Baby skin problems

A couple of weeks ago I went to the doctor about my baby daughter's terribly dry skin. As well as severe cradle cap her poor little body was red raw and dry as sandpaper. All the usual gentle oils and creams recommended for newborns hadn't done anything much to relieve her skin.

All three of my children had quite bad cradle cap and dry skin as babies. Luckily my older two grew out of it so I am really hoping it will be the case again this time. My husband has eczema so it is no surprise our babies get it too.

Coincidentally that same day I went to the doctor's, I received an email from natural skin care company Hannah and Hugh telling me about their baby products, one of which is ideal for baby's dry skin. I was sent their rosehip and calendula cream to try out.

The doctor had also given me a cream and told me to apply liberally to my daughter 4 times a day. I decided to use the Hannah and Hugh cream alongside, specifically on my daughter's face and on her feet.

The cream is a lovely consistency, not sticky or oily. It's light and absorbs easily. It smells really nice - I have received compliments on how nice my daughter smells when she has this cream on!

As for how well it works, it has definitely done as good a job on her skin as the cream the doctor prescribed. A couple of people on seeing just her face when she's been otherwise covered up in the pram or in my arms have commented that her skin has improved. It has. As a result, this is a product I would recommend and would buy myself in the future. Especially if your child has simply a bit of dry skin here and there, Hannah and Hugh's rosehip and calendula cream would I'm sure help clear it up.

This skincare range was inspired by Hannah and Hugh’s founder and product developer Pamela Orji, whose desire to find a solution to her own daughter’s eczema propelled her business.  Their mission is to educate people to make better choices when deciding on skincare products; especially for babies. Hannah and Hugh’s skincare formulations have been carefully chosen for their safe and beneficial qualities and are free from parabens, sodium lauryl sulphate, PEGS, mineral oils, synthetic fragrances or colours. Ingredients include natural butters such as Cocoa and Shea butter, and essential oils such as lavender and chamomile, all of which are sourced locally in the UK.

The regular application of the creams is keeping my daughter's skin in better condition. She still has 'baby eczema' but the harshness of it has definitely subsided.

Hopefully with time, the need to apply cream will reduce somewhat and as with her siblings, the eczema will gradually disappear or at least be more mild.

Have any of your children suffered with cradle cap, eczema or other skin conditions? What have been the best products you have used to improve them? Have you heard or or used anything from the Hannah and Hugh range?

Disclosure: I was sent one pot of Hannah and Hugh rosehip and calendula baby cream, but with no obligation to blog about it. 

Gardening, growing and zen!

Last summer was our first summer with our very own garden and I was keen to try growing a few things. I successfully grew some tomatoes from seed and also planted some broad beans and rocket. It was fun - I enjoyed looking after the plants and the children loved helping out with the planting, the watering and watching the plants produce things we could then all eat!

This year I still wanted to grow some veggies but was wary of being over-ambitious with a newborn to look after. I'm fortunate that our neighbour loves gardening and grows a lot of vegetables herself. I had a chat with her about what might be easy / fairly low maintenance things to grow this year and she kindly gave me some tomato plants she had grown from seed, as well as some green bean plants too. I also read somewhere that radishes are easy and quick to grow so bought some seeds and planted some of those too.

With a bit of help from the children, I got everything planted and in place. We have watered and watched as flowers have grown on the tomato plants, followed by tomatoes that are currently green and small but will hopefully grow and ripen before too long. The bean plants have flowers right now so hoping we will get some beans a bit later this summer.

In the same way that cooking is a way for me to switch off, relax and generally feel content, gardening has now become that too. I don't get a lot of time to do much out there but a few minutes here and there are fine if that's all I can get. Our garden is quite large and a little unruly and wild, in a good way, but that means there is always tidying and little bits of pruning to be done. I get a real sense of satisfaction from making even the smallest area look a bit neater!

As with cooking, when the children are out in the garden with me, they love to help or just to busy themselves with something outside. I'm having a good time, they're having a good time, we're all pretty relaxed - it's great!

Have you been growing anything this year? Do you and your children enjoy doing a bit of gardening? If you don't have a garden, do you grow any herbs in pots on a windowsill or have the odd house plant to nurture?

Little lunch box notes

I never thought I would be one of those mums who writes cute little notes to pop into her child's lunch box. Yet in just the last couple of weeks I've started including the odd note with my son's lunch.

One day my son mentioned his friend's mum put notes in her son's lunch box. I asked what they said but he wasn't sure. I then asked the mum, who I am friends with and she said she wrote any kind of little thing with the hope of trying to get her son more interested in reading. She struggles in getting him to do his school reading at home. 

I am fortunate that I don't have any trouble encouraging my son to read. He loves to read anything in front of him; cereal boxes, signs, advertisements in magazines, anything really. However, I thought I detected a slight desire for the odd note in his own lunch box and had that at the back of my mind.

