and Daddy looking at the pigs

The pigs were lounging around - there were so many squiggly tails!

I love this photo of them - Daddy having his hand nommed, and it was seconds after one of the Donkey's on the right did a massive and very loud eee-oooorrr!

Fluffy Donkey ears :)

After wandering around the place, the little man needed a feed, so we headed back to the cafe, ordered some food for ourselves and set up for Squidge to have a bottle and some solids. The had a big stack of (IKEA?) high chairs to pick from, all were nice and clean.

He fitted in the chair pretty well considering he's still a bit small for them.  We gave him cod, mashed potato, carrot and broccoli and he LOVED it!  Our food was really good - fresh, what seemed like home made, the chips certainly were - and wasn't too expensive (I think we paid around £6 a meal).

On the way back we saw some awesome views so we just had to stop and take a picture!

After a fun-filled couple of hours, Squidge was wiped out

10 mins later he was awake and happy to be spending some quality time with Daddy

We had a really lovely time at Cefn Mably, I'd definitely take him back there when he's a little older as he got so much out of seeing the animals.  Maybe when he's learned not to grab, and to smooth, that'd be a better time to take him back :)  The staff were really friendly, the facilities were clean and the change room well thought out and prepared.  Next stop, Folly Farm :)

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6 month update

Today the little man is 6 months old, it's so hard to believe 6 whole months have passed since he entered our lives, it really is incredible how fast time goes when you have children, they grow SO fast.

It's also time for me to start getting myself in the frame of mind for going back to work, I think my first day back will be the 30th June and hopefully I'll be going back part-time - it's just a shame we can't afford for me to be at home with Squidge full time, but that's life.

CLOTHING

I've posted a couple of big clothing haul's recently, he's grown out of his 3-6 month clothes now and is in 6-9 months, although they're quite big on him, they do fit him a lot better than the previous size - lots of the older ones stopped being able to go over his head and his legs were too long for lots of the trousers.

TEETHING

Still no teeth, but he has been sporting some pretty red cheeks, a hell of a lot of drooling and chewing his fists - and there is a lot of white up on his top sets of molars, strangely enough.  So there's definitely movement there, enough to cause him upset, but nothing actually through as yet.  This last week I've given him the Sophie the Giraffe I bought for him when I was pregnant and he's loving it!

SLEEP

Where to begin!  He was sleeping through like a trooper, until the 4 month sleep regression hit... I've actually blogged about it so you can read that here if you want to read more detail about it.  But basically, he wakes between 2-15 times a night - with the hubby and I each getting up on average 4 times a night each just to put his dummy back in.  The health visitor suggested weaning him off his dummy, however since he's teething she thought that would probably be a bad idea as he might need to soothe on it.  She also suggested at his 4pm food feed, to give him more, so a dessert too, to help fill him up. Then at his last feed (about 6:30) give him some porridge as it will help him to sleep. We've been trying that and I think it probably has helped, since then we've had 2 nights of him sleeping right through, most nights he's waking up, but more like 5 or 6 times, instead of 8/10 - so some improvement.

He's also started sleeping on his side, I'd say at least 50% of his night is spent on his side now and yesterday morning he even woke us up because he was on his tummy :)

FEEDING & WEANING

At the last update, we'd been weaning him very slowly mostly on just baby rice, but since then we've stepped it up and have been introducing him to meat, fish, different flavours from vegetables and fruit to textures and small lumps.  

He's done really well and we're realising he really really likes lots of flavour - so potato, carrot things like that he absolutely despises by themselves - however, mix them together with parsnip and chicken and he LOVES it!  We add some of his milk to the food to help - it makes it less thick and adds a familiar flavour he likes.  Today he had fish (cod) with broccoli, carrot and potato (mashed not blended) and he devoured it - the fish was still a bit flaky which didn't put him off too.  He's even started chomping in readiness to chew - it's very cute, and VERY funny :)  I've been loving making up proper food for him too, and seeing what he likes and dislikes. 

Unfortunately we have uncovered a food allergy too - I didn't realise until a newsletter/email popped through from 'What to Expect' on foods to avoid feeding your baby - it mentioned Strawberries, and how they can cause allergies, especially if there's a food allergy history in the family, which there is thanks to me (I'm allergic to banana, and intolerant to things like eggs, pineapple, avocado etc).  He developed a nasty rash all over his chest and tummy - it went within a couple of days, but it started after I gave him some fresh strawberry, and then he had it again and the rash got worse.  I've cut strawberry (in any form) out of his diet and he's been fine since, so I'm pretty sure that's what it was.

