Lincoln Loves Treasures (plus a Giveaway & Nursery photos!)

 ** This post is sponsored by Nuffnang and Treasures Nappies - All opinions belong to me, and all adorable chubby thighs belong to Lincoln**

A couple of weeks back I was asked if I would try Treasures Nappies, a thirty year old, leading New Zealand brand that has just hit the shelves here in Australia. Honestly, my first reaction was to say 'thanks, but no thanks'. I tried out a few brands of nappies when Max was little, found the ones I liked and have stuck with them ever since. I didn't even bother trying anything new when Link came along, I just stayed with what I knew. Then I got to thinking, soon I will have two babies in nappies... Which means double the cost (and double the poo...). I figured now was probably as good a time as any to give it a shot.

As I heard a little more about the nappies I actually started to get excited about giving them a try. My sister told me that she used (and loved them) when she was living back home in good old NZ and I found out they come in at a lower price point than my current brand. A recommendation and the chance to save money, win win!

So here's what happened when Link and I took them for a test run.

First Up - The Acid Test
The nappies arrived just before Link's naptime, so I figured that was as good a time as any to get started. I changed Link's cute little butt into one and put him down for his nap. Two hours later I heard him calling out 'Mum, Mum, Mum, Poo Poo, Poo Poo (as he does!). By the way it kills me that he's dropped the 'Mumma' and switched to 'Mum' so young. I'm sure Max was still calling me 'Mumma' when he was three! Anyway I went in to pick him up and was hit with a wave of poo so I knew it was going to be a bad one. And it was! It was one of those explosive poos that go all the way up the back, and the front of the nappy. Not great, but a perfect chance to see what Treasures could handle. I was seriously surprised (and impressed) when there was no leakage at all. Not one tiny bit. The entire mess was completely contained in the nappy. We were off to a very good start!

Round Two - The Overnighter
Feeling confident that the nappies could handle such a big poo, I decided to put them to the overnight test. Link still isn't a great sleeper and often wakes up in the night wanting a bottle. When he does I don't change him because it gets him too alert, I just feed him and get him back into bed as quickly as possible. Good for my sanity, but it does mean a really wet nappy in the morning. The two things I was hoping for would be that the nappy wouldn't leak (obviously), but also that there wouldn't be a really strong smell. Some of the other brands I tried with Max were terrible for that. When I went in and picked Link up in the morning the Treasures passed both with flying colours, they easily contained everything and there was no nasty all night wee smell. I've used them every night since and am loving them!

Last Up - The Pants Test (aka my baby has a big butt)
Link is a little chunky, in the good way that some babies are. He has deliciously chubby thighs and a big butt to match. Once you add in a bulky nappy some pants can be a bit of a tight squeeze, especially since a lot of his clothes are hand-me-downs and Max always looked best in slim fit clothes. As soon as I put the first Treasures on him I knew they were going to be a perfect fit. I actually found them to be a lot less bulky than our usual ones and I had no problems getting his pants on to his squishy little behind. Three out of three!

So even though I started out quite skeptical and very loyal to another brand I have definitely been won over. Their quality is on-par with the more expensive brands, they're cheaper and I actually like the look and feel of them more than our previous ones. Totally convinced! Plus they're stocked at IGA stores, which is super convenient for me as we have one just down the road from us.

Click the photo to visit the Treasures Page and find out more

Now here's the extra exciting part! I have a Treasures Nappies prize pack to give away valued at over $75. All you have to do is leave a comment (and your email address) sharing a personal tip on how to keep children sleeping through the night with the hashtag #sleepingtreasures. The winner will be drawn after 5pm AEST on 9 April 2014, announced on this post and contacted by email. Don't forget to share your experience with Treasures on facebook, twitter, instagram etc using #sleepingtreasures. Let's get the word out about these great little nappies!

{Click here for the full terms and conditions of the competition.}

Baking with Grandma

This weekend just gone my Mum came up to visit. We had such a great weekend, shopping, cooking, eating and celebrating a late Mother's Day as well as both her and my birthday. The absolute highlight of the weekend was Max and his cousin Emmy helping mum make a cake. It was beyond adorable watching the three of them working together, cracking eggs, blending up the limes, mixing it all together. Emmy and Max both took their jobs very seriously and mum managed the whole process with the patience of a saint!

Mum is an amazing baker and the cake was delicious. Perfect parts tangy and sweet. I will definitely be making this one again.

Here's what you need if you want to make it yourself.

375g of Limes (13 ounces)
6 Large Eggs
225g of White Sugar (8 ounces)
250g of Almond Meal (9 ounces)
1 teaspoon gf baking powder

1. Grease and line a 20cm (8inch) spring form tin. Preheat the oven to 190c (375f).

2. Place the limes in a pot of water and boil for 2 hours. Drain, and when cool cut in half and remove the seeds. Blend up the limes, skin and all, in a food processor.

