family Archives - Mami To Five

Does your child know what a birthday is?

A birthday. The day we celebrate a person’s life and the fact they have reached another year older. It’s obvious that’s what it is. Isn’t it?

Today, I learnt that my fiveyear old had no idea what a birthday actually is! Just as a bit of a backstory, his birthday was last week and mine was 8 days before his, so birthdays have been high on the discussion list for a good while now. This is how that conversation went:

O: Mami, how do you remember when my birthday is?

Me: Because it’s your birthday, I’m a Mami it’s my job to remember.

O: But how did you know it was my birthday?

Me: Ermmm……Do you know what a birthday means?

O: It’s the day I get presents.

Me: Do you know why though?

O: No.

Me: Your very first birthday was the day you came out my tummy.

O: Whhhhaaaaaaaattttttt!?!? When I was borned?

Me: Yes!!! On July 9^th every year means you are exactly a WHOLE year older from when you were born. So it’s been 5 years since you were born. That’s why we celebrate birthdays, because you are bigger and we are happy.

O: Well wow! I did not know that! He said shaking his head

This conversation happened about 10 minutes into a 20 minute car journey with just me and him in the car. I spent the next 10 minutes tittering to myself as he occasionally muttered under his breath about how cool that was and how he did NOT know that before! It was like I had blown his little inquisitive mind!

It is funny the little things we just presume kids know, when actually they might have no idea at all! Do your kids know what a birthday really means?

You know, that elephant dinosaur!

The one thing that definitely can’t be said about my youngest is that he has a lack of imagination! When his older siblings talk about dreams they have had, he will join in with some wild and wonderful tales about his own dreams. He talks in his sleep so I am well aware of the fact that he does actually have some fantastic dreams, but I often wonder how much he makes up as he goes along.

Being a typical four year old little boy he’s never really been one to sit and read, write or colour. He’s far appier bouncing around being a Power Ranger Transformer, making ships out of pillows, or staring goggle eyed at a TV screen. So every time he shows any interest in sitting and actually drawing I try and take full advantage of it. One of the ways he’s always happy to draw pictures is when we get the chalks out and he goes to town on our living room floor. It’s painted concrete so ideal for using chalks on, and him drawing on it means I then have to actually clean the floor, which is a chore I tend to put off far longer than I should!

Dinosaurs have been a big thing with O this year and when he wanted to get the chalks out this week I wasn’t surprised that they played a big part in his drawings. His story to go around them made me giggle though so I thought I would share them with you!

I would like you all to meet O’s Elephant Dinosaur and before you ask no it isn’t a mammoth silly, can’t you see her spines on her back!?

O says that this Elephant Dinosaur is called “Inmhinw” and she doesn’t live in our world. She lives in a world with lots of other dinosaurs like spinosauruses and T-Rex’s. But she doesn’t fight with them. She has a baby inside her belly (She has quite a few legs herself but her baby seems to be a mutant jellyfish baby dinosaur because it has LOADS of legs!) But the baby has now come out of the Elephant Dinosaur’s Fairy (yes that’s what our family calls it, don’t judge!) and is going away to live on it’s own because baby Elephant Dinosaurs don’t need their Mamis. I made the mistake of saying that there were TWO baby Elephant Dinosaurs, the one inside the tummy and the one on the right hand side, it seems I was very much mistaken and this is a picture that takes us through time all in one image!

I thought that would be all from this little world of his, he disappeared for a bit, but then came back announcing that he’d forgotten someone!

This is ‘human with a snake’ seriously, this kid couldn’t even say Mami until he was two and a half and now he’s calling us Humans!

The snake, which I first mistook for a balloon, is going to be turned into a spoon so Human can eat cereal. I didn’t dare ask what Human was going to put his cereal in. Maybe he was planning to eat it right out of the box?

Human and his spoon snake live in the same world as the elephant dinosaur but they don’t hurt each other. Human can control the elephant dinosaur with the two buttons on his spines. The one makes him go fast and run around, the other does something else.

At this point he got bored and left. I have no idea whether Human managed to turn his snake into a spoon, what that second button does, or what happened to the baby elephant dinosaur. Will it go and find it’s own human? Talk about being left on a cliffhanger!!!

