I'm not being rude but...

Since having a baby, there's been lots of occasions where I've felt like people think I'm being very rude, and to be completely honest, I'm not, I'm just putting my child first.

Take yesterday for example - we arrived at a notoriously busy lift in St Davids 2 here in Cardiff, there was one middle-aged couple waiting too.  As we arrived, the lift dinged.  The other couple very quickly darted across in front of us, ensuring their place in the lift.  Yes, they were there first, but was that polite? I was brought up to always let people who are older, or with prams, or in a wheelchair etc, go first, whether that's onto a bus, on a train, through a door or in a lift.  It's simple manners. Yes I'm able bodied - but I've lost count of the amount of times at that specific lift, I've had countless people push in front of me, leaving me not able to get the pram in the lift, and I've been there waiting for 20 mins trying to get on a lift as no one would let me on - I ended up giving up on trying to get to those shops on the next level up.

I'll give you another example.  When I'm walking down the road with the pushchair, I walk on the side of the pavement that's farthest from the road, so hugging the houses.  I will not move out of the way if you're walking towards me.  My child is the most important thing in my life and I will do everything I can to protect him - if that means putting someone's nose out of joint because I won't push him into the traffic, well so be it, or letting someone think I'm being rude, fine.  Countless times recently I've encountered some very nasty looks from people who refused to move and in fairness, it's not their fault.  Before having Squidge, it never would have crossed my mind to move to the outside of the pavement for a pram, but now I get it.  Just last week I was walking home, and a couple were walking towards me with their dog, they walked single file hugging the wall to give me room to get past, which was nice, but again, that would be me pushing my child towards the traffic - not going to happen - as a result I received some disgusting looks for barely moving out of their way.

Am I the only one that does this? I certainly get out of the way of prams now when I'm out and about now that I've had a child myself.

Hopefully if you're reading this and have always wondered why people with prams might not move out of the way, you'll know it's not because we're being rude or arrogant, it's because we're trying to protect the most precious thing in our lives, our children.

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My Weaning Essentials

We've now been weaning Squidge for just over 4 months and in that time we've tried out lots of different products, some of which were great, and some not-so-great.  With that in mind, I thought I'd share with you some of our most used bits and pieces that make up our weaning kit.

Steamer/Mixer

Having a steamer has really transformed how I prepare baby food - before I'd boil it, which boils out all the goodness in vegetables.  The Nutribaby from Babymoov (£99.99*) has 2 levels in the steamer, which from my experience is enough for 2 good meals for your baby (if you fill up the trays pretty well). What I'm trying to get into the habit of doing, is having his food steaming in the night while I'm cooking mine and Daddy's dinner, ready for his feeds the next day.  Once the food is steamed, I tip it into the blender, add a splash of cows milk and pulse the blend a few times (I want texture, not purée). The Nutribaby has loads of settings so you can also warm jars/pouches/bottles, whether room temperature or from the fridge, and even steralise.

Storage jars/pots

I go through almost all of these on a daily basis - each meal I'll put prepared food in different pots, like his main food in one, rice cakes in another, sticks of cucumber or another veg in another etc, so that each feed I could go through 3/4.  All the ones pictured are from Babymoov - the ones on the left (£13.99*) are their silicone ones which collapse when you want to store them (they're collapsed in this picture) - the pop out really easily and the lids click on better than any other tupperware I have (you don't have to squish the lids down).  The tubs on the right (£6.99*) are better (in my opinion) for when you're at home as at least with mine, the lids don't really stay on - so they're fine if you're putting them in the fridge, or don't need lids on them and there's no risk of them being upside down :)

An assortment of spoons

Everyone has their own preference, this is why we have 2 different sets of spoons - the short ones are weaning spoons from Tommee Tippee (£7.99) (the ones designed so babies can feed themselves), the spoon part is shallow and wide (the hubby prefers feeding Squidge with these). The other ones are from Nuby and are my favourite (£3.99) - apart from being lovely colours, they have a really nice deep scoop on them - they fit in his mouth really well and they have rubber handles, so are easy to grip.  The only problem with the Nuby ones is that because the handles are so long, they never stay put in the bowl, they usually end up tipping it over, so something to be aware of.

