run out of womb

... learning how to be a mum from scratch

Thursday 6 December 2018

Christmas at the London Transport Museum with #LTMChristmas

Vehicle-loving tiny man means we already know (and love) the London Transport Museum. In fact, despite its entry fee, I think it's one of the best kids' museum in London. So much interactivity, space to run around, two soft play-style areas, great food and coffee, and lots to learn about the Tube, trams, buses and more of London town.

But I digress - because we're just back from a very different-to-usual trip. Why? Because the museum is all decked out for Christmas - and it's brilliant. Here's why now is an amazing time to visit, on top of all the usual exhibits: 

SHARE:

Sunday 2 December 2018

Family-friendly afternoon tea at London's Langham Hotel

Enter the Palm Court setting of the afternoon tea at The Langham Hotel, London and you hear the rippling notes of a pianist with dancing fingers; the tinkle of silver tea spoons stirring the best blends in the Capital, the whoosh as another laden tower of scones, the ooze of burrata in a savoury course, the crackle of chocolate patisserie as a fork slices through it. You don't expect to hear the gurgle of excited children in the mix.

But you do - and ours added to that hubbub because the Langham's new Children’s Afternoon Tea with Daunt Books (£29) both encourages kids' love of literature and gives them the chance to be chefs at their own table: a winning combination.
SHARE:

Monday 12 November 2018

Review: family-friendly stay at the Grecotel Corfu Imperial

We have One Year To Go until we're locked into a fourteen year cycle of school-holiday-only (aka extortionate and packed to the gills) breaks. And we're making the most of it. With tiny man at nursery and tiniest man being home-schooled (aka tagging along to Brent Cross and house-tidying and cuddles with mama), October was the perfect time to take a break in Corfu. It's still warm, it's not far (sub three-hour flight, we didn't even have to break out the expected Paw Patrol episodes) and you can scoop amazing deals at five-star hotels because it's the 'off season'. Here's our review - and top tips for booking  - at the super family-friendly Grecotel Corfu Imperial.

SHARE:

Tuesday 31 July 2018

A robot made our dinner at Yo!

Week two of the summer holidays, and if you're already struggling for things to do, check out this list of fun activities in North London

And one to add - we've just come back from an unexpectedly entertaining restaurant meal!

We eat out a lot - a combo of being a foodie family and the exciting opportunity of *not* having to sweep my kitchen floor 2.3 million times a day when one meal's mess is swept away by a restaurant's broom instead. 

And we've just had such a brilliant meal at YO! Sushi. It seems to have had a rebrand - and the menu was a lot more wide-ranging than the last time I visited too. I loved the bao.

But this trip wasn't about me. 

SHARE:

Wednesday 6 June 2018

Review: Baby Bjorn's new One Air carrier

You know how you have some friends who've seen you go through a lot of stuff? They've mopped vom out of your hair after a bit of a session when you were at uni together, or helped you get over awful guys including seeing you cry more than the audience of every screening of every Nicholas Sparks film, ever? Well, little compares to re-meeting up with the midwife who was there for you when you gave birth.. 

But my midwife with tiniest man, Cassie, was not only amazingly calm and brilliant at her job, but super nice too. We kept in touch with the occasional baby photo spam, and then I was so excited when she told me she was pregnant (and a bit terrified, obv: can you imagine giving birth after seeing hundreds of other women, er, not exactly beaming through it in the past?!). 


Anyway, to cut a long story short, as a new mum Cassie agreed to review Baby Bjorn's new version of its One carrier, and she came to my house to pick it up, and when I opened the door all I could think about birth and everything she'd seen and I'm pretty sure I turned tomato-red-faced.. 

SHARE:

Dairy-free weaning, breastfeeding and CMPA: a survival guide

When tiniest man was teeny, he got a bad tummy. Pooping as much as 15 times a day, occasional strands of blood in the nappy - it was enough to get this stresshead-mama-at-the-best-of-times frantic with worry. After it went on a few weeks, we went to see a paediatrician, who thought he might be allergic to cow's milk. It was the first time the word 'allergy' had entered my family at all. As a breastfeeder, I had to give up dairy. 

I wasn't used to a restrictive diet and, in truth, surviving on zero sleep with a bouncy baby, an energetic toddler and NO chunks of cheese on crackers / slabs of Dairy Milk etc didn't feel good. Especially since I can't stand coconut, and an expensive trip to Planet Organic armed with all the dairy-free chocolate/cheese/yogurt etc options resulted in the discovery that, er, basically everything tasted of coconut.

Then there were the other worries... how to get enough calcium into my diet? What to do about weaning, making sure dairy-free didn't mean tiniest man missing out on vital nutrients?



SHARE:

Wednesday 16 May 2018

How to Turn Your Toddler into Your Cleaner

OK, not quite. No tot is gonna be Cif-ing your loo or anywhere near any dangerous cleaning products, and frankly if I could get mine to put the Duplo BACK IN THE BOX once a month I'd be happy. ("Duplo Foot - Standing on a Killer Piece of Duplo in a Dark Bedroom at 2am: more painful than childbirth? Discuss...")