I love listening to the stories he makes up, even ones without pictures to back them up. It makes me wonder if I have a future writer (and illustrator) in the house!

Do your kids have wild imaginations too?

Migraine or meningitis. Would you always know the difference?

Did you know that migraines and viral meningitis share a lot of the same symptoms? Until last week, neither did I!

We had a bit of a scare last week, which I will tell you about below, and I thought it only right to share the information I learnt with you all. Just in case the same thing happened to someone else.

As you can see from this infographic that I threw together the symptoms of both migraine and meningitis, although there are differences, are actually very similar. If they are happening to you, and you are a migraine sufferer, then you are highly likely to pass them off as just another migraine.

Please, if you have a temperature, stiff neck, rash or just that your head hurts more than it ever has before, GO TO THE DOCTOR, it is better to get it checked out and be nothing serious, than leaving it until it’s too late!

Here is our story.

On Monday morning LM was woken up, before the alarm, with an excruciating headache. It was so painful she was in tears. I gave her painkillers and packed her back off to bed. I did note that she felt a little warm, but she’d been bundled up under her blankets and was crying, so I didn’t think anything of it.

A few hours later her head was still agony and the light was hurting her eyes. My first thought was migraine. She’s never had migraines before but there is a strong family history on both mine and Lee’s sides of the family. I gave her migraleave and told her to go back to bed as sleep was about the only thing that would help her.

At 3.30 her headache was a lot worse. Again she felt a little warm but again I didn’t think too much of it. It wasn’t a raging temperatur. But being as neither the Ibuprofen or the migraleave touched the pain and she seemed to be getting worse I rang and spoke to the emergency doctor. We were asked to go down straight away and were seen within 10 minutes.

The doctor barely looked at her. She took her temp, asked of she had a cold, sore throat, bad ears etc and then turned to me. All the while LM was getting paler and paler.

‘You need to take her straight to hospital, I think she might have meningitis’

She then backtracked saying not to worry too much and that if it was it would more than likely be viral meningitis, which is quite common, and that she didn’t think it would be bacterial meningitis. I always knew there was a difference but in all honesty? Even after 16 years of being a parent I had never really thought about it. Just that meningitis was a bad thing. A REALLY bad thing!

We were only there because of a migraine!

We got half way back down the corridor to the waiting room when LM announced that she was going to be sick. I had visions of her vomiting everywhere but I managed to grab one of the receptionists and she put her hands straight on a cardboard sick bowl that just happened to be laying around. Once she was feeling a little better we went off armed with a stack of sick bowls to get us to the hospital.

They were fantastic in the Paediatric Assessment Unit. She was given a bed and the curtains were drawn to block the light a bit as soon as we walked through the door. She fell back asleep straight away.

Her temp was 38.4c so she was stripped down to her tshirt and given paracetamol in the hopes to get it down. Both the junior doctor and the consultant were hopeful that it was just a migraine but agreed Meningitis was a possibility and the consultant explained the similarities between the two.

She spent the next 6 hours either sleeping or crying when nurses taking her temperature would tut, take her blanket away and aimed the fan on her. Occasionally the doctors would come in turn the fan off and put the blanket back on because she was upset and said she was cold. Her temp still didn’t go down, she kept being sick and her head was still not getting any better. So finally she was given IV paracetamol, put on a drip and admitted to the ward.

Her infection markers were slightly elevated but, as with her temperature, not overly worrying for the doctors. We just had to wait and see how she went over night. She had a lot better nights sleep than I did. I woke every time she moved and every hour when the nurses did her obs.

By 5am her temperature finally dipped back into the 37s.

By 9am she had managed to stay awake for an hour, longer than any point in the previous 36 hours. Her head still hurt and she still looked unwell but she ate breakfast without being sick. Around 11am, when the doctor said she could go home, that heavy feeling of worry that had been weighing me down since we were sat in the doctors surgery the day before finally lifted.

