Saffron

I'm not sure about your particular case, but in other instances we've had a couple a minor tax mistakes corrected retrospectively. Call Revenue Services and speak to someone directly about your case. Somewhat surprisingly,Hubbie and I have found them to be friendly and helpful in the past. If the mistake cannot be correctly retrospectively, or you can't get anything back from the payroll company, I beleive the Revenue Servicies are obliged to offer you a payment plan which is within your financial mean. Do call and speak to them. It may not all be as bad as you fear. Best of luck.

He was bottom sitting again Monday and wouldn't eat, so I did a 20% water change. He's looking good now. We've cut his feeds down by about 2/3. I think the filter is catching up with the water quality now too. I'm scheduled to do another 20% water change today. I'm really just desperate to for the nights to warm up a tiny bit, so we can move him to an outdoor pond. He's really far too large for his tank, but far too small for eatin'!!

dulwichgirl2 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Btw, it is illegal persistently to take your child > out of mainstream education, Saffron, without > agreement from the head. Presumably your friends > wrote in advance, which would be sensible and > appropriate. Certainly not, writing in advance would have spoiled the spontaneity. ;-) I doubt as well whether my friends really cared two sticks what the law was back then. They just knew they were doing the right thing for their child. My personal feeling is that sending children to school everyday like little automatons doesn't necessarily benefit them, if what's really needed is a day off. But as I said, every family is different.

It could be subclinical infection with rotavirus. Rotavirus is generally thought of as a short illness in children, leading to diarrhoea and sometimes vomiting. However, in some cases rotavirus hangs around much longer causing "post-gastroenteritis syndrome". If that's the case, there's not much you can do. I second the BRAT diet, and also decrease your dairy intake. Post-gastroenteritis syndrome can sometimes cause temporary dairy intolerance. Eat plain starches like rice or oats, and avoid too much meat. If you're not better soon, check with your GP. xx

Oh dear, well it's always different in different families, I guess. My friend and her partner took their son out of school whenever anything bad happened, or even if they just felt they had something special to do together with him, which was often to do with art/music. He was shortlisted for the Mercury prize a few years ago!

I was also given the advice from well-meaning friends that I needed to allow Husband to make plans and to make mistakes, mainly where forward planning in childcare is concerned. Well, that's all fine and dandy, except he doesn't ?*^%ing learn from his mistakes! Grrrr. (Sudacrem on the sofa 3, YES THREE, times. It's not hard to put the lid on and put it out of reach of Little Saff's fingers.) Still, I wouldn't lump into the same category all seemingly lazy husbands who irritate their wives. Their wives may be staying with them b/c they have other redeeming qualities. Mr Saff, for instance, is very forgiving. (Hmm maybe that's something he's learned from making so many mistakes?) Ironic thing is that although he can destroy our kitchen by making a single cup of tea, from what I can tell about his work (he's a builder) he leaves the clients' houses clean! We have a cleaner who comes to our house once a week, even though we can't really afford it. It saves a lot of arguing. Although tonight, I'm the one in trouble b/c I forgot to pay the gas bill. I'll be returning to work by summer's end. Then I'll be the main breadwinner. Wonder who will do the extra childcare and forward planning then? Hmm, yes, hmm. Changes ahead.

Oh, susyp, what a very sad story! Is it something in the air? My little one has been very tearful recently too. Maybe try not to offer any advice or explanations. It's just enough sometimes to say that you're sorry your LO is feeling sad, and to offer lots of cuddles. I think at any age, there's nothing truly more comforting than heartfelt sympathy, and it doesn't need to come with any explanations. If you think you need a mother-daughter day, go with your gut feeling. She is only little. If you think a special day with you would boost her feelings, then that's the right thing to do. You don't have to say it's b/c she was upset about her friend. Then it doesn't have to be linked to that. You can just say it's a surprise. xx

No, you can still buy talc powders. Non-talc powders are usually made of corn starch. These are not recommended once nappy rash has appeared. This is b/c the startch holds moisutre against the skin and does not provide a barrier. In addition, the startch makes a medium in which bacteria can grow and lead to secondary infections in the skin. Talc can be an irritant to the lungs and the skin. I'm not sure the link to ovarian cancer in humans has anything other than correlational data to support it, and correlation does not equal causation. I think most of the tox data for talc comes from rats having received high exposures. Would have to look this up to be sure. Even non-talc based powders should be used sparingly because inhalation is still a route of irritation to lungs, even if it's only corn starch. Modern barrier creams applied thinly after each wet wipe provide good protection to the skin (though probably in 50 years, someone will come up with a reason why these are rubbish, geez ya can't win can ya?). Metanium has come out with a new "everyday" barrier cream. We tried some recently. It's good, but I still prefer Sudacrem.

