If they offer a baby pack on arrival consider whether you need all the items before paying for it upfront as it may be cheaper/free to wait until you arrive and ask for the specific items. If they don’t offer this, still find out whether they can provide a steriliser/kettle or whether you can get a container & take your own Milton steriliser tablets.
Take what you can re nappies and wipes – they are expensive (even local brands) in the hotel and there weren’t much in the way of shops outside our hotel.
Avoid taking any white clothes – any of you! We took travel wash & I tried to wash things as soon as they were stained but even after that & washing twice at home they are still stained!
Buy one of these:
An Outlook Solar Canopy Shade. It was fantastic. Fitted easily over our Maclaren Techno XLR pushchair even with the standard pushchair shade extended. Meant Millie was almost completely covered from sun during day and also acted as a curtain at night. We used to use a blanket but this enabled air to get in but shield her too. What’s more is it is super light and folds in on itself to a small tea plate sized circle.
Take a mini bottle of washing up liquid/pour some of your home washing up liquid into a travel bottle. Whenever we have been away & had to buy it they only come in one size…Large! I also took a dish choth & tea towel (actually didn’t get around to decanting the washing up liquid this year so had to buy) – all were essential for washing up the bottles but didn’t mind if got left behind.
Take some ready made formula packs with you (only if formula feeding of course). We used some on the journey out there, some on excursions and saved some for journey home but didn’t use these. We took 6 200ml cartons in total.
Pack a surprise goody bag for any children of about 2 or above. Doesn’t have to be expensive, could just be items from home with a couple of new surprises. Unveil it on the plane to keep them occupied. Save a few bits back hidden in the case for the plane journey home.
Pack lots of snacks in hand luggage!
Check out facilities before you go & whether you need to pack beach towels – being all inclusive, our hotel provided pool/beach towels with lots of tokens to swap for clean towels. Could have saved us some much needed luggage weight as we took 3 tubs of formula milk with us!
Don’t forget teething powders, other teething aids, baby paracetemol/ibuprofen!!!
Consider whether pretty/smart clothes for babies. We usually put Millie in her PJs when we went to dinner so she was ready for bed after dinner (her bed being the pushchair) so all the pretty dresses I took for the evenings were unnecessary.
Don’t stress about what your children do or don’t eat. It’s for such a short period of time and they will not starve themselves. Even if they eat nothing but chips for a week, they will survive and it doesn’t mean they wont ever eat a normal/better diet again. I spent 2 weeks as a 9 year old on chicken noodle soup when we went on a family holiday to (former) Yugoslavia. My aunt couldn’t understand it but my mum just said it was my holiday too and we’d all enjoy it a lot more if they just let me be rather than forcing me to eat food I didn’t like (I was weird, I didn’t like pizza, burgers, lasagne, bolognese etc like most kids!).
You can never take too much suncream!
Don’t forget easily washable & quick drying coverall bibs – I got ours from JoJoMamanBebe but there are plenty of cheaper ones out there. Take a few so you can still have a clean one when others are dirty/drying and we lost one while there.
I’m a little late in writing this post as I wanted to write it on 1 June. Why? Because then Millie would have been outside in the real world for exactly the same length of time as she was inside my tummy growing. I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to provide an update on my beautiful girl!
Moving
Still not much actual moving happening at the moment except in circles. If you lie her on her back, she finds it hysterical to roll straight to her front. Which is great! Except when she is in her cot and is meant to be sleeping or in her sleep as she then gets stuck and cries for help.
She isn’t crawling or bum shuffling forwards yet…or backwards…but she has mastered doing the 360 degree bum shuffle. She’ll sit amongst her toys and start rotating around as if she is sat on a Lazy Susan picking things up and putting them down again as she gets to the next toy of interest.