It turns out LM had a virus AND a migraine. The temperature made her migraine worse and just confused matters for the doctors. But they all said she was definitely in the right place because she was so badly affected. At home she was still being sick, her temperature still fluctuated and her head still hurt but after a good couple of days she was mostly better. Just tired.

I am so grateful for the doctors and nurses, and the receptionist who can magic up sick bowls, for being there for us. We might complain about waiting lists (I know I do) and rubbish service, but when it really matters, in an emergency, we can definitely say the NHS step up to the mark!

Summer Days Linky ~ Finally, a Day Out!

Please sponsor our Alzheimer’s Memory Walk through JustGiving

Welcome back to the Summer Days Linky with myself and Karen from Stopping at Two. You can read more about it HERE. You can link your summery posts at the bottom of this post.

So here we are, the end of the last full week of the summer holidays! It has been a long six weeks, but in a way it has also flown by. I must admit that we are all ready to get back to our usual routine and with the awful weather we have had the kids getting a little cabin feverish now and are actually looking forward to going back to school!

This week Lee was off work and it was supposed to be our week of fun.

It hasn’t quite worked out that way.

To begin with LV has broken his heel bone and is on crutches. He doesn’t have a cast on, which he is extra gutted about, but he isn’t allowed to put any weight on it for at least another 4 weeks. This has obviously limited the activities we could do.

The second problem was two hospital appointments which took up Monday and Wednesday.

The third and most inconvenient issue was once again, you guessed it, the weather! It has been horrendous here most of the week meaning most of our possible days out had to be crossed off the list.

By Thursday we decided we needed to look for somewhere further afield and after a quick google of ‘where is sunny in the UK now’ we jumped in the car and made our way to Bristol Zoo. I will tell you more about it next week but here are some photos as a teaser.

Blue skies! Such a change from the downpour we had just left in Wales.

Even the lions were enjoying a doze in the sun!

I think I had the better end of the deal with the much needed piggybacks later on in the afternoon. Not only did I get the smallest boy but using my pod (a style of baby carrier) makes life so much easier!

So now on to the Summer Days linky, please feel free to link up any type of post. It could be a round up of your week, a picture you want to share, a yummy recipe, fun craft or an activity you’ve tried. Maybe you simply went out for a lovely walk in the sun or spent a bit of time in the garden. Anything you like that makes you think of summer including fashion, beauty, interiors and travel posts.

Of course there are a few simple rules:

Link up one of your summer related posts from this year.
Please comment on at least the two posts before yours ~ Remember these linkys only work if we all share the love, the more you give the more you get back!
You can use the hashtag #SummerDays when you comment to let people know where you came from.
Please add the badge to the bottom of your post to help spread the word of the linky.
Have fun! It is summer after all 😀

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Sponsor Our Memory Walk

Alzheimer’s is a terrible disease. To watch your loved one slowly fade away over the years is such a sad sight, one that too many families must endure.

In the later stages, every smile, every tear is precious as you wonder what has been understood, or remembered. The smiles and laughter for babies and small children is a wonderful thing to watch, especially when there has been no recognition or response all day.

On September the sixth, we will be taking part in the Alzheimer’s Society‘s Memory Walk in Swansea in memory of Lee’s father. David passed away last month due to this awful disease and although it was a very sad time, in a way it was also a relief as he was no longer suffering.

Now we want to help the Alzheimer’s Society to carry out their vital work ensuring that people living with dementia and their carers enjoy a better quality of life as well as fund ground-breaking research into the cause, cure, care and prevention of all types of dementia.

I would love it if you would visit my JustGiving page and donate to this fantastic charity that we, as a family, hold dear to our hearts.

The Summer Days Linky – Shakespeare and Sports Day

Welcome back to the Summer Days Linky with myself and Karen from Stopping at Two. You can read more about it HERE.

At the beginning of the week we had a beautiful couple of days. By Wednesday, while the rest of the country seemed to be enjoying a heatwave we had cool breezes, cloud cover and even a fair amount of rain! Luckily O and I had taken advantage of the sun in my parents garden while waiting for the nappies to finish rinsing in the machine (ours is still broken)

Summer Days Linky ~ Attack of the Knotweed

I know it doesn’t really feel like summer yet but with the kids being off school this week I thought it was the ideal week to revive the Summer Days Linky for this year as I’m sure you’ve been up to plenty of activities to keep the children occupied during the half term break. You can read more about the linky here. This year the fabulous Karen from Stopping at Two has stepped in to co-host alongside me so please stop on over and read about her week too!

