'cleaning' the house in 5 steps

I am not as house proud as some. People coming over is generally when I whiz round and get some cleaning done. Lately though I have been on a spring cleaning buzz, trying to throw away some stuff so that there is less stuff to tidy! What I prefer to do is organise it somewhere and keep it.. But these two things are not always compatible. We have lived here two years and I am still improving the 'everything has a place' rule. In particular we have a new kitchen (yay!) with less storage so I am inspired to purge. Tis hard work but I don't want to grow up to be a hoarder. Wish me luck.

So, imagine a last minute visitor at your house and  things could look better... Here are my 5 steps to a 'clean' house. You can now benefit from my time saving tips gleaned from years of laziness (other priorities)! These will not be for everyone. If you are a neat freak, don't read any more... I think this list can be done in about 15-20 minutes?! Hopefully beds are made and table and bench is wiped. I am have been working on that this year. Gosh for shame, how old am I? Here you go, 5 steps to house reasdy!

1. Vacuum the floor in the main room and hallway if possible. This may involve putting toys away. Toy baskets are essential here or put them under a child's bed for another clean up later! I have a stick vacuum that I love, so this step is now super fast.

2. Clean the toilet. Ground breaking stuff right. Toddlers in the house means this just needs doing often. Don't skimp here!

3. If your hard floors need attention wipe around the corners of the room with a damp used tea towel or hand towel you then throw in the wash

4. Get your dishes in dishwasher! In extreme cases they can go in the oven or a cupboard! Revolutionary I know.

5. Put clothes in laundry baskets. Having a basket in each room is a bit of an intermediate step for me, I just don't seem to have a putting clothes away mojo. Ada is always pulling out more...

So there you have it! All done. Just enough tidy...

3 day toilet training, ah try three months?

I had heard of this technique and wanted to get in on it before summer was over. Two of my friends had it work a treat for them. Notice I am writing this at the beginning of spring, not a good sign? When I read up about it they recommended doing it before 2 and a half so in that sense our timing was about perfect. The websites recommended that the kid can communicate, is interested in toileting and can hold on, all things Ada was doing. The gist of this technique is to go COMPLETELY nappy free, bye bye nappies forever and don't look back. This method assumes that after about 15 'successes' over the three days your little one will understand the sensation and be able to associate that with hopping on the potty in time to go! Sounds a dream... lets try it! On day one you stay home and drink lots of drinks, hopefully hanging out in your house with wooden floors or in the kitchen or outside if it is summer time. As soon as the kiddo starts to wee (or poop, eep) pick them up and pop them on the potty and CELEBRATE your head off for ANY successful business in there. Day two is similar but you venture out in the avo, going to the toilet/potty before you leave and finally on day three you venture out in the morning, again sitting on the potty before leaving. 

At the time Ada only drank water and definitely didn't enjoy being told what to do. A bit of a stubborn streak/two year old assertion perhaps? So my little lady couldn't be convinced to drink more nor submit to trying to sit on the potty when asked. Also miss Ada does about 2 wees during a normal day and just held on and held on, after about 5 days she had only 'let go' out of a nappy about 6 times. The first time we tried she got sick, developed a UTI and was in severe rebellious mode when it came to the potty. On trial two, we took it sooo easy, Ada was in charge of whether she complied by sittng on the potty before bed or leaving the house and she got whisked to the toilet as soon as she said 'wees'. It still took weeks for our success rate to climb to 15. It even took days before we had an accident on the floor, these were all at someone elses house! SORRY GUYS. She actually did more wees on other peoples floors than our own. Suddenly it clicked and she was going to the toilet well for wees. Ada held on number twos until nappies went on for naps/bedtime (I didn't abandon nappies for 3 hour sleeps or overnight, I think some folk do!). Then that all clicked into place too. It is months later and she still gets help on the toilet and will let go at Playcentre rather than realise that she needs get to the loo in time... But, these moments are fewer and farther between now. So I would still recommend the three day technique for those who are game, but we took about three weeks for the first lots of very regular successes and three months for her to be almost in charge of it all herself. Phewf....

Maybe Olive will want to stay in nappies forever?

