I must BLEND!

In my last blog entry I said I was going to go grab a blender from Asda if they had them in stock. They had their hand blender in stock for just £4.18!!!

It was getting a bit busy in the supermarket so I rushed to see what fruit and veg they had but most of what I was looking for were out of stock. I will be giving it a trial soon enough though! So many ideas in my head already for breakfast and tea time.

I'm becoming a bit of a bargain hunting fanatic. I get so excited when I go into a supermarket and see a product that is cheaper or is more expensive compared to another store. Weird, huh? I found Petit Filous 6 pack of 50g pots in Morrisons for just 75p, it's on this week's offer it would seem. However in Asda it's £1.50 for the same product. Our boy just loves the taste of these yogurts but I am considering giving home-made a try as sugar in these is fairly high. But I am most certainly getting overly hyper of finding great deals for the three of us when comes to food shopping.

I have also started to give our little lad some follow on milk. He is still on the hungrier milk at night time though as this change has just started and was a bit wary about changing his whole day and feeds too suddenly. Heck yesterday we changed his bedtime routine slightly by adding brushing of his teeth, but it went very well and he even held the brush and put it in his mouth. of course I had to do the brushing action as he thought it was a chew toy, but still it felt like he was taking part!

Budget food

We have always gone with the flow of things being told to use anything that says "baby" on it. Well having researched and read further into all this I'm throwing this out of the window! So goodbye baby cereals and baby juices!

On and off I have been giving my lad watered down juice. This started when he was having a poo problem and was only going once a week. The GP suggested getting prune juice and water it down and told me by how much. Working from this I've been able to just give him watered down juices instead of the overpriced baby juices that are basically the same thing. I do sometimes get baby juice if I know I may have a meal I do not have time to make a juice or boil a bottle of water and cool in time and also have it so I can just give it to his grandparents when they take care of him on Fridays.

Today we tried a Strawberry Petit Filous as he ate all of his lunch and was still hungry. He was interested by the taste at first so I just gave him small amounts and slowly, but this soon became bigger spoonfuls and faster as well. He was loving it and by the end he was no longer grumpy and finished it all off with a bit of juice. Next time I'm going to put a bit of this into his porridge to give it a bit of flavour. Fingers crossed!

This month has been a kick in the back-end for us. Our rent went up and our letting agency took a large sum of money from us which we weren't really expecting til we got the letter last month informing us that if we want to stay we need to pay some stupid amount. However I am hoping to go get a cheap blender so I can just blend him some food myself. I shall be going to Asda and checking what they have in stock here sometime soon. It'll be fun to make his food for him too.

I'll update on how things go and hopefully come up with some cheap recipes for people to try out.

Living in a Flat

Now I live in a flat that is nearby the town centre. This is fantastic for going to the shops to grab some more baby wipes or do our weekly food shopping within an hour and all of us get a nice walk. But there are many downsides and today we are suffering.

We live on the second floor in a block that only has stairs. We have a Travel System which is fairly heavy and any times when I am on my own I have hurt my back badly trying to get it up the stairs over a couple of days. At first I stated I would go out every day for a walk with my son to keep fit as well as give him a chance to have fresh air and nap. Trouble now is my back suffered badly from this so I only go out if I need to which tends to be 3 days in the week and on weekends I have my partner with me to help take it down and up the stairs.

Other issues are sound. We have another flat above us and since we moved here they have always been a bit loud. Not sure what they do all day but you can hear them sit down, run around and even hear their landline telephone ring. Tonight these people have decided to put their sound system on full blast and have a party. All I can hear is the bass booming and the ceiling creaking loudly as they dance and jump around. Alex has woken up twice already from this and it's now come to the point that whatever they are doing it actually sometimes shakes our walls and floor! Of course we don't know people here and having read the Facebook page made for these blocks of flats people aren't exactly friendly or polite. I'm not sure what to do without causing issues.

So do other parents have this problem living in a flat? Do you have any suggestions on this problem?