As parents, we've always tried not to give in too much to the gender-stereotyping that goes on in the world of baby products – we may have two boys, but our home is not entirely devoid of ‘girly’ toys. Jonah has a doll, a baby cot and a buggy, and we've never tried to discourage him from playing with this sort of stuff – after all, he may be a father some day, and his experience at putting a nappy on Dolly's head may prove useful. You never know.

But he's three now, and I'm beginning to wonder if an awareness of the world around him is starting to play a part in his likes and dislikes. His love of pink has been replaced with a (slightly less girly) preference for orange. Where he used to favour jigsaws of fairies and magical castles he now chooses dragons and monsters.

And then there are the dinosaurs. According to Jonah, they're everywhere we go; hiding behind the sofa first thing in the morning, following the car as we drive into town, chasing us round the

Scoobydoobydoo

playground in the park – it's always “Quick, run – there's a dinosaur... raaaaaah!”. Post-pregnancy exercise class? Pah! Try being chased by dinosaurs 12 hours a day – I've never been so fit!

So the house is now littered with little plastic dinos; we have Lex, Nex, Rex, Red and Sunny. The names make perfect sense when you meet them. Honestly. But Jonah's a cuddly boy, and Lex and the gang are a bit hard and spiky. So imagine his joy when he spotted a huge display of soft toy dinosaurs at a recent trade show. Naturally, we had to order some for the shop (not that we always buy what he wants, of course, but sometimes his input can be very useful!).

And they're now in stock! There are four different breeds (types? species?), each in two sizes. The smaller size even growl when you squeeze them! And of course they're for girls as well as boys – why should we have all the fun?

Jonah now shares his bed with a T-Rex called Scoobydoobydoo...

Here's a devastating fact for a rainy Friday the 13th: nine million children under five die every year, often from something preventable like diarrhoea, malaria or pneumonia, and usually because their parents are simply too poor to afford effective treatments. The Millenium Development Goals – set ten years ago by world leaders, to reduce poverty, hunger and disease – are not being met.

So, in just a couple of weeks' time, Save the Children are taking three top UK mummy bloggers to Bangladesh to witness first-hand the work the charity does with parents and children there. They'll be seeing what benefits even small interventions can bring, talking to parents and children about their experiences, and bringing it all back to us here in the UK as it happens, via their blogs, Twitter, videos, podcasts, photos... you name it, they'll be using it to get the message across.

Nick Clegg will be at a UN summit in September, with the opportunity to hold world leaders to the goals they set out a decade ago. These are realistic, acheivable goals to make the world a better place for those nine million children per year, and Save the Children want to make sure they actually happen. So follow the blogs and the Twitter streams (links below), and get behind the campaign. Get the badge on your blog or website to show your support (ours will show up on the right as soon as I've wrangled the code in there...). 100,000 signatures for Save the Children's petition might seem like a lot, but the power of the internet and social media can never be underestimated!

So who's off to Bangladesh?

Josie at Sleep is for the Weak
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Sian at MummyTips
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Eva at Nixdminx
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Subscribe to their blogs and follow them on Twitter. It's going to be an incredible experience. And for an instant (and currently absolutely manic!) Twitter-fix for the whole project, search for the #blogladesh hashtag.

Having recently returned to the world of work (albeit only very slightly), I have noticed that my brain is not as sharp it was. Things I could once do easily now take considerable effort. I know some of it is the effect of sleep deprivation, but I'm pretty sure there's another factor at play. Because when I thought about it I realised I haven't just lost skills these past few years; I've also gained some.

Neurons: leaping into action to avoid porridge

And I don't just mean the obvious ones like the ability to successfully feed, clothe and generally care for my beloved offspring. There are other – far more subtle – abilities that we develop as parents, and I've a hunch it's the sheer quantity of these that contribute to the so-called ‘nappy brain’. We can't remember everything: something's got to give!

