right now, my knitting needles

Mummy Pig, Daddy Pig, Miss Rabbit/Nanny Plum, Peppa Pig and narrator man/Mr Potato at the BFI this afternoon - and H won a prize too so got a goodybag!! (Taken with Instagram)

We Love Books - Frugal & Fun - Enjoying School Holidays the Thrifty Way

I buy a lot of books, this one is pretty marvellous - loads of ideas and hints for things to do that don’t cost much through the summer. We’ll be making Olympic medals tomorrow afternoon. Sometimes I need a prod in the right direction. 

The little fridge (Taken with Instagram)

With J from next door (Taken with Instagram)

Three shelves of the bookworm’s collection (Taken with Instagram)

Oh yes! Flexibath is big enough for a tall almost three year old and I can’t wait to try it! (Taken with Instagram)

If you have a baby, you’ll eventually want a monitor - if only for the freedom of being able to go downstairs and watch tv, or something! We went for the Angelcare baby monitor, I can’t remember why, possibly as it has a nightlight effect on the monitor in the room, which has never bothered H. It took us about four or five months before we dared leave her in a room with us listening in (she had colic, to be fair, so in the early weeks some nights it was 2am before she settled) - and two years in we’ve had no problems. We do occasionally hear other people’s radios for a milisecond, but not enough to have to reconfigure our settings. The monitor on the parents’ side has rechargeable batteries which have a long life - though no facility to talk through it to calm down a screaming child (which fortunately we’ve never had to do). I’d recommend, anyway.

We picked this up at The Baby Show in February 2009 - a good six months before H was born! I liked the fact it was suitable from an early age and chances were that by the time H was three months old she’d need it as we’d be hitting the coughs and colds season. Two years on and it’s still going strong, just a tiny bit left, but it works a treat! We love it. For nights when she’s coughing in her sleep we’ll rub some on her feet and put socks on, and voila, a good nights sleep is had by all. 

(n.b. - the packaging has now changed on Kiddybalm - though the logo stays the same!)

H had awful eczema at times, and we tried plenty of creams (and olive oil) all hoping they’d help. In the end Lucas’ Papaw Ointment was recommended from our Aussie family, I found somewhere in the UK that sold it, tried it and it cleared up her skin a treat. We picked up a bigger tub last time we were out there…