Family

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Holidays with toddlers & babies – top tips from a survivor!

We’re just back from a week away with our little family, our first holiday with both boys, and despite my fears of being cooped up in a mobile home with a rampaging three year old and a teething newborn while it rained apocalyptic rains outside, we had a really fantastic time!

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I thought I’d share some top tips for UK based holidays with little ones. These are things we adopted last week and tips that, I think, make holidays more fun for everyone and a whole lot less stressful.

1 – Pack toys that they’re familiar with, and some new ones
We got a new Thomas sticker book which went down well, and filled in the time waiting for everyone to get up in the morning, or when we were packing up the car to go out. We also indulged Elliot with some new books to make bedtimes fun.

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2 – Save time by planning dinners before you go
I spent a few minutes photographing recipes on my iPad and packing little pots of any spices etc we needed in little tubs so we didn’t have to spend time and money buying five spice, soy sauce or tomato paste while we were away. I also made a huge shopping list of everything else which meant we just had to do one huge shop on day one and didn’t have the repetitive conversations of “what shall we eat today?” throughout the holiday. We chose recipes that were fairly quick and easy – a Jamie Oliver chicken tray bake, some lamb koftes from the Organix website, a salad, and a speedy chicken noodle recipe (also from Jamie)
These were all things we knew Elliot would eat too, so it made it really easy to have yummy family dinners all cooked from scratch.

3 – Holiday baking
One of Elliot’s favourite thing to do is to make biscuits, and i thought they’d make a great treat addition to the daily picnics we had planned. I found the simplest recipe ever online which basically is a simple shortbread (flour, butter, sugar). We didn’t want to buy bags of flour and only use part of it, so again I got out my trusty Tupperware and weighed out everything we needed before we set off, and packed a couple of cookie cutters from home.

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4 – Sandwich cutters make picnics fun!
Daily picnics (or car-nics, in the rain…) can get a bit boring so I tucked out little dinosaur sandwich cutter in when packing and the sandwiches disappeared quicker than quick, accompanied by the occasional “RRRRROAR!”

5 – Plan activities to match child’s age & interests, but don’t be afraid to throw a curveball in there too
We went at Elliot’s pace mostly, and ensured that we spent time driving when the baby didn’t need a feed, which lowered our potential stress levels! We spent time on beaches and in swimming pools (bring a noodle float, baby float/ring thing as appropriate!) and we also spent time chilling out back at the ranch and doing short walks. BUT we weren’t afraid to push boundaries, and it really paid off – Elliot screamed blue murder being strapped into a bike seat, but absolutely LOVED it “Mummy, I love this bike!”

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6 – Have “best thing about today” conversations at the end of each day
If your child is anything like mine, if you ask them what they’ve done at the end of the day, or return home from nursery/school, the answer you’ll normally get is “I don’t know” or “nothing”
I read a tip some weeks ago that I’ve been using on and off with Elliot, and we did this each and every day while on holiday, asking him what his best bit of the day was, and then sharing ours. It allows them to search through their day and find a moment that made them happy. We got some surprise answers and it really helped us plan for the next day – for example one day his favourite thing was the short walk in the woods near the mobile home that we did while dinner was cooking. Literally 15 minutes, but that was his best thing, so it helped us decide to do a longer walk later in the week.
Elliot loved these conversations and was very good at reminding us to do it as we tucked him up in bed.

7 – Keep notes of what you do each day
In a similar vein to number 6 above, I think it’s a great idea to keep a little note of what you’ve done each day. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy, just notes on your phone or on the back of an envelope will do. Remember holidays with little ones are all about making memories, for you as well as for them!

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On breastfeeding in public

I’m coming up for air (literally!) after a weekend which has been spent mostly moving between our living room and the bathroom with our three year old as we (finally) try to crack potty training – more on that another time perhaps.

Anyway, back to the reason I’m here – I felt like chiming in to the pro-breastfeeding in public debate that’s currently raging on most social media after a Sports Direct store in Nottingham allegedly demanded that a woman leave the store purely because she had sat down and started to breastfeed her baby son.

