Wednesday 29 May 2013

Mealtimes - The Vegetable Wars

With our three little ones at the table mealtimes are rarely a civilised affair. Even keeping them at the table is a huge battle. I have great admiration and envy for friends whose children eat what they are given. In theory I always thought it seemed so simple: if the child doesn't eat the right food then they go hungry until they learn. The reality is quite different (at least in our household). The children gobble up certain meals and turn their noses up at other things. They also have amazing willpower and will battle out almost anything with you.

Our now 4 year old daughter sat for 45 minutes with a small piece of broccoli in her mouth, refusing to chew or swallow it. I nearly broke and gave up altogether, but after what seemed like being trapped in purgatory watching a sad child, she finally gave in and snaffled it down. The following day she was as good as gold and ate a piece of broccoli with no trouble. We still seem to have to repeat a lesser version of this every so often to remind her that vegetables need eating but it is finally a little easier.

Enjoying a picnic at Bicton Park


Out of the entire range of delicious fruit on offer, she will only countenance eating bananas (sometimes) and boiled slices of apple (and raisins - do they count?). But as she takes those willingly I am encouraging her to eat them. As vegetables go she will eat tiny quantities of broccoli, cauliflower and the occasional pea.

Most days by children are served healthy meals with a good helping of vegetables. Somehow I've satisfied myself with that and not watched too closely as to how much is being consumed. Although we have gotten somewhere with the eldest, our second child is the next one whose eating habits need to be tackled. He has just turned 2, and is only recently starting to speak at all. His lack of ability to have a conversation about eating has definitely made us feel less able to strike bargains, eg one spoonful of peas and then you can have a yoghurt. We've tried, but he just looks confused and sad and then sobs loudly. As his communication is now improving we are starting again and he seems to get the idea (although he refuses to eat any vegetables). He is a good eater generally and will happily eat potatoes, pasta, cheese and eggs.

Perhaps in many ways it is the parents who have to feel ready and able to do battle with fussy children. Summoning the energy to sit through another mealtime can take some effort. However, when all 5 of us sit down as a family at dinnertime it is a lovely chance to be together and share some time. We are still trying to enforce the rule of sitting at the table until everyone has finished, but at least sitting together and chatting about our day creates a bond of family unity.

It would be great to hear any mealtime victories that you have had...

Tuesday 28 May 2013

How we sell on ebay and amazon

Many friends have asked us about where our products come from, and how we go about selling on ebay and Amazon. I'll share a few of our tips below.

1) It starts with an order. We've spent time researching suppliers from companies manufacturing special products, to wholesalers who supply excess stock at discounted prices, to factories that will manufacture for us. For most wholesalers you need to show that you are a trade customer. For us this just meant providing some basic info about our business, which we had built up from gradual ebay trading.

2) Listing the stock. We recently got in 3 different styles of maternity jeans which were overstocks from a high street fashion store. We calculate how much it costs us to buy each pair, plus the listing and selling fees for ebay and Amazon, the postage costs etc and then set a price which gives us a small profit. We invested in digital scales and made ourselves a postage rate table in order to sell cheaply overseas. A significant number of our customers live in countries outside of the UK. At the moment we sell a lot across Europe and in Australia.

Ebay and Amazon have simple templates to help you get started with selling, and then they can introduce you to business packages. For example we have a 'shop' on ebay which allows us to display all of our items together and also to benefit from cheaper listing fees. We rarely deal in auctions and sell everything as 'buy it now' just like a normal website. Therefore we tend to have a set price and stick to it.

3) Posting the items. Each morning we print off the sales orders from all of the sites and then go and pick the stock. We have a barn in our back garden which is the official stock room. We've gradually added more and more shelving to make it easier and faster to collect the stock. We have plastic mailing bags of various sizes, plus all the stationary we need, eg return flyers and address labels. The packing is done on the kitchen table, and any of our children who are around love to sit and make pictures with the remains of our packaging. We have a daily collection service from Royal Mail, so we sort the parcels into which region of the world they are going to and prepare them for posting. We can now print our own stamps and pay online. Our postie comes at 12.30pm so we have a mad rush to get everything sent off in the morning. After that we have more time for customer questions, returned stock and ordering new stuff in.

So that's it in a nutshell! We gained 'top rated seller' status on ebay by always dealing with problems head on and by communicating clearly with our customers. We try to go out of our way to resolve any problems, and we offer an honest service. As parents ourselves we source and sell things which we would want to use ourselves.

Thanks for reading. Any questions?

Sunday 26 May 2013

Is doing your laundry a full time job?

I'm definitely getting old. For my upcoming 34th birthday I'm getting a TUMBLE DRYER (yes I'm shouting) and I'm very excited.

In the past I used to consider spending money on myself to include such treats as a haircut, new clothes, shoes etc. Now, a treat is a (hopefully) fantastic device designed to spit out dry clothes for all of the family.

