An inspired by facebook day....

Well, a short time ago a new facebook application caused a stir and a flurry of debates on another online community I frequent and that was: council estate gifts.

Living on a (mostly) ex-authority estate with a fairly bad reputation I found it hilarious I must say. The ability to send your friends 'white dog poos' and the like really made me smile!

So in that vein today, after the children's first trip to the dentist I decided to make a day of it + keep them both off for the rest of the day (not at all influenced by the 2 hour long round trip on public transport to my eldest's school...). So out we went with new babe in what I have lovingly termed my 'chav pram'. A whopping silvercross effort in beige with gold + silver embroidery on it, I love it but more importantly babes love it and sleeps, well, like a baby in it. I won its name when I took my much adored pram to baby clinic to find every other make & model of silvercrodd trotting through the door as well, all with frilly footmuff in situ (yuck).

Being a bit limited by weather and finances we had a most the most stylish day available, I trooped the kids out in our (unintentionally) matching beige coats, with our big bustling beige pram and faced the freezing cold and rain. 'Did' the whole dentist thing then marched on to find the kids some treats for being good to the highly celebrated establishment known as 'the pound shop'. After that we went to the town's most high class eatery - Morrision's cafe- to feast on sausage sandwiches, with kids and ketchup with blackcurrant and a mini packet of biscuits.

I think though I probably lost council estate bonus points for sitting breast feeding and not cracking open a ready-made carton of SMA gold.

The kindness of strangers...

More baby purchases arrived this week, not without their trials of course.

Having splashed on the phil & teds vibe (pics & review coming soon) we realised this was actually not a good choice for public transport which is how I get around most of the time as I can't drive. So we set about finding a reasonable addition that would be easy to fold & unfold and ideally worked with our car seat (the maxi cosy cabrio) fitted to it.

We decided in the end on the quinny buzz, the thought of a pram that springs its self open when I have a newborn in a car seat on one hand and a 3 year old in the other, and possibly a 6 year old held between my teeth if she is not at school was just so attractive. Attractive and expensive though. So we set about trying to find one on ebay for less. Competition was steep especially as we wanted the newer version with a proper plastic catch to prevent it springing open in your face.... but eventually we did manage to secure a bargain. Not only did we manage to get a buzz 3 for much less that in the shops but it also had the extra set of wheels allowing us to use it as a buzz 4, as well as including a cosytoes, raincover, mosquito net and alsorts of other gadgets (strap extension kit, spare press studs..) we were very excited!

Of course that didn't last long. After sending a begging e-mail to colleagues to ask them to organise paper work for me so I could wait all day Tuesday, nothing arrived. After my husband and I racing around like lunatics making sure someone was in all day Wednesday; nothing arrived. After DHL's 48 tracking malfunction it finally came back online on Thursday morning. I was tempted to cry when I saw it had been delivered at 15:01 on Tuesday... to someone else.

Many irate phone calls and e-mails followed, the seller did believe we hadn't received it, but didn't know how to help us as the courier company refused to accept a lost item claim because it had been signed for and had the correct address on the label. After much hand wringing we accepted we had lost the pram, and the money that paid for it and I would have to use a sling on the bus (I should add that we ironically sold a lightweight buggy we had used for our son to make room/ make funds for one we could use with the car seat we have).

Then on Friday afternoon with glum faces my husband and I set off for the schools (miles apart as they are) that our children attend to pick them up before the weekend, only to get home to discover that in our absence a big white van had turned up and delivered our buzz to our next door neighbour!

The courier company (parcels2go who I have already previously struck off my 'will ever use again' list because of their incompetence and shocking customer service) refuse to admit they sent it to the wrong address and picked it up and re-delivered it. All the tracking information and barcodes had been removed from the packaging when we received it all that was on it our hand-written address and a tiny DHL label with no tracking code.

So we must thank the person who received it for their honesty in reporting it (guess they didn't want pushchairs cluttering up their hall unlike in our house....) and hope that one day companies like parcel2go learn to do business in such an honest way.

Moments like these...

Well, I had hoped to be showcasing our lovely new shinny pram and writing about all its lovely features and comforts for the little one who will be joining us in December but sadly everything has gone a bit pear shaped this week! After much deliberation we decided we had chosen too early and based our choice only on what we hadn't had for the other 2 (a large impractical springy status symbol with a designer badge) and promptly went and bought that. We (I) realised since that when its throwing it down or snowing and your picking your middle child up from nursery you won't care what pram you are pushing so long as 1) your youngest is warm & dry, 2) you can steer it home quickly. So our choice of the mamas & papas ultima only met half of the criteria for sensible winter pram.

Hot on the heels of this realisation a new mamas & papas brochure landed on our door step and we saw they sell a model which will face the parent, and fold small and has a nice separate carrycot. We contacted customer services & they told us yes we could exchange as long it our original was in salable condition. So we trotted off home with our new mamas and papas switch 3in1 in prim to slot it altogether and stroke it basically!

However, once put together it became obvious this is not a well design pram. The hood does not recline it goes only half way down so it would be difficult to slot my newborn into the pram while keeping an eye on 2 other children. The apron does not actually attach to the hood (or it didn't on our model) so you get the impression it would blow off with a gust of wind. The hood continually slouches down like a lazy teenager and impacts of the length of the zip on rain cover leaving half the carrycot exposed to the rain.

After much hand wringing we called customer services again and handed the pram back and to our massive surprise got a refund (even without the box which we binned straight away!). So we skipped down to another pram shop only to find our next choice is not in stock, never fear, candidate number 3 should be here on Thursday all being well, am so looking forward to ripping it open.......


Processing preset will be available on the other blog this week...