(p)raising girls

I used to be 'for women' but not a 'feminist', a distinction that I no longer see the need to make. I kinda think women don't get a fair deal and I want to see that change, sounds a bit like a feminist I guess. Now that I have two girls I really care about what works with how I parent them. I do see boys and girls as different and that will lead to some differences in how we relate to each, but articles like this one show me that as a parent I want to be mindful how I talk to my girls, particularly because they are girls. It talks about the messages girls generally get versus the messages boys get during schooling and how they impact on the child's desire to make an effort. Kids (often girls) who are always 'good' and 'clever' and always told so seem to find it very unsettling when they can't do something first try (I can still relate to this at times!). However the message 'if you would just put in some effort I am sure you will succeed' explains to a kid (often a boy who can't sit still for example), that we persist when things are difficult and that success is the result of effort. It sounds simple enough...

There seems to be lots of study and discussion about what sort of praise works. At Playcentre for example there is a general philosopy to be as specific as possible with praise (Faber and Mazlish talk about this in their book, How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk). This article here echoes the first one I mention above and encourages the reader to praise girls effort during the process rather than the only at the outcome. “The kids who are getting this process praise, those are the kids who want the challenge.” Praising persistence, engagement and perseverance through frustration builds resilience.

This is easy to say and hard to do but I am willing to practice. Ada is 3 months off three and up until now really has flitted between activities both at home and at Playcentre. Though it seems this is changing and I'm excited to see her interests develop. Until then we will continue to sing let it go and play with stickers!

Here she is on a gym trip persisting with the rings, she loves them! Go girl!

fun for free! the museum

The Auckland Museum in the Domain is a great free (for Auckland residents, just present your library card) place for small children. There are always  groups of Mums hanging in the foyer whilst tiny toddlers clamber on the furniture. Upstairs they have a Kai room, you can go mad and messy there small people. Next to that is Weird and Wonderful. Lots of live bugs and fish next to stuffed animals and drawers upon drawers of specimens. Insects, molluscs, birds, butterflies. It's not a huge space so your toddler can explore without you having to be right next toy them, but the specimen drawers are very heavy.

This week I went with Ada and Olive and the front pack and the double pram. We went to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. The photographs are amazing and the entries come from experienced photo journalists through to young children. Olive really loved these when she was in the front pack, reaching out and exclaiming with each image but didn't engage from the floor. The tiles confused her and she crawled for the first time in months! Ada enjoyed being about to identify the animals, even thought they photos are taken from new perspectives. They really enjoyed upstairs and the freesom to explore there. There were a lot of people there so we didn't stay long, but that doesn't matter!

Here is the helpful link for getting there and parking.

Here is the helpful link for kids activities.

Have you discovered anywhere lately?
Have fun friends xx

(Here is another visit pic)

reading wednesday - around the neighbourhood

So it's my blog and I'll change things on a whim if I want to! I am still fine tuning my schedule. What do you think of these topics?

Manic Monday
Tuesday's Tune
Reading Wednesday (cos that non alliterative assonance is so bittersweet!)
Thoughtful Thursday
Foodie Friday

Welcome to a new series of book recommendations! I always appreciate hearing what other kids have been enjoying so I thought I would share what works at our house. First up is Around the Neighbourhood adapted by Sarah L. Thomson, illustrated by Jana Christy.

This book is great as it imagines a babies world getting bigger and bigger from her room to the whole neighbourhood surrounding the house. I've been a grump lately and so singing about a happy laughing mama on page one is rather affirming even if it's more prophetic than accurate. I enjoy the active vocabulary in this book where animals pounce and sniff rather than meow and bark. Each page sees more animals added to the neighbourhood, providing many opportunities for counting! We love the style of illustration and that one animal seems to be doing their own thing in each group. Ada loves to point each one out every time we read it. The angry cat, the chatty duck, the distracted bunny, so many opportunities for a wee chatter.

What's that face?

The music is included at the end of the book. Ada always asks to learn the song. Oh but we know it now! You can learn too! Around the Neighbourhood is an adaptation of a classic folk tune 'Over in the Meadow', you can hear the tune here in this cute animation.

How about you guys? What is high on the reading rotation at your place? Do you have the same converaations each time you reread a book?

Previous recommendations.

tiny wisdoms

I blather on about a few things that take up lots of my brain power in parenting, food and sleep, aka human survival. Here are some pearls of wisdom that have been passed on to me that I need you to know. 

