So we have spent plenty of hours down the allotment just lately, here’s a picture of me digging, just to prove to everyone I also join in, haha. The whole family are chipping in with all the jobs that need doing
Bear getting stuck in
Daddy and cub sifting through the dirt to dig out roots
Cheeky snack time for the bear and the cub
We sourced some horse poop ready to add goodness to our soil…. 12 bags in the back of our car
So, I haven’t posted in a long while…. Life is hectic with bear now being 4 and a half and baby cub is now 15 months old. We decided to get an allotment back now bear is older (we had one before he was born but gave it up shortly after he arrived)
Wow, we have our work cut out to clear and sort before we even think about planting anything!! I’m going to take this opportunity to switch blog themes to show how we’re getting on growing our own seeing as allergies for us are a thing of the past…. Luckily baby cub didn’t inherit any of his brothers or my allergies!!
Heres some pics of early days on the allotment
Bear making friends with the wildlife
The pile of rubbish we found hidden in the grass, 2 car loads to the tip!
All strimmed back
Brother cuddle break
Covered as much as we could to kill off the grass, will make digging easier
Fence repairs…. Making do with what we can find for now
Fun family activity now
Will upload more updates soon
As promised, some new pictures of Bear!! He’s so big now!
Bear absolutely loves ice cream! We are so thankful he grew out of his dairy allergy, here he is enjoying a mini milk in the garden and a Mr Whippy style ice cream from his nanny’s new business (check her out on facebook, twitter or instagram – @justvwdesserts she serves ice cream and sundaes from her amazing VW campervan!) Bear definitely is nanny’s no.1 customer…..he insists on sampling all new ideas!
Bear is also quite partial to a babychino when we are out and about – we have to keep our eye on him though, given half the chance he will be sipping our coffees too!!! He is most definitely lively enough on his own, without the coffee!!
We love to get out and about, whether it is digging for worms in the garden, the park or taking advantage of our national trust membership (thanks nanny & grandad for our Christmas gift!) So far this year we have visited 6 different national trust sites (some a number of times as they are so close by!), with lots of plans to visit lots more soon. We got Bear a little ‘passport’ so he can keep  track of all our adventures. We have had a lovely warm weekend, this weekend, Bear and daddy even got chance to wear their shorts. Outside activities this weekend included painting fence panels, playing with lots of new garden toys Bear got for his birthday and lunch outside! Bear was very, very happy to be able to be back outside for long periods of time (when it was icy and cold he could only manage 20 minutes of play at a time!)
As I updated in my last post, I have been suffering with severe itching with my change or hormones and incredibly dry skin, I had been using lush cream to help, which it was but I was needing to reapply 4 or 5 times a day to keep on top of the itch. This week I was fortunate enough to have been sent a box of samples from Weleda…..lots of wonderful things for myself, bear and for our new cub too. I thought I would try a few of the samples out, seeing as they are a holistic, natural company I thought I might be ok with their stuff. Turns out I was right….
skin food
One of the samples was this skin food, designed for dry and rough skin it moisturised my legs (my worst effected area) so intensely, the first day I tried it I only needed to reapply it twice, the following day, just once!! At roughly £10 a tube, it isn’t the cheapest, but can currently be found in Holland and Barrett’s on their buy one get one half price sale. I have also used this on my face, feet and even treated hubby to a foot rub too!!
Stretch mark oil
The Weleda stretch mark oil made an equally good impression on me this week, it rubs on just like any other oil, but the smell is amazing, instantly makes me feel relaxed. I’m getting very paranoid about stretch marks now, so I am using this once or twice a day (I barely bothered with any cream when I was pregnant with bear, but my bump appeared a lot quicker this time around).
Was just a quick one this morning, to update you on my new loves, because sometimes mummy needs a bit of a treat too! Busy week ahead for us this week, so hopefully will post an updated picture thread towards the end of the week.
so, all has been very quiet from us for quite a while now. Bear has been really well and hasn’t had any issues for months…..well over 12 to be more accurate. He turned 3 the other week and we seem to be having some unexplained allergic reaction in the form of hives and itching. We started a food diary, but there was no obvious food to coincide with the reactions. We also suspected rubber latex, following his birthday, we had a fair few balloons in the house, which he thoroughly enjoyed playing with in every way……some sneaky culling of the balloons after bed time until they all vanished seemed to see a huge reduction in the frequency of the reaction, although it has not solved the problem completely. He is kept comfortable with piriton when required and a calpol plug in vapouriser seems to make him more comfortable at night time when his reaction causes stuffy noses and itchy throats. It has been a while since we have had to deal with allergy related problems, but it all feels so familiar and there’s no panic this time….thinking we are now seasoned professionals now. Good job really,as we are soon to add another little man to our household…..and the same allergies are never far from mind after our experiences with bear.