3. In a separate bowl beat the eggs and then add the sugar, almond meal and baking powder, mixing well. Add in the blended limes and mix again.

4. Pour mix into your tin and bake for one hour (you may need to cover with foil after 40 minutes to stop the top from burning).

5. Allow to cool slightly before removing from the tin, then serve warm with fresh cream.

(Adapted from this Nigella recipe)

 

Nigella says that the cake tastes even better the next day, but ours didn't last that long so I have no idea if it's true or not!!

xx Tamsyn

PS My mum is just about to start her own blog!! I'll let you know when she starts writing posts :)

Max and Emmy Being way too Adorable

Last week I mentioned that I spent the weekend on the Gold Coast for my Dad's wedding, and showed a couple of photos of Max and Emmy being adorable. And now I'm excited to say that I have something ever cuter to share... a video of them walking down the aisle holding hands :)

Probably completely boring if you're not family and I thought about not sharing it, but it really is so gorgeous!!

Feel free to skip to 2minutes 15seconds to see the real stars of the show (sorry Dad and Cathy!).




I'm so excited to see the professional photos and video now :)


xx Tamsyn 

ps the baby screaming in the background is Lincoln, he must have been feeling left out

pps I've gone from having one gorgeous and thin sister to having three of them, too bad they're all too nice to hate ;)

Happy Birthday Sonic

This morning Max came running up to me and said 'mumma we forgot, we forgot that today is my birthday'. I told Max that it wasn't his birthday and he went on to say 'I'm not Max, I'm Sonic and today is my birthday'. How can you argue with that!? So I threw him a little impromptu party :)

 
Toddlers really are the cutest!

A Tale of Two Thefts

Seems I've been a little absent-minded of late...

The other night as I started to cook dinner I couldn't find the bacon. As I was checking the fridge I realised that I didn't remember unpacking it, so I checked the receipt and sure enough it wasn't on there. I figured it must have fallen out of my trolley and made dinner without it.

Late the next day when I picked up my bag to go to the grocery store again (because I'm ridiculously disorganised and tend to shop for dinner one day at a time...) it felt kind of heavy. I fished around in there to see what was weighing it down and I found one kilo of bacon. Whoops! I must have put it straight into my handbag when the lady at the deli handed it to me. I felt even worse when I realised that after almost 24 hours in my handbag it would have to go in the bin.

I went grocery shopping again today (seriously I go every day, I need to do something about that), as I wheeled the pram back to the car I noticed two things. One, Max had fallen asleep in the pram and two, he still had a kinder egg in his hot little hand.

I'd given it to him as we started shopping and said he could hold onto it until we got to the check-out. I was even high fiving myself for coming up with a plan that kept him from asking for every second thing he saw. Turns out he may have been so quiet because he was asleep...

Anyway in that moment I knew what I had to do, I turned the pram around, went back into the shop and paid for the $2 egg. Once is an honest mistake, but two times would have practically made me a career criminal!

Tell me, have you (or your kids) ever inadvertantly stolen something? Did you fess up?

Make Your Own Fishing Game

For Max's birthday party back in December I put together a little fishing game for the kids to play. It was a big hit and they all absolutely loved it. It was so much fun watching the concentration on all of their cute little toddler faces as they tried to 'catch' the fish!

After the party I decided to make Max a more permanent version of the game using felt fish rather than paper ones. I orginally planned on including it in his Christmas stocking, but I didn't quite get there... Last week I finally got my butt into gear and made it for him. I would sit on the couch making it as Max watched ABC for Kids and he kept asking me 'those fishys for me?' and 'can I play with my fishys yet Mumma?'. When I did finish and let him have a go he was beyond excited!!

It was so easy to make that I can't believe I procrastinated for so long!

I started out by drawing a basic fish shape and then cutting it out to use as a template. Then I traced it onto my pieces of felt and cut out my little fishys.

I chose a fun bright orange embroidery thread to stitch them up with. I guess I was still stuck on the colours from Max's party :).

I hand stitched around each fish until I got to the pointy bit (I want to say it's nose, but I don't think fish have noses.... or maybe they do, I'll stick with 'the pointy bit'). Once I got there I added in a little metal hoop so that the magnet would have something to stick to.

I kept sewing around the fish until I only had a little gap left, then I stuffed the fish with hobbyfill and finished sewing them up.

I used the same fishing rods that I made for the party. They were super simple to make too. I wound some jute around the top of the balsa wood dowel and secured it with hot glue, hot glued a magnet to the end of the rope and added some washi tape to the base for decoration.

Max really loves playing with it! I'm always so thrilled when he loves handmade toys!! It's a great game for hand-eye co-ordination and takes a bit of concentration on his part :)

Tell me... Do you like making or buying handmade toys for your kids to play with?