Have your child say goodbye to the park, toy store, tv, whatever it may be and it's easier to go. We all need closure.

Always break a cracker (or cookie) in two and put half in each hand. So simple. Two busy hands, one happy mouth.

This one is a biggie, and it is so hard to do sometimes, we do things faster and cleaner and there are times that is necessary for us to keep our sanity. But if they can do something for themselves = let them do it! (Thanks three day nanny for sparking this conversation...)

fun for free: art gallery

We hoped to take the train to britomart and get all fancy in the down town precinct then the weather looked iffy and we thought, ugh all Olive will want to do is crawl about and we will be wrestling our 9 month old on our shoulders for so many hours. Today the forecast had changed and we had a rethink about where we actually wanted to go and realised the art gallery was a great plan.

We braved the bus into the city. I know! 

Dad chose my socks. 

15 minutes into the journey we were still in Onehunga and I was loosing my nerve. The girls were having a blast, Olive waving at our fellow passengers and Ada chomping on some crackers or looking out the window. I was busy worrying about the fact it was 25 more minutes till we got off. Cam talked me down and I reassumed positive outlook and lo and behold no meltdowns on the way there! Hallelujah! 

Finally using hand sanitizer?!!

Our bus dropped us outside the Civic and we went across to the takeout Korean Pancake place. Yum! We ordered cinnamon, beef and cheese and vege and cheese. These are delicious filled pastry-like pancakes and are cheap as! We ended up eating them in the art gallery cafe, no askew glances noticed by me, so they probably didn't happen. Ada said no and ate all the feijoas instead. No problemo the cinnamon pancake went very well with my long black. We try to not just go to a cafe each Saturday, but lo and behold, there we were again. We had a little book to ourselves overlooking the rotating L's outside. "Look they're turning!" Ada could sit in the high chair and Olive could walk around the buggy and not get covered in mud. Win win win people. 

The art gallery did not go as smoothly as our trip to the Wallace Centre, only that the girls attention span was getting short. We did get a good 15 minutes in on the ground floor but there was only paintings there. Olive walked a good 8 steps in the big rooms! Ada would point out one she liked in each room, I couldn't always decipher why each one was liked. 

Considering the brush strokes. 

The education room was good fun though! Tables for drawing, a tv playing peekaboo, placard signs to wield! Olive looked adorbz playing in a round window until she hit her lip. Blood not so adorable. She stopped crying super quick but we went outside to the bean bag book corner for safety's sake. 

Crazy eyes.

We only hung about in the city for a total of 90 minutes but Cam and I totally felt like it was a breath of fresh air. So many little victories. We took just enough snacks. Go raisins! Go crackers! Ada is toilet training and on the bus home she told me she needed to do a wee wee, so I whipped off her tights and threw on a pull up. Success! No wees on me or the floor! Finally 15 min from home, the bus taking the full HOUR to travel home, Ada got to look through photos on Cam's phone and then when we were almost home Ada said she was tired and it "might be bottle time". We made it. Home and two girls asleep in beds in 10 minutes flat. 

I am a big believer in plan b, or what's the worst that could happen, we can always just go home, not today! In the words of Dora and Boots  "we did it, we did it, yay we did it!"

milk boosting treats: dairy free oaty cookies and lemon truffles

Gosh, I had it easy with Ada, girl just fed and fed. Olive was a bit trickier. My milk supply was great, then average, then non existent at certain times of the day. I tried a couple of things to increase my milk production, lots of water, special tea but brewers yeast was the one that had the most effect. To give your milk supply a big boost in quality and quantity try making this milkshake found at breastmates.co.nz, a great website for breastfeeding support of all kinds. Clothes! Encouragement!

When I discovered Olive couldn't tolerate milk I found two other tasty ways to incorporate brewers yeast into my diet that wasn't sprinkled on soup or toast (not for me).

Lactation Cookies

A tasty little recipe that will help to improve the quality and supply of breast milk.  2-3 smallish ones a day will help balance out your supply but if you need to boost the supply eat more. The oats are a great mood stabiliser and I don't need to explain the necessity of chocolate. To make these dairy free use margarine and very dark chocolate chips.

