Citi Mini vs. Phil n Teds Thingy

Twice now I’ve had people tell me that I’m stupid for buying the pram I have.  Ok so they didn’t exactly say stupid but they were extremely rude and professed that their beloved Phil and Ted’s doubledeckersqueezethebabyunderneath pram is far superior to mine for a toddler/baby combo.  Their argument is that you can’t go anywhere or do anything with a side by side pram like mine because it doesn’t fit through a door or ....well anywhere really.  Ummm....it is the width of a standard door (and a wheelchair!) and most shops in this day and age allow people into wheelchairs into their shops!

Best. Pram. Ever

Thingy.

My pram is super light, super sturdy and super easy to fold.  It is fantastic for twins or a baby/toddler combo.  It has heaps of storage and you can balance two of those little red shopping baskets on top.  You can fit 12L of milk in the storage underneath!  You can steer it one handed while holding a child on your hip with no problems (essential!!!).  Yes, it is wider than the Phil and Teds thingy.  The Citi Mini is 76cm wide and the Phil n Teds is 64cm wide. But, the Citi Mini is only 12.1kgs and the Phil and Teds is around 13.8.  The Citi Mini is much easier to fold (so I've read, I’ve never folded a Phil n Teds) and has two wheels at the front which makes it much sturdier.  I know neither of my children would’ve been happy to be one stuck in that space down the bottom of the Phil n Teds from ummm...probably 5 months old! Also – I would’ve further aggravated my already painful back injury trying to get them in and out.  

Here ends my completely biased comparison of the Citi Mini vs. Phil n Ted’s thingy.  Now, the Baby Jogger Citi Select and Bugaboo Donkey didn’t exist when I bought my pram so I would seriously look into that those ones if you are a mum looking for a double pram but....just by looking at them they don't seem to be as leightweight and easy to fold as my beloved pram :).  

I guess what really upset me was just how rude these mums with the Phil n Teds pram were....seriously people – get over yourselves – it’s just a pram!

Stubborn Self Feeders

I think there are two ways to present food to babies. 

1. Over protective mum approach.  You sit with them the entire meal and put tiny pieces of food in their mouth and freak out if they look like they are going to choke.
2. Lazy mum approach.  Load up the highchair with a bunch of different finger foods and walk away to do the washing up.

There are two ways babies like to be fed

1. Lazy but smart baby approach.  Baby absolutely refuses to pick up anything for himself.
2. Stubbornly independent baby approach.  Baby absolutely refuses to be fed.  Baby must feed themselves.

I started out as being the over protective mum trying to feed two stubbornly independent babies.  The closer I was to the highchair the less they ate.  I changed to being a lazy mum.  It was hard to convince other carers that the lazy approach really was the best way, especially considering the mess it created (and therefore, it really isn’t a lazy approach!).  I swear the more mess they had created, the more food they had eaten so mess was a good thing!  

My messy 13 month olds!

Baby Food

6 months
I started trying to feed the girls solids at 6 months.  The problem was that the girls weren't really ready for them until 7.5 months.  I feel a bit bad that I was essentially force feeding them rice cereal and purees for 6 weeks.  I would keep them happy with easy-to-clean plastic toys and poke in the spoon between toy chewing.  They were very, very keen to grab the spoon from the get go so it was a rather messy/chaotic activity and I don't think it really achieved much.

7.5 months
I would create all sorts of vege and fruit purees that the girls weren't that keen on (except apple and pear....they were always a winner!).  I would even try to get some mince or chicken in there (even less popular!).  Often the only way I could get them to eat these purees was to mix it in yoghurt. So we would start the meal time with the purees as I had made them and as the feeding session continued I would add more and more yoghurt.  I had also started finger food and often tried to sneak in the mushy stuff between bites of the finger food.

Finger food was waaaaaaaay more popular than the mushy stuff.  Their favourites were - watermelon, orange (no pith/skin), cream cheese cubes, avocado chunks, cooked pear chunks, cooked apple chunks, canned peaches, cooked zucchini slices, banana, kiwi fruit.  It probably took a couple of months for them to master eating all of this but we started presenting them at around 7.5 months.

