Every Lidl helps

Lidl has been the talk of my fellow mums for some time now. They enthuse about the fruit and veg you can get there, all of it tasty but cheap. Their shopping bills have never been so low, they tell me. Even my dad has begun venturing in, returning with cut price dishwasher tablets and great slabs of chocolate like it's Christmas all over again.
So when my weekly shopping bill from Tesco hit a staggering £160, I decided it was time to take a look myself.
With the little man asleep in the car, and his daddy quite happy to keep him company and grab a nap himself, I took hold of my enormous trolley and ventured into the store. It's much smaller than Tesco and there are a lot of packets and boxes with obscure names and unreadable recipe information on the side but there are some old familiars there too - HP sauce, Branston pickle, Weetabix. I thread my way down the aisles stocking up the trolley.
Most of the cereal is unfamiliar but I take a chance (it is actually all very good). The seeded batch loaf I usually get is about 70p cheaper and delicious. Hot cross buns are in stock ready for Easter and are reasonable in price and taste. I even find some 100% fruit smoothies for kids at about half the price of their Innocent equivalent, although they are watered down so I don't think I will be getting them again. Crumpets, Heinz chicken soup, chorizo, wholewheat pasta all go in. The fruit and veg is indeed very good. A whole cucumber for 79p, a large pineapple for £1, a large ripe mango for half the price of Tesco but has yet to be tried and tested. There are organic carrots and onions and A LOT of cider on sale, if that's your thing.
So you can't get everything. There are no Pampers. I couldn't get hold of cream of tartare (for playdough which is the activity of the moment but I realise that is obscure) or parmesan or risotto rice. The miniscule packing area at the till suggests this is a supermarket not designed for big shops in mind (so why the enormous trolleys?) and most of the other customers I note are buying fairly small amounts of groceries, or a job lot of extra strength beer like the two retired men in front of me. With the tight squeeze and a growing queue behind me, I struggled to keep up with the urgent processing of the friendly man scanning my shop and did feel a bit hot and bothered by the end. Oh, and they don't take credit cards.
My final bill came to £89. I hadn't bought any meat or cleaning products or nappies but still it was a vast improvement and in the future I will certainly be using a combination of Lidl and Tesco, with the local butcher for meat and Jo the Fish in the town centre for, well, fish.
If you are feeding a growing family and trying to balance the books, I recommend discovering Lidl, if you haven't already. Good food, small bills, but even smaller packing areas.
One last tip - go armed with bags as they charge for them and you don't want a house full of Lidl bags for life - or is that the snob in me?

Unleashed and out of control

Maybe it is just because I am always sprinting full pelt trying to stop my little pocket rocket from running off the ends of the earth - or into a road - but it does seem my toddler has at least twice as much energy than others his age.
Boy he can move, as demonstrated at my in laws recently when, upset at the thought that I was downstairs and he was upstairs, he launched himself at the stairs and tumbled head over heels to the bottom. No one could have stopped him at the rate he was going. Thankfully, everything was carpeted and it wasn't a big flight of steps but rather unpleasant non-the-less.
But it was at our local soft play, housed in a garden centre, that I admitted defeat and concluded that sometimes I simply cannot keep up with this little one. I paid for a one-hour session, and he trotted off, shoeless, to roll around and let off some steam among the oversized sponge shapes, ladders and slides. This was all fine for ten minutes at the most but pretty soon, having seen me sipping my decaf latte through the glass just outside, he decided that he didn't want to be in there, he wanted to be out in the shop, running around in between the rows of displayed china and climbing on the sacks of compost.
Fair enough, I thought at first, he wants to explore, but after fifteen minutes of me running after him, herding him away from breakables and giving every impression of a mother who was out of control to all the customers, which I am afraid to say I was, I admitted defeat.
Hot, sweating, red-faced (in both senses), we put our coats on and left my poor friend and her altogether much calmer boy alone to finish her coffee in peace. I could almost feel the sighs of relief from those around as we made our exit, particularly from the woman on the next table who rather unkindly I thought put her fingers in her ears while the little man protested at his break for freedom being cut short. Okay he was loud but she could have hidden her discomfort a bit more for the short time I took a rest to get togged up and ready to leave - or not sit right by a children's play area?
I got home feeling rung out and filled with different emotions. Frustration at what the afternoon had turned into. Wonder at why he felt the need to escape when all the other kiddies played nicely in the soft play. Guilt at having got angry with him. And admiration, for while his energy levels can at times be difficult, it is a part of him that I love. He knows his own mind, he is confident, he is not afraid to go off and explore. Exhausting as that can be, it is a side of his personality I would run a mile to crush. And the other day, I reckon I covered a fairly good distance doing just that.

Any cures for a cough?

The little man has been a bit under the weather recently. It came on just before the weekend, cancelling a visit to the grandparents and a rare Friday night out. At its worst, his temperature shot up which was the most worrying although Calpol and Nurofen did the trick and he was soon back from the firey brink. I must add at this point how relieved I was that I had paid that bit more and invested in one of those digital in-the-ear thermometers the doctors use rather than perservering with the forehead sticks that I never seemed to get the hang of. If you are in any doubt as to what to get, I recommend the Braun ThermoScan. Totally worth the extra pennies.
He has been left with a runny nose and a horrible cough that just heaves his little body constantly. He has always suffered from coughs, an inevitable after-product of any cold - and they go on for an age. Having dropped his daytime nap, he is back to having a two-hour sleep, as he is so exhausted by constantly coughing.
It can be so frustrating as there seems to be very little you can do about a cough.I am adminstering Calpol and cough medicine periodically and I have invested in some Manuka honey that an assistant at the local health shop said worked with her children although he doesn't seem to like the taste (and a drop of that ain't cheap I tell you). I am going to try sitting him in a steamy bathroom later this evening to see if that eases it. In the meantime, if anyone has any top tips on eleviating a bad cough, they would be most welcome.