One day I was preparing his lunch and gave him pitta bread with something like cheese or houmous inside and then some sliced cucumber and tomato in a separate pot to add to the pitta when he was ready to eat it (not wanting to make the pitta soggy by putting it in myself). The thought occured to me to stick on a note to the cucumber and tomato pot reminding him to put those inside the pitta. So I wrote, 'put in pitta' followed by a smiley face and 'yum yum!'.

Another day, I was putting orange segments into a container for his lunch and carefully taking out any pips, as for some reason with oranges, my son doesn't enjoy eating them if they have pips in them. I then thought he might not even eat the orange if he thinks there might be pips in it so decided to stick a note on the container, saying, 'no pips!' and a smiley face again. He ate it all up!

I realised these little notes are indeed a good way to encourage his reading. They are also useful for me to communicate something about his lunch and a bit fun for my son to find them inside his lunch box too. I definitely don't include a note every day and I have not yet written a note that has not been functional (I am not one of those mums!). It seems little lunch box notes are not such a bad idea after all though....;-)

Do you or have you in the past included any kind of little note inside your child's lunch box and if so, what was the motive - an affectionate thought? to communicate something practical? to encourage their reading? something else?
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Copycat

As early on as she could, my daughter would try to do whatever her big brother was doing. As she has got older, the copying has increased all the more. Everything from wanting to play with whatever he is playing with (often resulting in snatching & fighting over a toy!), pulling the same 'funny' faces, dressing up as a superhero when he does, to repeating something he is saying to us (like a little echo!), wanting to eat the same foods, to draw when he is drawing, to read when he is reading and so on....

On the one hand it is rather endearing. She looks up to him with admiration and awe, which is sweet for a parent to see. She wants to be with him and do whatever he is doing all the time. Again, this is lovely to see the closeness in their relationship, even if it is not always harmonious.

The copying is also beneficial to her own development. She speaks a lot better for her two and a half years than our first born did and sounds older than her years sometimes. Seeing her big brother getting himself dressed in the mornings has meant she has been eager to do the same and she has been very good at putting on her own socks and shoes for some time. It sparks a determination in her to try things that perhaps an only child might not be in such a hurry to master. All pretty positive stuff!

On the other hand however, there are some things she copies that are a little frustrating! Just recently for example, my son decided he no longer likes to eat avocado. My daughter then tells me she also does not like avocado and refuses to eat any. If she and I are eating at lunchtime when my son is at school though, she will happily eat the avocado! This has happened with a few different foods. Likewise, if my son says he doesn't want to go somewhere, she will say the same or if he behaves in an unbecoming way, she will follow his lead and behave similarly. No fun for the parent in these cases!!

I realise at some point there will likely be a switch in her behaviour and far from wanting to do the same, my daughter may well decide she wants to do the complete opposite to my son. Undoubtedly, that will bring with it a whole new set of parenting challenges!

For now, I suppose my aim is to encourage the positive aspects to my daughter's copying and accept that the less endearing side is simply part of children being children and growing up in their own way, as they develop their own personalities.

Do your younger children copy their older siblings and to what effect?
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What a difference a day makes

I couldn't resist stealing the song title for my blog post.... ;-).

Finding myself mother to a newborn again, I am reminded of the stark contrast in days you typically face in any given week. One day, you're feeling on top of your game, baby is doing text book naps, smiling and generally being a pleasure. Another day, it's the reverse, baby's grizzly, lots of crying, they only want to be held and you're exhausted and wondering when you'll ever get to sit or lie down for a rest.

If you are a mother who likes routine with your children, the moment you think you are slipping into a nice routine with baby, they'll show you otherwise! Or just as you are getting some decent stretches of sleep, you'll have a shocker of a night that leaves you feeling unable to make it through the next day....

The good news is, it usually is just an odd day here and there. Unless your child is unwell or teething, you both might have a bad day but the next day tends to be much better and you can catch your breath again! I try to remind myself of that when I am experiencing a bad day.

Yesterday for me was a tough day. I had had a much more disturbed night's sleep than I have got used to of late so I was exhausted starting off the day. I had no time for a shower in the morning which always makes me feel less agreeable. Baby was not napping very much during the day and crying more than normal (probably as a consequence of the not napping!) and when I tried to sneak into bed for a quick lie-down when both girls were napping, my baby immediately woke up. So there was no nap for me! I was dead tired, it was a rainy day, everything was a bit of a struggle.

Today has so far been the opposite. A good night's sleep, a shower this morning, got some jobs done before taking my son to school, the sun is shining, baby has done great naps, I'm feeling cheery, proactive and like a completely different person to yesterday. Of course by writing those sentences I may have just jinxed the rest of the day ;-).

