ManicMammy’s Blog

Our 3 year old daughter hated having her hair brushed after bathtime and in the mornings so much that,  a couple of months ago, she snuck off to the playroom with the baby’s nail scissors and hacked a fair chunk of her gorgeous blond tresses in an effort to achieve “short” hair. Thankfully I found her before too much damage had been done and she now sports a long bob.

Around the same time, I noticed Johnson’s Junior Detangler in the supermarket and purchased a bottle. Its basically a spray for kid’s hair. It has a very mild smell. You can spritz it on to dry or damp hair. I apply it after their baths, and it makes the ordeal of brushing out the knots in their hair a thing of the past. Its great and bathtime has been made much more pleasant since we started using it. They all love it. Would highly recommend.

This is the 2 year old’s favourite and most played with toy since he received it for his birthday 3 weeks ago.

The Mega Bloks are a fabulous introduction to getting kids started at building things. Lego for juniors if you like. This car transporter truck comes with 3 cars which have interchangeable blocks on a 4 wheel base. Therefore the child can customise each car in a very basic way. The rig itself has a plastic handle so the 2 year old tends to carry the whole thing around with him throughout the house.

There are ramps at the back of the transporter move so he can drive the cars in and out. These can be click locked in the upright position to ensure the cars do not fall out when he’s carrying the whole apparatus around.

He loves it. Its perfect for him at the moment, as he really enjoys playing with the cars both on their own and in conjunction with the rig.

Yesterday the weather looked good so we decided to head to Fota Wildlife Park for a family day out. I had been there last year with the 4 kids whilst pregnant and we’d had a very enjoyable day so we were all looking forward to it.

Although it opens at 10am, this time we didn’t get organised enough to arrive till 12ish. There was already a queue to get it, but thankfully it moved quickly. We paid the €50 for family (2 adults, 4 kids and 1 baby) entrance fee, recieved the maps and in we went.

There is a suggested route around Fota, a track which is fine for walking on and no problem to push the baby’s buggy around on too. If you take it, the first animals you see are the giraffes. They are in a field with zebras.

It is great to watch them walking around, drinking and eating leaves from the high poles. The kids love them. The bison are in a field opposite. The next area is the monkey island. This I found a bit dirty and smelly and there was a distinct lack of monkeys and gibbons to be seen. There were plenty of ducks and peacocks. The area looks a bit run down. We saw a couple of penguins and various other birds.

The kids also loved a small playground area on the way. A big log to walk on and some monkey bars.

The cafe area was filled with people. The playground here is a great idea and it was full of kids. All picnic tables were taken so we ended up eating our lunch on a bench. An extra number of picnic tables would be ideal. The restaurant was packed and seemed to do plenty of burger and chips. We just bought drinks and icecream to go with our sandwiches. Service was good. The day was sunny so you couldn’t beat eating al fresco. It was gorgeous.

Further on, we saw llamas, kangaroos, lemurs, flamingoes, an ostrich and cheetahs.

The highlight for the kids was 2 llamas bounding past us on the track as we ambled along and seeing small monkeys jumping in the branches of the tree above us!

Overall we had a very enjoyable day there. Its high season so the crowds of visitors there were to be expected but it would have been a better experience had there been more picnic and toilet facilities. They could do with a revamp around the monkey island area too.

We’re looking forward to revisiting in the autumn or early next spring as the children loved it.

This movie was worth going to for me just for the special effects. I love the transformation of the various cars, tanks, helicoptors even CD players into machines.

The movie translated well from its cartoon beginning in the 90s to this cinema version. The story is basically good robot transformers, the autobots versus the evil decepticons. Nothing too profound, good action sequences. I also particularly liked the Hoover dam scenes. 

My only gripe was a scene in which masturbation was discussed. This was a 12A film so there were plenty of quite young kids at it. The scene itself was totally superfluous to the movie and just wasn’t needed, seemed at odds with rest of the film. Whilst I was just at the film with my son and so it was fine,  I was relieved he hadnt brought along some of his friends as I didn’t want to have to explain it to them.

Despite this one minor quibble and a brief lull in the middle, the movie romped along and the 8 year old and myself had a fine afternoon’s entertainment.

This series is approaching its season 2 finale and its been very entertaining so far. Sixteen designers all competing to win. Each week, they complete a design task and the weakest resulting designer is eliminated.

Some of the tasks have been very interesting and creative: Making a dress using just materials, plants and flowers from a florist shop, creating an outfit for Barbie and a lifesize model Barbie to producing an ice-skater’s outfit.  Others have been more mundane: lingerie design and an outfit for Nicky Hilton were pretty boring.

But overall a fabulous mix of bitchness, slagging, vanity, pressure, talent, creativity and madness. Highly enjoyable viewing.

I love this weighing scale. It is small, thin, unobtrusive in the kitchen. It has a “zeroing” facility which makes baking really easy. Put the bowl on the scales, zero the reading, add your flour, zero the reading, add the butter/margarine, zero the reading….Cuts down on number of bowls/plates used which is great.

Easy to wipe clean, easy to store. You can weigh ingredients in grammes or pounds and ounces on the push of a button. Long life batteries, we’ve had no problems with this kitchen appliance to date. Excellent.

After reading Kieran’s post on a new gourmet shop in Cork, we headed over to check it out a couple of weeks ago. One of the purchases made was East of Boston’s “chocolate bliss” sauce. I must confess to being a smidge partial to ice-cream and particularly when it is combined with chocolate, so was looking forward to trying it out.

It didn’t disappoint. It comes in a jar and so I spooned some out to heat in the microwave to the serving suggestion warm temperature. The result was fab. A dark, warm chocolate sauce which tasted delicious when poured over my vanilla ice-cream.

Its produced west cork from all natural ingredients according to the label. I’m looking forward to trying the rest of their range of fruit and toffee sauces and hoping to combine them with my favourite Murphy’s icecream. Happy days!

I first bought one of these grobags for our eldest son 8 years ago. Since then they have been used for all the kids. I have found them excellent. They are basically a sleeping bag that your child wears in bed. They are attached for younger babies using poppers at the shoulder and a zip at the side. For older children there is just a zip up the front of them.

They are made from cotton and resemble an all in one duvet. Easily machine washable and can be tumble dried. They are brilliant as their use means that no additional blankets or bedclothes are needed and thus avoid the baby or child kicking off bedclothes in the middle of the night and being woken from the cold.

They come in summer and winter togs, though with the Irish climate I have found no need to buy the summer variety and have just varied the vest/babygro/PJs that the baby/child wears underneath them.

Our children tended to grow out of them aged 2 or 3 when they started to unzip them themselves. But they do come in sizes up to 6 years. They come in a huge range of colours and patterns. I ordered mine from www.grobag.com but have seen them for sale in many local babyshops or Adams.

They are fab and I’d recommend them to anyone with babies and young children.

Having bought, played, lost and rediscovered plenty of Smiths’ CDs over the past many years, I spotted this CD for sale in Goldendiscs for €7 last week. Have been listening to it since.

Its fabulous- a great collection of 23 favourite Smiths’ songs on one CD.

“Bigmouth strikes again”, ” How soon is now?”, “Ask”,”Girlfriend in a coma”, “There is a light that never goes out”, “What difference does it make?”, “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before”, “Please please please let me get what I want” and “I started something I couldn’t finish”.

Brilliant lyrics and music. Go out and buy it. Nostalgia city here now. Have the kids singing along already.