Hi SEgirl. Would the accredited course at Middlesex Uni make it easier for you to move on to midwifery training, should you choose to in the future? Also, does Doula UK recognize the Middlesex accredation? Why not have a chat or even arrange a meeting with someone from each organisation to discuss career options? Best of luck! :)

Sorry no advice about the napping, but could the wakefulness be due to Baby being on the brink of a big developmental leap? http://www.examiner.com/article/the-wonder-weeks-predicts-babies-fussy-periods-and-mental-development-leaps-exclusive-interview Sometimes knowing what't driving the wakefulness can help you with parenting strategies and coping. We had really bad sleep at that age too. xx

Lhell, re mixing gaviscon... Do the directions say to administer it on an empty stomach then wait X amount of time before a feed? Otherwise, if you're going to administer it immediately before/after a feed, it's going to mix with your breastmilk in Baby's stomach anyway. Try mixing some with breastmilk and check its consistency. If it seems to dissolve fine, then it's probably ok.

Nah, he'll probably go to a school where all the kids were breastfed to 4+ yrs. He'll be the uber-cool kid who got his pic on Time. ;-) Not saying I think much of the pic obviously, but it's different strokes for different folks. Now, anyone see a waterfall round South London? No. Hmmm, guess we'll have to settle for b/fing while watching nature documentaries. That's about as extreme as I'm getting... today. xx

Hi Midivydale -- How old is your baby now? Could your LO be reaching a developmental leap? Babies are often fussier before a developmental leap. Your LO might be making progress on a medical level, but then feeling fussy because a developmental leap is on the way. Could this make your LO more sensitive to small irritations in digestion even if the reflux is slowly getting better? Just a thought. Sorry to hear you're still having a tough time. xx

Hmm, not sure I'm convinced of the chemistry behind that. All powders are not endowed with the same physicochemical properties. We recently had some homemade playdough in the carpet. It's basically an oil/flour/water mix. It was really, REALLY difficult to remove from the carpet (wet or dry). Personally, I'd shy away from adding flour to the sudocrem spot on the carpet, unless you've already tried this method on an unseen area of the carpet.

Is that babypowder with cornstarch or with talc?

Use a toothbrush to scrub it with a small amount of washing-up liquid. Then use your carpet shampoo machine (sans carpet soap) to steam and rinse out the washing-up liquid.

Well Salsaboy, we always keep some chips in the freezer just in case, but Mr Fishy seems much improved this morning. The redness is diminishing in size and colour. His dorsal fin is up, and he's not bottom-sitting anymore. I won't put the deepfat fryer on just yet. After flicking through some of the fish forums last night, I think in our case, the ammonia poinsoning wasn't that bad. It seems a severe case of ammonia/nitrate poinsoning would have resulted in the fish curling up on itself and/or having bleeding gills. Didn't see either of those symptoms in Mr Fishy. However, the fact that a water change yielded improved symptoms does suggest ammonia toxicity was the problem. Multifish, I read the same about consensus water change being 30-50% in one day (followed by 20% every 5 days). It seems that fish can also be damaged by rapid reversal of ammonia/nitrate toxicity, although I couldn't find anything about the chemistry/physiology as to why that should be the case. As our ammonia problem didn't appear to be extremely severe (ie, fish not curled up with bleeding gills), I decided to throw caution to the wind and do the 3x 50% change over the course of an hour. I decided to do this b/c I didn't have any chemicals to bind the ammonia/nitrate. But also, I was hoping (and thankfullly it worked) that the ammonia wasn't so high as to cause a shock by lowering it through rapid water change. We'll definitely be reducing food as well as doing the follow-up water changes. I've probably been letting my toddler feed Mr Fishy too much. Alan Medic, I think I know the shop in Lewisham. I couldn't find our bottle of fincoat last night, so I'll defintely check out getting some seachem and a bacteria booster, as Multifish suggests. I've had this shubunkin for over a year. He's very large a beautiful, we'd be sad to lose him to something as trivial as bad water. I've had an offer from another Forumite to rehome Mr Fishy in his pond with other happy shubunkins. As I said, we're just waiting for the night temps to rise a bit. In the meantime, if anyone else would be interested in rehoming him in a large indoor tank, please feel free to get in touch. I'd guess he's around 225g, maybe ~8". He could grow to be about 2x that large. Thanks everyone.

