Dr Who.

Nate's Dad is a very big Dr Who fan, and for those of you who don't know Dr Who starts again on Saturday 1st September. Unfortunately for Nate's dad we are busy that night, our wedding party, luckily for us we've already seen the episode thanks to the BFI preview. It'll be a very good episode and as we were asked not to spoil it by Stephen Moffat himself I'm not going to spoil it.

Back to the point of this post, on 31st August a new gadget will be released: the Sonic Screwdriver remote! Forbidden Planet had an event in which the makers of the remote were demonstrating it and you were able to buy for one day only. There was also a competition to win one if you came dressed as a character from Dr Who, neither of us were brave enough so we nominated Nate as the person to go dressed as the eleventh Dr.

Nate as the Eleventh Dr Who.

There were three other people who entered, which surprised us we expected a lot more people to enter. There was a David Tennant lookalike, a member from UNIT and a pirate Amy Pond, the judges handed it over to the crowd to decide and David Tennant came a close second to Nate.

Nate is the proud owner of a Sonic Screwdriver remote, and as he seems to have claimed my Sonic Screwdriver Wii remote I think I'll have to play with the new one. I'll post a review once I've had a chance to play around with it and I'm sure Nate will review is as well, in a few years time as it has a 12+ age rating and is rather heavy for him to properly manipulate.

A very quick review from me, it looks amazing and the functionality is very nice and if the novelty wears off it will look very good on your mantlepiece/bookshelf with it's morse code setting.

Travelling with gNappies

In April we flew to the Caribbean, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to test the gnappies. We took four outers and six waterproof liners. This was the perfect amount for us as we use disposables at night. The disposable inserts took up less room then the disposables we took for the same amount. They were perfect for our holiday, on the days we were out visiting sites or relatives a simple wipe of the liner before putting them in a bag kept it all under control. We had lots of comments about how smart he looked and stylish especially as he spent a lot of time in nothing but a nappy. We would definitely travel again with gnappies.

gTea in Brighton

One of my first purchases for Nathaniel was the new baby bundle of gDiapers (gNappies Facebook UK, gDiapers Facebook US) as I then knew them. I found them on an American forum and though how pretty they looked, plus they used a mixture of disposable inserts and reusable which I thought was a pretty good idea, as there are times when cloth could be too much of a juggling act. In the new baby bundle there are 12 tiny gPants, 6 small gPants and 80 disposable inserts. If I'm honest we didn't get much use out of the tiny's as he was such a long baby and people encouraged me to use disposables at first. I'd probably pack them in the hospital bag if we were to have another. Although they were really useful for popping over disposables to stop them leaking.

On to the point of this post. Yesterday Kim Graham Nye the co-founder of gDiapers was over here in Brighton, so we thought we'd pop along and have some tea and talk about gNappies as they are called over here. It was great fun to talk to Kim, who was happy to show other mums who haven't used g's before the beauty of them and talk them through the breathability of the pouch where one mum even attempted to breathe through the pouch, successfully I might add and a demo of the Sushi roll as a way of using g's overnight. There were samples of the gCloth, which I've never seen as I shied away from buying as I'd read bad reviews of it although seeing it in the flesh has made me regret this as Nathaniel seemed to love cuddling it.

It was great to see the UK team of gNappies and Kim, we hope there are many more gTea's over here.

Nathaniel in his Game Day gPant back in November.

Library Trips

Once a week, we like to visit the library; we started going due to the story time but we have since found they have an abundance of board books which are safe for Nate to play with as he likes to read with his mouth. 

The story time is great as there are a variety of books and unfortunately I never really know where to start with most children's book shops as there are so many books to choose from, at the moment I'm rather lucky as I'm limited to the board books as I quite like Nate being involved with the reading. We have a few book ideas for when we can finally trust him not to scrunch up the pages. One of my favourites so far is Billy Monster's Daymare, I'm not sure Nate enjoyed it as much as I did.

Nate enjoying his very own Library Card. 

Real Nappies

It's about time I posted about nappies, it's the thing we seem to do the most change nappies. When I was pregnant we had planned on exclusively using reusable nappies, that hasn't happened mainly as I'm not brave enough to test any all night. We do mainly use reusables though, even Nate's dad puts them on without having to be prompted. Everyone tried to talk us out of it, they smell, you'll spend forever washing and you can't get them clean were the main objections. All from people who hadn't used them, of the people who used them I just got a shrug and why not but don't discount disposables.
The nappies that get used first here are the Bumgenius sized All In Ones which unfortunately they no longer make. After that it's the Bumgenius V4's. Washing, well in the first few months, yes we did spend forever washing but that was mainly just baby clothes, and sheets for his bed.
We love them, I love them for the aesthetics they look so much nicer than the disposables you don't want to hide them when taking pictures. It's a shame it's winter as there isn't much opportunity for nappy pictures when it's so cold.

Snow Day!

Today is the first time Nate has experienced snow. He seemed to be smiling lots while we took a very quick walk to the nearest place that sold papers earlyish in the morning. We were quite lucky to get a paper there were about 10 Sunday Telegraphs and that was about it as the delivery had been delayed by a couple of hours and a couple of hours later there was still no sign of a delivery.

After going for a lovely walk, we took a quick picture of him standing in the snow. Look at that smile I think he might like the cold more than his mum, skiing here we come.

Book Review: Peepo!

One of our loves is reading, one that I think is important that Nate shares with us. Peepo! was written and illustrated by Janet and Allan Ahlberg who have also written The Jolly Postman and the Funny Bones (one of my favourite books). Peepo! seems to be Nate's favourite book at the moment he loves the illustrations which surprises us as they are incredibly intricate with lots going on which hopefully means this book will remain a favourite as he grows.
It's plus points for me are that we got it in board book form, which means Nate can play with it and we don't have to worry about dribble; it has a story and isn't just single words on a page which is what a lot of board books are.

Swimming

One of our pleasures is swimming every week we go to a swimming class specifically for babies. There aim is to teach babies to respect water and they take advantage of the mammalian diving reflex. Nate loves the water, I suppose being a water birth helps this. Its great seeing how swimming socialises the babies as well, they have to wait their turn and watch the others while waiting. We started swimming at 9 weeks and I think it was probably the best time to start for us.

First Post

Six months ago, we welcomed Nathaniel into our lives

We looked around a few parenting websites and we found that there are various 'types' of parents. I'm not sure we fit a type of parent, but if we did I suppose it would be baby led. However, I don't intend this to be a parenting blog. I intend this to be about our journey, Nate's journey and my journey. Nate enjoys reading, or should that be chewing books and music. I enjoy reading, listening to music, cooking and traveling.