She is itching to walk and to be able to pull herself to her feet. If there is anything in grabbing distance she grabs on and starts pulling. It is definitely time to drop the base of the cot to the next level! If you hold her hands while she is sat down she pulls herself to standing, or if you try to sit her on the floor she refuses and stiffens her legs to stand, then just starts marching her little wobbly legs and grinning from ear to ear! If she wants a cuddle she tries to walk up my legs!
Eating
Millie is doing so well with her eating. We haven’t officially dropped any bottles yet but think we are in the process of doing so. She is eating (or drinking, always think eating milk sounds weird) less of her milk and doesn’t ask for her milk as readily around her typical 3 hour slot. I would say she is actually eating at least one meal a day if not two, in total. Some days that may incorporate snacks but not always. This week she is particularly interested in protein by way of fish or meat. What were her favourite foods at the start, such as red pepper, are of little interest to her now, but she is still keen to try new foods. I finally managed (remembered) to purchase some low salt & low sugar baked beans the other day and she couldn’t get enough of them.
Sleeping
She is consistently sleeping through the night now. There is the occasional 5am wake up, like this morning, but she is generally waking up between 6 and 6.30am. Even when she wakes at 5am she tends to go back to sleep again.
Her nap times are usually (there is no real always with Millie, as is the same for most babies I imagine) around 8.30-9am for about an hour and then we have an early lunch about 11.30 then after that she will nap for about 1.5 hours.
Other Developments
Millie has 2 teeth and I’m certain there are a couple more on the way.
I think she might be learning to wave…it’s early days so not sure if it’s just co-incidence yet or she is actually trying to wave.
Lots of lovely babbling noises, too many variations to document, but she likes trying out different sounds and volumes as the below video shows. The video itself, I believe, is her first realisation that the reflection she sees in the mirror is herself and not another Millie. I’ve been told I need to give a ‘Utter Cuteness’ warning before you watch. Ensure you have a baby, child or pet to squish, failing that, grab a teddy (everyone still has a teddy right?).
Final Word
Although Millie has been a bit under the weather this week with a rotten cough (and those pesky teeth) she is still such a happy and contented baby. Unless you try to wipe her nose or give her calpol – she really doesn’t take kindly to anyone attempting either of those.
Callum is still wonderful with her though has started to slip into ‘typical brother’ mode by making her hit herself or goes charging her around the house when she is in her walker (the latter of which she loves).
Now for the next adventure – we are about to go away on holiday to Tunisia. Cases full of nappies, formula milk, wipes, bottles, toys, etc! How they think its fair to give a baby just 10kg for luggage is beyond me! Hoping Millie’s first holiday abroad will be more successful than Callum’s more testing one.
I love active outdoor sports, not that you’d know it! I do very little but mainly because when you have kids you either don’t get the opportunity or if you try to get them involved it gets very expensive. However, if I’m ever going to get the opportunity again it’s good to get the kids interested early! We are lucky enough to have a skate park in the park behind where we live where the local kids ride their bikes and scooters. Callum loves going there to watch the older boys (not seen any girls there yet) and he can have a little scoot around and vows he is going to do stunts like they do when he gets bigger. I told him he needs to get a little braver first as there’ll be lots of falls before he masters any of the tricks and I started showing him YouTube clips of the professionals to show him how they fall off and jump straight back on again!
As a result I found out there was going to be a Family Adventure Festival at the Bournemouth International Centre (BIC) and the Animal Bike Tour was going to be there. Callum was very excited so I purchased a couple of tickets. An adult 2 day pass was £9 (£5 for a day) and under 5’s were free which I thought was very reasonable so I purchased the 2 day tickets.
It opened at 10am and we got there on the Saturday about 11am. There were stalls and displays going on across 2 rooms which included High Ropes (Go Ape style), vertical slide, climbing wall, the Animal Bike Tour display, Bush Surival demonstration, the Animal Man talk, Slacklining display, plus various stalls providing information on various activities, opportunity to buy clothing etc. Outside they had a Zip Wire.
This is how we spent our day:
Vertical Slide (took Callum a monumental effort to climb up to the top of the slide but he was fearless going down).
