Product Placement

The toddler can be disturbed by many things of a night (hence my passion for coffee). Sometimes it’s his dreams, which reveal their subject matter when we hear him talking in his sleep though the monitor.The dreams sound pretty action-packed: lost zoo animals (“Where’s e-phant gone?”), the great outdoors (“Not touch bumber-bees”) and the confusion surrounding certain nursery rhyme characters (“Humpy Dumpy: Man? Egg?”).

The other thing that keeps the poor chap awake is itchiness. He’s got eczema, and although I am reassured it’s very common in the under-twos and will ‘resolve itself’, I can’t help being on a constant search for the mildest and least irritating bath products I can find for him. Continue reading…

Stealing from children is great fun. Oh shut up, I don’t mean in a cruel way. No, I’m talking about products, of course. And also food. In fact, let’s talk about food first. If you’ve got young kids, you’ll know that what they eat these days is a vast improvement on the minced mutton and marmite type carry-on we were all forced to eat in the seventies. No wonder I’ll try (almost) anything – it’s called hope.

Anyway, nowadays (thanks mainly to children’s food guru Annabel Karmel, I reckon) babies are given all sorts of delicious nosh, if their parents can be bothered. And if they can’t – no problem, because they no longer have to endure little jars of shepherd’s pie. Oh no. When I was feeling lazy the other day, my nipper got a Chicken and Apricot Tagine. Which he hated, so I ate it. That incident is not strictly theft, as it would have gone in the bin. But even if he had liked it I would have tried a bit whilst pointing out an imaginary farm animal in the kitchen. Easy pickings. Continue reading…