Look in my letterbox #2

Welcome to week two of nosying through the letterbox of the Monkey House. We're linking up with Alice Megan again for Look in My Letterbox.

It was a quiet mail week for me again this week. I started the week with a parcel of biscuit wrappers all the way from Dubai. It sounds a strange thing to receive I know but I save them to raise money for charity so I was really grateful for this donation.

I've had three penpal letters this week, all from UK pals. I really need to start working my way through my replies if I want to get any more.

Monkey had a bumper post day on Tuesday. Look at all this!

She had letters from three of her little penpals. One penpal had remembered how much we love giraffes and sent her this teddy. She also received this season's membership for the world's greatest football club - FC United of Manchester!

Have you had anything interesting in the post this week?

Keeping Monkey going

I always find breakfast difficult. I love my food but it's hard to be creative so early in a morning and I find I tend to eat the same kinds of thing each day. When you throw in allergies to dairy, soya, egg, wheat, apples and pears breakfast gets even more difficult. Poor Monkey has had the same breakfast every day since we started to wean her - Neocate spoon (prescription food to help with her weight), porridge fingers made with oat milk and if she's feeling really hungry (she usually is!) a banana.


So we were delighted to discover Keep Me Going, a brand new cereal which is free from all Monkey's allergens and also free from all the rubbish that is often found in kids cereals. We were even more delighted when they sent us a box to try!

Keep Me Going is the first in a new range of cereals developed by a dad who was worried about the salt and sugar content in many of the breakfast cereals available. It contains less sugar, less salt, is low in fat, high in fibre and has a low GI. All that and safe for Monkey to eat. The main ingredients are oats and barley with nothing nasty added.

I wasn't sure how Monkey would do with cereal. We did baby led weaning with her and she refuses to be spoon fed. Her own spoon control is still not great though so this had the potential to be a messy breakfast. I decided to serve it up with just a small amount of oat milk. She managed to eat the lot though with none going overboard. Surely an empty bowl from a happy smiley 13 month old says more about the product than I could ever do with my ramblings. She seemed to love it.

I don't usually eat cereal as I don't like milk. No allergies with me, just fussiness so the alternative milks are no good either. I've taken to grabbing a handful of this stuff and eating it dry as a snack though. It's really quite tasty!


Keep me Going is designed to appeal to all the family. It's not specifically marketed at kids so no cutesie characters on the box or anything like that. They have included three trading cards with each pack though. They're a Top Trumps style game based on countries of the world. You can print out a world mad for the trading cards at www.keepmegoing.net

At the moment Keep me going is only available from Ocado. It's £2.65 for a 375g box which I don't think is a bad price. It's certainly cheaper than most of the Free From ranges. Ocado isn't somewhere I usually shop but there are discounts available for your first order with them. The company are in talks with other supermarkets but they want to see how they perform at Ocado first. I'm really hoping they'll do well and I'll be able to buy it in Tesco for my Monkey very soon.

Look in my letterbox #1

We're a bit obsessed with post in the Monkey House.

As a kid I loved Postman Pat and one of my favourite toys was my post office. I used to play with it for hours and wanted to work in a real one when I grew up. I still do! The only problem is I want to run one of those little country post offices that they're shutting down everywhere.

By the age of seven I'd found the perfect hobby to go with my obsession - penpalling! And nearly 30 years later (how did that happen?) I still love it. I have loads of penpals from all over the world.

Monkey has started to share my hobby and has five penpals of her own. Some are the children of my penpals, others we know through my facebook baby group. Obviously at 13 months old Monkey isn't writing a letter but she draws pictures and loves it when I read her letters to her. I'm hoping it's something she'll carry on with as she gets older.

Towards the end of last week I discovered a wonderful linky called Look in my letterbox and I knew I had to join in. Typically that means that this week has been a slow post week but here's what arrived this week.

Monday and Friday were rubbish days with no post. They're very rare at the Monkey House.

On Tuesday two boxes of cereal arrived for Monkey.

This is a brand new cereal that is completely safe for Monkey to eat. We've been sent a few boxes to try and will be reviewing it here very soon.

I also received a letter from my penpal Elaine on this very cute Guess how much I love you paper.

Wednesday and Thursday was the battle if the loyalty cards as I got vouchers from Tesco clubcard and Sainsburys Nectar card. A letter from the Czech Republic also arrived on Thursday.

This morning I had letters from pals in Glasgow and Slovakia. I love seeing all the stamps from different countries. They're so much prettier than ours.

I wonder what the postman will bring next week.

A bad day

Monkey has allergies. Lots of allergies.

It can be scary at times, a pain at others but most of the time it's just how she is. We had the worry of the diagnosis but now we just avoid dairy, soya, egg, wheat, apples and pears and on the whole she's fine.

Every now and again though, I have a day where it really gets to me. Today is one of those days.

I've no idea why today is bothering me. She's not had a reaction and is her usual happy self. She's been weighed today and is gaining weight.

I know I should be looking at the positives and usually I do. But today it bothers me that my 13 month old us still only 16lb 11, it bothers me that she's so close to walking but nowhere near getting shoes that fit, it bothers me that they're talking about more tests and it bothers me that she's described as complex.

What bothers me the most is that there's nothing I can do to change it. Knowing it's 'just one of those things' doesn't help. Realistically I know it's nothing I did but I can't help wondering about all those cheese and onion pies I craved during pregnancy.

