Britax B-Agile 3 - Mumbassador Review

This Dream Machine, the Britax B-Agile 3, arrived in our house recently and I was so excited about it that I asked the OH to put it together before I got back from work. I say put it together, all that involved was putting the wheels on and the hood on, I think I could have done it myself. I'm told that as soon as it was up Isla and Noah were pushing and shoving to get in it first - they were pushing each other round the living room it was *THAT* exciting! This was all before I got home. So I was pleased to see that the new wheels had been gladly received. I do love a buggy, I think if you have a good one it can be the best bit about buying and using baby equipment. It's such a huge purchase and you have to research it well.

We've been sent this buggy as part of the Britax 'Mumbassador' (this makes me think of Ferrero Rocher every time I say it) programme and I was really quite flattered to be asked to join the Britax team. As a family we have never tried any Britax products so I was interested to see how I would take to a new brand. Before we owned the B-Agile I think I felt the name Britax was synonymous with safety and quality and with this buggy they have come up trumps. It's lightweight, easy to manoeuvre and sleek. The harness is safe and easy to fix and the frame feels really sturdy. It's already had the thumbs up from my mum, she says she thinks it's so lightweight that Britax must have been thinking of the Grandmas' when they designed it. She said 'it's brilliant, so easy to push, it just glides'. So there you are, one happy Grandmother. 

We've used it a fair bit for Isla and Noah and I would say that so far my favourite bits (apart from how easy it is to get around with) are the massive hood that extends further still when you unzip it and it has a mesh section so you can look directly through the hood to see baby. Great for checking if baby is asleep. Also I love the basket underneath which is great for when you do a little top up shop and you don't want to carry shopping bags. There is also a very nifty storage pocket in the the canopy for keeping important things to hand like keys and purse.

There's one other use for the B-Agile that you might not realise, it's a very good seat to watch Thomas the Tank Engine on TV in the morning......

We were sent the Britax B-Agile 3 to review - all words and opinions expressed are my own. Over the coming months we will review Britax products and let you know of latest news, offers and updates - keep your eyes peeled!

Persil Mosh and Wash - Get Messy With Music

Last Sunday was one of those drab days outside and all we wanted to do as a family was chill out. Sometimes the thought of staying in all day drives me mad but we all had a really good time, watching films (Star Wars - Isla and OH), playing with the Lego (Noah and I), taking naps (Noah), cooking a yummy beef casserole (Me) and in the afternoon I got the kids to take a look in a box of supplies that Persil supplied to get us into their Mosh and Wash campaign.

The first thing that caught Isla's eye was the big square piece of material and once I tied it round her head like a bandana, she got all into role play and pretended she was a pirate, ok so not exactly pretending to be a rock star but she had fun! Then I handed out the drumsticks. That prompted drumming on everything in sight.....they were withdrawn after a while as the drumming was getting ever more enthusiatic and dangerous....LOL!

Then the best bit as far as Isla was concerned was the face painting! Now as you'll see here I'm not expert when it comes to face painting - I blame the fact that they were sticks rather then paint ones. Once I'd finished Isla's face I have to say that my OH and I were in hysterics. It was an atrocious effort but I soon got him to stop laughing once I made a start on his......

By the time we'd done the faces we had a full on festival atmosphere going on in the house, it prompted a game of musical chairs (this is Isla's current favourite game, but lord forbid if she doesn't win!) and even Noah joined in and donned a pair of cool shades!

Check out the Persil site for some more ideas for activities to do with the kids - great for a grey Autumn day!

Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom Live - Review

This week we went to see Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom Live at The New Wimbledon Theatre. I'll start by saying that I think Isla really liked it and if you ask her what did you like best, she will say "The Frog Burp". This is the kind of humour I have to contend with in our house, burps and farts are hilarious to Isla and even Noah. I also know that she really liked the show because she participated when it was prompted and she got anxious when the interval started, asking me "is it coming back on?" several times!  She loved that Lucy was in it, the girl from the big world and she's a big fan of Gaston (She managed to wangle an £11 ladybird out of me before we went in to the show.....).

