Jem's field notes

Non-parenting readers will have to bear with me while I complete my experiment ;) Yesterday Izz spent most of the day in cloth, with no leakages! My mum picked me up late morning and we went to Boots to get some terries/pins/waterproof pants (until I can afford some nice wraps) and she showed me various… read full entry »

A couple of weeks ago, I sat down and worked out how much we’ve spent on disposable nappies in 7 months. It turned out to be some ridiculously huge figure like £120. As Izz gets bigger and the size of the nappies get bigger, the price per pack gets more extortionate and you get less… read full entry »

I’m taking part in the Transworld Dan Brown Summer Reading Challenge! Between the Lines (Transworld Publishers) are having a summer reading challenge which should give me the opportunity to read and review some books for free! (My favourite price.) I’ve picked the following four (the first I’ve wanted to read for a while, the others… read full entry »

So, here it is, finally all coded up and polished and pretty. My shiny new layout, which is totally awesome and 99% down to Ms Bloody Awesome Lilian. Yes, I have given her new names. I say 99% because I tweaked the titles and made them not-italic because I have secret feelings of dread when… read full entry »

This is Kim Kardashian: She thinks breastfeeding in public is only OK if you use a cover1 2 Riiiiight. Let’s just say I won’t be taking tips on modesty from her.

There’s a thread on one of the forums I read, “Did you plan on being a natural parent?” Hahaha, I don’t think anything could be further from the truth. I had two plans: 1) that I’d breastfeed, and 2) that I’d try for a ‘natural’ birth to decrease the risks of buggering up plan 1…. read full entry »

OK, back to srs business posts now… One of my current top secret projects (it’s not that exciting, I’m just helping someone convert their site to WordPress) involves creating pages with a list of child pages on ’em. Back in ye olde days I’d have done this manually (which meant every time a child page… read full entry »

Towards the end of 2009 it seemed like I was seeing the same premade WordPress themes over and over and over again. Bloggers were too bored / busy to create something fresh and new? Who knows. It was pants, though (from a visitor perspective) and didn’t do much to inspire me to make over my… read full entry »

Once upon a time, if someone left a comment on one of my entries that made me suspicious, I had the time to look into it and figure out who the person was and where they were from. Of course, I don’t have that luxury these days, I have a daughter to look after. I… read full entry »

When I was in school, my drama teacher told the class a story about women in Africa who’d been given Nestle formula milk samples shortly after they’d had a baby. They used the samples, believing that formula was superior to their breast milk, which led to their milk drying up. Because their milk had dried… read full entry »