My new best friend - jeggings

On Saturday, as excitedly anticipated in my last posting, I hit the shops.
Childless, with credit cards burning holes in our pockets, my fellow mummy friend and I did our best to boost the economy, and our wardobes.
Being 15 weeks pregnant, buying "normal" clothes might seem to you a little bit like madness, seeing as a burgeoning bump would make them all but useless for the best part of half a year (or more depending how quickly I lose the dreaded baby weight). I might have once agreed, but that was before I came across the wonderful invention that is the jegging. Take the humble leggings (which I love and wear far too much), cross it with a pair of jeans and there you have it - trousers that look like denim but are stretchy and just so so comfortable. Okay, so the pair I chose from M&S looked dreadful on the hanger, with an extremely unflattering elasticated waistband that did it no favours, but once on they were a dream. And as I am hardly likely to be donning a crop top in my condition (I refer to age as well as baby), the offending waistband will always be safely hidden under a top.
Here is the pair I got:

Pull on denim jeggings from M&S, priced £19.50

Although they might not bear the strain for the entirety of the pregnancy, these trousers are a perfect compromise for now and I can see them fitting perfectly for after the little one arrives which is value for money you can't argue with.
I couldn't resist buying a few things for the little man too - stripy socks, vests (can't have too many of these in my opinion) and a cute pair of thermal pyjamas with stars on, his favourite. We also managed to fit in a very civilised lunch and a much-needed afternoon pot of tea with large slice of cake on the side. Although we didn't have to, it ended up that we both got back in time for bath and stories which was rather a nice way to round the day off. A bit of me-time, a bit of mummy-time. Perfect.

Some me time at the shops

When I was five, my mum took me shopping to Debenhams. We covered the ground floor, gathering up clothes for me try on and then commandeered a large changing room just the right size for the two of us and all our hangers of dresses, skirts, tops and trousers. As I tried on outfit after outfit, with my mum rushing back and forth to get different sizes and colours, I had a moment of blinding clarity - in short, the sheer joy it was to go clothes shopping. As they say, it was like a lightbulb going off in my head, blinding my other senses to this one overriding feeling of euphoria. A true shopaholic's high.
It is a fond memory we both share. My mum says she can still recall the subtle change in my expression as it dawned on me that what we were doing wasn't something to get over and done with before heading for the book shop or cafe for a sticky bun, it was the whole point of the day and it was fun.
My love of shopping has not dwindled over the years since then, although becoming a mum myself has seriously curbed the amount of time I have to dawdle round the shops. In fact, most of the clothes I get are for the little man and I get just as much satisfaction buying these as anything for myself.
However, this weekend, another mum friend and I are putting on our heels and lippie, kissing goodbye to our little ones and are hitting the shops. We are both very excited. She has already written a long wishlist and we are putting together a military-style plan of action to make the most of the time we have. It will probably go something like: coffee, shops, lunch with long conversations not interrupted by toddlers or babies, shops, coffee (or something stronger for those not expecting) then home, hopefully armed with bagfuls of goodies. Bliss.

Our little miracle

So there it is again. The fuzzy black and white form, tiny arms and legs waving about, jaws opening and shutting, heart beating frantically it seems. Our new baby - all 6.7 centimetres of him or her. Isn't life incredible?
Yes, our news. Our three is, if all goes to plan, to become four in July - I know, the same time as a certain royal although probably without so much fanfare and ceremony - and we recently had the 12-week scan to confirm all is okay.
I remember the first scan we had when I was expecting the little man. The screen was angled towards the sonographer and out of my sight so I could only watch the reactions of daddy-to-be which was actually rather wonderful. The big grin that spread across his face told me that whatever he was seeing, it must be good. I am not sure what we were expecting to see that day, but we were both surprised at the fully formed little person in front of us, jumping about and wiggling its limbs like it was having its own little disco inside my uterus.
Things have come on a bit even in this short space of time and we were treated to a large wall-mounted flat screen monitor for us to peer up at. Again, it was lovely seeing this tiny being for the first time. There weren't scans like this when I was that size, my mum commented as she absorbed the photos we returned with from the hospital and it made me think again how lucky I am to be given this short glimpse at our new family member-to-be. Actually, having had rather an uphill struggle getting number two even to this stage, we are feeling pretty lucky all over.

Look who's sharing

Yesterday, the little man had a friend to play. I love having other tiny people over as I see it as a good opportunity for him to learn to share his toys. You never know quite how that's going to go, so I watched with pained interest as his playmate's eyes rested on this Christmas' favourite present - the accordian.
It was a gift from my parents and since it was unwrapped, it has gone everywhere with him. I thought perhaps this musical acompaniment to my life might grate after a while but so far, it remains rather pleasant, like a one-man folk band following me about.
I went to fetch it and the moment he saw it, the little man stretched out and took it in his arms. Gently, I said that his friend had asked if he could play with it and suggested he go over and give it to him. I held my breath. Then, he walked over to our guest and gave him the accordian. Relief and pride flooded over me.
I know this generosity might only be temporary. That another day, he could fight tooth and nail before sharing but for the moment it seems to be going in the right direction and that's all I can ask for really.