Pickle

I got a "temporary" cleaner just before I had my son... 3 years later and I still have a "temporary" cleaner :)) We get our cleaners through Selclene Dulwich - have had 3 in the 3 years - first one not so good but wasn't a problem at all to change to a different one. The one we have now has been with us for over 18 months and I can honestly say it's the best money I spend every week. When you've got kids it's hard enough keeping on top of keeping yourself and them clean let alone the house! I hope you find someone suitable, sorry I can't help, ours is currently fully booked up.

That's great news Sususudio, I hope you enjoy a stress-free pregnancy from now on.

Unfortunately Mr Pickle now has to fly to Scotland for a funeral, so is away on Friday night - meaning I can't make it to the drinks :( Hopefully those of you who are planning to go along can sort out meeting up somewhere beforehand, and have a great time. I'm definitely keen for another night out in Feb, I'm in the country till the 18th then off to NZ for 6 weeks, so before then would be great. Pippa x

Hi Computedshorty, My father has always been an avid classic cars fan. When I was young he had a Ford 10, which we used to go to car rallies in (very uncomfortable journeys! 3 kids on the back seat, hot summer days in New Zealand, no air con!). These days he collects Jaguars and uses them to run a tourism/wedding business in NZ, his oldest is a 1960 Mark IX, he also has a 1964 Mark X, a 1965 S Type (my favourite), and a selection of 420G's (67, 69 and 1970). He shows a lot of them in Jaguar rallies and "Best of British" rallies which he organises in New Zealand.

We're registered with Dulwich Medical Centre and they're excellent, especially with kids - you will always get an appointment for your children if they're sick, and I've always found it very straightforward to get seen by a GP myself too.

Was it around 1.30, 2ish? I'm on Upland too and there was a house alarm going off for ages around that time which woke me up, I guess it could have been caused by a power cut. I was on the verge of searching it out with a sledge hammer!

We put our little boy in pants straight away - made a big deal of it, he chose them at the shop (Bob the Builder and Thomas, of course!), we always adopted the "we don't want wet big boy pants do we?" approach and it seemed to work. Happy to lend you my copy of GF if you decide you want a read.

Yes! Would love to meet you Twinmummy... I've got two little ones (18 months and 3). The "plan" is to go along to the official forum drinks, so we get to meet other forumites as well as being in the safety of other Family Room people :) Might be sensible to arrange to meet somewhere beforehand so we can go as a group, will post nearer the time to arrange something properly. Everyone's welcome!

Mrs Y, it sounds like you need to run the Norton removal tool - we had problems removing Norton from our laptop a while ago and it helped us. It's widely available online (free), you can try using this PC World link. You'll also find it on the Symantec website. Good luck.

Ha ha Fuschia, that's exactly the issue I've got at the moment - C needs assistance with his toileting, so in the meantime his sister is either rifling through the bin, pulling all the toilet paper out, or crawling round on the floor. I have to lock her in the cubicle with us otherwise she runs away. Horrible!!

An innocently made passing comment by a 18/19 year old in which I was compared to his mother!

It's worth a try I guess, no harm in giving it a go! I would be surprised if an 18 month old managed to potty train (although in the "old days" it was common - but my Mum says it was because she spent half her day sitting us on a potty because that's what they were told to do by the Plunket Nurses - similar to health visitors). Good luck x

Computedshorty, I love reading your posts :)

Sanne Panne - Piplings is for over 2's only (it's a drop off playgroup, so you don't stay with your child).

That's interesting Mumof3... I think my 2nd will be out of nappies earlier than my son, she seems a lot more aware of wet nappies and often sits herself down on the potty we have in the bathroom without prompting. I guess when they have an older sibling to watch and learn from it makes a real difference.

How funny, we've just been talking about Reggae Reggae sauce after seeing this article

We've always managed to take the cartons of ready made formula without any problems - I think when they see a stressed out Mum trying to juggle children/buggies/bags/hopeless husband they tend to relax the rules a little ;-) We once had to open one carton and taste it, but we had a bottle ready to put it in, and had our Avent cool bag. As the kids have got older we've successfully taken bottles of cow's milk etc (they will generally provide it on the flight, but occasionally we've been told they don't have enough on board). Also bottles of "growing up" milk. They tried to challenge us on that, but when we explained we had 35 hours of travel ahead of us and that the Boots didn't stock the one brand our son would drink, they were fine. I've also taken jars of baby food through security, and containers with frozen home made kids meals.

Bluebrick, the good thing about the Gina Ford book is that it doesn't force the matter at all - so there's no point using it with a child who isn't ready (and one of the first things the book outlines is the signs to look for to help you work out whether they are physcially and mentally ready). We found it useful for giving advice on the approach to use once our son was ready to be potty trained - it's not like the other books she writes at all. Personally I think it was money well spent :)

They usually collect them with the garden waste recycling after the Christmas period - we've always left ours out with the brown bin and it's been picked up as part of the usual collection.

I used the Gina Ford book to successfully potty train our son when he was just under 2.5 - it eases them in to the process quite gently and logically and most of my friends who used it had success like we did. Happy to lend you our copy if you would like?

You keep them on your knee, it's not really till they're over 2 (or even older) that they'll happily sit in a seat by themselves for the take off and landings.

We've always managed to get bassinet seats when requested - on Singapore Airlines flights to and from NZ there are a lot of them (generally 8 in economy, and you can also have bassinets in business class). They're definitely worth having if you have a young baby. Our son always slept really well in them, but my daughter didn't - but even though it wasn't used for sleeping it meant we had extra space to put the kid's stuff where it was contained, and you also have the bulkhead seats meaning there's a lot more room for the children to play. We're heading to NZ again in February and have booked a seat this time for our daughter, who will be 19/20 months - she probably would still fit in a bassinet at a push, but is far too agile and would escape too easily!

By far the easiest of my trips to NZ with children was when our son was just 12 weeks old - a breeze, he fed & slept, we got to sit and watch TV and I even had a glass of wine. Gets much harder when they are on solid food, more alert, and moving!

I'd love to be able to sleep past 10am on a Sunday morning - wonder if the noise control people would deal with my noisy kids?? ;-) I hope you get it sorted Cazkid, what a nightmare. Some good suggestions above. Would your landlord help out by putting in some more insulation? Might be worth approaching him/her about it, as in the long run it makes their flat better. Good luck

There's nothing bad about that advice! Great way to teach him about saving, spending, value of money etc. while slowly eliminating the dummy. Better than my "chocolate is the solution for every problem" approach :-$ Mumum, personally I would try a slightly gentler approach, try to drop the dummy during the day and once that's been successful start working on the night time. My little boy has a smelly soft toy dog which he sucks (horrible), but is old enough now to understand that it's only for bedtime, and it never moves from his room (thank goodness, I'd be quite embarrassed to take it out in public!). I'm quietly hopeful that one day he'll decide that he can just cuddle it rather than suck it!