Posts by: Tertia

Hi Beautiful Bagpuss - I don't know about ice cream, you will find the ingredients on the tubs -beware the ones that say 'non-milk fat' it means they are made from vegetables (I suppose) instead of dairy produce. I prefer the sorbets - tangy lemon sorbet, strawberry sorbet and best of all mango sorbet with blackcurrant sorbet a close second (when I can find it!) All that lovely fruit and so few calories. Yum yum.

Hi, I don't like the idea of him 'filling up' on bread and orange juice (yuk) for one very simple reason - the stomach is elastic! and will stretch to accomodate extra filler! Ooops. Furthermore, if you continually eat big meals the stomach will stay big, BUT if you take a little less it will gradually shrink so you will need less to fill it up. So rather than have a Lap Band (whatever that is) try eating slightly smaller meals, or even using middle sized or smaller plates, or thinner bread.

Bread actually swells up as soon as it gets wets so maybe is worse for that, and please -not white bread.

I fancy the steak, egg and chips diet myself (without the chips of course) and lots of water maybe instead of the orange juice. If you can work some Marmite (if tolerated, nice with tomatoes) into the sandwiches it might help balance his feelings about this.

Boots.com have a special BMI calculator to promote their (very expensive) dieting product - you might want to have a look at this. I spent a whole evening playing with it (the BMI calculator) to find out how much weight I would have to lose before I wouldn't qualify for their diet plan! (It was surprisingly less than I thought.)

Good luck! Trisha

Hi Sue0506, can I suggest Microsoft Excel? It will total columns for you as you go, and you could get fancy and have totals by room. Use at least 2 columns for costs (estimated and actual) and another for status (pending, in progress, complete). All you need to figure out is what to call each expense, and quite possibly the uktvstyle team have got suitable headings for this lurking somewhere on the site.

Lucky you! A 7 month baby, just old enough to enjoy his first Christmas to the full and no wonder he wants to stay awake. We haven't had New Year yet, and that's almost as much fun.

The sleep thing though is easy- keep him occupied for another 90 minutes (an hour and a half) after he wakes, then put him back to bed. Make the extra hour as boring as you can. When you've got 5 minutes check that you're not giving him flavoured crisps -the monosodium glutamate (E621) keeps bairns awake.

For a last resort, I used to run the hoover round the bedroom and landing- the noise is soothing (!) and it is generally less stressful than leaving them to cry.

Happy New Year!
Trisha

I'd like to share one of our family traditions with you, to spread the Christmas magic a little more evenly.

I know some families keep everything until the BIG DAY, but we found opening a small package -if one turned up in the post- very therapeutic in the eek before Christmas and no that isn't a spelling mistake. Gifts from distant relatives & friends were thus elevated to a status they might not have achieved in the grand crush of Christmas Day, and appreciated all the more. (But ONLY ONE, and gifts in cards count too -obviously- so open the cards first.)

Similarly, I keep our family cards for the day when there is none in the post, so that Christmas becomes a steady trickle of goodwill instead of a breathtaking avalanche. Have a good one.

Tricia

I am appalled that a high street bank would not only allow an 18 yr old's overdraft to mount up to twice her earnings, and then moan at her because the account was never in credit - an obvious and foreseeable result of their action. They then offered her a loan for said amount at an APR of 30% (when you include the loan insurance). Well, not -- so much as flaming furious.

I said she shouldn't take the loan, but how can I break their zvengali hold on my daughter? I know she should spend less, but they keep throwing money at her.

Patricia

Hi hkmk and welcome to the boards. I can't suggest a timetable for the day because the 4,6,9,12 formula is for the main sleep at night.

Do cuddle and hold her more if she wakes unhappy- she could have been frightened by her dreams, and may have woken suddenly from a deep sleep. Look at the times for a 'good' day and see if you can pick out a pattern.

Good luck, Trisha

Hi Lili7 and welcome to the boards. Changing her sleep times will be fairly easy since she is already showing signs of doing it herself by waking up at 5am. Just shift everything back by 3 hours - wake her at 8am and put her to bed between 10pm and 10.30pm. This will give you times much nearer to what you want for going back to work.

By way of explanation: if she goes to bed about 1.30am then 4 hours takes her to 5am, when she is waking. Then when u settle her she sleeps another 6 hours before waking at 11am.
If you can get her to bed between 10 and 10.30 then 4 hours will take her to 2am, which is a time when bodies instinctively sleep- a very quiet time of night. Hopefully she will sleep through this point and take her extra 6 hours sleep which will bring her 8am. She might wake at 5am still, but she won't be ornery since these times work with her body clock.