So, arriving in June 2017 will be our little cub. Pregnancy has resurrected several allergies for myself. Lots of itchy skin related problems have seen me give up on all my usual shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, moisturisers and make up. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself, until I discovered something wonderful……child’s farm! Now, I know I probably have mentioned them many a time when talking about bear as I have been a fan for quite some time, but I never thought to use it for myself! I now smell and feel amazing after using all their shower products as well as their moisturiser, even caught my hubby filling up his bath the other day with child farm smelling bubbles, so even he is loving their stuff.
this is just a quick update from me today,but hoping to update more regularly with all things bear and cub! Especially as I will soon get to bring our cloth nappies back out of storage since bear potty trained last summer!!!! Excited!
There have been many changes for us…..
Bear has changed, he no longer has allergies…..he is now well over 2, so no longer my little baby, but instead my little toddler instead.
My life is changing too, as will soon have no job. As our income will drastically reduce, we have started to make some big changes to the way we live.
With this in mind, I have decided to change the nature of the blog from allergies (a journey that I can no longer share with you all) to frugal living…..something that I am learning to do and wish to document my new adventure.
So, a few of my favourite frugal tips….
So, here’s my little introduction to frugal living, will let you know how I get on over the next few weeks….future posts to include photos of my bargain buys too!!
Would love to hear some feedback from you guys about my new topic. thank you.
Now bear doesn’t follow a dairy free diet shopping has become simple. We no longer have to read every label and we can try new things. We always encourage Bear to at least try things, he obviously has the things he likes and things he doesn’t like, but nothing makes us prouder when he just tries things because he wants to. the other day he helped himself to his daddy’s hummus, dipping some of his daddy’s cucumber (he didn’t like that much) and a raw carrot (he enjoyed chewing) although he has had these things before, he didn’t like them on a number of previous tries, but we were so pleased he gave them another go…..and all by himself. He also ate a slice of ham for the first time ever (he has very recently just cut 3 back teeth…..making it 11 teeth in total!! We think this helped him to chew, and enjoy, the ham)
We also like to encourage Bear to help with the cooking, and some fun baking too. We are trying to encourage a healthy relationship with food for him. We all love good, healthy, home cooked meals….cooked from scratch. We have discovered muscle foods as a source for amazing quality meat for a cheap price (they often do really awesome deals on big bundles, so we are definitely needing our big freezer!) I have included a link to muscle foods in case anyone is interested, if you use my referral code you will also get a free item (and i will receive some credit too). Our meat portion of our meals work out at around £2 a meal (with the latest order made, should come out somewhere near £1.50 a meal…..and that is for the 3 of us!) You can also get great groupon deals for muscle food bundles, that is where we sourced our last order…..and don’t forget you can get cashback on it if using quidco (I will also include a quidco referral code for anyone who wants it, once you start earning, we both get £5 cashback) Using quidco I have received almost £200 cashback in the last 15 months on things that I would have bought anyway…..we are really trying to live a little more frugally to save money for the finer things in life (life trips out and nice holidays!) I am thinking I may start to turn this blog into a frugal living and general life type of blog to share my experiences now we don’t have allergies to concern ourselves with. Will see how it goes and see what our followers reaction to it may be.
Muscle food link, and referral code: Receive a free gift (and i get a little bit of account credit!)
http://www.musclefood.com/LS201491
LS201491
Quidco referral code: we both get £5 cashback once you start earning!
So, I am not one to be tempted into black Friday…..cannot be bothered to go wait outside the shops with my elbows raised ready to attack anyone who gets in my way! But from the comfort of my computer I am pleased to say I have succumbed to the Black Friday madness a little.
I have been toying over getting some Cheeky wipes for a while now, but struggled to justify the cost….but with their 25% off Black Friday sale and the fact I sold some stuff so had a decent fund in my paypal, I treated myself and Bear to some lovely new wipes with their snazzy clean/dirty boxes and bags! I am so excited!
