Yay us. Today was our first “2 nappy day”, and baby is just a week short of 8 months old. We missed some signals I think at lunch when we were at a cafe (so much going on for all of us), but it’s our best day so far.
Infant potty training really does rock, you gotta love no poopy pants to change.
Right now I’m in search of the perfect nappy bag. I’m not having a lot of luck, what I want is….
My last 2 nappy bags have failed on being a nice colour (both black), and one was not at all durable.
My current one is a nice bright yellow Koha messenger bag, but it doesn’t zip closed so stuff falls out all the time when it tips over.
Things that I don’t need
You wouldn’t think it was so much to ask for really!
Update: What I got in the end is an orange leather OiOi Hobo bag. It’s capacious and pretty, the only thing it lacks is the weather proofing flap over the zip but so far so good and it hasn’t leaked.
I wish that there was a reliable source of info on good (and bad) cafe’s to take small children to in Wellington.
At the weekend we went to Super (old Island Bay Cafe) in the main shops, Island Bay village on the Parade. The food was good, and they have a nice big “fenced” play area inside, with quite a few toys, and some toys in the “garden” out the back as well.
Our boy is 3, so was perfect for him. If you’re breastfeeding it’s not so good. On a fine day you could get some privacy out the back, otherwise it’s all open plan and no easy chairs or couch anywhere so you need to have your technique sorted for the unsuported feed.
They do have a kids menu, fluffy was ok, and reasonably quick to come.
As it’s on the main Island Bay bus route, if you have a bus fiend like I do then there is a bit of entertainment out the window as well.
We’ve just had a month away with our 2 year old and it went really well. In part it went well because we tried to be as prepared as we could be to fight off the twin event killers - hunger and boredom.
One of our outings was to a very “grown up” pot luck lunch with about 20 ish people including 4 or so other kids ranging in age from 10mths to 8 years. Our man had some food, a bit of a play and then fell asleep on dads lap - nice - we were the envy of everyone.
One of the mums of the older children though was complaining about how her child constantly interrupts her while she’s talking at these “do’s” and so we talked about some a techniqueto teach them for for getting attention quietly - “Quiet Hands”.
You teach your child to come up and gently touch your hand when they want your attention rather than shouting at you or dragging at you. Attention is the “reward” so you need to withold the reward for behaviour you don’t want. You might start by giving attention for shout and touch, but then go only for touch. Her child was 8 so she could explain it to him.
However it got me thinking about going out with a child to essentially an adults “do” and how she really had set herself up to fail. It was a house without kids, or any outdoors, so no toys and no running space. We took our travelling suitcase with toys in it (as we had on our whole trip), and the other children fell on them with great gusto.
So I think if going out with a small, or even not so small child, to a non child friendly place where you’d like to be able to ignore them, or keep them amused with minimal intervention take…
Toys and lots of them, some suggestions are
Toys that they and other adults will want to play with like lego, trainset, cars, mechano
Toys they like to play by themselves like crayons, colouring book
Books either to be read to them or they can read themselves
For older kids then computers, games, cards, anything that some other adult will take an interest in is a good idea (so not the new fangled game boy style things unless they will just play that themselves).
How many toys to take? Well that depends on how long you want to stay with them being quiet, but I figure one toy per 20 mins or so is about right. So if you’re wanting to stay for 2 hours, you’ll need about 6 things.
For our toddler we have a suitcase called a trunky that is both a good carry case and a ride on toy which is pretty well perfect for outings.
And I guess for anyone in their 30’s-40’s who is hosting this sort of event and would like to help thier guests with kids out, stockpiling a few books and toys would be most gratefully recieved.