{Come and join me on Facebook or Pinterest - you'll often find me pinning at 2am as I feed my hungry baby!}

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Max - My happy little man, one of the last photos of him before he had all of his hair cut off.

Lincoln - 8 weeks old and looking a lot less like a newborn every single day.



Linking up with Che & Fidel for 52 - a portrait a week.

Toddler Tuesday - Playing Matchy Match

Back before Christmas I made Max a matching pairs game for my project in the handmade gift round-up (you can see the tutorial here).

I was actually really nervous for him to open it on Christmas day, I thought he might just brush it aside in favour of the things he asked Santa for (Angry birds, chuggington, trucks, fire engines etc).

So when he opened it and actually loved it I was equal parts happy and surprised. When we were playing with it on Christmas Day he asked me 'why you make this for me Mumma?' and I told him 'because I love you'. He gave me the cutest smile and said 'I love this thing you made for me Mumma'. Toddlers are seriously the sweetest thing on the planet!!

We've played it several times in the last week and I can't believe how good Max is at it. He definitely has a better memory than me!!

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When Max was a baby I took hundreds and hundreds of photos of him. Not on the iPhone, but with my big old clunky 500D. I always had the camera with me and I love looking back at all of those photos.

I haven't been so great with the camera this time round, I tend to rely on my iphone and the ease of uploading photos to instagram.

But last week I remembered to get my camera out and take some 'proper photos' of my gorgeous boys. So when I heard (through Julia) about Che and Fidel's 52 week project I knew I needed to join in.

2 boys. 1 photo of each per week. 52 weeks.

Lincoln. 7 weeks. Smiling more. Crying less. 6.6 kilos and wearing size 00. Off the chart for height and weight. My beautiful big baby boy.

Max. 3 years. Happy. Fun. Independent. Funny face extraordinaire. Loving brother. My beautiful big boy.

What would you do?

Christmas. It started out being the best day ever with, Max was sooooo excited that Santa had visited. But it ended in the most bizare circumstances, resulting in us driving three and a half hours back to Brisbane in the late evening (we got home at midnight).

Late in the afternoon (after we'd all had Christmas lunch), Max was in the pool with his Nona & Pop along with Sean's Aunt and Uncle. I was up in the house reading a magazine and the rest of the extended family were all taking a nap.

I could hear Max being silly in the pool and everyone laughing along with whatever he was doing. Then he started bawling his eyes out. Not that unusual, he was tired and full of sugar and he normally cries when he hurts himself (like most three year olds). I saw Aggie (Sean's Mum) bring him up the steps so I went out to give him a hug and find out what happened.

Between Max and Aggie I found out that Max had thrown a hard plastic toy and hit Sean's Aunt in the head (she was sitting right next to him). Her reaction was to lash out and hit him back. Hard, and in the throat. Max was completely inconsolable, Sean's Mum was so mad that she was shaking and I can't even begin to describe what I was feeling.

I woke Sean up and he was gobsmacked. Once he understood what had happened he was furious. Sean and I handle things very differently, I was crying and yelling and shaking and ready to fly off the handle, but Sean was quiet and still and the most angry I have ever seen him. We could not believe that his Aunt had hit Max. Not smacked (which would still make me angry anyway), but she had reacted in anger and hit him.

Aggie wanted me to go and speak to her straight away, but I knew if I did I would lose my temper and say something I would regret. So we handed Lincoln (who was sound asleep) to Aggie and took Max out for a drive to get some ice cream. Once Max was distracted Sean and I had a chat about what we were going to do. We decided that I would let Linda know that we were sorry Max hit her with the toy, but that her reaction was way out of line and that she was to never lay another hand on him. Then we were going to pack the car and head back to Brisbane (unless she decided to leave, then we would stay).

We went home and let Aggie know what we were going to do. She immediately started crying because she loves Sean and our kids more than anything else and didn't want us to leave.

I called Linda aside and started off by apologising for Max hitting her (to be fair he threw a toy that accidentally hit her, but I was trying to be nice seeing as I was about to give her a piece of my mind). She mustn't have been able to tell how furiously angry I was because she tried to hug me and say that she forgave him. I started to lose my temper at that point, but tried to hold it together. I stepped back and told her not to touch me and that I wasn't finished. I said that she had no right to hit my child and that there was absolutely no excuse for what she had done.

She exploded and started yelling at me that he had hit her first and that I was doing a really bad job of raising Max. I absolutely LOST MY SHIT. I screamed at her that she knew nothing about raising a child (she and her husband chose not to have children so that they could focus on being buddists*) and that hitting Max like that was unforgivable. She reacted by saying that she had trained kids at karate and knew more about children than I did.