·       1 cup butter

·       1 cup sugar

·       1 cup brown sugar

·       4 tablespoons water

·       2 tablespoons linseed (flaxseed) meal*

·       2 large eggs

·       1 teaspoon vanilla essence

·       2 cups flour

·       1 teaspoon baking soda

·       1 teaspoon salt

·       3 cups oats, thick cut if you can get them

·       1 cup chocolate chips (optional, add cranberries or almonds or similar if that suits you)

·       2 tablespoons of brewers yeast* (be generous)

Preheat oven at 180ºC

Mix together 2 tablespoons of linseed meal and water, set aside for 3-5 minutes

Cream margarine and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, mix well.

Stir linseed mixture and add with vanilla to the margarine mix. Beat until blended

Sift together dry ingredients, except oats and chips. Add to margarine mixture.

Stir in oats & chips

Scoop small balls onto baking sheet lined with baking paper.

Bake 8-12 minutes, until they are just browning and smell like cookies

NB: MUST BE BREWERS YEAST,  not bakers yeast, I bought some at the local health shop. This recipe makes 6 dozen small cookies so you can freeze the dough or bake the cookies and then freeze them. I think I did both!

Lemon and Coconut Truffles

These are adapted from the recipe found at a lovely local blog petite kitchen a great resource for dairy, gluten, refined sugar free recipes, if that is your bag baby! 

·       1 1/2 cups unsweetened desiccated coconut

·       1/4 cup for coating

·       1 cup ground almonds

·       1 tbsp brewers yeast

·       4 tbsp extra virgin coconut oil

·       4 tbsp honey

·       zest and juice of one lemon

·       1 tsp pure vanilla extract

·       a pinch of sea salt

In a food processor or bowl mix all of the ingredients until the mixture starts to mix together like a dough.

Use your hands to form small balls.

In a separate bowl, add the extra coconut. Roll the balls in the coconut until well coated then transfer to a plate. Place in the fridge for at least half an hour to set

NB: The truffles can be kept at room temperature but they are best kept in the fridge and will keep about 4 days.

italian baby food

So I have said before that Olive is a rather tight lipped baby when we put a spoon near her face. Then I made a classic italian baby food as suggested by Luisa at The Wednesday Chef.

Here is her recipe:

Pastina
Serves 1 baby
2-3 tablespoons small soup pasta
4 grape or cherry tomatoes, quartered
Olive oil
Grated Parmesan cheese
1. In a small saucepan, bring an inch of water to the boil with a small pinch of salt. When the water is boiling, add the soup pasta and the quartered tomatoes and cook until the pasta is done.
2. Spoon the pasta, tomatoes and a little bit of the cooking liquid into a serving bowl. Drizzle with a little olive oil and top with a little grated cheese. Serve.
Variation with 1 very fresh egg:
When the pasta is finished cooking, turn off the heat under the pot and crack the egg into the pasta. Stir the egg until it is cooked and transformed into custardy shreds. Pour the contents of the pot into a serving bowl, top with olive oil and cheese and serve.
Nota bene: Make sure to really only use the amount of water that you want to serve, if using the egg. Once the egg is stirred into the pot, you can't reduce the amount of liquid in the pot.

I skipped the tomatoes and cheese but added the egg. Olive opened her mouth repeatedly for more! The best feeling, you do have a primal urge to feed that baby. Just as I thought she would never be spoon fed, Olive went and ate a meal! Simple things. I'm still doing loads of finger food but I always offer something else too. This recipe is a keeper or maybe our dinner puréed to a thick mash, or try my luck withv a pre prepped jar. 

As a side note Olive and Ada are such wee opposites, in the tastes department Ada loved pumpkin, Olive loves egg and each hates the other. But we all love broccoli. 

Any must share recipes or thoughts on solids out there? We are having no joy at breakfast time. 

I end up eating her toast. Trying to give back the crust. Not so much.

