Winning the vegetable wars!

A few days ago for the first time, our 4 year old daughter asked for MORE BROCCOLI! This was a momentous and unprecedented occasion. (See previous post ..The vegetable wars)

I'm trying to appreciate victories when they present themselves. For years we have battled to get our daughter to eat even a mouthful of vegetables. It's encouraging to see that our hard work is gradually building a pattern of behaviour and it gives us motivation to keep trying.

Getting the children to eat healthily seems to be an endless task. Our 2 year old is currently ignoring all vegetables on his plate (he love veggie sausages more than anything else) but he will eat fruit at pre-school. Thankfully his pre-school is training him in the art of fruit before yoghurt and they have plenty of will power.

There are still many things I feel endlessly guilty about with my 4 year old: she eats '50/50' bread rather than proper wholemeal, she wont go near a carrot, courgette, pepper, onion, strawberry or any other kind of berry, I allow her quite a few sweet treats when we go out, she has apple juice in between meals (against the advice of the dentist). But, for just a few moments I'm going to savour the sweet taste of success in having raised a child who once asked for extra broccoli.

Money saving tips

Many of us struggle with finances when we have young children. The added cost they bring along with often losing one salary (or going down to part time work) can put a strain on the family budget. So here are a few ideas I've picked up along the way. Thanks to all of the friends who have suggested these tips over the years - I'm not trying to claim them as my own!

1) Can you change your supermarket shop? I thought that I was budget-aware with my weekly shop, but a friend recently recommended shopping at Aldi. I gave it a try and it definitely saved money, but it took a huge amount of time as I was previously getting Tesco to deliver. I tried going to Tesco and looking on the shelves for the budget (Tesco Value) alternatives and discovered I could save between £5 and £20 a week by changing items. So, I'm back to shopping online and having it delivered, but with a few more value brands.

2) Use cloth nappies. We invested around £180 in a full set of Wonderoos cloth nappies when our first child was born, and we are still using them with child number 3. With the 2 older children we switched to disposable nappies when they turned 2 years old as the cloth nappies just weren't absorbent enough, and we also use disposables overnight so that we don't need to change them. But, it has saved us a fortune in buying nappies every week, and is also great for the environment. Many county councils also offer incentive schemes such as money back if you buy cloth nappies.

3) Eat home cooked food. Ok it's an obvious one, but eating fresh food really does make sense. We're trying to get better at taking sandwiches with us on our many outings as the café trips are really adding up. The children and I eat vegetarian food which hopefully saves us a bit as well.

4) Set a realistic spending budget and stick to it. I now have a weekly figure that we can afford to spend, and I'll adjust it based on what's happening. So if a school holiday is coming up I know we'll need to put aside more. Using cash instead of your debit card also really helps to keep track of spending.

5) Look at your last 2-3 months bank statements and see what you are actually spending money on. This is a tough one to motivate yourself to do, but I was surprised at the results. It is easier to face up to your spending patterns if you have the facts in front of you. This definitely helped us create a realistic budget.

6) Shop around for a deal. I'm sure you do this already, but many quality items can be picked up via sites like eBay - new as well as second-hand. We do get our children's feet measured at Clarks and buy their shoes but for second and third pairs of shoes we then look online. Our last trip to Clarks cost £58 for sandals and we realised the shoes our children had been wearing were too small. I couldn't afford to buy them proper shoes as well as sandals so managed to get them second-hand Clarks shoes on eBay.

Having said all of this, we are ALWAYS broke! So, please let me know your money-saving tips!

3 forward facing car seats!

Just a quick photo update today... We got (baby) Harrison a new car seat this week which is forward facing.  He loves it, and is still comfy sleeping. When he is awake he grins happily out of the window. So, our 4 year old is in a booster sit in between her 2 brothers. We have to get her to let the baby sleep and keep the toddler awake!

Haircuts at Nippers in Exeter

I wrote before about the trauma of paying to have my children's hair cut (do you pay for your children's haircuts) and this week I took them to a new place: Nippers in Exeter. I haven't been able to find a functioning website for Nippers but you can easily find their contact details on google.

I knew before going that it was going to cost £9.95 per child, so I viewed it as a (possibly one off) afternoon's outing. The experience was great though, and I could see where the money is going. Nippers is a hairdressers which only serves children and so is set up to be a child-friendly environment. There is a waiting area with toys and all of the salon seats are wooden toys. My daughter sat on a horse and my son sat inside a car. There is a choice of kids DVDs to put on during the haircut to keep them still and happy, and they received a balloon and a few chocolate raisins at the end.

I don't begrudge them the money charged, but I'm not sure I can bring myself to part with that kind of cash on a regular basis. The haircuts were good though, and the children loved the experience.

Camping - what do I need to know?

Our family is facing the first year of school holidays now that our 2 eldest are in pre-school rather than nursery. We just about survived half term and the Easter break, but those 6 long weeks of family time are looming. We'll have to get our work done around the children, but are planning to have 2 (separate) weeks of holiday. Our budget will stretch to a camping holiday here in Devon and Cornwall. We're also planning to go away over the weekend for a one night tester trip to see whether we can survive a baby, a toddler and a pre-schooler under one canvas roof. So, what do I need to know?