Here are a few of my new skills – very important ones, I'm sure you'll agree:

• The ability to leave a bedroom (that has a sleeping baby in it) completely silently, along with its sister skill of creaky-floorboard-avoiding. When the baby's finally gone to sleep, the last thing you want to do is wake him up by leaving the room too noisily: I've thus become a master at the “silent creep”. A friend of mine went one step further, perfecting the skill of silent crawling: just in case her baby opened an eye she wanted to make sure she couldn't be seen and thus remained below eye level at all times!

• An adeptness at what I like to call the “porridge dance”. We have a small kitchen. Alexander sits in his highchair in the middle of it. He wolfs down porridge, getting his face and hands covered in the process. And then he strikes: just when your back is turned, he leans over and makes a grab for you. Maybe you've bent down to pick something up off the floor: whompf, porridgey hand in your hair. Maybe you've bent to take something out of a cupboard: whompf, porridgey hand on your bum. You go to the fridge: whompf; reach into a cupboard: whompf. And that's to say nothing of what happens when, mid-mouthful, he decides to see what happens when he says, “pffffffffftt”. So we've unconsciously developed a kind of dance. I watched Owain doing it this morning as he poured Jonah's cereal and made himself some lunch. It's a kind of wiggling shimmy, with the odd pelvic thrust and an occasional sudden leap backwards. If you remain alert and do it well enough, you can remain porridge-free through the whole of breakfast time. What a skill. And a transferrable one too, should we ever find ourselves on the dancefloor again.

• Search and rescue skills: whether it's submarines behind radiators, snakes on top of lampshades or pigs behind the TV... Things in our house end up in the weirdest of places due to Jonah's astounding throwing methods (and by astounding I mean ‘complete lack of directionality in his’). So I now have an enhanced ability to fish things out of odd places. I have an array of different tools for such events, including a duck on a stick, a child-sized mop and a dinosaur whose mouth opens and closes at the press of a button. Really I should market it as a kit for parents; I'm sure it would be a big money-spinner!

• The ability to hold (at least) two conversations at once and run them seamlessly together. A simple sentence can become an advanced amalgamation of thoughts and comments. For example, a suggestion to Owain about when to do the shopping might become, “I was thinking maybe Jonah don't do that we should go to the because you might hurt him supermarket after lunch and socks don't fit on ears anyway.”

I could go on, but this post is getting a bit lengthy and I need to set about using another of my enhanced skills: stuffing more into the washing machine than is realistically feasible.

I'd love to hear about your super-enhanced skills too!

Image credit:

fbobolas on flickr / CC BY 2.0

Somehow, without even noticing it, we have become overrun with Gruffaloes. At home and work alike, we are surrounded by terrible tusks and terrible claws.

Jonah loves The Gruffalo, and I have to admit we're rather partial to it too. For the uninitiated amongst you, it's a book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler about a mouse that goes for a walk in a wood and outwits various predatory animals he meets along the way. It's a story of a triumph of brains over brawn, it's easy to read and it's brilliantly illustrated. And as Jonah says "The gruffalo is great because it's scary and goes raaaaah!"

And, as it turns out, our favourite knobbly-kneed beast has a fair bit of influence over our buying habits. Over time we’ve found more and more Gruffalo stuff creeping into our shop. At the moment we’ve got three different sizes of stuffed toy Gruffalo (and we’re due to get snakes, owls, mice and foxes in before Christmas), we’ve got bags, tabards, room makeover kits, lunch boxes, snap cards, plasters, ceramics… we’ve even got Gruffalo Trunkis, so kids can pack clothes in his tummy and ride around on his purple-prickled back!

When Jonah comes into the shop he goes into a kind of Gruffalo daze. He wants everything. We’ve so far managed to avoid giving in to him on that count, but it definitely gets his seal (or rather, squeal) of approval. So if you’re looking for inspiration for toddler gifts, take a stroll through our (deep, dark) website!

I was sorting through my maternity clothing the other day and I was struck by just how much of it there was, and the shocking amount of money that I must have spent on it. True, it's seen me through two pregnancies, I've bought some cheaply through our shop and a fair bit of it is borrowed or given to me by friends. But even so, I wondered: did I really need it all? Could I have spent less? And given the current precarious economic climate, what would I do differently if I got pregnant for the first time tomorrow?