Ada loved food, see baby dahl, irish mash and best (guilt free) pancakes ever, I no longer think these are embarrassingly easy. If you make food for your baby, you are hard core! Go us, when we do it! Haha.

fun for free: Monte Cecelia Park

Our most recent Auckland discovery is Monte Cecelia Park off Hillsborough Road. It is a lush green, rolling hills sort of place where people picnic and walk dogs. At the top of the park is the historic and very lovely Pah homestead which houses the Wallace Arts Centre, a gift shop and a cafe. Did somebody say coffee? We all loved walking/crawling around the galleries filled with sculptures and paintings. Ada showed us her favorite piece in each room and tried out all the leather couches and seats that I wanted to take home, along with some Ian Scott pieces. Outside there is a huge sweeping veranda to enjoy some coffee and cake and lots of outdoor sculptures to explore. There is even one friendly cat to amuse the small ones. I want to go back soon! 

So much crawling to do, so little time

baby led weaning update

Olive doesn't want to be be spoon fed by us, she clamps her mouth shut and turns away. We can even put food on a spoon and she will put it in her mouth, pretty successfully I may say. She has an independent streak a mile wide this one. So I have been reading a bit about baby led weaning (pretty sue I am repeating myself, ah well). Baby led weaning seems to be about the baby being in control of what goes in their mouth, the name gives some of that away, no? The goal is for them to get used to different tastes and textures while their nutrition is still coming from breast milk or formula.

Olive loves to munch on:

• Broccoli, steamed or stir fried but really soft so the floret kind of disintegates in her mouth
• Chick peas. Yep whole. I'm not freaked about the choking thing it seems. Olive has never gagged on these, I squish them slightly so they are slightly easier to grip and slightly easier to munch.
• Peach.
• Pasta, in particular, fettuccine, So little was eaten but the tomato and vege sauce went down a treat!
• Oven fries (I added some paprika to keep them tasty). She eats the potato and spits out the skin, or you could cut off the skin once cooked.
• Carrots and lamb removed from a slow cooker meal. She chews on a big piece of meat then discards it once it is grey.
• Peas, I serve them frozen, Ada loved them like this too, those little fingers working out what they can grasp. Olive only manages to consume about four in a sitting so I am not worried about her digesting the uncooked fibre.

One idea I read about that I haven't tried yet is to peel and chop into spears apples, pears, kumara, potato, carrots and bake at about 200ºC until soft inside, maybe 30 minutes, sprinkling each with something complementary. Cinnamon on the fruit, cumin on the carrots, paprika, mild curry powder even on the root vegetables. Olive being fussier than Ada has meant discovering that interesting flavours will entice her to eat more!

I do keep trying with different foods though and strangely enough as I go to post this we have discovered something Olive does want to be spoon fed. So, swings and roundabouts folks, that's the name of the baby game huh, all that change keeps us on our toes! So I'll post a recipe for that too...

 We miss watermelon...

fun for free: Grey Lynn Toddler Pool

If you are lucky enough to live in Grey Lynn you will no doubt be reading this with a takeaway coffee and Anika Moa's Songs for Bubbas playing in the background and you will know all about the great stuff for kiddos in your local park. If you are anywhere else in Auckland and you don't have a pool get on down to the free pool in Grey Lynn Park. It is supervised, shaded, next to a cool playground and safe for under 5's. We love it so. We have been twice this summer, the first time was before our beach holiday in January, Ada just dangled her feet in from the edge of the pool. The second trip we had the pool to ourselves, it was a cooler morning, Ada was all about it! I put Olive in too, she was sitting in a big ring we have, she seemed pissed off that the couldn't splash her hands, well it was that or the cold. Olive had a short swim...

Ada a year ago! What? Hi Grace!

You enter the Grey Lynn Park from the Williamson Ave entrance or down Grosvenor St, thwn you are right next to a great play ground, a skate ramp, basketball court and the paddling pool. Fenced. Patrolled. Shaded. Amazing! It should be open a few more weeks, here is the councils website with the guff.

Google Map!

fun for free: Auckland Botanic Gardens

I thought to round off the summer I would do a short series of posts of places to go with your toddler in Auckland. You may or may not know there are a number of fun places to go with your family for free! I do so love a good freebie. There are hopefully a few good weeks of weather left and getting outside is a great plan. Winter is coming.

oops, not for touching...