She's getting older now and notices if we're eating something different to her. She's still too young to understand though. I have no idea what I'm going to tell her. I don't want to scare her but I do need her to know it's important. It's another thing that bothers me when I'm having a bad day.

There's no real point to this post except to say that even when allergies are well managed, they're a constant worry. It's hard to be an allergy mum.

Anyway enough feeling sorry for myself. Here's Monkey looking gorgeous yesterday

Bear Hunting at Baby Book Club

Today was the second of the baby book club that we've formed with some friends. The pressure was on though as we'd managed to get a room at the local children's centre to hold it in. We're hoping to hold it there regularly and maybe open it up to more people. The staff there seem keen but they have all kinds of boxes they have to tick with their managers so we knew they would be coming to see what we got up to.

The book for this week was We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. It's been around for ages, first published in 1989, it's still really popular. The story is all about a family going off together on a bear hunt. Despite the many obstacles they face on the way, they're not scared and eventually find a bear. But what happens then?




We had 7 babies (and one older sister!) at book club today aged between 7 and 15 months. We started by reading the story sitting on cushions then moved on to our activities. The main activity for today was a sensory recreation of the bear hunt.

With being off work for the summer I've completely lost track of my days so book club had completely snuck up on me. Luckily Mummy Hercules had it all under control and our bear hunt was fab.

First we crawled through the long wavy grass. Swishy swashy over the mat of artificial grass.

Next came a deep cold river to splash splosh our way through. The babies loved the blue crinkly fabric and it provided great protection for the next part of our hunt.

MUD!!!

Thick oozy mud. They really did squelch and squerch as this seemed to be the favourite part of the hunt. The mud was chocolate custard made with oat milk. Another great thing about setting up our own group is that Monkey can join in with everything with no stress. Monkey and her friend Little Hercules both have allergies so we make sure everything is safe for them.

Other mums were cleverer than me here and stripped their babies down to their nappies. Monkey saw the food and was straight in there though! I did take her clothes off eventually but it was a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted. Messy play at it's best!

With a LOT of encouragement to leave the mud we entered the big dark forest - stumbling and tripping our way through a tunnel with leaves.

Paper snowflakes dangled in a tunnel made our swirling whirling snowstorm. We crawled through shouting hooo whooo...

...then tiptoed into a narrow gloomy cave.

And found.....A BEAR!!!

Bear hunting is very exciting but very tiring so after all that we needed a nice relaxing activity. We made bear faces on paper plates then played with some toys.

It was a great book club. The children's centre seem pleased and the manager is going to meet with us. I'm hoping we'll have a permanent room but either way we'll be meeting again in two weeks to read The Very Hungry Caterpillar [Board Book]. Come back and see what we got up to.

Food trials - Finding the courage

One of Monkey's best friends is Little Hercules. The other night Little Hercules had poached egg for his tea.

I get it, it doesn't sound like news. Why on earth am I blogging about it? While like Monkey, little Hercules has allergies and this was a sign that he was doing well on the egg ladder - a plan for gradual reintroduction of egg back into the diet.

I'm really pleased for Little Hercules as it will open up so many more food options for him. I'm also incredibly proud of Mummy Hercules for being brave enough to do the egg ladder with him.

As a parent of a child with food allergies, ladders and trials are a bit of a nightmare. Obviously I don't want to unnecessarily restrict Monkey's diet but now she's generally happy and healthy the thought of giving her something that could make her poorly again terrifies me.

At Monkey's dietitian appointment at the start of July we agreed not to reintroduce any of the major allergens until she was at least 18 months. We'd had a disasterous wheat trial and accidental exposure to milk and it was decided that her reactions were still too severe to try the ladders. We did say we'd try apples and pears though. These had made Monkey very sick when weaning but she didn't have any of her other reaction types. We thought maybe her problems with these were more reflux related rather than true allergies.

I've still not given Monkey an apple. Or a pear.

I've found every excuse possible - waiting for a wheeze to clear, waiting until I'm off work, until her eczema clears up, until she's had her injections, until she's not teething - the list goes on and on. I know that now is a good time to try though. I also know that apple especially will give us so many more options when it comes to feeding Monkey.

But I'm terrified.

I can't get the picture of Monkey in that hospital cot out of my mind. She was so poorly and it was such a horrible time. The thought of giving her something that could potentially send her back there makes me feel sick.

I had a chat with Mummy Hercules about how she'd found the courage. She said that she'd been quite confident about egg but was worried about the next step which for them is the bottom of the milk ladder. We're going to hold each others hand through it though and be brave for our babies.

So today Monkey is having stewed apple - wish us luck!

#allergyhour

Did you know that there's an allergy hour on twitter?

Neither did I! I was just scrolling through last night, not really doing anything just bored when a tweet caught my eye. I can't even remember who the tweet was from but it included the hashtag #allergyhour so I decided to click and see what it was all about.

And I'm so glad I did.

I found myself talking to other allergy mummies, bloggers, doctors, free from food suppliers and all kinds of other people with in interest in allergies. There was advice, there was support, there was ranting, there was guilt but most of all there were people that 'get it'

I try to be positive about Monkey's allergies. I know on the whole she's happy and healthy and there are people out there dealing with a lot worse. It is a constant worry though, I spend my life worrying that she's going to get hold of the wrong thing and trying new foods is always scary. It was great chatting to people who had these same feelings and being able to feel slightly less neurotic.

I really enjoyed allergy hour. Officially it takes place from 8.30-9.30pm on a Thursday but I was chatting to people long after that. I'll definitely be back next week!