I don't remember exactly how things went next, but she stormed out of the room yelling that everything was always about me, and I tried to follow her (whilst yelling at her), but Sean held me back so I couldn't. (I'd already asked Sean's brother to take Max outside to play so thankfully he didn't hear or see any of this).

I cried and vented to Sean for a few minutes and told Aggie that we would be leaving (she was crying even more by this point), she told us that she would ask Linda to leave instead. We took both kids this time and left the house for 45 minutes so that she could pack her stuff and go.

When we got back her car was still there so Sean went in to see what was happening. He came back out ten minutes later and said that she had decided that seeing as she'd done nothing wrong(!!) she wasn't leaving. Sean and I agreed that we would just pack up and go. That process took a good couple of hours because Max had a million Christmas presents spread around the house, Sean's Mum was crying and begging us to stay, Sean's grandparents were trying to smooth things over and convince Sean and I that we could all stay and forget anything had ever happened. At one point Sean's Mum asked her to leave again, but his Grandma told her to stay (I think).

Eventually we had everything packed up and we got in the car and left.

I still can't believe how it all happened. Nothing like this has ever happened in either of our families before. In our family no one is violent, no one has ever hit anyone, something like this is completely out of left field. Sean told me as we were driving home that his Aunt had said to him that she hadn't meant to hit Max as hard as she did. Sean said to her that she should've hit him at all and she again responded by saying 'he hit me first'. And Aggie told me that the Aunt thought she was justified in hitting Max because she felt that he threw the toy deliberately and with malice. She could not see that she had done the wrong thing... Unbelievable.

So we're back at home, Max is sad that Christmas is over, Sean's Mum is still devestated that we left and Sean and I are still reeling.

Most bizare Christmas ever...


(*I don't know much about buddists, but I don't think they're supposed to hit three year olds.)

Loops n Swoops + A Giveaway!

**This post is sponsored by Nuffnang - All opinions are mine (and Max's)**

There have been a lot of knocks on the door over the last couple of weeks from the postie and various couriers. Almost every single time it's been a little gift for Lincoln, which is amazing and sweet and kind and very much appreciated, but it was starting to rub a certain toddler up the wrong way!

The other day when a courier arrived with a huge package Max asked the usual question 'it's for me Mumma?'. You should have seen his reaction when I said yes, he couldn't contain his excitement, it was so adorable! There may have even been some box hugging involved :)

Once we opened the box and Max saw that it was the Fisher Price Little People Wheelie Loops ‘n’ Swoops Amusement Park he was even more excited. Now that he's three he is all of a sudden crazy about cars and trucks and ramps and all things like that.

We got started on putting it together and I have to say it was probably one of the easiest toys I've ever assembled. I'm talking '7 days post c-section and it only took me 15 minutes' easy. Got to love that!

Max couldn't help himself and started to play with it before I'd even finished setting it up!

At just over 2 feet tall it's the perfect height for Max, he lined up the little cars and trucks at the top before sending them all shooting down the two-sided ramp in quick succession. It came with two new amusement park themed wheelies (four wheelers, perfectly sized for little hands!), once he saw them Max realised straight away that were similar to the ones he already had and went and grabbed them all from his room :). The more the merrier I guess!

Once I showed Max how the cars would go down the (gravity defying, 360 degree!) loop he was all over that too. He even made up a little song that I had to sing every time before he would push the button to send the car down the loop. Seriously, there is nothing sweeter than a toddler's imagination! He worked out pretty quickly that you can lift the ramp at the end of the loop so that the cars do a jump at the end as well.

After we'd played with it for about 20 minutes, I suddenly remembered (baby brain ftw) that it took batteries (3 AAA) and popped those in. Max loved the 'muse-lic' and sound effects and lights that starting playing as the cars went down the ramp. It was like I took his favourite thing ever and then added chocolate to it, toddler heaven!!

Later on in the afternoon Max's cousins came over and started playing with it as well. I loved seeing how they all had different favourite things. Ava liked the bottom level where you can drive the cars up to the ticket booth, fun-house mirror, food stand and lift gate, Emmy loved taking the little colourful flags and moving them around to different parts of the amusement park and Max just kept on sending those cars down the ramps!

Days later Max is still loving it. We have it sitting in the lounge room and whenever I sit down to feed Lincoln Max will happily play on the floor. He's started building block towers at the end of the loop the loop for the sole purpose of watching the cars crash into them. Boys, huh!

Now for the best part, just in time for Christmas I have one Little People™ Wheelies™ Loops ‘n’ Swoops Amusement Park to giveaway! All you have to do is leave a comment telling me why your little one would love their very own one of these.

The giveaway is for all Australian Readers and is open until the 14th of December. Good luck!! (Full terms and conditions are here.)

{This giveaway has now closed. A big congratualtions to the winner - Rachel T. I hope you're little guy loves this as much as Max does!}