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And here’s a brief video of a sleeping baby. Bless.

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Hey, look – we’ve got one of them “baby” things! Sweet!

From Baby Amy, posted by Andy Fisher on 6/22/2010 (14 items)

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Although we’re veterans of the Ideal Home Show and the London Motor Show, we’ve never been to the Baby Show before. There are three in 2010 – one in February in the ExCeL Centre in London’s docklands, the second in Birmingham’s NEC in May, and the third back in London for October, this time in Earl’s Court. We’ve just got back from the ExCeL show, and here’s what we thought… We weren’t planning on buying anything, as we’re only in the 22nd week at the moment, so we went by tube. When we came out of Custom House station, there weren’t that many other people going to the centre, so we thought it might not be too busy inside. We were wrong. It was packed.

Our first impression of The Baby Show was not good – it really hasn’t been thought out very well. They’ve crammed loads – and I mean loads – of exhibitors into the hall, but they’re all much too closely packed. Everywhere you went, you’d have people standing in front of an exhibitor, looking at their stuff, and people on the other side of the walkway who are also standing in front of an exhibitor. The problem is that this leaves barely enough space for people to walk past them – and when you remember that, since it’s a baby show, there are loads of prams, buggies and pushchairs crammed in, it’s simply madness. You have to either rudely push your way past people, or be polite and get stuck behind the people in front who are walking sooo sloooowly – which of course simply winds up the people behind. Basically, you’re going to end up either being annoyed, or annoying others. It was not a nice experience.

The entry fee was not cheap – £18 each – but I would be happy to pay a little more if it meant they could afford to use a slightly larger hall with more space. Not only were the walkways crammed, but some of the exhibitors had loads of stuff on display, and again, it was all crammed into much too small a space. It’s really difficult to check out a travel system when you’re bunched up against other people also trying out prams! And you can forget simply browsing the shelves of items – with people continually pushing past you, it was impossible.

So, our first -and lasting – impression was that it should have been held in a larger venue. I’m hoping that the Earl’s Court show in October will be better – although since we’ll be parents by then, we can just be like every one else and barge our pram into people regardless…

It's so hard to turn down a freebie!

Moving on from the stupidly small venue, now, we come to the variety of exhibitors. Here we were pleasantly surprised. As I mentioned earlier, there were loads of exhibitors. Some were small, specialist companies; others were big names like Mothercare, Philips and Tommee Tippee. We were very pleased to see Stokke had a big demonstration area, as we really like the look of the Stokke Sleepi crib/bed but haven’t found a local retailer who stocks it. Now that we’ve been able to have a look at one first hand, we’re happy to order one over the internet. We also discovered that the baby carrier/slings that we had been thinking about were stupidly complicated – the chance to see them and try them out was very helpful, and we actually found a much better one that we hadn’t come across before. There were also plenty of free samples being thrust into our hands at every turn – I was glad I’d taken my large rucksack along, it was crammed by the time we left!

What we were impressed with, even though it wasn’t of use to us this time, were the facilities for parents. There was a Pampers baby-changing area; a Tommee Tippee-sponsored feeding area, a play area, and a crèche. They were packed, of course, but they did seem quite well thought out.

Because there was so much to look at – and also partly due to the fact we were crammed in like sardines – we ended up spending a good four and a half hours in the show. There was plenty to look at, and it was definitely worth us going along. We did buy one item – a Philips Avent electric breast pump – and the discount (even cheaper than buying online) nearly offset the cost of the tickets.

So to sum up, it was a worthwhile, if not exactly pleasurable, day out.

Professor Layton and Pandora's Box

I wouldn’t normally post this on here – it’s what my other blog is for – but we had so much fun with the first of these games that it deserves a mention!

Today’s a great day for Nintendo DS owners – a new Professor Layton game is out! Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box gives us another dose of the charming gameplay found in the first game, Professor Layton and The Curious Village.

The games basically involve you solving lots of puzzles whilst investigating a mystery. The actual story itself is pretty much irrelevant, and only serves to move you from puzzle to puzzle, but it’s a nice change to all the frantic action games that seem to make up most of the charts these days! In addition to the puzzles, there are also places to explore and items to collect along the way. The game is presented in a hand-drawn cartoon style, with voice actors playing the various characters, and the occasional animation clip for key scenes.

The puzzles range from the amazingly easy to the mildly difficult, and if you do get stuck there are hints to nudge you in the right direction. As with many Nintendo games, it’s clearly aimed at entertaining all ages. Younger players will still be able to solve many of the puzzles on their own, with or without hints, and older players will get just as much satisfaction from getting them right first time, or without any assistance at all. We had great fun playing three or four puzzles a night for a few weeks, although some of the trickier puzzles can end up in tussles over control of the stylus for “just one more go, I think I’ve got it this time – oh, no, I haven’t, just one more go”…

Amazon currently have the best prices – the first game (Professor Layton and The Curious Village) is around £18, and the new one (Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box) is around £28 – everyone else seems to be doing it for £30+ as of 25 Sept 09 – even Play, which was a surprise.

I thoroughly recommend both these games! Buy them! NOW!

I always enjoy wandering around and looking at all the cool steam engines at the fair, and this year we went along when there were loads of classic cars there too…

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Top Gear doesn’t have anything to worry about…

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Heute wuenschen wir unseren deutschen Zwillingen alles erdenklich Gute zum Geburtstag und hoffen, dass Ihr einen wunderschoenen Tag mit ganz viel Sonnenschein habt!

Das Wetter war heute nicht so sonderlich toll, daher haben wir einen Einkaufsbummel zum Bluewater-Shopping-Center unternommen. Dies war auch gleich meine Gelegenheit fuer einen neuen Augentest in einem Optikerladen vorbeizuschauen und mir eine Sonnenbrille passend zu meiner Augenstaerke zu bestellen. (Damit ich dann spaeter bei unsereren nachtraeglichen Flitterwochen auch Nichts verpasse, falls es mal sonnig werden sollte )
Was natuerlich auf keinen Fall bei unserem Einkaufsbummel fehlen durfte, war ein Besuch des Bread-Shop-Standes, um ein paar leckere Koernerbrode zu kaufen….. hmm die sind so lecker….. genauso gut wie zu Hause in Deutschland….