Ch-ch-ch- Changes

At the weekend we finally stopped using the baby bottle with a nipple for Eve's bedtime drink of water. I think we're quite behind on this compared to other kids, but I tried this about 4 months ago with her and she got very upset and I was too tired to carry on with it. After our long days spent apart I think Eve wanted the comfort of the bottle teat.









Now that she's understanding and communicating so well I figured we should get down with the change. I guess it's slightly selfish on my part, as I knew that once I took away her bottle at bedtime the realm of babyhood would be completely gone.

Eve loves her 'special bedtime cup' (I bought her exactly the same Tommee Tippee one that she uses during the day time but in a different colour, blue and pink.) She chose it herself in Asda. However she is a bit more agitated at bed time and it takes me an extra ten minutes to get her to settle down for sleep. To be fair though she is taking it in her stride, and she loves telling me about the different safari animals who are around the cup.

Bye, bye baby bottles you've been good to us! 

(These MAM bottles are brilliant, well worth the money)

My plans always go a bit awry with Eve. I thought the jewellery box was so great - until it came to bed time. At first she was so cute playing with the fairy and looking at the little tiny treasures inside. But then she got very upset at having to go to bed and wanted to play with the fairy for longer (or possibly all night). 

I tried for a couple of nights letting her see the fairy and then saying goodnight to it, but this did not work. I've now taken the jewellery box out of her bedroom and have stashed it somewhere safe. The first night that she went into her room after bath time she was slightly upset that the fairy was not there. I told her that the fairy had gone to bed. Eve looked at me and said, 'fairy in bed in the garden.' It was so sweet. Eve talks about the fairy every night and I do feel bad about it, but the alternative is a serious bedtime palaver.

The BabyBjorn Potty - we love it, such a great product.

Eve is now doing multiple wee's and number two's in the potty. The nursery staff are really pleased with her progression, and we make sure that as soon as Eve has had her breakfast we put her in pants for the rest of the day (excepting nap time). This means that our nappy consumption is rapidly declining. This is so great as I have felt awful about using disposable nappies, which we switched to at the age of 9 months when she was waking all through the night and wetting the bed too much.

As parent's I think that we are put in awkward positions by our governments. We know that disposable nappies are bad for the environment - 8 million go to landfill daily in the UK, that's 3 billion per year. But we are pushed back to work earlier and earlier. As full time working parents there is no way that we could have gone back to using cloth nappies when Eve started nursery. Before Eve's birth I bought all the stuff in preparation for doing just so (positive wishful thinking), but when you've had sleepless nights for a year, and you race to and from work every day, the last thing you want to do when you get home at night is to be washing nappies that have been soiled 10 hours previously. Once Eve started sleeping well at 14 months if I had been a stay at home mum I most definitely would have gone back to cloth nappies as we absolutely loved our Bum Genius ones. 

Bumgenius Cloth Nappies - can't fault them - brilliant things.

I'm so pleased that Eve is doing well with potty training and cannot wait until the day comes when we no longer need to use disposable nappies.

http://www.girlguiding.org.uk/get_involved/volunteer/register_your_interest.aspx

Looking to the future, and it may seem way too early but I've just received an email from the Girl Guides confirming Eve's place on a waiting list for 2nd Knowle Holy Nativity Rainbow Guides. I saw a post thread on Facebook with people discussing the waiting list and one of the leaders told me that they have babies on their waiting lists and that it's never too early. So, this is an exciting thing for Eve to start in a few years time.

Eve loves pasta but has started getting a bit picky and won't eat the vegetables; she just scoops up the pasta shapes. So, yesterday Sam quickly blended up a smooth vegetable sauce in our Nutribullet, gently heated it with the pasta, and bingo! It looks like a basic tomato sauce but it has lots of vegetables in it. Plus, this sauce has more nutrition as the Nutribullet blends the raw vegetables so that you don't have to cook the food and zap away the nutrients.

You just cannot go wrong with the Nutribullet. We use it everyday. It's such an easy way of making sauce for children and they don't know what is in it. You can chuck in whatever vegetables and fruit you have - the recipe is always different :-)

We're going to attempt making houmous in it soon. Previous houmous attempts have always ended in disaster, so fingers crossed this bad boy will do the job.