We visited the Auckland Botanic Gardens the beginning of summer and loved wandering about the various regions of the world represented in plant life. There is a sculpture walk over summer ponds with birds and fish and of course many plants to keep your inquisitive toddler entertained. We will hopefully go again soon as teh sculpture walk is great and only there until February 28th. This time we will probably go as early as possible to avoid the heat of the day and now Olive can crawl about a bit rather than suffer the squirms in the front pack as she fights sleep! (I love when they are finally awake long enough to go somewhere and get home again without a melt down. Ada loves wide open spaces she was in heaven here.

The gardens are in Manurewa, take the Hill Road exit when coming from the city, from there you can follow the signs. Easy! For a refuel/adult moment there is also a nice wee cafe at the entrance that serves a lovely Italian espresso.

Where do you take your small children in Auckland?  Look out for my next installment of free fun.

You may also like to know some kid friendly cafes.

Obaby that's a fun app!

Hello!

Obaby is a new discovery of mine at the App Store and allows cuteness overtop your cute pics. Double cute!

It's 80% off, so I bought it. Usually I go for the freebies but I'm having a lot of fun with this. $1.29 worth of fun at least. 

There are sections for all sorts of baby related moments, pregnancy, birth, the first year and so on.

Do you have any app recommendations? 

lunch time!

Olive seems to prefer savory dinner ish food over sweeter breakfast ish food and so I made her the baby spinach dhal Ada used to like. I searched here on my own blog for 'dhal' rather than redo the conversions for the original recipe. Reason #15 for blogging?

Success! She loved it too! I have puréed this and put it into ice cube trays to use later. Olive is still munching fruit pieces and toast, she has tried beans, broccoli and corn thins lately too. The other night at dinner I got the happies cos we were all eating corn at the same time. Small things... Olives food always ends up in her hair, marmite was no exception. When she was not eating dinner one night Cam put pumpkin on a nectarine slice, she opened her mouth wide each time and ate it. Olive thought it was awesome at first but then you could see her thinking, everything I eat tastes like pumpkin, what gives?!

What have you had success with when you have fed your babies? Any great sites out there? I am going to go back through The Wednesday Chef: Cooking for Hugo series and see what I can find.

baby name wizard

How great a name is that for a website? Well for anything!? I love the names we gave our girls. You can refer to me or Cameron as the baby name wizard if you happen to agree. Giving your children a name is one of your most important tasks as a parent, and you often do this on day one. So unprepared. So hopeful. Ada Ann Hockly and her sister Olive Joy Hockly, what ladies these two shall be one day! I also love graphs. Here are links to two graphs that help you visualise how Ada and Olive are old names that are having a resurgence in popularity. The height of the bar shows how many babies were given that name in that year (per million babies). Searching Ava and Olivia gives entirely different results and partly shows how Ada and Olive have their unique feel even though they are only one or two letters different in each case.

You can enter your name too and see how trendy it has been over the last 130 years. This is rather fun and addictive. My name was definitely a fad, the time of babies being called Loren has been and gone, also I was named Loren at the height of it's popularity. I checked a few friends names and found the same thing.

Kudos to the article that looked at lots of names and found interesting trends and things that I discovered this nifty tool on. If you have that link send it to me and I will add it here for others, so interesting!

Have you found anything curious about your name or your babies name? I would love to hear more.

food glorious food!

Olive is eating!

We are having a go with a mix of mush and some baby led weaning principles. It is quite fun watching her give a baton of pear or banana a good go. The big bits seem to be no problem, they just fall out and she has another go. Here she is having some pear! Her first solid, solids.




Here she is trying banana with Ada. Two girls, one menu! Whoop. This is moments before we go on holiday, great timing Mama. I do love when they are having the same snack though.

We have tried a few fruits and veggies, homemade toasty marmite things and rice porridge. Nectarine gets the best response. What first foods do you start with? I feel neglectful not steaming things for her to try, it just isn't as appealing in summer. I have got some pumpkin this week for her to taste.

On to steak next...

out about: child friendly cafes

Hi friends!

I am so obsessed with coffee. I thought I could write about 80 Cafes in a short amount of time but it turns out there aren't that many that kids can go to so I have only done 56! Here is a list of where we chose to go with our two in Auckland.

Walton Street, Te Awamutu

Our local is Ruby Red in Mangere Bridge, it has some toys and a couple of kids chairs down the back. This place is packed with toddlers on a Friday morning after music at the library!

