Twinkle On The Blog

Just putting the finishing touches to this year’s display board.  I’ve decided that I spend too much time re-doing it, so this year I’ve laminated all the posters, and nappy pictures.  I’ve also made it more specific to each area, so, for example tomorrow and Tuesday we’re in Maidenhead and Windsor respectively, so I’ve included information provided by Windsor and Maidenhead Borough Council – it costs the council £118, 000 to dipsose of nappy waste each year.  All paid for by council taxes!

I’ve also added lots of nappy ranges at 20% discount – Tots Bots, Nature Babies, BumGenius, Fuzzi Bunz.  I think this is one of the best years for offers that we’ve done.

Later in the week I’ve some more sale stock to add – this is actually very time consuming, as most are single items, so take a while to photograph and describe, and they go up one day and have to come off the next as this section can be very fast moving.

I really like the Real Nappy Week Bargain button – on the right on the main page.  This was created by Chris at http://www.randomriver.net/ who re-designed our site to celebrate our 10th birthday last year.  We’re going to be updating the software in  a couple of months to speed up the checkout and a few other things, and I shall take advantage of Chris’s expertise to improve the site once again. 

We have a busy week this week with events every day.

Interesting article in this week’s Nursery Industry.

Baba Me, the European distributors for BumGenius have invested in a two-page spread in Bounty magazine, the free magazine and goodie bag scheme (previously a mecca for the disposable nappies), and are giving away 90,000 extra small BumGenius to new mums-to-be.

This is really good news for washable nappy uptake.  I find that if parents see modern cloth nappies ‘in the flesh’ before the baby is born, it does make a huge difference in the uptake after the birth, as many parents tend not to realise that cloth nappies have moved on considerably since the terry squares and pins they wore as a baby.

You can read the full article here.

Cute or what? Itti Bitti new photos for this year.

Recently launched in America, the new Pampers Dry Max is causing a few problems with nappy rash according to Reuters, a Facebook group and some on-line blogs such as this one: Dirty Diaper Laundry.

This actually reminded me of a time about 10 years ago when Pampers brought out a ‘New Improved’ Pampers.  Suddenly we had a lot of parents whose babies were inflicted with nappy rash which appered to be caused by the new nappies.  After many complaints, Pampers launched their ’sensitive’ range with less chemicals in. One of my converts to cloth at the time (due to the nappy rash her son was experiencing) was convinced the ‘Sensitive’ range were actually the old style Pampers re-packaged in ‘Senstitive’ outer wrappers and sold at 25% more, because they looked, felt, and smelt the same as her old Pampers.

At the time I was trying to establish exactly what was in disposable nappies, and had written to main manufacturers asking exactly what chemicals were present in the surface of the nappies.  Naturally this is a trade secret they will not divulge.  (I wonder why?).  I was sent information about the products of they type to entice me to buy, but not answering my questions.  I wrote again, and this time I had a phone response from one of the big two.  It was most interesting. I had my bank manger at the house at the time, so let the message run to the answer machine, he too was amazed at the message left, asking me to ring them back ’so we can let you know what we are able to tell you’    Which actually was nothing, it seems to be a trade secret, and no parent is allowed to know exactly what chemicals are present in a disposable next to their baby’s skin.  I am curious as to why there are no regulations about this, and how are they tested for safety?  All skin care, bath products and so on that are used on your baby have to, by law, list in full the ingredients present.  Why not in nappies, which surely are not dis-similar to a preparation placed on your baby’s skin as they’re on for usually a good 3-4 hour stretch or even overnight?

BumGenius have announced the bright colours – clementine, moonbeam, grasshopper, zinnia and moonbeam will be discontinued once stocks have run out.

Our house is directly under the flight path to Heathrow – planes turn at Woodley Beacon (half way between our house and the office) so it’s been strangely quiet overhead. We have noticed the bird song a lot more. Apparently the dawn chorus is created largely by the male birds who sing to tell the females they’re good at searching out food and have managed to find enough to tide them over the night and now they’re up and about singing, so they make a good mating prospect!
We have been hearing the cuckoos for a couple of weeks or so, and have a male pheasant in the area too.

We also spotted roe deer in the field this week. We’ve just harrowed, and the grass is beginning to grow back, and we should have a splendid display of bluebells. I created a page a few years ago here, which will give you an idea of the display we’ll have.

We’ve recently re-fenced one of our paddocks with stock proof fencing, and where we’ve disturbed the soil we’ve re-seeded with a 80% grass and 20% wild flower mix called ‘English Meadow’ from Bright Wildflowers . This will have lots of different species such as Cornflower, Corn Chamomile, Field Poppy, Oxeye Daisy, Birdsfoot Trefoil and more.  Obviously it will take a year or two to fully establish but I’m hoping we’ll have a nice display of flowers in the grass by the fence.  Rabbits  permitting that is!

We’ve now booked a series of events for Real Nappy Week , in conjunction with the local councils.  Press releases have gone out to the local press and we’re hoping for good attendance (and nice weather as some are outdoors!)Real Nappy week this year is from 26th March to 2nd February.

I’ve had a rather nice ‘Real Nappy Week Offers’ button created to replace the pink ’see our latest bargains’ button, so I’m currently plotting which special offers to add to the site alongside out traditional clear out and seconds – we accrued quite a bit of stock over the years and also from closing down nappy sellers about 4 years ago and to date it’s just lounged in a few boxes as it’s quite time consuming to add to the site. We’ve decided to clear as much as we can this year in order to free some space up.

So do keep an eye out for the button’s appearance, it has a Union Jack background, so to tie in with this our main Real Nappy Week offers will be from UK manufacturers such as Tots Bots, Nature Babies, and Nappies by Minki

I had a great day on Saturday at the Maternity Network Pregnancy Baby Fair in Maidenhead.  (For those that missed it, it’s hoped there will be another in September – see The Maternity Network).  I was next to an osteopath, Rosa Townsend, and as one does at these events one gets chatting in a quiet spell!  Now this was a lucky coincidence, as my daughter, Tamsin has been diagnosed with Osgood Schlatters Disease - basically pain in her knee caused by her growing quickly causing the muscles to tighten and not keep up.  I have to say she’s fast catching me up, being 5ft 2 and only 10 years old.  Consequently I booked an appointment,  and we went along today.

Tamsin has very strong leg muscles due to the amount of running, football and riding she does. She has tight muscles in one leg, caused by the fast growth which is slightly more in one leg than the other, hence the pain below the right knee where the tendon that attaches her thigh muscles is pulling on the bone.  Rosa has treated with some massage, and has equipped Tamsin with some stretching exercises to perform every day to help stretch these muscles and reduce the effect of the tendon pulling below the knee.   She’s also to cut down on running everywhere, no sports other than a bit of riding, so that the knee has a chance to recover.

Rosa’s website

Having been laid low with the lurgy for 2 weeks, I’ve finally got around to doing a bit more, have uploaded some Easter Special Offers here .

Today we’re off to the Lambourn Open Day - all the race yards open to visitors and there’s a programme of field events too. Should be fun, wet, windy & cold!