Veg Watch

It is now 3 weeks since Lara sowed her Birdseye Grow Your Own seeds so I thought, given the spell of nice weather, I would update you on their progress.

Well, first up, we had a 100% success rate - every one of the seeds that we got from the Birdseye Grow Your Own Initiative has germinated - much better than any of our other seeds we have sown this year together.

On the day I checked out the seedlings, Lara was at nursery so Holly helped me in the garden. You are never too young to start learning to grow veg!

All of the sweetcorn germinated - in a week or so they will be ready to plant out into their final position (or so that 'Grow With Us' app on the Birdseye facebook page says).

The carrots are on their way although I suspect that Lara's generous sprinkling of seeds my be a bit too crowded for this pot and she will need to prick some out in a week or two.

By far the most impressive of the veg (not just the Birdseye veg but all the veg in our garden) are the peas. As you know, peas and sweetcorn are both firsts for me and Lara so it is great to see the peas looking so healthy and putting on good growth. We watched the growing guide below to find out more about what we should be doing to our pea plants right now to get the most out of them and it told us to add canes which is exactly what I did after taking this photo. I have a good feeling about these peas!

If you're wondering what the blue things are - they are slug pellets to ward off hungry bugs!

You too can join in with the gardening fun by claiming your free seeds and there is even an incentive (should you need an incentive more than the prospect of yummy home-grown veggies and great fun in the garden). Birds Eye are offering several prizes of £100 worth of birds eye vouchers to people who take part and upload photos of their peas, carrots or sweetcorn to the facebook app by the 15th of July - winners will be judged on their crop!

Little Athletes - Getting Into the British Summer Spirit

If you are looking for a cute way of getting your little ones into the Great British spirit for Jubilee weekend then have a look out for the limited edition Pampers Active Fit disposable nappies in Tesco and ASDA which are adorned with red, white and blue!

The limited edition team GB Active Fit nappies with the infamous Dry Max technology I learned about in 2010 are part of the Pampers Little Athletes Campaign in the run up to the olympics. Backed by Mum and Marathon runner, Paula Radcliffe, the campaign is designed to highlight how active a baby or toddler really can be along with offering tips and ideas for building the spirit of play in little ones.

Pampers Village Parenting Panel baby development expert, Dr Maggie Redshaw, has lots of tips to help you develop your baby's love of play from a very young age. Simple bouncing on your lap and the encouragement of rolling, kicking and grasping is about as active as my 4-week-old Holly is up to right now, but as she grows older this year and we approach the Olympics, I will take on some of Maggie's tips for encouraging activity:-

• Introduce a ride-on toy, which involves more balance and co-ordination skills using his whole body, hands and feet, as well as teaching him to pay attention to where he is going
• Use outdoor spaces, which provide different surfaces and areas that slope up and down helping your baby to learn different ways to move – he may go back to crawling, slow down or move backwards
• Create lower, softer surfaces for him to climb onto - like a big cushion or your lap
• For first ball games, start with rolling a small, soft ball backwards and forwards on the floor
• Walking babies love to run after balls. Try throwing or rolling a ball in a park or a long corridor to provide lots of fun and walking practice

To find out more about the Pampers Little Athlete campaign go to the Pampers UK & Ireland Facebook page.

Note: I received a pack of limited edition Pampers active fit for review.  We don't use a lot of disposable nappies in our house but Active Fit with Dry Max seemed to work well for us when out and about with Lara.

Bathtime Fun with BabyDan and Fisher Price

Both Lara and Holly have been having great fun in the bath recently, due to a number of new additions and special treats for the girl's bathroom.

Lara was sent this Dive & Swim Mermaid Dora as a special treat from Fisher Price to celebrate the arrival of her little sister. It worked a treat as a way of easing Lara into big sister-hood. Dora and the Mermaid Kingdom is one of Lara's favourite bedtime stories so Lara was over the moon when she met her new bath toy. Mermaid Dora has an ingenious switch which causes her to jump spectaularly into the water and then she starts swimming backstroke through the bath water. You wind Dora's arms up to help her swim and Lara loves it because she has just started learning backstroke herself at swimming lessons so she and Dora can practice in the bath together. Dive & Swim Mermaid Dora also comes with a hairbrush but Lara show as little interest in brushing Dora's tangled hair as she does in brushing her own!

Holly's new gadget is the Fisher Price Happy Bath Hippo Tub. This is an ideal product for myself and Mr. B (and Holly of course). One of my first ever blog posts detailed why I found traditional baby baths a total waste of time... we've tried several other styles and just kept going back to our own normal bath tub. For Holly, we never even bought a baby bath. The Happy Bath Hippo is a mesh sling which sits inside a sink or bath and allows you to place your baby on it for support, leaving your hands free to actually bath your baby, rather than you having to hold them delicately in the tub to keep their head above water. It is great for a newborn.

Holly absolutely loves her baths (Lara used to hate them) - she sits quite contentedly on her bath stand and seems really relaxed on it. I don't know whether this is to do with her being born in water, a natural love of bathtime or because I have more confidence when using the Happy Bath Hippo Tub and so no stress passes on to her. This Fisher Price bath stand costs £19.99 and I think it is much better value than a baby bath. One of the fab things for us is that we can fill the bath with a small amount of water for Holly and then when she is finished, just top up the water for Lara... this saves water and saves us money because we are on a meter.

Our final addition to the bathroom may appear to be the most mundane but actually it is a lifesaver and something I really should have got my hands on a long time ago.  We were sent the BabyDan Bath Storage Basket for review.

The BabyDan Bath Storage Basket is available from the online nursery shop Hello Baby. Hello Baby also sells a wide range of other baby and nursery stuff including Baby Toys, nursery furniture, baby travel and baby safety products.

The storage basket was easy to put together and makes it a lot easier to tidy up all the girl's toys after a bath. Since we got it, I've felt like I can reclaim the bath as my own because when I want a long relaxing soak, all I need to do is lift the BabyDan storage basket off the bath and I am no longer surrounded by toys!

Cooking With Children :: Fruity Meringue Nests Recipe

This is a dead simple recipe for cooking with children of all ages - it was inspired by the Dora Little Cooks Collection. Recently Dora has taught Lara how to make pizzas and cakes - and in the next issue we are looking forward to cooking our first tomato soup together.

In the past I HAVE made my own meringue nests but I think meringue is a bit of an art to get right so I might leave Lara's first attempt at them for another day. This time we used a packet of ready-made meringue nests. You can usually find these in the area of the supermarket where you would find ice cream cones and toppings as well as custards and pie toppings. In our local supermarket they are stored above the frozen desserts.

First, choose your fruits of choice. I quite fancied a tropical fruit medley but Lara tends to enjoy berries more. As I've mentioned before, Lara is unstoppable when it comes to soft fruit.. especially blueberries. We chose to add some strawberries too. I chopped them up (Lara was feeling a bit under the weather as she had chicken pox at the time) and then let Lara loose on them.

Lara arranged the fruit inside the meringue nests and was very restrained until the end... only one or two ended up inside her tummy. It's a dead easy recipe but with a very enjoyable result. Mummy and Daddy ate the nests with cream.