simonethebeaver

I've not been myself as mine are too young, but I've heard fantastic things about the activity Sundays at the Roysl Opera House: http://www.roh.org.uk/functions/family-sundays

My two year old had truly horrible chicken pox. I would think carefully about whether you'd feel comfortable with yourself if your child was suffering because you'd deliberately exposed them to infection.

You'll stay on the waiting list of all the schools you applied for. And you do need to accept the place offered or you could end up with no place at all. You can also look at other schools you didn't originally apply for and ask to go on their waiting lists. You can have eggs in a lot of baskets!

This is useful. http://www.guysandstthomas.nhs.uk/resources/patient-information/maternity/support-breastfeeding-lambeth-southwark.pdf The lovely Anna Cannon and her colleague Linda work at the Milk Spots in Lambeth, but can also be called up in a panic.

Sydenham does band, but uses the Lewisham yr 5 test results rather than any test of its own. Ditto all local authority schools in Lewisham. Intexas, as Katgod says, banding of applicants rather than banding of all kids reduces the disadvantage as, for example, if 50% of your applicants would be in the top band of the Lewisham test, then instead of all of them competing in that one band, your own test will moderate them into the top five bands of ability of YOUR applicants. Thus giving them a better chance. Banding doesn't increase a school's reach by very much if there's great demand - just look at Haberdasher's Hatcham! But it does make some difference.

There is a NVR test at the end of year 5 in Lewisham primaries, and each child is assigned a band on the back of that. Some Lewisham secondaries just use that for admissions. Southwark applications I'm not totally sure of the method of banding them! Other, and Haberdashers is one, administer their own NVR test to all who apply, from whatever borough, and then moderate the results into bands shared equally across the number (eg 900 applicants would result in 100 in each band). This removes the disadvantage of top heavy banding as a very able set of applicants will still be separated into equal bands. It is horribly confusing. We applied for six secondaries with six different admissions criteria this year.

Sorry, the advert for the SECOND sale says complete modernisation! I read it with half a brain and assumed it was the listing for the cheaper sale. So someone has bought it and simply resold without doing the work, to ride the market.

The advert for the first sale describes it as 'in need of complete modernisation'.

I'm glad it's over, Knomester. You can get fantastic post-TT support at the local breastfeeding cafes, you know. And a shoulder or two to cry on.

I probably am wrong! But do double check, as the Southwark brochure suggests that isn't the case.

You don't automatically go on Lewisham waiting lists, I don't think. You need to call the schools directly and ask to go on. Apologies if that's wrong.

Fly, what a really stressful situation. We've also had lots of dealings with SEN issues and the Children with Disabilities team and can confirm that not only do they not always work together, but can in fact be in conflict with each other. I highly recommend taking this to your local councillors in the first instance. They will go straight to the council bosses and hopefully find out very quickly what is going on. PM if I can be any more help.

Does anyone know what the distance for Goodrich was this year?

I know you're not focusing on mobile devices, but it's almost entirely how I access the Internet, and sadly the site is pretty unusable in that format. Future proofing must include mobile/tablet functionality, surely?

We've just remortgaged and the difference between the estate agent's valuation and the surveyor's was ?215,000 less for the surveyor, which was in turn ?35,000 more than we'd put on our application form, and ?220,000 more than we paid for our house two years ago.

We are sharing 60:40 in the same situation.

Sillywoman, sounds great. To avoid confusion though, I'd like point out that it's 24th April, not 23rd!

Excellent, sillywoman. Ours was asked to mop the kitchen floor last night and told us it had given him a nervous breakdown.

Yes, my Mother's Day treat will be a wake up at an hour beginning with 6!

I would add that you may want to think about whether or not you want to use a case loading midwifery team like the Lanes or Oakwood. That would mean booking in at Kings, but getting the majority of your care from midwives that know you, and delivering with familiar staff.

JAGS costs less.

That sounds very stressful, brain. I hope it doesn't happen again, but just in case, or for others reading, if you run out of prescription medication at a weekend, Seldoc should be able to give you an emergency prescription. We found this out when we were in this position with epilepsy medication for a child and Sainsburys tried to charge us for a private prescription. Another local chemist however told us about Seldoc's service, and we got the prescription over the phone and sent directly to the chemist.

I'm pretty sure the pool ratio is 1:1 for under 5s there. Definitely for under 3s. I loathe Centerparcs but ignore my grouchiness as so many people like it.

We also have an S-Max and I can fix a Maxi-Cosi stage 1, Maxi-Cosi stage 1 and a Gracco stage 2 across the back. We don't use Isofix as we stupidly believed it when we were told they didn't exist in the S-Max, despite we now know the existence of little Isofix tags on the seats! Like Bellenden Bear says, it drives pretty much the same as our Focus did, although parking it can be a pain.

Your poor son. Despite his wishes I would definitely tell them, not least because they are obliged to keep records of any such incidents, so a picture can be formed of how the school is dealing with bullying. I would hope that the staff will be able to deal with it sensitively enough that it doesn't make things worse.