With 5 of us in the family we get through around 3 loads of laundry a day. That includes cloth nappies, daily changes of bedding for a toddler and an endless supply of un-paired socks. With a baby in the house I'm also washing even my jeans and cardigans after every use. And then there are towels, chair cushions, ballet and swimming costumes. You get the picture.

We have 3 drying racks permanently on display in the dining room, and without either the sun shining or the heating on everything takes 2-3 days to dry. So, like a 1950's housewife I'm looking forward to a labour saving device. My Mum is enabling this treat, although she insisted that I have a rotary dryer for the garden as well, just in case I would rather stand for an hour pegging all my clothes outside than move them from the washing machine to the tumble dryer.

For anyone who has read this far, well done. This topic will either bore you completely or be of the utmost relevance to your life :-) I'll keep you updated on the progress of the dryer!


Friday 24 May 2013

Ideas for bank hol / half term

At the time of writing it's Friday night and the beginning of the half term holiday. Luckily we have a bank holiday weekend as well so a bit more time away from work. Even more luckily we live in Devon, so there is no shortage of things to do!

We're hoping to drive down to Torquay to venture on to the beach and then take the boat across the bay to Brixham. We'll probably make it to Bicton Park and Escot, plus we have 2 play dates arranged. Time to make the sandwiches and try and save some money :-)

What are your plans this weekend? Write your ideas below....


Thursday 9 May 2013

Introducing the sippy cup

Getting my children to give up their milk bottles has never been easy. All 3 have been breastfed initially but at some point have moved on to bottles. With my eldest child I fed her for 9 months and then gradually introduced a bottle. She loved it and we had it until she was 2, and she continued to have a night-time bottle until she was 3.

She loved the comfort of sucking from a bottle and so we really struggled to get her to give it up. We tried to be tough a few times but she was so distraught that we didn't feel able to persevere. We managed to phase it out gradually by allowing a bottle in the morning and one at night-time but insisting on a sippy cup during the day. Getting rid of those last bottles were definitely a struggle, and the final night-time one had to be replaced with a loooong bed time routine of stories and songs.

My feeling definitely has been that it is more about the parents being ready and able to give up the milk bottle rather than the child! At least in our case we had to be prepared for an upset child, sleepless nights and a disrupted routine. As our second child was born when our first was aged 2 years and 4 months we weren't immediately ready to take on the challenge.

Our second child has just recently turned 2. He is equally happy and comforted by his milk bottle, and we are in the same situation with also having a 6 month old baby. 'Choose your battles' has become a parenting motto (see Choose your battles - teaching good behaviour). Yet with our 2 year old son now starting pre-school it seemed like a good time to try once again to introduce sippy cups. The pre-school teachers were definitely encouraging me to try, but I wanted to give him a few weeks to get used to that new environment.

 
I bought him a new sippy cup that he could feel was his own, but initially he refused to go near it. However his older sister, now aged 4, decided that the two of them should have a picnic together in the garden and set about preparing drinks for them both. She gave him the sippy cup with milk inside (showing some good skills of breaking into the fridge, using a large milk carton and screwing the lids on their cups!) and the two of them trotted around the garden together with their cups.



Can it really be that easy? Has my 4 year old successfully introduced the sippy cup? So far the signs are good. I sent him to pre-school with the cup these last few days and he has been totally fine. He is still having night-time bottles but this is great progress. So now I'm steeling my resolve to be firm and not let him go back to daytime bottles. Can I get my daughter to show him how to use the potty next???

Tuesday 7 May 2013

How do you get your kids to sleep?

I'm counting myself very lucky tonight because by 9pm all my three children under 5 years old are asleep and I can sit at the computer without distraction! Each child seems to require a different bed-time routine.

My 4 year old definitely requires a long routine. We usually start at 7pm after her bath and the routine involves a prayer, reading a story and then some songs. Luckily we had grandparents here to help today so she got lots of attention.

My 2 year old can be the easiest one to get off to sleep. On days like today when he hasnt napped he is completely done in by 6pm and will head off to bed with a bottle of milk. And yes we do suffer plenty of judgement for letting him still drink from a bottle, but I'm totally OK with it. If he has napped then there is usually half an hour of him running out of his bed and me catching him and putting him back in again.

My youngest child is just over 6 months old. He usually falls asleep at the breast, but in the evenings has resolutely refused to be put down into his cot. We've spent many evenings cuddling him whilst he sleeps, but recently have been trying to get him to sleep properly in the cot. The last few weeks he has struggled even to sleep in our arms so we felt there was no other alternative than to try controlled crying. After hours of feeding and rocking we've been putting him in the cot and then going back after 2 mins, 5 mins and then 10 mins to reassure him that we're still there and help him to settle. Thankfully it has worked very well so far and he has fallen into deep sleeps and stayed in his cot for a few hours.

Let me know your top tips for getting those tricky kiddies off to bed!