Quinny Caster sketch

Our time as a Quinny Caster is over, our final task has been submitted. I was really enjoying my time as a Quinny Caster so am a little upset it is now over. 

As a little goodbye to the Quinny Casters I have decided to draw a sketch of Nathaniel in his Quinny. 

Bye Quinny Casters 2013.

If you like my sketch I have a blog for my artwork over at CareyArt

Car seats

Choosing Nathaniel's first car seat was easy. We chose the maxi cosi Pebble due to the ISO FIX base and the ability to buy adapters for our pram (we started with the bugaboo bee and then the donkey)

However, as time went on Nathaniel was outgrowing his car seat lengthwise but not weight wise. He stuck just under 9kgs for a long time, in fact at 24 months he is still 10kgs. What car seat do you go for? We decided to go for an ERF (extended rear facing) due to him being so slight and we saw the videos of children in forward facing car seats. We decided it'd be safer. Then came the hard choice of what car seat. In the end we were in between the Maxi Cosi Mobi, Britax Multi Tech II and the Britax Max Way. The only one of these car seats to pass the Swedish Plus Test, which isn't a complusory test for all car seats but is known as the Gold Standard, was the Max Way. 

Nathaniel sleeping in his Britax Max Way.

Fitting the car seat wasn't the easiest, if definitely wasn't as easy as the ISO FIX fit for the family fix base on the Maxi Cosi. It required lifting up of the seat fabric to pass the seat belt and attaching seat ties to the seat in front. It's a seat that I wouldn't choose to swap between cars unless very necessary. Although Nathaniel is a lot happier in the Car since being in his big car seat. He isn't worried about his feet touching the seat in front in fact as you can see in the picture he sits in a slightly bent legged position. 

Across town in the Moodd

This week we went slightly further than across town as we were going to meet a friend in London. We were heading to Herne Hill as there was a county show going on in Brockwell Park.

Here Mummy and Nathaniel are avoiding the cars and scaffolding on the high street. It's a bit of a tight squeeze as you can see.

First we had to head into London on the big train as we call it. Getting to the platform here is easy as they have a slope down to the platform.

Nathaniel had great fun on the big train as he is guaranteed a seat with the Moodd. Sometimes this train can be very busy but the Moodd is very easy to get on and off the train even with the big gap there sometimes is at Brighton.

Next we had to go on the tube.

To get to the tube we had to go down some stairs here we are at the bottom of the stairs

At the top of the stairs, with Nathaniel parent facing it's quite difficult to pick the Moodd up with one parent but as there were two of us it was a lot easier. 

We changed trains at St Pancras to get to Herne Hill to another big train

Nathaniel with his ticket for the journey. 

Once we got to Herne Hill the fun started, at Herne Hill station there was a lift down from the platform which made things easy, although getting out of the station there were two steps to negotiate which the Moodd wasn't quite long enough to get down in one go. Nathaniel loved seeing the animals and the Moodd just sailed across the grass, we didn't notice much of a difference between the pavement and the grass

The Moodd was the perfect place to put the Peppa Pig ballon we got at the fair.

Nathaniel thought the Moodd was the perfect place to go to sleep in with Mickey.

Travelling with the Moodd is always enjoyable as it does well on most terrains, the only time we have any issues is on cobblestones. The only problem we ever really have with the Moodd is the basket underneath which is a little too small to fit anything useful in, maybe with the slightly higher sides as we found even Nathaniels sippy cup falls out if we're not careful. 

Nathaniel had to have a little journey on this train but there wasn't enough space for the Moodd so Mummy held on tight to the Moodd until we came back from our journey.

Brands we love

For this weeks task we have been asked to blog about our favourite brands. These are brands we love as a family we have 4 brands that we use a lot. They are as follows:

SplashAbout

Nathaniel is 3 months old here

Nathaniel has been swimming since he was 9 weeks old so we have needed special swimming nappies and SplashAbout have been there along with a special UV suit when we went on holiday.

Nathaniel at 13 months in the same SplashAbout nappy.

Lush!

My wife has loved Lush since she first found it on Carnaby Street (that shop has been gone for sometime now) The staff are amazing and always get Nathaniel involved in choosing his bath products.

So much choice.

As you can see he loves being hands on and smelling all the lovely goodies in Lush, here he is choosing his birthday bath goody.

Jamie's Italian, we love going here the food is very nice and the waitresses are always willing to find out about the food, especially important with Nathaniel who has a dairy intolerance. 