The Animal Man talk – fantastic show where the kids got up close to a number of animals - Giant African Snail, Tarantula (yes I did say Tarantula), Snake, Bearded Dragon, Pancake Tortoise, Meerkat, Owl, Chinchilla, Skunk. The Animal Man, Nick, really engaged the kids and would ask for a couple of volunteers to go up and hold or touch the animal – including the tarantula. The kids were very brave and the animals were so well behaved. Here is a poor photo of Callum stroking a Chinchilla.
Animal Bike Tour – we caught the end of Martin Ashton, Blake Samson, James somebody on the bikes and another guy demonstrating parkour (free running). As this was the main attraction for Callum we went back to this again later to see the whole show.
Zip Wire – we then headed outside to the zip wire. This was free to festival goers but also open to the public for £3 a ride. The queue wasn’t too long but we did have to wait about 20 minutes as it took time to put the harness & hats on everyone. Callum was so brave and followed instructions from the guys really well. Here’s a video of him coming down the wire and as soon as he got off he asked if he could go again. We didn’t immediately but we did go back to it at the end when Stuart went on it too.
Callum going down the Zip Wire
Lunch – we ate in the cafe at the BIC outside of the exhibition. It filled a hole! Nothing amazing!
Climbing Wall – Callum had a couple of goes trying to climb the wall. Both times he started well and managed to get to about 7 ft high before getting stuck but I’m really proud of him for trying and the lady said he was probably the youngest child they’d had on the wall.
Slacklining – Portlebay UK Slackline Open competition was being held on the day we visited where ‘trickliners’ each performed their best high skill tricks against one another to compete to win a cash prize.
Animal Bike Tour – we left the slacklining competition to catch the full bike display. Having been to the bike tour down on the beach at the Bournemouth Airshow a couple of years ago, the display itself was much the same but with a few additional tricks and the extra couple of guys added a bit more diversity to it. I don’t think Callum really remembers seeing the show at the airshow anyway so he enjoyed it. Blake Samson was also kind enough to pose for a photo with Callum.
Zip Wire – just before leaving we headed back out to the zip wire so Callum could have a second go. He insisted Daddy went with him this time and Stuart agreed that it was good fun!
We didn't visit many of the stalls as we weren’t interested in buying anything or signing up to any subscriptions or clubs. There were a number of freebies being handed out during the festival too. There was a bag with a few sample waterproofing products as we went in, a few freebies being thrown out to lucky people during the bike tour and you got a free waterbottle if you entered their competition to win a bike, there was a free bottle of the really good (in my opinion) P20 sun block and packets of flavoured popcorn (the bacon and maple syrup was rather salty but quite tasty) and juice were the things we picked up.
I would have liked to have caught the Bush Survival demonstration as they were showing how to skin an animal but then I’m rather gruesome like that. Otherwise we were happy with what we had seen when we left around 4pm. I did feel a bit sorry for Millie who had to just sit in her pushchair and watch – although she seemed happy enough to play with Callum’s balloon for a bit. I was a bit gutted there weren’t more activities that the grown ups were encouraged to try as, after all, it was a ‘family’ adventure festival not just a kids one but Callum said he enjoyed himself.
Although we had a good day, we felt one day was adequate and so gave away the tickets for the Sunday. Unfortunately, the feedback was that the demonstrations weren’t so good on the Sunday so sounds like we picked the best day, just a shame my friend and her family didn’t get to enjoy their visit as much as we did.
The Festival also held a number of free ‘fringe’ events during the weeks leading up to the main event in nearby Bournemouth boroughs. Callum and I headed to the Boscombe event being held on the Wednesday the week before where Callum got recorded throwing a tennis ball at 18.6mph (very good for a 4 year old apparently) but I wasn’t overly impressed with the small number of activities happening in the fringe events but the main event more than met expectation.
Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. All opinions are my own (or those of my family).