But first onto our week.

Lee had the whole weekend off so I took advantage of the weather and him being here to watch the kids while I tried to attack the garden. With all the scratches on my arms it actually looks like the garden attacked me though! I mentioned this time last year about our garden being over run with Japanese knotweed. We couldn’t stretch to the builders doing anything in the end so it was still looking a ~~lot~~ little a jungle up there.

believe it or not there’s a garden up there somewhere and I’d already cleared some brambles away!

I’m sure I left my house around here somewhere!?

Oh there it is!

There’s still a long way to go but it’s certainly a start!

Today, we also took a lovely walk up the mountain opposite our house. There was me, three teens, 3 tweens, an eight year old, a preschooler a toddler and two dogs. It was definitely a gossip filled walk that’s for sure!

We even had a bit of impromptu babywearing from a couple of the teens on the way back down!

It’s been a bit hit and miss with the weather, but we certainly took advantage of the nicer days when we could! I hope you have been too!

So back to the linky, please feel free to link up any type of post. It could be a round up of your week, a picture you want to share, a yummy recipe, fun craft or an activity you’ve tried. Maybe you simply went out for a lovely walk in the sun or spent a bit of time in the garden like we did. Anything you like that makes you think of summer including fashion, beauty, interiors and travel posts.

Of course there are a few simple rules:

Link up one of your summer related posts from this year.
Please comment on at least the two posts before yours ~ Remember these linkys only work if we all share the love, the more you give the more you get back!
You can use the hashtag #SummerDays when you comment to let people know where you came from.
Please add the badge to the bottom of your post to help spread the word of the linky.
Have fun! It is summer after all 😀

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Our visit to Dan yr Ogof Caves

As I mentioned last week we recently spent the weekend in South West Wales. While there, one of the places we visited was The National Showcaves Centre for Wales, more commonly known as Dan yr Ogof. It is somewhere neither Lee nor I have ever visited, although a few of the kids have been on school trips a few years ago and were desperate to go back.

If you plan to visit with babies, I would seriously consider bringing a baby carrier as there are many parts that are completely unsuitable for prams with some really steep inclines and lots of steps (there are places to leave the prams at the entrance of the caves). This wasn’t an issue for us as I favour babywearing anyway.

The first of the three caves you can explore is called Dan yr Ogof. There is actually 16km of explored caves systems but the public only have access to a small section. Even so there are some wonderful rock formations to see. The kids were fascinated and the fact that you had the Morris brothers talking about all of the sights as you walked through was great because it meant I could answer some of the questions that were thrown at me, like which ones are stalactites and which ones are stalagmites? In case you didn’t know mites go up and tites go down (which is actually a saying I learnt years ago)!

The second cave is called the Cathedral Cave. It is absolutely beautiful and it has been lit perfectly to show off it’s features. People can actually get married here which I bet is so magical! When you first walk in there are some scenes set up to show how the caves would have been used thousands of years ago, then you walk down a huge passageway with thousands of tiny straw stalactites on the ceiling and water cascading down the walls and into pools.

When you reach the bottom, it opens up into a massive cavern, called The Dome of St Paul. The path you follow down takes you between two waterfalls that are 40ft high! This section is where people get married and truly is a sight you will never forget.

The third and final cave is called The Bone Cave, due to the fact that over 40 skeletons have been found here dating back to the bronze age. It is a very steep walk, up lots of steps to reach this cave, with the final part being a covered walkway where you have to wear hard hats! The kids thought this was great, O thoroughly enjoyed wearing his and even learnt to say hat, well he repeatedly said ‘ah’ after being reminded a hundred times not to take it off, but we all knew what he meant! Most of us were okay just short enough to walk up without having to duck too much, but poor Lee was just that little bit too tall, lucky he had a hard hat on!