To help her sleep through, look at what you give her for the last feed. There should be no meat (takes a long time to digest = keeps awake), and a higher calorie content than average, so milk alone would not be enough. Maybe a milky pudding type thing. If she fills up with just liquid there won't be enough to keep her happily asleep, she would get hungry and wake.

If she is teething that would stop her falling asleep, but it wouldn't wake her up.

For the floorboards try paint stripper on a small section first to see if it is likely to work. See above, and be sure to follow all precautions on the tin. I wouldn't sleep in the room for 48 hours and it would be easier to get proper ventilation in the summer because you could leave the windows open at night.
I used chemical stripper in my hallway and the smell was only strong while acting on the paint- you clean every scrap off afterwards and the smell goes too.

If all this is too stressful think laterally - you can get paint kits to resemble a wood finish and that might be the way forward. They will blur the edge between the painted and the natural, but never look exactly the same.

Draw all the curtains at night, not just the downstairs ones.
I have just come down from putting cling-film over the loft hatch -I have an open plan living room and stairs- and it feels warmer already. It's very cheap and very temporary. At the weekend we're going to try a more permanent version over single glazed windows in a flat but I need double sided sticky tape for that.

I would have liked to see more mention of double glazing -it isn't just fancy windows and status symbol, you do actually feel warmer for it and after the initial cost of installation there are zero running costs and no service charges. It might possibly have more impact on your household energy bills than upgrading to one of the new EE boilers but we'd need ukstyle to work out the costs and savings for us first...

I need a shrug. I think that's what they're called, but not one of your 6 best, unfortunately. I have got the rest of my christmas outfit- a long midnight blue taffeta skirt which I shall wear with a devore velvet bustier (by special request, only he doesn't know it yet) in the same colour.

I'm looking for something like a shrug but that doesn't do up in front, is not cropped (I am tall as well as long-bodied); in silver or with silver edging. If its dip-dyed silver and midnight I'll take a dozen. And suggestions for a necklace. Thanks in advance. Trisha

MFI have got to be the last word in single-use furniture. All that chipboard, all that plastic, all that offgassing in your bedroom Get rid of it and start again.

Hi Uel, I think you're going to have problems... I suggest you decorate the room using 2 of your preferred colours and use the third colour for soft furnishings- curtains and bedding. I personally don't like yellow and green for a nursery but I do know lilac works well- my daughter's room is done in Laura Ashley's pale crocus with a slightly darker shade wallpaper on the bottom. The 3 colours you suggest were feaured on a Care Bear some while ago.

Tricks to get this to work would be find a fabric you like with the 3 colours you want to use (you could make curtains in it to tie the scheme together) and get the paint mixed to match.
I would paint the walls all one colour, or top a paler shade.

I don't think you will find paint colours in the standard ranges that will work together - but you could have a tinker on the Dulux website with their mousepainter. The closest I could get was Willow tree (walls), Timeless (curtains) and one of the purples or lilacs for the rug. I don't know what colour your furniture or floorboards are.

Good luck and let us know how you get on!
Trisha

This will be a very hard time on you, but only until he is recovered from the infection, at most another 2 weeks. As well as getting better his body is also setting up the immune system to fight off this and other infections later in childhood, so although this may look like a setback he will be better for it.

He will need all his energy for getting better, so leaving him to cry may be counterproductive. If you can settle him quickly with another drink then a) he won't have woken up so much and b) you won't have to lay there listening to him cry. This will be for just a short while and your 'good' baby will come zooming back.

Your own sleep is vital. What I'm going to suggest won't seem like much but you may find it makes a world of difference. What you need is 4 hours uninterrupted sleep in 24. All you have to do is figure out how to get this and you will get through this difficult time, maybe someone else can get up for one feed in the night that would give you 4 hours. Or maybe you could squeeze it in while your toddler is at playgroup or grandparents give them tea. Just 4 hours will do the trick.

Good luck

Dying works best on cotton as I'm sure you know. There are 3 options here- either pick up some fabric in the Laura Ashley sale (now on but hurry) and make your own, or look in the charity shops for something suitable to dye. Or look on ebay.

Phones have been ringing up and down the country this weekend, probably a lot more than the '25' runners-up for the competition that ran in the Daily Mail a while back. 'You are one of 25 runners-up and have won £500 worth of our products,' the nice young lady said. (Funny how they didn't put that in writing, it would be so much cheaper.)
'We do so much more than double glazing now that we've had to change our name! '

Well thinking it might go some way toward replacing a broken patio door I booked an appointment, checking that there was no minimum spend requirement etc etc as you do, but when the company phoned back today to confirm the appointment that all changed. I could only be a runner-up if I had placed an order and they do such wonderful offers on the website and how much did I think I was going to spend....you get the picture.