But cleaning powerhouse Zowie Ashton got in touch to tell me her tips can turn any pre-schooler into a tidy chore-doer. I was intrigued... So here's her advice on how to get a little assistance with the chores from your small uns... 

SHARE:

Sunday 13 May 2018

DIY toddler party at home

Hell is a sweaty London soft play on a Sunday afternoon. Especially with a toddler and a baby, the former wanting to sprint to every sticky corner, the latter really keen on playing with a stray abandoned dusty sock discovered in the ball pond. So when tiny man's birthday approached, I was really keen to avoid the de facto soft play / freaky entertainer chap and do a DIY party.

I know the kiddos really do love a soft play / freaky entertainer chap. But until we're at the age of having to invite all the school class and having 40,000 kids to entertain, I started googling some easy ways to entertain kids with a do-it-yourself party. 

SHARE:

Sunday 4 March 2018

Mothers' day gift edit

Mothers' Day Gift Guide
I've heard people (one of whom *may* be the other grown up living in my house) suggest mothers' day (and Valentine's day) are 'silly' because we should celebrate our mums / lovers every day of the year. And we should. But we don't. Because it's all too easy to forget how fab people are - whether it's that frantic phone call to your mum when you're worried about a kiddo's rash, or you're just plain knackered and they come round to give you a few hours off, or they support you from afar.

I also *definitely* didn't fully appreciate how much my parents did for me and how fab they are until I became a parent. So I think mothers' day is a fab opportunity to say: thank you, you're great... and here's a present to let you know I love you.


SHARE:

Sunday 11 February 2018

Children's room-decorating with Wallsauce

When it comes to kids' bedroom decor, I'm one mean mama. Thomas the Tank Engine walls or Princess duvet? No thanks. You can have the toys, sprogs, but I've always liked neutral walls and colours pops in our nurseries and children's bedrooms. Because a house is a house...  And because if you give in and go for a favourite character blanketing the walls, you can bet the £300 it cost you in wallpaper that they'll have moved on by the next week..

Wall stickers were a good compromise - you can stick em down, move them around, and they look good. But then I saw a friend's kid's room full of half-peeled off star wall stickers, because her toddler regarded their presence as an exciting real-life sticker book.. and tried to take them all off.


SHARE:

Wednesday 24 January 2018

The best non-chocolate advent calendar


This might seem a weird time to be writing about advent calendars... but I know I'll forget by December so just a quick one to rave about Mothercare's Happyland advent calendar. Because since opening three months ago, tiny man has played with its contents every day. 


Each day the window holds another character - a few people, angels, Father Christmas, etc or animal (polar bear, reindeer, dog etc) or accessory (table, cakes, chairs, Christmas tree). They're so useful for open-ended play - here he made a huge queue for some reason, and Father Christmas was playing a Duplo piano he'd constructed!

SHARE:

Tuesday 16 January 2018

Review: the Postal Museum, London for families


As London parents, it can be easy to get a bit blase about the culture oozing out of the Capital's paving stones - a free weekend means the option to visit more museums than there are Pampers stockpiled in my cupboard (A LOT). 

And it's also easy to get stuck in a rut. Lets go see the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum; lets pop to the London Transport Museum - the bus soft play is great and it's free on our annual ticket; lets go to Greenwich because all the museums there are epic and there's that fab park to run around in too... 

But when a new museum opens, and it's fantastically kid-friendly AND we parents can learn something new AND there's a train ride that all the family will really, really enjoy (unless you're 8 foot tall or claustrophobic, in which case, watch out..) AND there's great coffee - you really need to go.
Step forward, the Postal Museum in Clerkenwell. It's only been fully open for a handful of months, and is the perfect mix of fun for the kids (there's a whole Kidzania-style soft play, where kids can pick up post, weigh it, sort it, send it on a conveyor belt, pull posties' wagons and drive their vans..), interest for parents (I had no idea the world's first driverless rail ran under the City for more than 75 years until 2003, and loved travelling on its tracks) and interactive exhibits. Here's the lowdown:
SHARE:

Sunday 14 January 2018

Review: family-friendly Cyprus at the Almyra, Paphos

I’ve just come back from the closest experience to being a celebrity that I’ll probably ever have: a week in a Pathos, Cyprus hotel so fantastically baby-friendly that it could take me ten minutes to walk the 10 metres from breakfast table to buffet.

That long because the staff were so lovely with our two tinies that, if they weren't six months and two, I’d worry about them getting big headed.

It wasn’t just the staff who loved seeing our kids - the December clientele, mostly retired Brits spending a few weeks in the sun - made us feel like the Beckhams on holiday, stopping us to say hello, to offer help with the buggy (though there are sloping ramps all around the grounds and the glistening turquoise pools) or just to coo.

Travel in the "off season", November-February, and you can bag a five star hotel for less than half the summmer price.. and, unless you’re pretty unlucky, enjoy some lush sunshine time too. Here’s the lowdown on our baby-friendly week at the Almyra, Cyprus.


SHARE:
© run out of womb. All rights reserved.
Blogger Designs by pipdig