In case you were wondering, Lee had donated his hat to a little kid who was going up hatless as we were on the way back down.

The cave itself is actually quite small, the entrance is only about 4 foot high, but it does open up inside, which is lucky as I’m not sure I could have crouched for long with a toddler on my back! Again they have created exhibits inside, this time of how the cave has been used over the years and the dangers the inhabitant faced.

Apart from the caves there is also an iron age village and over 200 life size dinosaurs to see. This had to be LV and O’s favourite part. O even learnt to say dinosaur, well, “dido” counts right? In the museum, the kids thoroughly enjoyed painting their own dinosaur, but not in the normal way!

Unfortunately the weather finally got the better of us so we were grateful for the undercover picnic area.

We also missed seeing the shire horses and the farm, but we did take a look at the burial chamber on our way back to the car. I love how the rain brought out the colour on the carvings.

So there you have it, our day out at Dan yr Ogof caves, a real must if you are ever in the area and you have a budding caver, or dinosaur fanatic in your family! It wasn’t cheap at just over £65 for 6 of us (O was free) but well worth it in our eyes and we will definitely be going back in the future, maybe at Christmas or Halloween when they have special events.

Have you been to Dan yr Ogof? My favourite part was the Cathedral Cave, what was yours?

Taking a holiday, the Snaptrip way

This past weekend we went away for our first holiday in 3 years! Okay, it was only for a few days and only just over an hour away from our own home, but it was so lovely to have a change of scenery and visit some lovely places.

I will tell you more of our adventures over the next week or so but today I want to tell you about the cottage we stayed in. Well, in actual fact it was an old farmhouse, whose walls were over 3 foot thick! As you can see from the following picture it was practically in the middle of nowhere and for us, that was just perfect!

You see, living in a small valley ourselves, we are not really used to town living or all the noise that comes along with it. But here, we had the peace and quiet of being deep in the countryside, with the luxury of being close to lots of the places we have wanted to visit for a while

The owners, Brenda and John, were very welcoming. They had even left a pint of milk in the fridge and the makings of a cuppa in the cupboard, which was a lovely gesture that I wasn’t expecting. There were towels in each bedrom and everything you need in the kitchen to be able to make a meal without panicking at the last minute about some missing utensil. I have to admit here, that I did take my 9 litre saucepan so I could cook enough pasta for us all in one go, plus I wished I had taken our big frying pan so I could fry more than 4 pieces of bacon at a time. But there are 7 of us so a ‘normal’ sized family would have got on perfectly with what was supplied!

Here are all the kids a little while after we’d unpacked the car enjoying cake and a cup of tea at the kitchen table. Obviously getting them all to look in the same direction at the same time is nigh on impossible, especially when there’s cake involved, here’s the best I could manage!

And here is the moment the kids found the wifi that seemed non existent until our first morning. From that moment on we regularly found at least one of them (or us) perched on a windowsill!

We booked this holiday through Snaptrip, who contacted me a few months ago asking me to review their website. I absolutely jumped at the chance of being able to take my family away for a while and immediately started searching for somewhere perfect.

Of course, when there are seven of you, finding somewhere reasonably priced that will fit you all in is often quite difficult. In the past I have searched cottage websites, think I have found THE perfect one, then find out it only sleeps 5, isn’t baby friendly, or has some other random issue.

What I loved about Snaptrip is that the options to refine your search are really clear. You can pick the options that are perfect to you, like amount of bedrooms (as well as how many it sleeps) plus things like wifi access etc. Most importantly, for me anyway, is that you can set a budget. So if you know you only have, say £300 to spend, you can set that as your maximum so you know you are not going to be swayed into falling in love with something more expensive and spending more than you should.

What I find amazing, is that you can literally search for a property to stay in for the weekend, on Friday morning, then be staying there by that evening, or even the afternoon! How many cottage websites offer you that option? Plus, because it is last minute, there are massive savings to be made. But even if you are booking for weeks, or months away there are still lots of discounts. I’ll definitely be booking through Snaptrip again!

Check back soon when I’ll tell you more of our South West Wales adventures including our visits to Carew Castle and Dan yr Ogof Caves.