On another nappy note….we have fallen in love with Gnappies (I completely blame Ocado for that one, their latest offer was unreal!!) But we get way longer out of them, with no leaks at all. I have 5 medium block colours which I am managing to use plenty as I wash the pouches and covers in with the normal wash and the inserts with the nappy wash, but have plenty of inserts (need to wash at 40, my normal nappy wash is 60 so would rather be safe than sorry!) But love them so much I have purchased a christmas themed one for Bear…..only down side is i didnt realise I was buying from the USA…..fingers crossed it arrives in time!!
Also, I won a competition by Ecopipo and got one of their newest nappies. I am very impressed with the inserts and overall quality by them too. We have been discovering lots of new brands just lately and loving it.
Our stash is somewhat impressive now, fingers crossed I can get some new stash shots and On the bum pictures soon….Bear is getting so big now!!!
So, Bear has been in cloth nappies for over a year now and I feel that it has changed us a lot. Bear with me whilst I try to write a summary of our journey over the last 12 months!!!
After months of steroid cream and trying every nappy cream on the market we were at a loss, nappy changing was unbearable with the screams and tears from the pain it caused Bear. One of my husbands work colleagues mentioned that they had used cloth nappies with their 2nd child as he too was suffering badly with nappy rash. We spoke about it a few times and were unsure. I spoke to my mum who was definitely against it (she cloth bummed by older sister back in the 80’s and had the old terries boiling on the hob firmly in mind). But we had to do something for Bear so spending a little money on a few to ‘trial’ was worth it…..after all we were spending a fortune on creams and nappies anyway as we couldn’t let him sit in a nappy if it was at all damp.
After very little research we purchase 10 ‘little bloom’ nappies off eBay to try.Bear was in them only a day when we started to notice a difference to his nappy area. After 3 days in cloth we decided to order more so we could cloth first time. Little blooms and TJ’s were fine for us for months, I had one ‘special’ elephant Bambino Mio Solo which I loved, but was our special nappy as we couldn’t justify spending £15 on a single nappy.
By March this year Bear was leaking through almost every nappy…..he was more active, drinking more and peeing more too. It was getting very frustrating and we were getting disheartened a little. I came across a great bargain lot of Tots Bots V3 on a local selling page, an offer too good to resist and I thought (as tots bots was a well known brand) it would be the answer to our problems…..it wasn’t, in fact, he leaked worse!!! But,as they were such a bargain, I was able to sell them for more than I paid to fund a few different nappies to try.
By this point we had figured out the night time problems with prefolds, an insert and a wrap (we have always used a mixture of wraps as there wasn’t a single one that was ‘better’, they all did the job). So we started to look around at the day time nappies. We tried tots bots bamboozles, mio solos, little lambs…..mio solos seemed to be the best so we up graded all the nappies so we had enough to be in solos full time. We love Bambino Mio Solos, we have always promoted them as our personal favourite, and although they are heavily boosted, they work brilliantly (and lets face it, they are so cute!!!) The only time Solos aren’t fantastic is when Bear is running around with only a nappy on…..velcro is easy peasy to undo!!
I have recently discovered Milovia Pocket nappies (courtesy of a mystery box I got!) and they are also fantastic. These nappies dry over night, whereas the solos take several days to dry inside in this weather. And the Milovias are poppers, which also solves our clothes-less issues! The only problem is the price….we happen to have fallen for a nappy that is even more expensive than the solos.
Had it been set up a few months earlier, when first starting our journey, our local cloth nappy library would have been a great place to ask questions and get advice from. But since we started our journey, the number of local nappy libraries has increased massively, so hopefully this will encourage more to cloth….especially if the local midwife services allow cloth nappy demos in ante-natal classes, if ours had of mentioned cloth (instead of showing us how to put a disposable on a doll) maybe we could have considered it earlier.
Our cloth journey has spread beyond nappies for Bear, we also have cloth wipes for Bear and Cloth Sanitary Pads for mummy 🙂 it has made a massive difference to me too, no more cramps, and my time of the month is no longer dreaded…it just comes and goes without a fuss, completely pain free! I never realised how the chemicals in both Bears disposable nappies and my disposable sanitary pads could have such an affect on us. Bears were obvious, his eczema and rash. Me on the other hand, I always thought that the monthly visit was supposed to be a horrible time to be dreaded….it doesn’t have to be, believe me!!
Myself and my husband have already made the decision to use cloth on all children we may have in the future, you don’t notice it when you are using them so much, but the smell of disposable nappies is not nice (in my opinion, and my husbands, anyway!) they make my stomach turn, so even if the next child is not allergic, it will be cloth all the way as a choice, not as a necessity x
mummy tales of an allergy baby 