And the moral of this story is - if you can't download a copy of the Terms and conditions from their website then don't bother with them. As a caution to the company concerned -should they recognise themselves- they would do well to remember that libraries keep back copies of newspapers on microfiche, so it would be possible to obtain a copy of the advert to check the t&c -if I could be bothered. As it is I shan't spare them the cost of a phone call.

Trisha

Throw it! Seriously, the mould probably came off with the bleach and all you have now is discoloration, where an organic dye has bonded with the material of the swim hat. It is already clean, just a different colour. Get him to request a new one, could be the rest of the team have the same problem. (or just throw it anyway..)

I think it depends on the size of the room. Living rooms and
master bedrooms are too big for borders, but they can be used to good effect in small bedrooms and possibly bathrooms. There was a jacquard effect one in ivory that I fancied for the stairwell - the pattern was picked out in silk finish on a matt background but all one colour. Subtle is good, but stencilled borders definitely out.

Hi piglet, are you still shelley too?
You could maybe ask your physio person if it would be ok for you to swim or do yoga, both should be gentle exercise to keep you supple. If you badly injured your knee at 14 I would say you were TOO active, and need to choose different activities and less impact sports.

Your body will never lose its shape but it will change in the next few years (quite alarmingly at times). Super thin is out of fashion and BMI is the thing to watch now. Not only can you work towards the neatest BMI but you also get to show off your maths when you work it out. Bet half your class can't keep up.

Please be friends with your body, look after it and learn to love the shape you're in -then it will take you all the places you want to go.
Best wishes, Trisha

Has she seen you wash your hair? Could she wash it in the shower or the sink? A bath is a big slippery place for a 2 yr old if she suddenly can't see - and she would close her eyes instinctively against water whether it stung or not. You could try using a lot less water in the bath to help her feel more secure, but then the whole bath thing would need to be over more quickly in order to stay warm. Very good idea of yours to leave it for a bit.

I don't suppose you're planning a trip to a swimming pool anytime soon? Her hair would get wet then and she might associate it more with fun.

Hello Leah, I wonder if you could make his cot so warm and cuddly he wouldn't want to wake up so much? When my baby was very young I put a fluffy wool fleece between the sheet and the mattress to keep her warm and cuddled when I wasn't there. It worked so well that now I have one on my bed too, it is very luxurious.

The fleece I used was a natural lamb fleece specially clipped for babies and it is imortant to put it BETWEEN the sheet and the mattress, fluffy side up (unless you're going to watch them the whole time).

Some days he will go back to sleep again and some days you will have to get up with him. The dark mornings will work in your favour soon and by Spring he will be sleeping through the night, but in the meantime take a nap when he does during the day - you've earned it.

Some 'tips' are worth their weight in gold
and I reckon this is one -
a babe will drop off to sleep
as soon as its feet
are as warm as your tum.

Hi groovydaisy - as a short term measure I would make sure that the sausages are the best you can buy in terms of nutritional value even if it means buying them separately. Ditto the peas, if you can get them fresh in season thats good as they lose some vit C in freezing. Same goes for the potatoes -none of this freeze dried stuff plz.

Other than that, chill. Keep eating a good varied diet yourself and wait until she asks to try some. You could cheat and use peas as a garnish on some sorbet (sorbet for the vit C) -or trifle- but you would have to keep a very straight face while you ate it.

This might not work in every case but it could be worth a try - I know several mums who let their toddlers eat crisps and drink cola (and a grandma who insisted on treating them to these delights behind my back) and all it does is keep the little blighters awake.

Feed bananas and turkey breast (the real thing not turkey jetters) You don't have to roast a whole turkey, they do slices in the deli counter. And completely cut out anything with caffeine (tea, coffee, cola, chocolate) and anything that remotely resembles crisps.

This should get him to the point where he will sleep through the night, or at least 4 hours at a time.

5 years isn't so much of a gap; there's 5 years between my sister and I. You will also have a full 9 months 'to yourself' before the birth assuming you fall straight away, and there are plenty of things an experienced mum like yourself could do with only 1 baby in tow -all of which escape me just now...

The sensible thing would be to do both- look at updating your skills by taking a course or whatever, and at the same time try to find out why he is 'keen'(unquote) to have a third. You also need to discuss whether a 3rd could mean you need a bigger house etc. and look at the costings there, and the impact it might have on holidays for instance.

If he is feeling kinda redundant in the daddy stakes you could discuss him opening a savings plan to put money by for their teenage years (or schoolng or whatever) which are, by comparison, horrendously expensive.