8.5 months
This was the start of the "everything on toast" stage.  They LOVED toast so I would spread all sorts of things on toast like cooked pumpkin, homemade hummus, cream cheese, Vegemite, etc.  In between bites of toast I would try to feed them something like:
- tuna rice (cooked rice, tuna and sour cream mixed together)
- beef stew
- beef bolognese
- scrambled eggs (adding cream seemed to boost its popularity!)
- baked beans
They started to love itti bitti frozen veges around this time too (pea, corn and carrot mix is a goodie).  I also encouraged them to self feed yoghurt with a spoon at the end of the meal which they LOVED!  They always had a bath afterwards :).

9.5 months
I continued the 8.5 feeding strategy but added in untoasted bread, crackers and corn thins.  I also started to give them roast chicken, meatballs and pan fried fish.

10.5 months
Dinner ideas:
- toasted sandwich (ham, cheese, tomato)
- wholemeal pita bread toasted sandwich (frozen vege and cheese filling)
- omelette (frozen vege and cheese filling)
- pasta with basic cheese/cream sauce or passata
- mexican mince with tortilla
- udon noodles with veges
- fried rice
- satay chicken made with no sugar/no salt peanut butter

Vegemite on toast for brekkie. 12 months old.

11.5 months
Mine started to eat regular food like curries and stirfrys and LOVED all the intense flavour.  I am blessed to have pretty good eaters :).

Breaking the rules
As you can tell - I didn't follow the recommended ages for introducing eggs or peanuts.  There is no history of allergy in our families and we were careful to watch them after eating these foods.

Fast Food for Toddlers

P&S sharing an unpeeled apple at 13 months

I am lazy when it comes to feeding my children....and I have a budget.  I have come up with a list of foods that are healthy, cheap, and can go from your fridge/cupboard to the plate in under 10 seconds.  I ALWAYS have these items in my house.  Now that’s fast food!!

Carbohydrates

• Bread (multigrain is best)
• Cornthins/ rice cakes (mine LOVE these!!!)
• Fruit bread (try to get one where most of the sugar comes from the sultanas)
• Rice crackers (plain are best as they have less salt than others)
• Wheat crackers (try to get ones without tonnes of salt)
• Cereal (mine like Weet bix and museli)

Protein

• Milk (full cream, unflavoured)
• Shredded cheese (mine eat it straight from the freezer!)
• Yoghurt (full fat plain or greek)
• Cream cheese
• Canned chick peas (look for no added salt variety)
• Canned baked beans (look for no added salt variety)
• Canned Tuna (I buy the stuff in springwater and mine would eat it straight from the tin if I let them!)
• Cashews (some people say nuts are a choking hazard but mine have been eating them since 18 months with no troubles)
• Peanut butter (no salt, no sugar variety)

S eating a corn thin with cream cheese at 13 months.  That's a pea stuck to her face.

Fruit

• All fresh fruit can be served within 10 seconds...I don’t bother chopping things like apples, bananas or pears.
• Canned fruit (don’t buy the stuff in “syrup” but the stuff in fruit juice)
• Frozen berries (they will eat them frozen!) 
• Dried fruit (mine like sultanas and apricots)

Vegetables

• Vegemite (not really a vegetable but wasn’t sure where else to put it!)
• Carrot
• Cucumber
• Snow peas
• Cherry tomatoes
• Capsicum
• Mushroom
• Celery
• Canned corn

Losing the Baby Weight

My Baby Weight Story

Before I thought about having kids I was skinny.  Then when I started to think about getting pregnant I became average (why watch my weight when I’m going to be pregnant soon anyway??).  Then when I got pregnant I became overweight.  There are a few reasons why I put on 20kg while pregnant. 

• I had twins that weighed 4.3kg and a big placenta and all that amniotic fluid, etc.
• I had pregnancy hormones that told me I was STARVING all of the time
• I felt sick if I didn’t eat every hour
• I was sedentary due to pelvic pain
• I had steroid shots.  These made me retain even more water!