The final post in my series of guest posts on BLW is from Karen. Karen is married with three children – twin boys T1 and T2, who are 3 and a half, and an 8 month old daughter E. Karen is a freelance copywriter and regular friendly face in the blogging community and Twitter. She is also one of the few whom I’ve had the pleasure to meet in person when I first moved to Bournemouth at my first ever Tweetup! After taking a very short break from blogging to landscape their garden (which I can’t wait to see photos of) I really appreciate Karen taking the time away from her busy return to blogging schedule for Tales of a Twin Mum to contribute to my guest post series with her own experience comparing the traditional purée weaning to that of baby-led. For those of you thinking of starting BLW, Karen has also written her own great post on her own blog, including some ideas for first foods to try, which can be found here. Thank you Karen.
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When my twin boys were four months old, our health visitor advised me to start weaning because T2 was being sick all the time and she was convinced it was reflux and would improve with real food. It wasn’t and it didn’t, but that’s a whole other story. Because they were so little, I had to begin with baby rice and purees. I found it exciting buying a hand blender and making up ice cube trays of foods for the freezer as I couldn’t wait for my boys to move on to the next stage of their development. The only problem was that half of the things we ate for dinner didn’t work as a puree (chicken salad, fajitas, pork chops…the list goes on), so it wasn’t long before the excitement wore off and I started getting stressed that I didn’t have the time to make them separate meals to us.
As they got bigger I struggled to get them to take lumpy food, as they preferred it smooth. They’d often gag and be sick because of eating tiny lumps. I was terrified of the idea of giving them toast or sandwiches as I didn’t think they’d be able to cope with them. By the time they were about nine or ten months they started to turn their noses up at foods, especially if it was something homemade rather than a jar of baby food. As the months passed and they became more independent I was happy letting them self-feed but they were still very picky. If I made them chicken sandwiches T1 would eat the meat and pass his bread to T2, and T2 would eat the bread and pass his meat to T1. If I gave them hard boiled eggs T1 would eat the egg white and T2 the yolk, so at least food didn’t go to waste but it meant they were both missing out on the things they were avoiding. Their eating has gradually got worse, and now at three and a half they are both super picky. I can usually get them to eat things with hidden veg in the sauce like spaghetti bolognaise or homemade pizza, but every meal is hard work. We have to use pudding as a bribe EVERY DAY – if you don’t eat X amount of this you won’t get that. I never thought I’d be that sort of strict parent but if we didn’t do it they would literally survive on fruit, yoghurt and biscuits. I don’t let it stress me out; I know they’ll eat if they’re hungry and they have plenty of energy but it does get exhausting beginning every meal with them refusing to taste the food. If it’s something they’ve never tried before they will not taste it, no matter how much bribery I use.
T1 T2
With E I wanted to do everything possible to a) make weaning easy b) make her an adventurous eater and c) get her eating what we eat right away. We decided to wait until she was six months and try baby led weaning. It has worked amazingly well. She eats noodles, sandwiches, pasta, Yorkshire pudding, potatoes, beans, carrots, stir fry – literally everything we put in front of her. The only thing she hasn’t liked so far is melon, but I’m going to give that another go and see how we get on. I know that she’s eating (or sucking on) things off our plates that the boys never did (garlic bread or slices of olive, for instance) so I’m hoping with all hope that she stays on this path. So far so good. I’ll have to report back in six months or so to let you know how we get on, but I *think* this time we have a real eater rather than somebody who eats the breadcrumbs off a fishfinger and leaves the lump of soggy fish behind (yes that refers to you, T2). Keep your fingers crossed for us!
An Outlook Solar Canopy Shade. It was fantastic. Fitted easily over our Maclaren Techno XLR pushchair even with the standard pushchair shade extended. Meant Millie was almost completely covered from sun during day and also acted as a curtain at night. We used to use a blanket but this enabled air to get in but shield her too. What’s more is it is super light and folds in on itself to a small tea plate sized circle.
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