My Sunday Photo 28/02

Magnet Mouse Clothing - Review and Giveaway

During my visit to the Baby Show, I came across a new range of baby clothing that I straight away just loved. Not only were the designs very cute. They had something very special and clever about them. Instead of having poppers to fasten the clothing, it had magnets.

The Magnet Mouse slogan is "Cuddles not Struggles" as the idea behind the clothing is to save those extra few minutes a day that you would spend fastening up those poppers and give you more bonding time with the baby.

We all know that babies need endless nappy changes through out the day and so when you add the minutes up you spend fastening the bodysuits and sleepsuits they really do add up. Then theres the night time changes, I bet you really can fasten these with your eyes closed.

Not to mention the fact that some babies (like Lily) like to try and make it as impossible as they can to fasten them by wriggling and rolling and eventually crawling or walking away.

The clothing goes up to age 9-12 months for the moment, but they are planning a toddler range.

Here is a video supplied by Magnet Mouse that shows how the clothing works.



Magnet Mouse kindly gave me a bodysuit to try out and review.

After telling people about the clothing, a few concerns were expressed.

Arn't the magnets going to be heavy and look bad?  

The magnets aren't heavy at all, in fact you wouldn't even know they were there. They are enclosed nicely into the bodysuit.

Are the magnets safe?

Yes there are no known safety concerns linked to magnets. You can read more about what magnet mouse have to say about safety here.

Are they machine washable? 

Yes at no more than 30OC and the magnets need to be closed when washed.

Review

Lily was given a 9-12 months bodysuit and though Lily is 15 months she is a little small for her age and still wearing some 9-12 months clothing. She looked so lovely in it, the collar is so pretty and the bodysuit is a lovely colour. 

Lily and I spent the day trying out the bodysuit that magnet mouse gave us. Here are a few scenarios where we tried them out.

1. When it comes to nappy changes, Lily hates them. She will wriggle and complain until its over. It was great to be able to speed the process up by simply placing the fastening area together. One thing I always struggle with is that Lily likes to try and stand up while Im dressing her, and Ive always found it really hard to fasten poppers between her legs. Especially because she doesn't keep still. It took a little bit of a pull to pull it round to the front and then SNAP the magnets join together and its done. 

2. I often dress Lily on my knee and again the poppers are really sticky to do when she is sat down. So we tested this out with the bodysuit and again a bit of a pull to pull it round as the material is quite stretchy and SNAP, its on. Much less hassle and quicker and I can let Lily off my knee which she is so dying to do. 

3. The third scenario was one that wasn't planned. I had Lily sat and all fastened in her highchair ready for her dinner. Spaghetti Hoops! One of her favourites. But wait a minute. I don't want her eating them hoops wearing her new bodysuit. To messy. I need to take it off and put on another top. Oh the hassle! Am I going to have to unfasten her, take her out and undress her to do it? 

Wait. No. Lets try something. Can I take it off without doing any of that? I reach for the fastening between the legs of the bodysuit and easily unfasten it in one hand motion, and up it comes, over the head and brilliant! Ive done it! Job done with no hassle!

4. I also wanted to see if the magnets stayed closed when Lily played. So I let Lily roam free in her bedroom and play for half a hour. She stretched, she crawled, and she squatted. Not once did the magnets pop open. 

5. Lily wore the suit all day and we even paired it with a nice pair of jeans and headed out. Lily did loads of walking and the magnets stayed closed all day. 

We give big thumbs up to the Magnet Mouse bodysuit and will be buying some for baby number two for sure. We also can't wait for the toddler range as I would love to see sleepsuits for her age and also short sleeved vests would be great to. 

What we Loved

- How easy they are to fasten
- How soft the material was

- How cute the collar was

- How the suit didn't come open all day

- How it saved us time

- How discreet the magnets are

What we didn't like

 - I found that when fastened up the front looked unflattering. Which doesn't matter if you plan to wear with trousers. 

Visit the Magnet Mouse website to see more designs -  magnetmouse.co.uk

Magnet mouse have kindly let me run a contest for you to win your vest own set of Magnet Mouse clothing. The prize is a choice of colour and size of sleepsuit, bodysuit and bib worth over £50.
Please note the largest size Magnet Mouse does is 9-12 months.

Please enter using the Gleam app below. 