Breastfeeding is really tough. My journey with it has taken two forms – one for each of my children. With Elliot, my first, it was plain sailing for a while but after a few weeks I began to find it quite hard. There was pain, tears and a crying baby much of the time, and I spent days with blocked ducts wishing he was bottle fed but at the same time not wanting to stop just yet. I bribed myself weekly to just make it another week – partly because I didn’t know how to stop without causing more pain, and also aware of the guilt I may feel if I did. Eventually we mixed fed him from about 4 months until a fateful day in month 8 or 9 where he bit me and that was it. No more boob. To be honest, he didn’t bat an eyelid. As long as food reached him in some form, he was happy. I wish I’d realised this sooner.

With Alexander it’s been a different story. After a few ouchy days to start off, we’ve settled into feeding so well that I now have an issue where he simply refuses a bottle, so I’m stuck. Unable to go out, or leave him anywhere for longer than about 2 hours. Oops.

But back to the debate in hand. I feel so awful for the woman in question. You are really pretty vulnerable when feeding in public – despite the obvious fact that you’ve got your boob out (enough to make most people feel at least a bit self conscious), you’ve also got the issue of a hungry, and therefore probably not the quietest, baby to deal with which inevitably brings the attention of 99% of the people in the area all focusing on you. As a mum it can be really hard to block this out long enough to shush your baby whilst getting a bit of your body, that you don’t really want to be waving about, out whilst covering enough of it so as not to draw attention. Oh and of course this is mostly done with one hand if you’re also holding said crying baby with the other. Add to that keeping an eye on any other kids you may have to make sure they’re not running off/talking to strangers/throwing themselves under buses etc, and you’ve got yourselves a headache of a situation. Quite frankly it’s way easier to stay at home. But we don’t, of course, and that’s why Sports Direct should be so ashamed of their staff members involved. Let’s not add another reason to the already huge list which makes feeding our babies in public the ridiculous obstacle it is today, shall we?

After all, if she’d been feeding the baby from a bottle, would we even be having this debate?

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Siblings – April

Oh my, where has that month gone? I’m a day late with my siblings photo this month because it simply came round too quickly!

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This month has seen a major development in the boys’ relationship – cuddles!!

Elliot is desperate to hug and cuddle Alexander and loves to crouch down next to his bouncy chair or car seat and hug him. He comes and finds us after his bath to give Alexander a goodnight hug and kiss, and sometimes to read him a book (the Stripy Horse ones are favourites right now)

We’ve just got a second hand inline double buggy (our three year old still needs naps and is quite adamant about when he doesn’t want to walk!) and its given me a new sense of freedom. I can go out into town with them both on my own and Elliot has the option of walking or being in the buggy. It was whilst out with them both that I overheard Elliot looking over the side of the buggy, at Alexander who sits behind him, saying “are you alright down there Alex?”

I love my boys!

As usual do take a look at the other siblings photos from this month by following the link below.

dear beautiful

See my other Siblings posts:

January
February
March

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Parenting without the guilt?

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One of the things that new parents, particularly mums apparently, are often surprised by is the amount of guilt that comes with the parenting territory. It comes along right when you’re least expecting, and the accompanying physical feeling of having all the wind taken forcibly out of your lungs is really something to be feared. Experts tell us that guilt arises when we become aware of failing to be the best we could have been for our children (normally right when you’ve just yelled at them for no specific reason other than being the sole adult with them for 8 straight hours!)

On any given day, the following things can make me feel like my stomach is about to flip right over with guilt:

