scareyt

If we had the space I would get a quote from this guy to build something unique. http://www.freerangeplaygrounds.co.uk/ We have a big sandpit instead which is fab and i think gives more play value than a house but means I spend all summer sweeping sand off the kitchen floor.

bornagain those chicken pies sound lovely.

I love this beef stew - it's great for ex veggies or for cooking with a baby in a sling as there is no messing about frying anything beforehand - you just chuck everything in a pot and put it in the oven for ages and it comes out delicious and really tender. I get the butcher to chop up the meat and literally just tip it all straight out of the packet into the pot. http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/748653/smoky-beef-stew

We have an Armitage Shanks toilet and the push button flush is not too stiff for our little boy to press. Avoid getting a shaped / contoured toilet seat as our tippitoes toddler loo seat slips about on that one. A nice solid wooden seat and lid is good because you can sit on the lid while kids are in the bath. Also worth thinking about the shape of the toilet bowl - a larger water surface area means less little kid poo will end up landing on the porcelain. (tmi???)

Argh EmilyPie that's a pretty brutal regime! I feel for you and have no ideas but lots of sympathy. In retrospect, I wish I had embraced our cosleeping situation a bit more as a positive decision. I always felt like I had failed to get him to sleep the way "everyone else" did and beat myself up about it. If I had read some of the more hippyish attachment parenting books instead of the Baby Whisperer I would have been a lot happier with how we were doing things! And I also had a permanent fear that we were creating a monster who would never sleep by indulging him when he was little, which I don't think now he's nearly 4 was true at all - mostly he sleeps through now for around 11 hours but occasionally goes through phases of turning up in our bed 3 times a night, and it seems to be pretty random...

Thanks BrownCoffee! Hope you're both having a lovely skiving day. :-)

We had loads of rabbits when I was little and I wouldn't have one now. The hutches get pretty grim if you're not vigilant about cleaning them out and it will always be you who does it. I think the main problem with rabbits is most of them are quite boring. We had one that liked to come inside and was cute and good company but most of them that I remember had no interest in people or in being petted whatsoever. Our arms were often all scratched up by antisocial rabbits who we tried to cuddle. (Although my mum did also kill them for meat so maybe that affected their attitude!) In my experience guinea pigs have more personality and slightly less gross poos.

The Discover Story Centre in Stratford is amazing and worth avoiding the crowds by going on a weekday. We also love the Museum of London. I have a blog here of days out in London I've done with my 3 yo if you want more inspiration! www.toddlertrips.wordpress.com Have fun.

I had a terrible sleeper and did the "no cry" stuff at around 11 months and it worked. Not like magic, but definitely helped. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have worked any earlier though as he was small and just needed to feed a lot. Could you fit an extra mattress on the floor in either his room or your room? It might make co-sleeping a more comfortable option for a few months until you're ready to try again. My sister raised 4 kids without ever buying a cot - the baby slept on a single mattress next to their low futon bed so she only had to roll over to sort them out if they woke and everyone got enough sleep. We found that none of us got much sleep if we were all in the same bed so I used to move into a double bed in the baby's room at some point during the night and sometimes went back and forth if he settled easily but usually I woke up there in the morning. It wasn't perfect but it worked well enough and was so much less miserable being able to lie down and feed somewhere warm and comfortable for those gruesome 4am wakings!

My sister lives in Worcester Park, they both work in that area and used to rent in Teddington and loved it but couldn't afford to buy there so kept going east until they could, which ended up being Worcester Park. They are happy there. Houses are affordable, trains go into Clapham and Waterloo and there is a Waitrose but not much else exciting on the high street. You can get to the countryside really easily too. I agree Sutton high street is really horrible though - we used to meet there with our babies as it was easy for us both to get to but it's so depressing that we both now travel further to Wimbledon to meet up instead.

Oh that would be a shame. There were no signs of activity the last few times Ive been past. There is definitely a gap in the market for a soft play cafe somewhere in Herne Hill!

RLS syndrome is horrible & feels like your going crazy! Being overtired or dehydrated triggers it for me - might help to drink more water during the afternoon.

I would definitely look at Bessemer Grange and renting in North Dulwich. Being walking distance to work is such a bonus.

Days out together can be really nice with just one. I started a blog a while ago about our day trips in London - it's here if you want some inspiration! Www.toddlertrips.wordpress.com

My son is in blue class 2 1/2 days a week and is very happy there. They have a dance teacher come in once a week and a yoga teacher once a week as well as circle time twice a day where they act out stories, crlebrate birthdays, do music etc so I think it's a good balance between free play and structure. The staff are lovely and very skilled especially in blue class. The only downside is the playground which is tiny and my son finds it too overwhelming at lunch times - it gets very crowded when all the class goes out to play after eating and he finds it a bit scary so tends to stay inside instead. They go out to play in the mornings and afternoons too but only take 1/2 the class out at once so it's much more manageable. So I think the outside space is the only thing I would hesitate over for a full-time place. They are starting forest school this term - a small group at a time will spend the whole morning in Sunray Gardens once a week for a block of 6 weeks. The hardiest ones are starting next week - brrr! But it sounds great. We have to send them with lots of extra clothes... They were also very nice and flexible about settling in. I was also worried about the size of the blue class hall but that never seemed to bother him and means they have lots of stuff to play with.