Win a Baby Clothing Set from Magnet Mouse worth over £50

Terms and Conditions

Uk only
1 Prize of Bodysuit, Sleepsuit and bib, Value over £50 
Prize to be supplied by Magnet Mouse
All incomplete entries will be disqualified. 

Heavenly Tasty Organics Taste Tester Review - Pumpkin and Banana Wafer Wisps

Just over a week ago Lily received good news that she had been chosen to be a Heavenly Tasty Organic taste tester. We have tried some Heavenly food before and Lily loves her snacks so we were delighted to be chosen. 

Today Lily's snacks arrived. 

There was two packs of Crispy Veggie Waffles in carrot and cumin flavour and sweet beet and shallot. 

Two packs of Wafer Wisps in pumpkin and banana and spinach and apple.

And two Coconut Squishies in strawberry, apple and banana and mango, apple and banana. 

Lily loved looking at the great selection. 

Our first snack we tried was the pack of the pumpkin and banana Wafer Wisps. 

We were heading swimming for the day so I popped them into my bag for later. They come in nice handy snack sized packets so great for on the go. 

After a tiring session of swimming we went to the cafe for a drink and a snack. The perfect time to test them out. I sat Lily on a chair and opened the pack. I handed Lily one and she started to eat it. Suddenly a friend I hadn't seen in a while came over. She started making a fuss of Lily and Lily is going through her stranger danger stage and didn't like it at all. In protest she threw the wafer on the floor. Oh no! Had this friend ruined my chance to test?! For the moment she had, but luckily Heavenly put THREE wafers in their packs! Phew! 

I decided to wait until we left the cafe to try Lily again with the snack. She was sat in the pram and we were on our way home. I gave one to her and she started tucking into it! She loved it and made her Mmmmmmmm sounds that she makes if she is enjoying something. The wafers were easy for her to nibble and not crumbly and so didn't make any mess!  

Here is the test to if she really loved them or not, did she ask for a second one? The answer is YES! Lily points and makes a specific noise when she wants something and so I knew exactly what she wanted. 

Lily finished the second wafer. She obviously really enjoyed them because she finishes off by licking each of her fingers. YUM  YUM 

It was also great knowing that Lily was eating and loving healthy and nutritional snacks with no added sugars, colours or preservatives. 

So over all the pumpkin and banana Wafer Wisps get the thumbs up from us.

We give thumbs up to practicability! 

We give thumbs up to amount! 

We give thumbs up to no mess!

We give thumbs up to nutrition!

And we give thumbs up to taste! 

Please remember that all children are different and your child may not have the same opinion as Lily. But we do recommend that you give these a try.

You can read more about Heavenly Tasty Organics here 

and keep your eye out for our next taste test! 

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Household Object Painting Number 1

We all go to the shops and buy paint brushes, stamps, sponges. But who would of thought some of the best painting tools could be found around the house.

Me and Lily plan to start using different items one by one to see what funky patterns we can make. 

Todays object is one we all have, and all seem to let build up in our bathroom. 

The Toilet Roll!

All you need is a toilet roll or two, paint, and paper. 

I squeezed four primary colours into a bowl and let Lily do the rest of the work. 

The colours all mix up nicely and made it multicoloured. 

The toilet roll makes nice circle shapes if printed onto paper and also can be dragged along the paper to create a swish look. 

Lily loved painting this way though mostly did swishing. 

Here are Lily's results! 

I did another example for you of how effective the circles can be without the swishing which could probably be done by a child older than Lily. 

So if your stuck in and looking for something interesting to paint with, don't head to the shops, head to your bathroom and pick up a toilet roll. 

Would love to know how your little learners got on with this activity. 

Lily's First Day Walking in the Big Outdoors

Today I decided to take Lily to the local park. Its not the kind of park with swings, its the kind that just has grass and paths and benches. Its always empty and its a lovely place to go to have some outdoor fun without other children running around.

Lily has been walking around the house confidently now for the last 2 weeks and doesn't crawl at all. She has also had a stroll around Mothercare on her own, but never outside.

Today I decided it was the day to try the next step and the park was the perfect place.

As soon as I got her out of the pram she was off! She was going a little to fast for my liking and I tried to encourage her to slow down. But she was loving the freedom and the independence and giggled as she walked. She definetly wasn't going to slow down.

She walked back and forth on the path, and wasn't even interested in stopping to see the flowers or tree's which she normally would be very interested in.