I have now lost all of the weight.  How did I do it?  S-l-o-w-l-y is my answer.  I didn’t rush out to join a gym when the girls were 2 weeks old or try 20 diets.  I took it very, very, slowly!

0-3 Months
At first I was still eating loads of food and not exercising.  I remember eating a lot of chocolate during those 2am, 4am, 6am feeds!!!  I would eat a HUGE fruit salad for afternoon tea to try to keep me satisfied but I would still need to eat a HUGE dinner and snack during the night.  Trying to cut back food when I was sleep deprived, stressed and lactating just was not an option.  The only exercise I did during those first three months was walk, bend down and practise getting up off the floor.  As I’ve mentioned previously, pregnancy was not kind to my body and getting up off the floor was impossible because I had lost a lot of muscle tone in my legs.  By the end of 3 months I could (just) get myself off the floor and bend down to pick something up off the floor and walk around the block.

3-7 Months

This is what I call the “walking to avoid crying” stage.  The girls were always very fussy in the afternoon after their second nap.  I quickly worked out that the best solution was to put them in the pram and just walk.  I didn’t want to walk (sooooo tired...zzzzzzzzzzzzz) but it was better to be pushing the pram at a snails pace than trying to jiggle them in my arms for hours.  So I would just walk and keep walking until both of them had had a third nap.  Sometimes it only took an hour, sometimes two.  At first I avoided hills but after a while I would deliberately go for the hills to challenge myself and get a bit of exercise.  I would always take the baby carrier and would often end up carrying one in the carrier and push the other.  I had stopped breast pumping by 3 months and felt that all my hormones had settled down.  I didn’t feel the need to eat in the middle of the night and I quit eating so much cheese and chocolate.

7-10 Months

mmm...I was slack.  No more walking the streets (too hot!) and a lot of walking the shopping centre with iced coffee in hand....mmmm indeed.

11-18 months

I joined a gym!!!!! Have you ever tried to have a shower with 10 month old twins in your care?  At 10 months they have 2 naps (usually not at the same time!), they move (and can open drawers, pull themselves up on things, etc.) and are not happy with any form of restraint (playpen, highchair, etc.).  This was my number one incentive to join a gym – the crèche!!!  And the baby free showers that come with having a crèche!  There were some days I would drive all the way to the gym, settle them in crèche and then have a really long....shower!  No workout required.  Most of the time I would actually do some exercise but I was really there for the shower for the first couple of months.  I would typically try to do about 20 minutes cardio (treadmill and elliptical) and 15 minutes of weights (5 different weights machines) three times a week.  Once I started working out I started to cut a little bit more of the unhealthy stuff out of my diet...bye bye juice, ice cream, greek yoghurt and nuts!

18-24 months

The weight loss really slowed down at 18 months.  It was time to join those crazy gym classes!  With some encouragement from some friends I did a Body Pump class.  The first time I used 0.5kg weights on each end and just focussed on the technique.  I was in AGONY!!!!  I thought I was going to die from all of those lunges and squats!  Death by lunge...mmmm not the way I wanted to go.  I persisted with the class and slowly added on the weight as I gained more muscle.  Now I can lift ten times the weight I started with!  I still haven’t got the hang of those hard core aerobics classes (e.g. Body Step) but there was this basic cardio class I could keep up with and didn’t require a lot of coordination.

24 months

So I’ve lost all the pregnancy weight and now I’ve moved on to trying to look more tone and fit.  I am really looking at what I’m eating and realising how addicted I am to chocolate and sugar.  One bite of chocolate cake and I’m hooked...mmmm cake!!!  So I’m working on my self control around sugar.  I also tend to eat the girls’ leftovers which adds in extra calories.  They eat healthy food but I’ll tend to eat their leftover dinner at 5.30pm then eat a full sized dinner at 7.30/8pm with hubby as well!  I'm certainly not skinny but I'm healthy and happy with my body.