So I pondered. And I came up with a list of maternity wardrobe essentials to help mums-to-be avoid spending too much (on themselves, anyway; spending on the new arrival is another matter altogether!).

Read more...

Well, yes, pretty much everyone who saw it knew what it was (although I had a few "no idea" responses on Twitter). I thought the unusual body shape might throw people off. Should have cropped it a bit tighter.

It was indeed the back of the neck joint on one of my bass guitars (specifically one of my five-string fretless bass guitars). One of my "other children", as Maddy calls them, so beloved are they to me. Here it is, front and back:



Yes, it's inexplicably in the garden. And yes, we mowed the lawn just minutes after I took those pictures.

This week, the theme for Tara Cain's Gallery photoblog workshop is, in true Rolf Harris style, "Can you see what it is yet?":

So, take a photograph of something everyday, but take it at a different angle, from a different viewpoint, using a close-up zoom, whatever - something that makes that everyday object look totally different.

And we all have to guess what it is.

I had a photo knocking around that I thought would fit the bill perfectly if I cropped it down a bit, so I'm going to join in:



So, er... can you see what it is yet? I don't think it's too hard, but it's certainly not the angle you'd usually see this object from. Nor is it in its natural environment. Thinking caps on!

EDIT: See the answer in the next blog post, here.

So we've taken the plunge and started Alexander in nursery. It's just two afternoons a week but it feels strange being apart from him for even that long. I feel slightly confused and rather bereft. But I also feel excited too. Is it bad to admit that?

There's just so much that needs doing for Little Dodo and getting things done in the evening wasn't happening. Also, my brain was getting increasingly desperate to apply itself to something other than nappies and teething and wondering whether it's safe to feed raisins to a ten-month-old (I've just googled it and UK sites say yes but US sites say no – maybe America has a breed of mega-raisin that poses a particular risk?).

So I'm finding it kind of exhilarating to have time to focus on job-related stuff. Even though I work in the nursery industry, ordering potty-training products from a supplier is worlds away from trying to stop a baby putting a toilet seat on his head the moment my back is turned.

And now here I am at my computer in the middle of the afternoon, not racing against time to do everything before a thirty minute nap is over. Not fending off kids with, "Just a second, I need to get this done". Not having to break off every third word to intervene when a block-throwing game becomes a bit too 'enthusiastic'. What freedom.

Motherhood is wonderful. Time off from mothering is bliss.

Just don't tell the boys I said that....

I'd kind of promised myself I wouldn't do any "oh, the things kids say" type blog posts. But Jonah managed to completely crack us up a couple of days ago, so I'm going to subject you to it anyway.

We were all just getting into the car and Jonah spotted a couple of spiders' webs on the car. He felt he had to point them out to me.

"Look! Spider webs!"
"Yes, Jonah. They're good, aren't they?"
"What are the spider webs there for?"
"They're how the spiders catch their food. It gets caught in the web, and the spider can eat it."
"Yes... Bread and cucumber... and fruit. And Pom-Bear."

I couldn't bring myself to disabuse him of that dietary notion. Besides which, I was laughing too much.

Image credit:

vizzzual-dot-com on flickr / CC BY 2.0

In my last post I was wondering how we should go forward with this blog: How personal should it be? How much of our lives should we reveal in a blog that is attached to our business? I received some very interesting and helpful comments which I have been mulling over ever since.

And it's now nearly two weeks later and I've finally come to a decision. A sort of decision. Kind of. I think we just have to have a bash at writing this blog in whatever way seems best at the time, and just see what happens.

Hmmm, not exactly an earth-shattering conclusion to have drawn is it? But the more I think about it, and the more of other people's blogs I read, the more I feel that there's no real right or wrong to any of this blogging stuff. Well, apart from generally being respectful of each other. So I figure I should try not to worry too much about what I write and whether anyone reads it or comments on it, and just follow my instincts about what seems appropriate. I may make mistakes, but such is life!