Trying out the tent in our garden

We have a 4 man tent kindly donated a few years back by some dear friends, we've gotten a gas cylinder and some special saucepans from my parents, and we've bought a camping stove which has 2 hobs and a grill. We also have some grotty old sleeping bags.

The last time we went camping there was only me, Mark and Alabama who must have been under 2 years old. We had a great time, although we realised that once she was asleep we had to sit in near silence and near darkness for fear of waking her :-)

So... I'd love to hear your top tips and your campsite recommendations. This summer we'd like to visit Dartmouth and St Ives, and for the tester trip we saw a nice cheap campsite near to Kingsbridge which we may try.

Mealtimes - The Vegetable Wars

With our three little ones at the table mealtimes are rarely a civilised affair. Even keeping them at the table is a huge battle. I have great admiration and envy for friends whose children eat what they are given. In theory I always thought it seemed so simple: if the child doesn't eat the right food then they go hungry until they learn. The reality is quite different (at least in our household). The children gobble up certain meals and turn their noses up at other things. They also have amazing willpower and will battle out almost anything with you.

Our now 4 year old daughter sat for 45 minutes with a small piece of broccoli in her mouth, refusing to chew or swallow it. I nearly broke and gave up altogether, but after what seemed like being trapped in purgatory watching a sad child, she finally gave in and snaffled it down. The following day she was as good as gold and ate a piece of broccoli with no trouble. We still seem to have to repeat a lesser version of this every so often to remind her that vegetables need eating but it is finally a little easier.

Enjoying a picnic at Bicton Park

Out of the entire range of delicious fruit on offer, she will only countenance eating bananas (sometimes) and boiled slices of apple (and raisins - do they count?). But as she takes those willingly I am encouraging her to eat them. As vegetables go she will eat tiny quantities of broccoli, cauliflower and the occasional pea.

Most days by children are served healthy meals with a good helping of vegetables. Somehow I've satisfied myself with that and not watched too closely as to how much is being consumed. Although we have gotten somewhere with the eldest, our second child is the next one whose eating habits need to be tackled. He has just turned 2, and is only recently starting to speak at all. His lack of ability to have a conversation about eating has definitely made us feel less able to strike bargains, eg one spoonful of peas and then you can have a yoghurt. We've tried, but he just looks confused and sad and then sobs loudly. As his communication is now improving we are starting again and he seems to get the idea (although he refuses to eat any vegetables). He is a good eater generally and will happily eat potatoes, pasta, cheese and eggs.

Perhaps in many ways it is the parents who have to feel ready and able to do battle with fussy children. Summoning the energy to sit through another mealtime can take some effort. However, when all 5 of us sit down as a family at dinnertime it is a lovely chance to be together and share some time. We are still trying to enforce the rule of sitting at the table until everyone has finished, but at least sitting together and chatting about our day creates a bond of family unity.

It would be great to hear any mealtime victories that you have had...

How we sell on ebay and amazon

Many friends have asked us about where our products come from, and how we go about selling on ebay and Amazon. I'll share a few of our tips below.

1) It starts with an order. We've spent time researching suppliers from companies manufacturing special products, to wholesalers who supply excess stock at discounted prices, to factories that will manufacture for us. For most wholesalers you need to show that you are a trade customer. For us this just meant providing some basic info about our business, which we had built up from gradual ebay trading.

2) Listing the stock. We recently got in 3 different styles of maternity jeans which were overstocks from a high street fashion store. We calculate how much it costs us to buy each pair, plus the listing and selling fees for ebay and Amazon, the postage costs etc and then set a price which gives us a small profit. We invested in digital scales and made ourselves a postage rate table in order to sell cheaply overseas. A significant number of our customers live in countries outside of the UK. At the moment we sell a lot across Europe and in Australia.

Ebay and Amazon have simple templates to help you get started with selling, and then they can introduce you to business packages. For example we have a 'shop' on ebay which allows us to display all of our items together and also to benefit from cheaper listing fees. We rarely deal in auctions and sell everything as 'buy it now' just like a normal website. Therefore we tend to have a set price and stick to it.

3) Posting the items. Each morning we print off the sales orders from all of the sites and then go and pick the stock. We have a barn in our back garden which is the official stock room. We've gradually added more and more shelving to make it easier and faster to collect the stock. We have plastic mailing bags of various sizes, plus all the stationary we need, eg return flyers and address labels. The packing is done on the kitchen table, and any of our children who are around love to sit and make pictures with the remains of our packaging. We have a daily collection service from Royal Mail, so we sort the parcels into which region of the world they are going to and prepare them for posting. We can now print our own stamps and pay online. Our postie comes at 12.30pm so we have a mad rush to get everything sent off in the morning. After that we have more time for customer questions, returned stock and ordering new stuff in.

So that's it in a nutshell! We gained 'top rated seller' status on ebay by always dealing with problems head on and by communicating clearly with our customers. We try to go out of our way to resolve any problems, and we offer an honest service. As parents ourselves we source and sell things which we would want to use ourselves.

Thanks for reading. Any questions?