Not-a-baby-shower

A few weeks ago, Charlotte very kindly offered to throw me a baby shower. After a short discussion we agreed that cake and a catch up would be fabulous but the event would NOT be called a baby shower - I didn't want people spending their hard earned money on presents.

So two days ago, my not-a-baby-shower happened. All my high school girlfriends gathered round at Charlotte's place and it was so wonderful to spend the day with them. Charlotte made some gorgeous cupcakes:
There were also brownies and fruit & nut cake. All delicious!

Then it turned out that some people had bought some presents. Thank you girls, they are all wonderful :) Gemma gave us a Grobag - a baby sleeping bag basically - and a hooded towel, both of which feature a Disney character called Roo (from Winnie the Pooh). There was also a wooden toy to clip to the pram, some rubber ducks for bathtime and a cuddly sheep which doubles as a pillow.
Lucy gave us a very cool sheep-themed baby book. It makes noises and is nice and colourful. The little green thing on the left of the picture below is a baby gro (some people call them onesies). It's wrapped up as a little cupcake. It's a bit big for a newborn so we'll open it up once the baby is a few months old.

Next up are the gifts from Fiona and Fahri. I've been given some scented candles for any 'me' time that I get once the baby comes. There is also a lovely keepsakes box with space for a photo on the lid. I think this will probably be the baby's little treasures box.


After all the presents were opened, we ate LOTS of cake and just generally had a catch up. We talked for quite a while! Then Charlotte got out some pumpkins for us all to carve. The artists of the group carved some truly amazing designs - mine is the rather basic one on the left. It's my first pumpkin and I love it :)
Thank you girls for making Saturday such an amazing day. xx

Some photos for you

I've gone through all the photos that Frans took on Sunday and I've chosen a small selection for you all to look at. Click here to see them.

So much washing!

I've just done my fourth washload in three days. WTF! First I got all the adult washing out the way - that was two washloads. Then I changed the bed sheets - one washload. Now I've just done baby clothes and because it's all so tiny, there's LOADS of it! It's taken me half an hour to hang it all up, and I'm gonna have to do a baby washload every other day, what with the clothes, the nappies, the wipes, the blankets. And I have to fit 'normal' washing in there somewhere. So tomorrow is more washing for me - the blankets, musline squares, sheets and the few clothes I didn't do today. Sigh.

What have I let myself in for....

Maternity Leave

So my maternity leave officially started on Friday. Today is Monday and I've done more 'stuff' in the last three days than I did when I was working. We had a VERY full day at the Baby Show on Saturday, Sunday was also very hectic (see previous blog posts) and today I started on my to-do list. I think I crossed off two things yet I haven't stopped moving. Even now, we've just finished eating and I'm straight on here writing. I even know what I'm doing when I've finished writing - more tidying. What's wrong with me?!

Photos and cot storage

We spent most of today taking photos. As soon as I've sorted through them, I'll put them up for you all to see. Until then, you'll have to wait :) We finished with the photos about 2pm so thought we should have some lunch, then pop over to see Mum and Tim. They've kindly offered to store our wonderful new cot in their shed. Actually, loads of people have offered to store it for us and we're so grateful to have such wonderful friends. Unfortunately it's too large (even in pieces) to go through a loft hatch so the shed was our only real option. So we popped over and left them with a lot of wood to store. Thanks guys!

Our new cot!

After the Baby Show yesterday we headed over to Essex to pick up our lovely cot, purchased from Ebay. I won't tell you about the nightmare traffic or how it took us 2 hours 30 mins to do a 1 hour 30 min trip. But I will tell you about how lovely the family were that we bought the cot from. Really friendly and helpful and it makes me feel like we've made a good choice with the cot. Silly, I know. So the guys packed up the car - which was also full of Baby Show stuff - and off Frans and I went. At this point it was about 8pm and we were both exhausted and hungry. We decided to stop for a very romantic Burger King at South Mims Service station. Wonderful :)

But we've got the cot that we fell in love with all those months ago and we know that our little rugrat will be happy in there for a long time to come.

The Baby Show

Yesterday we went to the Baby Show at Earls Court, London. Once we eventually got there - we had a bit of navigational trouble - we wandered around looking at all the stalls, trying to work out what we needed and what we just liked the look of :) Seriously, we know what these shows are like and how easy it is to spend money so we went with a list of the things that we wanted to look at and set about investigating in a "Lytzen" systematic way.

So the main things we wanted to look at were reusable nappies, baby wipes, changing bags, bottles and equipment for expressing and storing milk. The bottles and related products were easily sorted. Tommee Tippee have their Closer To Nature range which I really loved the look and feel of. The teats on the bottles seemed to me - the expert - to be a much more natural shape than the others we looked at as well as having some other features that both Frans and I felt were important, especially since we only want to bottle feed occasionally. We bought two bottles and a breast pump kit (which had a bottle in it) so if breastfeeding doesn't work, we can at least feed the baby then go and buy more bottles when needed.

As we were walking around we found lots of stalls selling changing bags. To be honest, I was quite disappointed by most of them. A lot of them were trying to be something other than what they were and weren't really my cup of tea. I did see one which I had looked at before the show - the Wallaboo - but didn't like it in the flesh. That's been crossed off. The bag that Frans quite liked was the Baby Mule. A great design and seems to be quite practical but again I'm not sure that I can see myself carrying it around. Something to think about though.

For the baby wipes and nappies, Frans and I again both agreed that we wanted to use resuables as much as possible. The plan is to use disposables until we get the hang of things and also when we're out but to use the reusables when we're home. Before we went, I found Cheeky Wipes online and knew they were exhibiting at the Show. To be honest, what they sell is just flannels and tupperware boxes but the cost of us putting the kit together ourselves wouldn't be worth the hassle. The Cheeky Wipes kit all fits neatly together and also comes with two bags so you can take the resuable wipes out and about with you and baby. It gives us options in the future. Sold!

The nappies were much harder to decide on. There was such a vast amount of stalls selling resuable nappies, all of which seemed to be a little bit different. We narrowed the contenders down to two - Bum Genius and gNappies. We sat and discussed the pros and cons of each system and eventually decided that we wanted to go with the Bum Genius nappies. They had a good deal on at the show so we bought what we needed there. Sorted! Now we have twenty nappies and forty liners to wash. Oh joy!

Lastly, we had brief look at the Pourty. It's really just a fancy potty but it's going on our 'still to get list' anyway.