***Disclaimer: I was given a discount off a cottage holiday with Snaptrip in return for this post, however all thoughts and opinions are honest and my own***

How young, is too young, to be left home alone?

While commenting on Sunday Stars last week I read a post by Lisa, who blogs over at Mumma Scribbles, about leaving children at home alone. Poor Lisa had an awful experience as a 12 year old and now as a mother to young children is questioning what age is considered appropriate, you should go and read her post here.

After reading the comments, where the perceived ‘appropriate’ age varied from six up to 15, I decided I needed to share my own opinions on this matter. But first I just want to go over the legalities with you.

Of course herein lies the problem.

There is NO legal minimum age for leaving children home alone. Here is the link to the government website. It simply contains a tiny bit of information released by the NSPCC which you can read in full here.

Basically it is the parents responsibility to decide if a child is capable enough to be left home alone and to ensure that they are leaving them in a safe environment with food and heat. Until they are 16 the parent is responsible if anything goes wrong and can be prosecuted for neglect if it does.

So what is my opinion? Do I believe there is a specific ‘ideal’ age to leave a child alone? Do I believe there should be a legally binding lower age limit?

Well, To begin with I believe it depends on each individual child and only the parent can make the final decision.

I currently have two almost 14 year olds, an 11 year old, an eight year old and a 20 month old. And yes, shock horror, I have left them all in the house to pop to the shop. I have left my oldest four while I visited somewhere in the valley. I have left my oldest three, while I have been out of the valley for a few hours.

Do I get concerned about them?

Of course I do! I am their mother after all.

BUT

My daughters can all cook a meal for the entire family, not just themselves, they can make hot drinks safely and use sharp knives responsibly. They can change nappies (although they object to stinky ones!), they can bathe a toddler and put him to bed (not that they do these things while I’m out,I’m just making a point). They would act responsibly in an emergency.

My eight year old son walks the 15 minutes to and from school every day, on the very rare occasion he has needed to let himself in, he just watches the TV till someone comes home, which is always within 15 minutes. He can make himself toast or a sandwich and a drink. He has a mobile with everyone’s numbers and knows what to do if there is an emergency.

O is a toddler, of course I wouldn’t leave him alone, I’m not an idiot!

I know I can trust MY children because I have taught them to be independent and are capable of taking care of themselves. I also trust my children not to do anything stupid whether it be purposefully, like sliding down the stairs on a baking tray. Or accidentally, like leaving food in the oven and going out. They are all pretty sensible kids. I have a mobile phone, as do they. We can be in contact instantly, we also have family and friends dotted all around the valley where they know they can go for any reason at all.

They are also completely happy and comfortable to be left.

At eight, or even 12, YOUR child may not be sensible enough to be left home alone. At 14, they still may not be comfortable being alone for hours at a time. There is nothing wrong with that, all children are different.

BUT

What you have to keep in mind is at 16 those children are no longer really children. They legally allowed to leave school and home, they can get a job, have sex, make their own decisions in life, they can enlist in the armed forces (albeit with parental consent) to learn to fight, and kill, for their country which they can then be doing as young as 18.

Yet at 15 some parents still don’t believe they are safe enough to be left in the comfort of their own home.

Seriously?

Surely as parents we are doing a complete disservice to our children if we haven’t prepared them to be self sufficient well before that? How can they be expected to survive in the adult world if they have never been given the opportunity to fend for themselves for even a few minutes?

Do I believe that the government should make a legal minimum age for leaving children alone?

Actually no I don’t.

Let’s say a law was made stating that infants are not allowed to be left home alone. Could parents then legally leave 3 year olds in bed while they went to the pub? So what if they created a law that under 12’s were not allowed to be left? What would happen to all the children of working parents, or parents who have kids in different schools, who are perfectly capable of walking to and from home and then wait for a parent to come home from work? How many families would suffer because one parent (or the only parent) would need to stop working, even though some of these children are in secondary school?

I believe that ultimately it’s up to each set of parents and the children themselves to decide when the right time is, no one else.

So what do you think? Do you believe there should be a legal minimum age? How young do you think is too young to be left home alone?