Bath time: Munchkin bath toys

Bath time in the Cawood house is all about fun (and of course getting clean!). We  were offered a range of toys from the Munckin range to try out, and the boys loved them!

 These Munchkin bath dunkers provided much fun and lots of laughter. Easily attached to tiles with suction cups you basically have bath basketball. The kids found this great fun and I was impressed with the ability to close the net afterwards via drawstring so that I could store the balls which come in the form of very cute coloured creatures.

Next up were these glowing Disco Lights Bath Tub Toys. These cute shapes that come in assorted designs literally light up and kept both boys occupied, searching under the bubbles for them. Again suction cups meant they could be attached to the side of the bath. I store ours in the bath dunker hoop.

The Munchkin Alphabet shapes were another big hit. The 17m old loved the colours, shapes and textures and spent ages handling them, and the eldest (5yr old), well as you can see, he thoroughly enjoyed sticking them to the tiles and spelling out words.

Last but not least we have the Munchkin Heat Sensing Bath Grippy Dots. The name says it all really, they change colour to alert the parent if the water is too hot and provide a valuable and attractive safety feature to reduce the risk of slipping in the bath.

In truth I hadn’t heard of the Munchkin range before it was sent out to me and further investigation on Kiddicare, one of my favourite sites for all things kid-related shows not just these items but a huge range of fun and useful products that can make family life easier.

Overall, the kids and the parents give this range a 9/10.

The Working Mum- My full proof plan for working during the holidays (or not)

We’ve just had two week off school for Easter.

Fortunately I had airtight plans in place that would enable me to continue to work and have both kids at home, and still do loads of exciting and education activities. We had plans for outdoor activities for exercise and fresh air and much more besides.

At the start of the holidays I was all very excited. I had reduced some of my work for the fortnight and set up an uber-organised plan for when I would be free and when it was kiddie time.

Seriously? How optimistic was that? In fairness I was asking for something to go a bit wrong. And it did.
First of all there was the weather. Wet, windy, dark, cold…. I had forgotten to factor in April showers.

Then there was illness. Kieran was ill for four days, Taylor spend a week cutting back teeth (in a very disturbingly clingy and tearful way – Kieran’s just popped through so worries, poor Taylor was past himself!) and then to add insult and injury Taylor got a rip-roaring ear infection. My poor children!

Lets just say that my uber-plan was recycled and used to make a paper airplane and everything ground to a halt. There was no way I could do any more than basic admin during the day so I ended up working stupidly long evenings and starting very early (i.e. before the cuckoo) to get everything done.
It may not have gone to plan exactly but all the work got done, the kids were well looked after and the house has even stay almost tidy. Not bad going really.

The beauty of being freelance for me is that I can pick up extra work when required, lower my workload if necessary and can work whatever hours I like so that I can be truly flexible to fit in with the needs of the family, the home, and my own schedule outside of work.

Airtight isn’t airtight when you have  kids and we may not have stuck to “The Plan” but we had fun and spent lots of quality time together. I think I’ll stop with the super organised plans for holiday times in the future and just go with the flow!

And when I really did need to do something... I could just pop the kids into storage 🙂