So there may be personal stuff in this blog and there may be businessy stuff. That may make it a bit of a hotchpotch, but people can read what interests them and ignore what doesn't. And if we're not happy with how things are going we can always make changes. It will evolve as we go along.

So there you have it.

I'll be back.

I'm wondering what to do. When we started this blog three months ago we planned on it being as much a personal blog as anything. OK, it's attached to our business, but we wanted it to be about us as people and parents as well as about nursery industry stuff. I kind of feel like we've kept to that aim but the thing is, when it comes to what I write, I'm holding back. And I don't know how not to.

The thing is, I'm a private person and having a blog attached to a business means I have no anonymity. I've read other people's blogs where no real names are used at all, or others where the blogger uses their name but their children are simply son1 and son2 (or whatever). Even people who are free and easy with names don't give out their address or anything. But here we are, Maddy and Owain with our boys Jonah and Alexander and you can find at least one of us at our shop in Hexham 5 days a week! It just feels a bit exposing; not quite as bad as running through the streets waving your bra in the air (which naturally I do most Tuesday evenings), but almost.

And there's stuff I could share. Right now we're dealing with something with Jonah that's stressing me (and Owain) out no end, but I've not mentioned it here at all. Yet it's something I'm sure others out there have experience of too, and this whole blogging lark seems to be about sharing experiences and hopefully feeling better for it. But what if I blog about it and no one comments? Does that mean no one is reading this? And if they're not, why don't I just make better use of my time and cry on the shoulder of a friend rather than pouring the words into the void of cyberspace? And if people read what I write and don't comment, how do I take that? It's fine if it's nothing too personal but I think I'd find it hard if I wrote about something close to my heart and had no responses. I'm not saying I'd expect every reader to comment (of course), but I'm pretty sure complete cyber-silence would make me insecure. And I've not even touched on the idea that someone might write something I don't want to read: it's a minefield! So, as I said: I'm holding back.

I really would love to hear from fellow bloggers on this. Should blogging be like writing in a diary – just pouring words onto a keyboard in a way that is cathartic without any need for response? Do you ever feel you're going out on a limb with anything you write; is it too exposing? Have you ever regretted clicking the 'publish' button? And comments from non-bloggers are also welcome of course – what draws you to follow a particular blog or comment on a specific post? Has anyone got any advice on where we go from here?

Maddy

Image credit:

Random_fotos on flickr / CC BY 2.0

There's been so much going on here at Little Dodo (and at home) recently that it's been difficult to keep on top of everything. The upshot of this is that there's now a huge (and growing) backlog of products that we have in the shop but which I haven't managed to get up onto the website yet. Clearing this backlog is now my priority, so you'll notice a lot of new things popping up on the website over the next few days and weeks.

Getting an item ready to go online is often quite a time-consuming process. Each product image needs to be edited so it's square (a differently shaped image could cause our nice neat rows of products to go all squiffy). That's usually easy enough in itself, but when you're preparing eight images for each item – like with the Gruffalo Room Make-Over Kit – that can take a while.

Then I need to write a description. Sometimes it's provided by the manufacturer... but even then it might not be up to much, so I'll need to think of something to add or a way to improve it. I like to include dimensions as often as possible, so customers can get a really good idea of how big a product is, along with information about age suitability and the manufacturer. As I've said before on the blog, I can be a bit of a perfectionist, so even writing product descriptions can take me ages.

And the final touch: you see the "Related Products" underneath the product images? They're not automatically generated; I need to pick those by hand for each product. Sometimes that's easy; other times it requires trawling through everything to find connections.

So bear with me while I get everything sorted out. There are probably a couple of hundred products for me to get up online, so it'll take a little while...