On a fine day Luscious in Te Atatu is fantastic. Lots of tables outsided, trees and a big shade covered sandpit. They do a good coffee too.

Kohu Creamery in New Lynn was awesome, you could buy ice cream and there was a caravan with kids DVDs!  They have a new cafe collaboration called The Tannery that we need to go and check out to see what's new.

Mostly we go to Bean There in Onehunga. The space is lacking some style, it still looks a bit like the awkward bar that has changed hands here numerous times, but they have a kids play pit. This too is rudimentary but it gets you through. The coffee is excellent and the food is good standard cafe fare.

In Onehunga Library Cafe is often touted as the go to kid friendly spot. They have a tramp and slide outside and a big kids area inside. The service and coffee and food are hit and miss unfortunately. We get fries and a cold drink now...

Also in Onehunga there is Luscious Cafe. They have a kids play room upstairs. It is noisy but convenient. Luscious do great food but just an OK brew.

Localist recommends entirely different spots, a few over on the North Shore that maybe one day we will hikoi to.

Walton Street, Te Awamutu

Anyone else have a favourite place to enjoy coffee with kids? It's obvious by now, you must tell me!

i like this a lot, 6 words to say today

Sheesh I am running the risk of being preachy this week... Must be all that time gained by sending Ada to daycare... Anywho...

A new found blogger Joanna Goddard at Cup of Jo recently posted about a blog post they read at Hands Free Mama, (ahh it made me tear up) she had read that they couldn't get out of their heads. I read both posts and found the same thing. Read it read it!

The 6 words are so simple, "I love to watch you play. I've heard about and I try to give specific and descriptive praise to Ada rather than a generic 'good girl', the idea being that they build a big full picture of what is 'good'. But the phrase"I love to watch you play" lets the kids know they have your attention in a way that just doesn't matter how 'good' they are. It seems to me that kids won't always want to be good, or smart or talented or patient for you, but they desperately want your attention.

I love the freedom given by just enjoying someone. I tried to rephrase this thought, but this Joanna at Cup of Jo is a real writer so listen to her put it succinctly here:
"imagine if someone said it to you—for example, think of the difference between "You're a great karaoke singer" and "I love to watch you sing karaoke." Doesn't the latter make you feel much more confident and free to goof around and not be perfect? All you have to do is sing karaoke, you don't have to be a genius at it. It's remarkable how much those words take the pressure off. It's funny how even well-meaning praise can shut someone down and make them feel critiqued."

The best advice I ever got: toddler preparation for sibling

Ada coped amazingly well the first few days Olive was home. We got her a baby doll with a few accessories and she mimicked me a lot. Rock, pat, cuddle, car seat, night night baby and repeat. Ada is only 20 months old but has understood a fair amount of what is happening. She definitely got overwhelmed in the first week, being tired from being sick and sleeping poorly along with adjusting to sharing Mama and Dada has meant a few more wails from our generally amicable girl. We are learning how to approach these, how to respond when Ada wails over being told no or how to respond when she needs a bit of space and has chosen to cry in the corner because she can't figure out what she wants or how to get what she wants (often Mama). That's probably another story. 

• We got Ada a gift from Olive for when we came home from the hospital. This was a picnic set that Mama and Ada enjoyed straight away. Ada is mimicking everything we say and so we got a "thankyou Olive", Arr, so cute!
• We have a few cheap wrapped gifts on hand that double as an activity. Things like stickers, puzzles, colouring book, crayons, bubbles. If Ada gets jealous of the gifts arriving for Olive we can distract her with a gift and give her something entertaining too!  
• When Cam is at home from work I try and go out with Ada just for brief trips. Out of the house time and one on one time with Ada is a real treat,  trips to the pharmacy or a wee walk to the nearby horses are great. 
• Ada is small but we let her know Olives cries are to try and tell us that she is hungry or sleepy, or has a dirty nappy. We try to explain feeding takes a long time because that is where Olive gets all her food and water. 
• Older toddlers may be curious about scrunched-up legs that come from all that time spent tucked in mums tummy, the floppy neck which isn’t strong enough yet to support babies head and the soft spot and the reason we need to be extra gentle with heads. We have a kiss on head and pat on body policy that works ok. 
• For older kids: Together you can make a list of quiet activities she can do with you while the new baby in the house sleeps.