She was walking so confidently and loving every minute of it. She Took a few breaks and would come to be and hold onto my legs or want to be picked up and we sat on the bench for a little bit, but not for long as she wanted to be walking. Ive been told by some she is to young to be walking so much, but I don't agree. If she wants to walk, why should I stop her?

We had a couple of tumbles to the floor and most the time it didn't effect her but one time she did have a bit of a bump  and it did give her a few tears. This didn't put her off though and she soon picked herself back up and set off walking again. 

I really look forward to more trips out now she is happy to walk. I also have got her some reins so we can walk to the shops or in busy places. 

So proud of my little princess! 

The Baby Show - 21/02 ExCel London

So yesterday was my first trip to the Baby Show as a blogger. Im always keen to see the new products available but this time I was even more excited to meet some companies I could potentially blog about in the future.

What I bought/Received

One of the things I always have to do when at the Baby Show is buy the amazing goodie bag from Prima Baby Magazine. Its only £5 and you get 2 magazines as well as it being packed full of great items such as Sudocrem, Nuk baby bottles and one of my favourite bubble bath makes Infacare.

I also had to head to the MAM stall to buy Lily's Favourite soothers :-) They were doing 3 packs for £10 so I snapped up the bargain. Lily is still using the 6+ ones and is very happy with them. But thought I would try her with the 12+ ones to. 

I couldn't leave the MAM stall without picking up one of there free baby bottles they were handing out! Then when I headed to the Nuby stall I got a free baby bottle also. These will be popped away for baby number 2 (whenever this may be). 

Last but not least I headed to the NAIF stall. After looking at there lovely products and feeling impressed by there other brand Squid Soap. They gave me this tube of sun protection which I look forward to reviewing when the sun comes out in summertime. 

Favourites of the Day 

There were so many products that impressed me and I loved, but I really couldn't talk about them all so here are a few I've picked out from the day. 

Zippy

The range of bibs that was at the Baby Show was great, I also loved there new cute little cloud baby Pjs. Always been a big fan of zippy bibs. 

Cuddledry

The team were showing great demonstrations on how the baby towels worked. They are great and I wish I would have known about them when Lily was little. (Next baby maybe!) But they also had on show some great hooded toddler towels. 

CozyGlo

These little lamps shined bright at the show for me. There range of little characters are really cute and they come with so many different practical functions that help parents such as clock and being able to dim them down. Great product! 

Magnet Mouse

I was so impressed with these the moment they were shown to me! Not only are the clothes really soft and cute they have a clever way of fastening using magnets instead of poppers. Keep your eye out for a review of this product coming soon.

Little Folk

These cute little deck chairs are only one of the range of amazing personalised items from Little Folk. Ive never seen deck chairs so tiny before and I just had to stop and have a chat to the company and tell them how cute they were. 

Unfortunately I could not manage to get photographs of everything I loved at the Baby Show and I saw to many to mention. But here is a list of some other wonderful companies that I saw and loved yesterday. 

MAM, Toffee Moon Clothing, SassyBloom, KozyKartz, Kings Vs Queens Clothing, MOCCIS, Sillybillyz, Snuglo, BundleBean, Onni Smart Care, Cuddle Mates, Not Before Tea, Morrck, House of Bibs, My 1st Years, Pourty, Babies that Rock, Love Boo, Joie, BoboBuddies, Cheeky Chompers, Cheeky Wipes, Funky Giraffe Bibs, Naif Care, Slumbersac, Squid Soap, Ewen the Dream Sheep, Your baby can read. 

The next Baby Show is at NEC Birmingham on the 13th-15th of may and its a great day out so if your free I would recommend heading there. 

My Sunday Photo 21/03

Does your Little one Sleep? Can I help?

Sleep for me is one thing of the past, as I'm sure it is with a lot of mothers. In the past, 5 hours sleep would have been terrible and I could not have functioned. Where as now if I get 5 hours I feel like jumping for joy and like I can achieve anything.

Lily has always been a terrible sleeper. Some people can't believe me at times when I say "lily slept really well last night, she only woke up 3 times."

When she was born, she was a typical newborn, I was breast feeding so she would be waking every 3 hours for feeds and it was tricky but I coped. As she got a few months older, she would start to give me 5 or 6 hours here and there and those nights were great! She fell asleep no problem either. I would lay her in her cot and she would self settle and fall asleep.
So the thing is, I put a lot in place to ensure Lily would sleep just like advised. I taught her to self settle. I never let her cry it out but always tried to settle her in her cot rather than rocking her to sleep. I thought great, its all working wonderfully! Then she hit 6 months!