PROGRESS MILESTONES

By 6 months he should be able to do things like turn towards sounds, rolling over in both directions, reaches for objects and mouths them etc and in fairness, he's doing all of that.  For rolling over, it all happened at once.  About 4 weeks ago he rolled over for the first time, then a couple of days later he did it twice, and then for about 2 weeks he didn't do it again.  Then about a week or so ago I put him on his play mat and he rolled straight over, and every time I rolled him back, he rolled straight onto his tummy again (then screamed down the place as he hates tummy time and couldn't roll back).  A few days ago, he managed to roll himself back and he's done it quite a few times since but he's not as competent with it as he is rolling onto his tummy.

He's also done a tiny bit of commando crawling - he's tried really really hard to crawl and to get to a couple of toys when he's been on his tummy, he's pulled himself a long using his elbows, very cute and scary at the same time!

We've also ditched the play gym as it's just too restrictive with him rolling over, and instead he has a big Taf Toys play mat that's 1.5 metres wide by 1 m.  We have his toys on different sides of it for him to roll to - the mat is great, it has different colours, some squares have squeaks and noises they make, and one has a mirror on - he loves to look at himself in this when he's on his tummy :)  It's really nicely padded too.

PHYSIO

While he still as a wonky head, it's definitely getting better, which is great.  He had another check up with the physio about 3 weeks ago - they were happy that he's turning his head to the left more easily and that his wonky head is now 'mild', but they wanted to see him rolling over more - so we're off back there on the 15th April for what should be a final check-up - huzzah!

OTHER BITS

• No first word yet - but he has started babbling by saying 'ba ba ba ba ba' so it's only a matter of time before he says 'ma ma' or 'da da' - it's felt like he's been on the cusp of saying 'hello' for ages too - you can really hear him trying to say it
• He's obsessed with pulling my hair, touching my face and grabbing the cat's fur - she's been great so far and hasn't retaliated
• We're going through bibs like there's no tomorrow!
• The pampers nappies we switched to (from Aldi) have been amazing, not one leak of wee-wee since we changed, whereas with Aldi we were needing multiple daily changes of clothes thanks to wee-wee leaks
• He's pretty much grown out of his Shnuggle bath - it's up to 6 months and he barely fits in it now :/  So now we're looking for another solution - both hubby and I have bad backs etc so can't be bending down, so we'll see what we find

I've also started creating the paintings for his nursery, the ones I wanted to get done when I was still pregnant! Useless I know! Well, the Totoro one is nearly finished - I just need to add a bit to the bottom right and it'll be ready to hang.

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John Lewis & M&S Baby Clothing haul

Sorry I haven't really blogged over the last week - I've been busy with Squidge :)  However, I have lots of posts planned for this next week including his 6 month update tomorrow, yikes!

As you might recall, he's been busy growing out of his 3-6 months clothes and is now in 6-9 months clothes, most of which are a bit big for him but at least they fit over his head and are long enough for his legs :)  I had a load of vouchers to spend, £100 John Lewis, and £60 in M&S - as well as spending all of these, I also bought 1 item with my own money from each shop making this a VERY expensive haul! But only spending around £25 of my own money, bargain :)  Here's what I bought:

Sun hat and little shoes from John Lewis (as you can expect, with the current fashion trend being nautical, a lot of the baby clothes are in that style too)

Nautical socks from John Lewis

2 pairs of trousers from John Lewis - the blue pair roll up to turn into shorts (as demo'd on the one leg of the blue pair)

A blue whale shirt from John Lewis - I freakin' love this shirt!

A nautical whale and light house t-shirt and shorts from John Lewis

A linen blue and white striped shirt from John Lewis

Green stripy giraffe dungarees from M&S - these were a gift from my mother-in-law

Pyjamas from M&S - 2 sets - these were also a gift from my mother-in-law

Adorable shoes from M&S

1 set of sleepsuits and 1 set of vests from M&S - I love the designs on these, some are jungle themed, some are coloured, and one of each have bananas on :)

Geeky superhero vests from M&S - nice, not cheap and not great quality

Cat sleepsuit from M&S - seeing as I'm a bit of a cat lady, I just *had* to buy this

Navy blue linen trousers from M&S

So there you have it, a LOT bought - can you imagine if I spent all that money in Asda instead, how many more clothes I'd have been able to buy!?  But at least this way he has super lovely clothes, really nicely made, great quality and very, very on-trend :)

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