The story is a mixture of a few of the TV episodes of Ben and Holly, including the one where they clean up Gaston's cave, The Tooth Fairy episode with Lucy and there's also a Jelly Flood thrown in for good measure. There was also an appearance by the Elf band, lead of course by the Wise Old Elf who are preparing to sing to the King, at which point Lucy suggests perhaps the King would like some different music for his birthday and a rousing rendition of 'Music Man' followed where the whole audience joined in.

My particular highlight of the show was actually when Princess Holly, Nanny Plum, Lucy and Ben Elf flew through the night back to the Little Kingdom. At this point puppets were used and I think this highlighted to me that I think I would have personally preferred the show had it been puppets the whole way through rather like the Peppa Pig show and not adults playing the parts. This small part of the show with puppets actually felt more magical, as if they really were flying. This is only my view though and Isla wouldn't even have considered how else it could have been performed.

Singing Happy Birthday to King Thistle was the final highlight of the show, Isla loves singing happy birthday! And so the show ended and I ushered a very happy little girl out of the theatre and off for some dinner at Pizza Express. Finally another indicator that Isla enjoyed herself, she tiptoed all the way from the restaurant back to the car, clearly copying what the fairies did throughout the show, she even made me do it much to the bemusement of drivers stuck in a traffic jam along the way.

We were given free tickets in exchange for a review but all views expressed are my own.

What mustn't you do with.......?

In the last week we've had to say the phrase "what mustn't you do with (insert object)?" quite a few times and it all started when last Friday I found out that Isla had cut another little girls hair at nursery. I'm friendly with the girl's parents and I received a text from her mum saying that her daughter had a lot less hair this afternoon than this morning. If anyone else was telling me this story I would have probably burst out laughing but I just felt really fed up about it. What were the nursery doing letting them play in such a way with scissors? I was aware that they used little craft scissors but I had thought that they were supervised. Scissors had already caused a bit of a furore last year when Isla was accused by another parent of cutting the hair of his daughter when she was only 2. That time was slightly more awkward as I was told this by the father while at soft play (I'd never met him before but his daughter started trumpeting out loud that "Isla cut my hair!"). The nursery hadn't even told me anything about it. At the time I found it hard to believe because at home Isla couldn't even hold scissors properly let alone be able to cut a small plait off a girls head (she had Afro hair - there were lots of small plaits). So on approaching the nursery on that occasion they said that they weren't sure who'd done it therefore they couldn't tell any single one parent. It then came about that it wasn't Isla it was her little friend who'd done it, but the other parent was determined to believe the word of his 2 year old daughter.

So since then I thought that scissors might be monitored better although I think I have become complacent of late believing Isla to be a lot more responsible than she actually is. What actually happens when it is described does sound absolutely hilarious. The CCTV shows 4 girls playing hairdressers with each other, they all take it in turns to sit and have their hair brushed and 'styled' and in one little girls experience have an actual cut!!! The long and short of this is that I have spoken to the nursery and so have Isla's friend's parents and they have convinced us that scissors will be more closely monitored and will not be out to use over lunchtime where there is a period of children being picked up from a morning session and dropped off for the afternoon and nursery staff are not so focused on an activity such as craft. Staff who should have been watching the children more closely have also been disciplined. I feel that the situation has been dealt with and hope that it doesn't happen again. This incident triggered a whole weekend of me and the OH saying 'What mustn't we do with scissors' over and over again. "Cut hair" comes the solemn answer!

I mentioned that I've been complacent lately too and so following the scissor incident came the drawing on the walls incident! I really didn't think that this would happen to us. I felt like we'd got past the stage where she might do this, that she would understand that the walls aren't for BLACK FELT TIP PEN! No, not quite and so our next phrase was "What mustn't you do with pens?" .......ah, it's so easy this parenting lark.

Silent Sunday

Ella's Kitchen Big Taste Menu

A couple of weeks ago I went to an event hosted by Ella's Kitchen at Food at 52 and I was rather intrigued that we were going to dine on a menu whereby we would taste food the way that our babies taste it - I was promised that the flavours would be BIG!