Feeding bowls

We have 3 bowls for Squidge all together.  The one that's a plate with separate compartments is from OXO*, this is great for offering them finger food or BLW - the plate also has a rubber grip on the bottom to stop is sliding around, and the coloured ring around the edge can clip off too. The other two bowls we have is the orange one from Tommee Tippee (£8.95) we actually, we have 2 of these but there's only 1 in circulation - we also have a Winnie the Pooh one (pale blue, my personal favourite but currently discontinued, so it's appearing in Poundland).  If I give Squidge pouches at home, I tend to squeeze them into one of these bowls so I can give it a good mix.

Free-flow sippee cup

This one we were given by our health visitor at a weaning party they threw (this sounds SO much more exciting than it was, lol).  With the cups that are spill proof, you have to suck really hard to get any water out, and if you're teaching your baby to drink water out of a sippy cup (£2.50), they really won't have the motivation or understanding for it, whereas with a free-flow one they only have to tip it and they'll get water from it.  You can move on to a spill proof one once they get the hang of it and certainly when they're older - but we've had the most success with free-flow ones (in fact, the orange plain Tommee Tippee one is the best we've found, but it's nearly impossible to get the lid off!).

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*Post contains PR samples, I'm also an ambassador for Babymoov - all opinions are 100% honest and my own

8 Month baby update

I honestly cannot believe as I'm writing this, that Squidge is 8 months old... 8 months! Where has the time gone? What's more, I'm now on a countdown for going back to work, I've got just over 5 weeks to go, and over the next few weeks we're super busy, meaning it'll fly by faster than ever.  Don't get me wrong, I'm so grateful that I've been able to have this time with Squidge, and that I have a job to go back to (and part-time) at all - but I just want to spend every waking day with him - as I'm sure most mummy's do.

CLOTHING

He's still in 6-9 months clothes, but some of them are getting a bit small for him, like his sleep suits (legs and feet are too short/small) and some of his tops barely go over his head.  In the picture above, the trousers are 6-9 and still fit really nicely and the shirt is 9-12 (we didn't have a smart shirt for 6-9 and I had this waiting for his next size, so we put him in this - we were going for a nice Sunday lunch and to a 3rd birthday party). Just in case you're wondering, the shirt is from Next, and the trousers and socks are from John Lewis.

TEETHING

Still no teeth but an awful lot of teething! He has developed two tooth-shaped bumps on the front of his gums (top and bottom sets) and they're getting closer to the top, so I think any day now we'll see them make an appearance.  We've certainly had our fill of excessive drooling, fist chewing and general grouchiness. 

SLEEP

What a mixed bag it's been.  Generally he's sleeping much better - he typically sleeps from about 7ish until about 5am, he wakes for his dummy and then is ready to get up around 7/8am.  However, since he started going through his latest leap (about a week ago it started) it's turning into a nightmare to get him to sleep - his bedtime is 6, but we're lucky if he'll fall asleep by 8pm - those two hours are filled with him screaming his head off... nightmare.  His day naps are different too - his first nap which is around 9am often lasts for 1 - 1.5 hrs now, but then where he used to nap at about 11am/12pm he's pretty much dropped that.  He'll have his lunch at 1pm and then go down for a good nap, and maybe if I'm lucky, he'll have a third nap around 4pm after his next feed.

FEEDING & WEANING

Weaning is going great! We're definitely not going down the BLW route.  I am feeding him more pouches than homemade food at the moment, which I'm not overly comfortable with - and it's so much more expensive this way... but I honestly don't know where anyone finds the time to cook the food... just recently he's gone nuts if I've left him to go into the kitchen (the rooms are tiny and joined so I can see him at all times) so it's really hard to find the time, and pouches are just so easy.  I really should make more of an effort and plan better, he does love my homemade food.

PROGRESS MILESTONES

So the last couple of days have heralded some big progress!  He's been commando crawling for quite a while but in the last week he's really gotten good at it! He'll see something and be able to navigate the room to be able to get it.  On Thursday morning the hubby was up with Squidge and saw him crawl! He said he moved about 2 steps forward using both hands and knees at the same time (I haven't seen it myself yet though).  He's also gone from sitting, to kneeling, to standing!  He's sitting up really well too, only falling over if he wants to lie down or get onto his tummy.

OTHER BITS

* Still no mama or dada - but lots and lots of babababababababa :)
* We've had a big proper giggling fit from him, he was pretty much in an infectious laughter fit
* I think we're ready to sell his Jumperoo - he barely goes in it now and when he does it's not for long
* I've taught him to high-five and wave - early days, but he holds his hand out :)
* He cries when we leave the room
* He throws proper tantrums when we stop him rolling over when we're changing his nappy - he does an explosive scream and slams his legs and feet down as hard as he can

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