One week to go....

In one week I'll be a Dad for the second time...

I've been a bona fide Dad for 4 years and 9 months and here's what I've learned:

1. Routine, Routine, Routine - From the moment you get the newborn home this  is the morst important thing, Whether it's feeding, or the bedtime routine do it the same (as much as is humanly possible) and you'll reap the rewards. Our first was sleeping through the night within 3 months, we've never had any problems getting her to bed (even in strange surroundings) and it means if there are problems that 9 times out of 10 she's ill.

2. At dinner they eat what you do - Once they start on real food give them what you eat. Once they're able give it to them as finger food and always put food on their plate even if they don't eat it. Children seem to go through stages of liking/disliking food as they mature. Our little girl went through a stage of refusing Brocolli, but we still always served it up, eventually she started eating it again and loves it. Many of our friends simply stopped giving their kids certain foods if they showed a dislike for it, what they have now are children who refuse to try something new and will only eat certain foods (usually little or no vegetables).



3. Get them involved - Whether it's cooking, cleaning , gardening or anything else. Getting our little one involved in the cooking and gardening has helped with point 2 as she's been part of the process. Getting her involved in the household chores means that even when Mum and Dad are doing the housework there's still an element of family time. Through my other half's work (childminder) we've seen this work numerous times with children who may not have these experiences at home, from the excitement of pulling up potatoes to helping chop (with plastic/child friendly knives) mushrooms for their dinner.

There's three of my steps to successful parenting, use them for free...

Growing your own to save the pennies...

I’m trying to win an iPad 2 in the iSave, iWrite, iPad competition from PlayPennies.com!

Money saving, we all do it at some point, whether it’s turning down the heating a bit, walking/cycling as part of the daily commute, or (my personal favourite) shipping the kids off to the grandparents for the weekend to save on the weekly food shop.

I won’t lie to you, I’ve done all of that and more and with the ongoing financial crisis in our house it doesn’t look like we’ll be stopping anytime soon. In order to try and get ourselves a bit of breathing space I’m dreaming up schemes on a daily basis to try and make ends meet. At the moment it’s a combination of eBay selling (not too bad), T-shirt designs (too expensive to setup) and getting a childrens book published (I think I’ve got more chance of a close encounter with Jessica Alba on a desert island, no offence to my other half).

The one thing I have had success with, albeit limited in terms of end product, is growing my own veg. From since I was 4 years old I’ve looked at neighbouring gardens in awe of the variety of veg being grown, from Old Mr Mac’s cabbages to Big Franks home-grown/made pickled onions to the towers of runner beans looming over my Granddads allotment. So after reading up a bit on the net I decided to turn my small suburban garden into Basingstoke’s answer to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's river cottage.

Task one was getting the garden ready. It was a battle of wills to convince my better half that I could make a go of this. She wanted flowers; I wanted the practical and useful greenery that I could use on my Sunday roast. Compromise was eventually arrived at and I installed two raised beds and a few pots and a weekly helping hand from my 4 year old Daughter and a couple of kids my darling minds (day to day this is one of the most satisfying aspects of the whole mini veg farm, the kids get to help with the planting and the harvesting, which in turn encourages them to eat various vegetables as they had a hand in creating them).

Once the garden was cleared of a couple of old conifers (cue lots of swearing, cuts and bruises due to the lack of the proper tools), and the beds were built (less swearing due to buying link-a-bords, but old wooden planks would be as good) I got down to growing. I’m in my second summer growing season now, so take my advice, don’t plant too much, I did and my first crop suffered for it. My first bed (1m by 1m) had cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and red onions in it (and far too many of each), Don’t get me wrong, we had a bit of each in terms of produce (ok, the onions were a complete and utter failure, and I got an extra caterpillar with my broccoli one Sunday dinner), but extra space between plants will get you better results, if you have some small plants over put them in pots or give them to your neighbours to try their hand at growing.

Our second bed contained radish, lettuce and carrots, and this is what really got my daughter and the other kids eating salad, not a lot of kids like the peppery taste of radish but they wouldn’t say no because it was grown by them from seeds. We also grew the following in various pots; sprouts (they grew extremely well and the children liked the tall ‘alien’ stalks); beetroot (again the kids love the striking purple stalks) and an orphaned courgette plant (it’s owner disappeared to Australia for a couple of months, during which we grew the biggest courgette in the world, tasted a bit woody mind).

This year I’ve been much more frugal in my planting, just two varieties of cabbage, radish, lettuce, runner beans (the flowers placate the other half). And I’ve hardly paid for any seeds! Why? Well the beans are a result of last year’s poor attempts, and through various promotions (Homebase, RHS, and the Sun’s potato competition) we’ve managed to get most of what we need to create a garden to rival my Fiancée’s Farmville attempt on Facebook (try saying that after a few ciders).

And with us only just being in May we’ve already had a load of radishes, some lettuce, and the gorgeous weather means it probably won’t be long before we get some tomatoes and strawberries. The potatoes are shooting up, the cabbage look strong and the only pests I’m having to deal with are my pesky cats, at this rate I’m going to have to issue ASBO’s to the blighters the number of times they’ve broken through the netting on one particular bed (I wonder if I could hook up an Ipad to flash up an image of a large dog to growl at them each time they attempt it?)