The 300k debt-free diary!!!

Seaxwyn

pandapaws wrote: »

The difficult bit is going to be finding a balance between saving money/reusing everything from DS1, and letting the poor kid feel individual rather than just a giant hand-me-down case!

Hi pandapaws

You can put this worry out of your head - the baby won't know or care whether he has new stuff or hand-me-downs. A 'hand-me-down case' is an adult concept, not a child's one!

All my kids have been hand-me-down cases. I really bought very little for any of them, and now the oldest ones are 13 and still fall on bags of hand-me-downs with glee.

Good luck with the ebay stuff. I'm dying to get listing but have no working camera at present - very frustrating.

pandapaws

Thanks both - very true! I'm not too worried at all about having a hand-me-down baby, after all, that's the reason I kept all the stuff. I was just hinking about birthdays, Christmases in the future - not quite the same if DS1 gets loads of shiny boxes to open, and DS2 gets an old banana box with half a broken train set in it!!! But I know it won't come to that, and I'll definitely save an absolute fortune in the first couple of years.

Seaxywyn - I got an email from Misco the other day advertising an HP 5Mp camera for £25. I'll have a look in my email and see if I've still got the link if it's still available and PM you with it if so.

My son has just discovered Playhouse Disney channel! Such a welcome change from Thomas/Pingu/Peppa Pig, and means that I'm allowed to sit here in peace for a bit rather than building train tracks, which I just don't have the energy to do today, so I'm going to let him sit there like a vegetable for as long as he wants to this morning. Bad mother!

chocaholic110

pandapaws wrote: »

Thanks both - very true! I'm not too worried at all about having a hand-me-down baby, after all, that's the reason I kept all the stuff. I was just hinking about birthdays, Christmases in the future - not quite the same if DS1 gets loads of shiny boxes to open, and DS2 gets an old banana box with half a broken train set in it!!! But I know it won't come to that, and I'll definitely save an absolute fortune in the first couple of years.

Lol, that image made me giggle ( well, actually i snort laughed but that's not such an attractive image!!)

Is Playhouse Disney the one where the presenters keep bursting into random tuneless singing?? I looked after a child when I was childminding who always wanted that on and it drove me mad!!! DD was always more of a CBeebies sort of girl and we didn't even have Sky when DS was little - he watched a LOT of Thomas the Tank videos and they drove me mad too but not as much as having to read the stories. I bet I still have the videos in the attic. Now do I keep them for DS number 2 or do I destroy them for my sanity's sake???

pandapaws

Don't know about Playhouse Disney - I've abandoned the poor kid in the lounge with the TV and hiding in the kitchen! My son is also Thomas obsessed, plays with the trains all the time, and has even been heard to say things in his sleep like 'No Henry, that's Gordon's trucks'!!! Not a word of a lie, I promise! I'm afraid that you probably should keep the Thomas videos, I doubt your new son would forgive you if he evr found out when he's older (although he probably won't know what a video is!).

Trying to pluck up the courage to try and dress DS and drag him to Asda. But as I'm super-lazy, both jobs might wait until DH comes home at 2!

chocaholic110

DS was so Thomas obsessed he used to tell random people in shops that his name was Thomas (It's not!!). It's also the way he learned all his numbers when he was two so I can't complain too much. He started saying "That's Henry's number, that's Thomas's number" and we would say "Yes, that's three, that's one" or whatever. It was just the perky songs that got on my nerves (and some sadist bought him a Thomas songs video) and the fact that Thomas seemed to crash in every episode!

Mind you, I think the baby is going to be called Thomas (well, Tom, but thomas for when he's being naughty!!) so maybe a Thomas obsession is unavoidable!

I would wait for DH to go to Asda - means you don't even have to think about it for a few more hours.

Seaxwyn

Thank you SO MUCH pandapaws for suggesting the Misco camera - I'm really chuffed.

I've been waiting for weeks for OH to buy one for me (he's the great camera expert round here) so it feels very liberating to have done it myself.

I'm chuckling at the Thomas chat. I've known many little boys like that, including my brother, who used to insist on having the same story read to him every night (this was in the days before videos) and I had to put my head under the pillow to avoid hearing it. I'm so glad my own DS seems immune to this particular obsession.

pandapaws

Glad that the camera link was useful!

My son is exactly the same with numbers - he's still lousy at counting but has recognised all the number characters for ages now. Only problem is that he's Gordon obsessed, and therefore wants everything to be '4' - so when you make him a sandwich, he wants 4 sandwiches, and when we tell him I'm having a baby, he's determined that I'm having 4 babies! He's the same with stories as well - I know 'Gordon takes a tumble' off by heart!

I think I might have to give in and go shopping. The Disney novelty has worn off and I'm being bugged now for things to do. Wouldn't mind if I didn't want to just curl up on the sofa and enjoy the luxury of doing nothing except feeling poorly!

pandapaws

Ok, opinions please, from anyone with any experience of prams...

Just found this:
http://www.pushchairs.co.uk/acatalog/handlebar.html
but it specifically says on the ad that it ONLY fits the company's own brand pushchairs.

It looks fairly simple to me - do you think that they only say that for health & safety a*se-covering reasons, or do you reckon that it would actually be impossible to try and fit it to a normal travel system because of some bizarre design?

We can buy the cheapest simple travel system for about £120 in Mothercare, but the handles are ridiculously low on them. To get one with extendable handles, we'd have to spend about £300 on one of those bizarre Quinny things!

Kaz2904

Don't you have one left from DS 1?
Not trying to make you in agony or anything but I know that as soon as mine were out of car seats we stuck them straight into a stroller for ease. We tend to use the car most of the time so managed with the lower pushchairs.

pandapaws

We've got a decent buggy/stroller which will be fine when baby is a little older, but I sold our Mamas & Papas travel system as soon as he'd grown out of the car seat. I think that's the only thing that I did sell!

We therefore need to get a new car seat, and I thought that as I'll have a toddler as well as a baby it might be easier to have a buggy that we can clip the car seat on to rather than messing around in car parks. There's a full travel system in Mothercare for £129 at the mo, including the car seat base (£40 worth), so it's actually very little more money than just buying the seat and base on their own, but it's just those bleeding low handles...!