Based on last year's leavers list, about 40% of the kids at half moon go on to DVI, 40% to Bessemer, and the rest split between lots of other schools.

Hi, I am English but speak pretty good French and would love the opportunity to practice it and for my 3yo to be among native speakers. We read him lots of stories in French and spend holidays there but he only knows a couple of words. Do you have some group activities going on that we could join? Many thanks. Sarah

I use two thick books to prop up the legs of the cot bed at the head end which seems to help a bit. A steam humidifier definitely helps. I'm about to steal ours from son's room as his cough is finally better but now I have it instead!

We got a Playmobil one for my son's 3rd birthday and just held back all the tiny bits until later. They also do a baby version but the full-on one will be interesting for longer and you can introduce the little tools and bits as rewards / treats etc when the time seems right.

Thanks fl0wer.

I had a Leapfrog Learn & Groove DJ station instead - it was in a corner of the kitchen and my baby loved it and didn't feel like he'd been dumped there when I put him in it. It allowed me to cook safely which was the only time I ever felt like I needed to contain him. Eventually he got bored of it and realised it was a prison but it was brilliant for about 6 months. It's very big though. And quite noisy, but I didn't find it too annoying and I have a very low tolerance of noisy toys. (Selling ours for ?25 if anyone would like it!)

I had an emergency section at Kings and apart from a couple of rubbish midwives everyone was great. I have no clue whatsoever who did the actual op! Only the anaesthetist spoke to me beforehand. I had no issues with getting access to pain meds. (Don't recommend the morphine-based one though - I was a complete wreck until I stopped taking that. It was a syrupy liquid called Oromores or something. The little white triangle one was good!) The first day of recovery was horrible but it got better really quickly. Top tips - get someone to tie a dressing gown cord to the foot of your bed to pull on when you want to sit up. And I definitely agree about getting someone to bring extra food. And peppermint tea & dried fruit to help avoid constipation. And those hideous giant string knickers are really good for letting air get to the wound. And a rigid breast feeding cushion is really helpful for keeping the weight of the baby away from it if you're going to be breast feeding. http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=my+brest+friend&tag=hydrukspg-21&index=aps&hvadid=16940038047&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=561639623369553421&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&hvdev=m&ref=pd_sl_jjgwhfm77_e

Hi everyone! I think the real problem with page 3 is that it provides such an easy way for idiots to intimidate, harass and bully women and girls. It's so easy for a group of boys to buy the paper and wave page 3 around in front of girls to embarrass them that I'm sure it leads to more bullying and harassment than there would be if it didn't exist. Using page 3 against women like this requires no effort or imagination at all, and the fact that it exists in a newspaper makes it seem ok. I'm so convinced that this is the real problem, and that it's nothing to do with prudery, that I created a website to collect the stories of women who have had page 3 used against them. It's here if anybody wants to have a look, or to add a story. I hope it might help to sway some opinions! http://www.page3stories.org Some of the stories are really sad. When I started the website I assumed that most of them would be about unpleasant incidents in public, but what's come in so far is worse than I imagined - a lot of them seem to be about the cumulative effects on mental health or physical health of long-term bullying and abuse, including child abuse, within families. These are stories that aren't getting told anywhere else. Of course there will still be horrible people in the world if we get rid of page 3, but why continue to provide these photos that make it so easy for them to continue with, and above all to excuse, this way of treating women, because the photos are in a newspaper which means that "nobody else minds"? There is a demo this Sunday 17th November in London to mark the 43rd birthday of page 3. Details here: http://nomorepage3.org/news/page-3-43rd-birthday-protests/

My sister's vegan friend wanted to eat hers, but couldn't bring herself to deal with it raw. So my sister fried it up for her with some onions. I felt slightly queasy eating anything in her house for a long time afterwards!

I go to this Zumba class in the Charter School on Wednesday evenings sometimes. It's absolutely brilliant fun, the instructor has a ridiculous amount of energy and is very entertaining. There are a huge range of people that go, a handful of sixth formers from the school and a few good dancers who also do his hip hop classes but its mostly middle aged ladies of all shapes and sizes, lumbering around in a vague approximation of what the instructor is doing and having a lovely time. He doesn't really pay any attention to what you're doing though, just on keeping the energy levels up and encouraging people to go for it with lots of silly moves. It sounds kind of annoying but isn't. It's I think ?2 for the first class, then ?5 if you pay for five classes at once that you can use up any time. I really recommend it! http://www.shakethatzumba.co.uk/classes/