As I've said before, we've been lucky with Jonah in the sleep department. He's had the odd blip (like when his little brother turned up), but by and large he's pretty reliable. Of course it's all relative: in my pre-parenthood years I would have thought that getting up at 7.30 every morning was pretty bad (what? no weekend lie-ins?!). And the fact that he's only occasionally up in the night? Being awoken from my slumbers at all would have struck me as pretty awful! How things change.

For those parents amongst you that are thinking 7.30 sounds like a pretty good getting-up time, we've been helped by the piece of genius that is the Gro-Clock. It's a special clock that shows either a sun or star on its face, depending on whether it's day or night. When we put Jonah to bed he says goodnight to "Mr Golden Sun" and down goes the (brightly lit, yellow) sun, to be replaced by a (dimly lit, blue) star. You can set the waking-up time to what ever time you like, and the star is displayed until then. There are also little stars round the edge of the clock face that vanish one-by-one as the night goes on, so if your child wakes in the night they can get an idea of how soon the sun will rise. Then, at your chosen time, up comes the sun! The clock comes with a special storybook which explains to your child the importance of not getting up before the sun rises, which helps them understand the concept of the clock. It's worked brilliantly for Jonah, who quite often wakes up before 7.30 but stays in bed till "sunrise". You can also set it for nap times too (though I can't comment on how well it works in this area as naps disappeared with Jonah long ago!).

Another great product for toddlers is the Grobag Stay-On Duvet. When you first take down the side of your little one's cot (or make the transition to a big bed), they can fall out or wake up in the night because their duvet's fallen off or they've lost their pillow. This bedding solves all these problems: the pillow-case is attached to the bottom sheet so it can't go anywhere, and the duvet also zips onto the sheet so it doesn't fall off and also helps keep them in bed. The bedding comes in some really cute designs – Jonah's got the monkey one, which perfectly matches the jungle theme of his bedroom...

...which brings me on to my next toddler sleep suggestion: making their bedroom somewhere they really want to be. This was important to us when we needed to move Jonah into another bedroom before Alexander came along. I needed his old room for the baby because it's bigger, but I was worried that the move would unsettle him. So we set about making his new room really special for him. It's a tiny room, so there was no need or space for anything big; it was just down to the little details: a cushion shaped like a lion, a lampshade covered in lizards, an elephant mirror and the bedding. The main thing I added was wall stickers; I found some jungle themed ones and they totally transformed the room. We didn't sell any in our shop at the time, but at a recent trade show we spied some brillant ones. If I was going to redecorate now I'd definitely go for the Gruffalo ones! Anyway, Jonah fell in love with his room, proudly showed it off to all his friends and was very happy to sleep in it: we used to hear him over the monitor saying goodnight to all the animals on his wall!

Those were the things that worked for us. No doubt Alexander will have new challenges in store for us when he hits the toddler years and we'll have to find a whole load of new solutions! Let us know what worked for you and if there are any brilliant products you've discovered out there that you think we should be selling.

Just two weeks ago, I gave myself a bit of a wrist-slapping for over-analysing and for not blogging enough. And how much blogging have I done since? None. Zilch. Nada.

I've got a good excuse, though. Quite apart from the time and energy that Jonah's been taking up with his challenging behaviour, we've been extremely busy with Little Dodo. Acres and acres of admin and re-ordering stock, not to mention the general day-to-day mayhem of sales, packing and sending. And when we haven't been wrestling toddlers or running a business we've mainly been asleep (either voluntarily or otherwise), or I've been in rehearsals for the musical projects I have on the go at the moment. At least I've been managing to fit in some creativity.

Well, tonight Maddy's at the pub. The boys are in bed and I'm still conscious. So here I am on my first "night off" in a long while, lying on the sofa with a netbook and a bottle of Grolsch Blond, listening to Scott Walker as the last rays of daylight fade. I suppose this is just me "touching base" with the blog. The crazy period of busy-ness appears to be winding down a bit so I can catch my breath. Hopefully soon I'll be able to get into my intended rhythm of more frequent writing.

So, yeah, I haven't quite lived up to my advice to myself. But at least I'm aware of that. More soon. And if I slack off, you know where to find me.