On arriving I met the Ella's Kitchen Team including the Ella's Kitchen founder Paul Lindley and  Taste Psychologist, Chris Lukehurst. It was a fun evening where we tasted food that had it's flavours amplified in order to replicate how food can taste to babies. I learnt that babies have three times as many taste buds in their mouths as adults, thereby making them experience flavour in a much heightened way. It explains why they react so strongly to some flavours, and pull such funny faces when they taste things that are extremely bitter or sour! The Taste Psychologist pointed out that evolution is responsible for babies avoiding bitter flavours as this would have helped them to reject anything poisonous.

As part of the Big Taste Menu we tried the following:

The Red One Lolly
Brussels Sprout Ice Cream
Cheery Chicken Roast Dinner with Stuffing
Full of Sunshine Thai Curry With Lots of Veg
Cheese and Apples Munchy Biccies
Apples & Bananas Dessert

Well it was no surprise that the Brussels Sprout one was absolutely disgusting and if you wanted to see a whole room of adults pull faces then this was the place. The flavour filled my entire mouth, it was like an invasion and it just spread. I had to quickly wash it away with water - almost a whole glass. Quite understand now a babies reluctance to tuck into the green veg!

Brussels Sprouts and Strawberries!

On the flip side the Apples and Banana dessert was absolutely delicious - the bananas were like banoffi pie, so sweet and delicious, I wished my knackered adult taste buds would give me the same banana extravaganza as babies get.

Thai Curry - HOT HOT!

In between those two totally different taste experiences the Chicken Roast dinner had lots of flavours and the Thai Curry was HOT! So sometimes when us adults try some of these pre made meals we might think that they are a bit bland but it seems that this is not the case for babies, especially with their extra taste buds that fill their entire mouths.

At the end of the evening I couldn't wait to get my photo taken in this giant highchair - I was the only one!

I came away from the evening feeling a bit like I shouldn't put too much pressure on my kids if they don't eat certain things. Celebrate the victory if they at least try something was a great piece of advice that I took away from the Taste Psychologist. Also getting an insight into how children taste things so much more than we do will help me to reset my expectations of what they will eat.

The Big Taste Menu has been unveiled to the public this weekend at The Hackney Homemade Food Market this weekend and tasters will be offered free for a trial period. Ella's Kitchen are also running a great competition on their website at the moment where you can win a year's supply of Ella's food. All you have to do is upload a photo of your little one's big taste face! http://big-taste-face.ellaskitchen.co.uk/

Thanks to Ella's Kitchen for inviting me to such an enlightening evening.

The Endless Round of School Visits

I'm nearly at the end of the seemingly endless round of school visits to potential primary schools for Isla for next year. In our borough we have to put down 6 school choices and so over the past few weeks I've been visiting the 6 nearest schools to us to get some sort of sense of order I might put them down on the form. The visits have  all been very different. Each Headteacher seems to take a different stance on how best to show parents their school. Some have favoured the method of getting the kids to show us round, which I quite liked, others the Head or Deputy Head took us round personally. Some have done a formal presentation to parents and others have been more informal and chatted to parents on their way out (I liked the formal presentation personally). 

This whole process gives the illusion that you somehow have a real choice in where your child will go to school. The likelihood of getting your first choice though when you live in a borough where the schools are heavily oversubscribed is low. I have liked aspects of all the schools I have seen over the past few weeks but there is one school that in my eyes really shone out for me and I would love for Isla to go there. The facilities were amazing, I had a good opinion of the headteacher and the children seemed happy. However it's third nearest to our house (as the crow flies), so locality is against us - which seems ridiculous as we're only 0.74 miles away from it but looking at last year the furthest they took children was 0.6 miles. Before distance is even considered priority is given to looked after children and children with medical conditions. Then you also have to factor in siblings - last year this school had 31 out of 60 places taken by little brothers and sisters. 

One thing I noticed about all the schools that I have seen is that the children are mostly very proud of their school and they are amazingly confident and articulate. I loved it when a school let the children show us around - after all they know the school best don't they and will be more candid? It really helped me to imagine Isla in a years time in her school uniform and to visualise her in the future being part of a class.

I will put my preferred school as first choice but I feel sure that we will get the one which is 2 minutes walk from our house and it's not a major problem as I did like it too. It's just that when you find somewhere that you totally fall in love with and you start to imagine your little one going there, it's hard to convince yourself that other places will be just as good. Anyway, one more school to visit and then time for the form filling and the dreadful wait until April!