The same can be said of parenting older children too. You can have a great day followed by one you would rather forget. However with the lack of daily structure that comes with a young baby, the differences are more pronounced I find.

A new day really does make a difference. Make the most of the good days and however much a struggle you might be having on a not so good day, remind yourself that the next day will be different again, even if it still might not be as perfect as you would like!

"Every day may not be good, but there's something good in every day". ~Author Unknown

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Rice bake: a recipe for National Vegetarian Week

As this week is National Vegetarian Week, I am sharing a vegetarian recipe some of you might like to try; rice bake. It's a family favourite in our household, it's relatively quick to make and it's a great recipe for adapting to whatever vegetables you happen to have around. 

In a nutshell, you cook some rice, some veg and combine with a sauce. Top with cheese and breadcrumbs and bake in the oven. The veg can be of one type only (even frozen peas!) or a mix of whatever you have to hand. 

The sauce can be whatever you like too, I usually make a bechamel sauce and tweak it in some way (make it cheesy / add some tomato/pesto/mustard) but you could use any kind of homemade or ready made sauce, as you would for pasta for example. A tin of soup could even be used, something like a cream of mushroom soup would work well.

Most recently I made a rice bake with mushrooms, courgette, green pepper and asparagus with a cheese sauce. My children seem to like and eat courgette if it's grated (not when it's diced or sliced) so I grated it for the bake. They don't like asparagus so I made two separate bakes, one with asparagus for my husband and I, the other without for the children. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the completed rice bake - we were in too much of a hurry to tuck in!

Rice and veg cooked, ready for sauce and topping to be added

You will notice that I have not specified quantities in the recipe below. Simply cook the amount you think your family will eat and enjoy - there's no risk of the recipe not turning out, I promise!

Rice bake 

Ingredients 

• Rice
• One or more vegetables, finely diced/sliced/grated
• Fresh breadcrumbs
• Cheddar cheese, grated
• Sauce (see note above)

Method

• Preheat oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6
• Cook rice. 
• Gently cook your vegetables if applicable (ie. steam/boil asparagus, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli etc, lightly fry courgette, pepper, aubergine, mushrooms etc).
• Make your sauce unless you are using a pre-prepared sauce  / tin of soup.
• Combine rice, vegetables and sauce in an ovenproof dish.
• Top with breadcrumbs and cheese.
• Bake for 15-20 mins until bubbling and golden on top.

Do you have a family favourite vegetarian recipe in your household?

I'm linking up with this week's #recipeoftheweek

Baby makes three!

My baby girl is six weeks old already, how the time has flown! These first few weeks as a family of five have been busy, enjoyable and exhausting. Between family and friends helping out I have felt very well supported and my time managing all three children alone (while husband is at work) has been very limited so far. Lucky me!

Now for a few random musings on these first early weeks with three children:

The sleepless nights have not been so hard to deal with this time. Obviously I've felt very tired some days and wondered how I'll make it through the day on occasions but overall it's not been as horrendous as with the other two. Perhaps realistic expectations better prepared me this time!

The mornings are not a big rush as I'd imagined. One thing I was particularly dreading was getting myself and three children ready and out on time to get my son to school. Turns out when you're up around 5am with the baby, there's plenty of time! I've even managed a shower some days!

I was right about the worst time of the day! The dinner time, bed time witching hour is difficult, as I knew it would be. On the days I've had to put all three to bed by myself it has mostly been a struggle. I console myself with the reminder that it will only get easier. Right?!

It's not easy on the siblings. My 5-year old son who has dealt with a new baby sister once before has seemed pretty ok with the new addition. He was initially very excited, now he mostly ignores her and gets on with whatever he's doing. That's fine by me :-). My 2 1/2 year old daughter though has understandably been more affected. She's very loving towards the baby most of the time, very helpful with nappy changes etc but she herself has become clingy towards me and a bit more withdrawn around other people, which she wasn't at all before. It makes me a bit sad but all I can do is give her lots of love and be patient through this period of adjustment. 

I feel stretched! I felt stretched with two children, always wishing I could find or make more one-on-one time with each child. Now there's an extra child, one who currently demands a lot of me and spending quality time with the older two is tricky. I am doing what I can, trying to do something fun with my two-year old while the baby is napping, spending time with my eldest before he goes to bed when his sisters are already in bed (or sometimes whilst simultaneously rocking the baby to sleep in my arms!).

I feel very fortunate. I look at my three children and am filled with love for them all. The baby is a wonderful addition to our family and I'm so proud of my older two children and how for the most part, they are kind, loving, fun, well-behaved little people. I look at my husband and remember back when we didn't have any children and talked about both wanting three one day and here we are all of a sudden with all three!

For those of you with two or more children, what do you remember from the early weeks juggling everything? Can you relate to any of the above? What do you still find most difficult or most fun at whatever stage you are at now?
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