The last is gNappies, we have been using these since Nathaniel was a few weeks old. They are called hybrid nappies as you can use them as reusable nappies or with a disposable insert. On holiday they were a perfect in-between from full reusables and disposables.

A more recent picture of Nathaniel in his gNappy.

Travelling with the Moodd

We spent the bank holiday weekend in Ireland with family, we all flew out together and hired two 7 seater cars. Space was a premium as they only have tiny boots and luggage for 14 people.

The Moodd came with us and there were a couple of issues with travelling with the Moodd. Only the chassis would fit in the boot with the wheels removed and the seat unit ended up on the adults laps. A couple of back packs were pushed down in the boot to surround the chassis. 

Getting on the plane was nice and easy, we set the Moodd up forward facing so it was an easy fold without having to remove the seat. When we got off the plane it was waiting for us still nicely folded. 

However, on the way back the footrest managed to get a bit damaged, just a bit of scratching but it was still slightly annoying. I think we may need to invest in a bag for any other holidays we go on. 

The small basket came in handy with the quick folds as it held the raincover in nicely once folded. 

Arriving back late at Stansted

Having the Moodd on holiday was great once we had arrived at the hotel as using the Moodd is a pleasure but getting there was difficult with a full car and tiny boot. 

Sleepy Time

This weeks challenge was to capture Nathaniel sleeping in his Moodd. I thought this might be hard as he isn't the best of sleepers and most of the other QuinnyCasters were also worrying on twitter about how best to approach this task. 

Within minutes of getting on the train and he decides he'd rather be asleep

Still sleeping...

So fast asleep, he even let daddy clip him in (light sleeper alert)

The transition from the big train to the underground didn't wake him.

Asleep while the commuters look on.

Changing tube trains

Nathaniel stayed sleeping until just before we got off the tube.

Today we are going out shopping so Nathaniel decided to take his nap now.

Nathaniel needed nudging back in his seat.

A lift up to the books for mummy

Sleeping in front of the comics, he doesn't know what he is missing

Coming up in the lift

Covent Garden street entertainers and Nathaniel is still sleeping, although he woke for the swimming over the other side.

Sunday's nap was taken just as we were walking towards the London Eye...

and just as it started to rain.

QuinnyCaster Hotspots

For this week our challenge was to find free Hotspots in our town, our hotspots included London and Brighton. 

 To get to London we went on the train. 

Once we were in London we had to get on the tube. 

 In London we visited Nathaniel's grandparents and while we were there we decided to visit a couple of museums. 

 Welcome to the Wellcome Collection. 

 There are a couple of tables in the exhibition, in these tables there are Postcards with words written on them. The idea is to draw one of the words. Obviously Nathaniel is a little young to do this but he really enjoys drawing while watching daddy draw. 

 Looking at the bugs. Eww!

 Here Nathaniel is looking at blocks that spell Dyslexia 

 There were lots of interesting things to look at that were at bit old for Nathaniel but he really enjoyed wandering around. There are a couple of video screens which kept him entertained along with an exhibit with an eye that opens and closes when it senses people are close. Nathaniel was scared of this but continually wanted to look at it. 

 For older children they have a free Young Explorer Pack. Inside the pack there is a booklet with different activities to carry out, stickers, a tie on moustache, a pencil, some string and Fimo. The stickers were a big hit with Nathaniel, he had great fun sticking on the heart, lungs and intestine in roughly the correct place

 After visiting the Wellcome Collection, we walked round to the British Museum. The exhibit we visited was the Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibit which was only free to us due to Nathaniels Mummy having a Membership card. However, Nathaniel enjoys looking at the horse statue in the main entrance. As you can see Nathaniel fell asleep on the way there so we walked around the exhibit and then left to get some lunch. 

 For the Bank Holiday Weekend we stayed in Brighton

 On Saturday it was Free Comic book day.

 We visited the comic shop to pickup my comics and for Nathaniel to collect the childrens free comics.

 After Collecting the comics we watched some of the Children's Parade and then it started to rain so we went for a walk and went into the craft fair at the Quaker House. 

 Sunday was a much nicer day so we decided to go for a picnic and walk in Lewes. 

 We arrived at our picnic spot and Nathaniel had decided to take a nap. 

 Nathaniel enjoyed our first picnic of the year

 After the picnic Nathaniel decided to go for a walk where he spotted a cat. 

 Nathaniel enjoys the slide in the park 

 We really enjoyed visiting free hot spots in and around Brighton and while visiting London. There were many more to visit as well.