  1. Sending my toddler off to childcare. In our house, Elliot spends two days a week in pre-school, and a further day with each set of grandparents. This means I only look after both my children together on one day a week. Up to now this has worked really well. As I am currently on maternity leave from my four-day-a-week job, Alexander gets my full attention (when I’m not writing blog posts or cleaning the house) for the time that Elliot is away, which is what Elliot had at the same age. Elliot gets to spend time with other children and also with his grandparents – something I loved as a child, and an opportunity for them to spend time with him also. More often than not, I spend part of the day he’s at my parents with them all, so it’s only really three days that Elliot isn’t with me. Still the sight of a crying toddler who wants to “stay with mummy” being bundled into a car and probably arousing suspicion of kidnap among our neighbours on at least two mornings out of every week is tough.
  2. The variety (or more accurately the lack of variety) in my toddler’s diet. To get him to eat any sort of vegetable that isn’t hidden (thank you Annabel Karmel) in a sauce or pie is nigh on impossible and is normally accompanied by all sorts of excuses ranging from “I don’t like it” to “I’m too tired” or the standard “mummy, I’ll do it tomorrow” (by the way tomorrow, when it comes, is going to be an amazing day in our house!) The crazy child also turns his nose up at previous staples like bananas and blueberries. Weird! Despite knowing that it’s a phase, and my child will more than likely voluntarily eat some form of vegetable at some point in the future, I do look at other kids happily munching on carrot sticks/ cherry tomatoes/ broccoli trees and feel all sorts of guilt.
  3. Handing over parenting responsibilities to technology for anything over 20 minutes a day. I feel so proud if I can make it for a whole morning or afternoon without giving in to the demands of “can I have your phone/ipad?” And the truth is, as well as watching endless ridiculous videos of Thomas and his friends being covered with or built out of PlayDoh (something he is desperate to recreate at home, and that I’ve so far avoided!) he also spends time tracing letter forms, watching shows on iplayer like The Lingo ?Show, and drawing pictures on any number of art apps which isn’t too bad. The fact that he knows how to launch youtube, press search, and type in “Thomas” to find his programmes makes me feel pretty guilty. (Though I did have a moment of pride recently when he showed me that he was trying to search for Abney and Teal (yes, another TV programme) and he’d got as far as “abnet and tyal” – clever boy!)

Thankfully a quick google search reveals that all this guilt may not actually be such a bad thing.

For most of us a moderate amount of guilt is actually a sign of love, our strong attachment and commitment to do the best we can to raise healthy children. [Psychology Today “Are you a guilty parent?” Sept, 2011]

 
Well that’s a relief! Maybe the only thing we’re guilty of is loving our children and wanting to do the best for them. That’s no bad thing really!

Now you’ll have to excuse me, I’m off to buy more colours of PlayDoh so I can finally give in to those demands to build engines! Wish me luck!

To keep up to date with Letters to Elliot, why not follow me on Bloglovin and Twitter @elliotandme
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A letter to my children on sleep, or the lack of
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A letter to my children on sleep, or the lack of

To my beautiful sons,

I’m sure you’re right in your current belief that mummy was getting a bit too much sleep lately. After all, being woken every three hours to feed a newborn is almost the same as the halcyon days of getting 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep pre-children (a time which I now believe is actually just fictional)

I’m sure you’re just thinking that waking so infrequently could have been said to have been getting a bit dull, so your exercise this past week of “let’s wake the big ones more often” has been especially welcome. It’s been interesting to see the world through the sleepy fug that waking every hour brings, so thanks for that!

I have to say that I really think it’s great how the two of you are developing a sense of team work so early in your sibling relationship. You have clearly devised a plan between you to make sure that you’re not both awake at the same time so you both get to benefit from some one-to-one parent time, and I’m sure the worlds greatest mathematicians would be interested in how you’ve worked out the optimal time between wakings:

For those that are interested this works out as:
Time of your brother returning to bed/sleep + 32 minutes (approximately the time it takes mummy to become completely settled, warm and cosy under the duvet and be drifting off to a lovely sleep)

3 year old, I think you’re doing especially well at this given that before the baby came along you were sleeping through routinely and not waking at all, so you must have had to work hard to get into the new routine of night waking and crying. And let me take this opportunity to say that I totally agree with your many and varied stated reasons for waking up. My favourites from the past few days include “I don’t need anything, I just wanted to see you”, and “I don’t want orange juice” (none was being offered, it was 2am)

And to you, littlest one, I must say I really appreciate how you’ve waited until you’re almost 12 weeks old to experiment with waking more often. After all, knowing that you CAN go 4 or even 5 hours between feeds at night makes it even more delightful when I get to see your beautiful face more often than that. I know this is just a recent experiment, but I think we’ll all be happier (or is that just me?!) when you go back to your lovely blissful previous routine.

So, my darling children, thank you for your consideration and thoughtfulness, but I think maybe we should try to see each other a bit less between the hours of 7pm to 7am. It’s not you, it’s me, and to be honest that way you’ll have a much nicer set of parents the rest of the time. Deal?

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Trying to win me over with his “I love Mummy” t shirt whilst sleeping LIKE A LOG during the day!