Suddenly she started waking more often, every 3 hours without fail and every night. This was tiring, but I thought just a phase and carried on, thinking this wont last forever.  My partner was up at 6am and worked all day and as I was breast feeding I did all the getting up in the night.

A few months later, did things get easier? No, they got worse. Lily started not wanting to go down to sleep. I couldn't figure what had gone wrong, was it that she was hungry still? Or wanting to play?Not tired? Maybe her naps were to long? Maybe it was just attention? Are her teeth hurting? I thought of every possibility.
I tried cutting out her nap, and of corse this worked but only because she was so so tired that she wanted to sleep. But this just lead to her being to tired in the day. She needed that nap still.

At 11 months old, the routine of every 3 hours went out of the window, and not in a good way. Suddenly it was every hour, 2 hours at the most. Not only was she waking up, she wasn't wanting to go back to sleep! She was still in our room but I was adament that she was not getting in my bed. This lead to a a lot of rocking, patting, stroking of the face, and maybe a hour later and she would be asleep.

This carried on for months and really started to get to me, not only had I not had a full nights sleep for a year, I was now getting woke up every hour.

Unfortunately for me, this lasted up until a week ago! Lily is now nearly 15 months old and finally sleeping a little better thought not straight through. She is waking 3 times a night, around 11pm, 2am and 5am and sleeping until 9am. Lily is still having her comfort night feeds and this is one thing I next need to tackle. But for now I am starting to feel more alive and enjoying that 4 hours she gives me from 5 to 9am.

I am now trying to figure out what it is thats helping her sleep better. Could it be that She has recently moved into her own room, or that she is now having 20oz of cows milk a day. Or that the room is a lot cooler than ours which she originally was in. Or is it the fact that this week she has started walking? I don't think I will figure out which is it. But it could be one of those factors that helps so I'm sticking to them.

So what can I maybe tell you to help? I am no expert when it comes to helping babies sleep but here are a few things that I can say, or that I wish I would of tried earlier.

1. Firstly, Keep it up! Your doing a great job. You should be proud that your so strong to have managed so many sleepless nights.

2. Relax, easier said than done but you can really stress over it and it doesn't help. Keep calm and do things that make that getting up nicer for you. A drink next to the bed and comfy dressing gown seem to help me.

3. If you can, ask your partner for help. One thing I wish I would have done is got my partner to go in and tried to settle her without a comfort feed from me. Getting her used to less comfort feeds at a earlier age.

4. For me I wish I would of given her more bottles, expressed more and let the partner give her them to get her used to it. I didn't start to introduce bottles until she was nearly 12 months and by this point all she wanted was my breast. 

5. This is not a certain, but I think that a relaxing bedtime story and a relaxing room seems to help. So the sooner you can get that, the better. 

I would love to hear your sleep stories and if your baby sleeps or what you did to help your baby sleep.

Valentines Art - A Vase of Roses

For Valentines yesterday I decided it would be nice to do some art with Lily. 

Having not planned anything, I decided to look around my home to see what I could find to make something that was Valentines related. We had paint, paper, and love heart shaped sponges. But I also found some tissue paper in green and red and some empty toilet rolls. Suddenly the idea popped into my head to make some vases of roses.

I put all 4 colours of paint into the bowl and let Lily decorate the toilet roll which would make our vase. I was quite surprised that I didn't have to show her what to do and she started to dab her brush into the paint and then paint the toilet roll straight away.

Now for the flowers, this part Lily is to small to do and so I had to do it while I left her to paint with the heart sponge and a toilet roll. 

Here is how to make the roses so then you can make them at home.

Firstly cut the toilet roll into strips. These will be our stems.

Then you can either paint them or wrap them in green tissue paper, I decided to wrap them in tissue paper and glue them shut with Pritt Stick.

Now to make the flowers, rip the red tissue paper into squares, and place into your hand like in the photograph. Then squash and fold the tissue paper until it forms more of a flower shape. 

Stick the rose to the top of the stems you have made and you have your flowers, make around 5 for each vase you painted. 

When your pots have dried, place them in and they are finished and ready to give to your valentine! These would make a lovely gift for mums also and so would be great for childcare workers to make them in Nursery settings. 

What do you think to our Valentines Flowers Idea?