Given two straws and half a chance, I'm sure Little Saff would snorkle for a b/feed in the bath! I like the funny side of b/fing. We've had so many hilarious moments. When Little Saff bumped her head on the table, she told us it was a beeboo (that's her word for booby or b/fing) emergency. When I picked her up, she started making noises like beeeeebooooo-beeeeeboooo-beeeeeboooo (you have to imagine that sounding like the old-style emergency siren). Needless to say we all fell about laughing. :)

Hi Forumites. Can you help me troubleshoot my goldfish problem? I have a large shubunkin goldfish in a small tank. I'm hoping to rehome him in a pond soon. I've been waiting for the night temps to warm up a bit. In the meantime, my filter has gone down (again). I've been distracted over the last few days, and I think the ammonia has gone really high. I see red streaks like bleeding/bruising on his sides. I think this is ammonia toxicity, so I've done 3x 50% water changes (can't set the hospital tank up at the moment, and it doesn't have a filter anyway). I've also managed to restart the filter. Goldfish seems not to e quite so listless now. What else can I do? I can't get to the aquarium shop today. Not sure if any aquarium shops are open tomorrow. My water conditioner has a scale conditioner in it. And, I might have some extra fincoat in the cupbord, must look. Any advice? Or is Mr Fishy a goner???

When I saw "extreme breastfeeding" in the title, I was slightly disappointed to learn that it wasn't b/fing underwater or up a mountainside! Tee Hee. Reality was somewhat less exciting... BBC article-- Extreme breastfeeding: Should children be nursed for years? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18032390 Hmm, funny but, I think I would have preferred an article on b/fing underwater or up a mountainside.

Sorry, womanofdulwich, I couldn't disagree more! One person's perception of warm/cool is definitely not the same as another's perception. And, yes, I do "get out there", but I don't enjoy it or find it warm with weather as it has been recently. A friend of mine was raised in Newfoundland, and she said her childhood was "bloody freezing". So, I don't think it's entirely down to how or where you were raised either. I've heard the ol' "It's not the wrong weather, it's the wrong clothes," but I don't agree with that either. Sounds too much to me like some rubbish my parents would say when they just wanted to get us kids out of their hair for an hour. Sometimes the weather does make it more difficult for some peopel to get out and about. On the flipside, I bet you tuppence I can sit in the noonday sun in Cairo or Blackrock and not even wilt. But would we drop everything to emigrate to lower latitudes? Hmmmmmmm. Only time will tell. Forum, you may find me messaging you one day from sunnier climes! :) As far as correlation/causation in allergies, the research presented does not appear to be suggesting causation in any way, if I've understood correctly. It is however looking at functionality, which is an important part of understanding biological interaction. I think Prof Thompson's quote at the end of the article is particularly succint: Hey is that a ray of sun I see breaking through? I'm off!!!! :)

Brilliant! (The Nature Play, not the muddy wash cycle ;-) )

Seriously though, the article promts some interesting thoughts about the trade-offs between urban and country living. If our family lived in the countryside, we'd find transport difficult b/c we don't have a car. We rely heavily on public transport. Also living in an urban area, we have easy access to lots of diverse activities that we wouldn't so easily access living in a non-urban area. I guess the trade-off is in how to maximise the benefits of our green spaces in London. And, how much exposure is needed to get any benefit? I lived in Hoxton/Brick Lane many years ago. There were loads and loads of families in the area, and there was very little green space.

womanofdulwich Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > its quite warm today Saffron!! go find some > puddles! Well, thanks for the friendly heckle, but I don't find 16 C warm at all (and I used to live in Switzerland!!!!). :(

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17952320 PLEASE NOW CAN WE HAVE SOME NICE WEATHER!!! (I'm really struggling to get out with my toddler in the rain & cold.)