A Matter of Choice

Louka's favourite thing at the moment is football, he spends ages on the balcony kicking a ball around (and often over the edge!) or down with his friend on the field outside.  He loves anything and everything with even a hint of football about it, so you can imagine his joy when we gave him a football themed water bottle! Since then he's taken it to school of course - as that was the intention He's carried it around the house, used it at the dinner table, in front of the TV and taken it to bed! I explained to him that we received the bottle to review and he took it very seriously, telling me that it is a good colour and he likes the footballers on there especially the one with the blond hair.   The best bit apparently is the lid because it looks like a football and he's never seen that on a bottle before. The bottle is by Sigg Cyprus and is part of their Aluminum Kids range.    It's great to have a bottle that the boys like to stop them wanting...

How many times have you asked a question to be met with 'Google it' as a response? These days we have come to expect information at our fingertips, and it came as a big surprise to me when I first arrived in Cyprus to find that Google was letting me down! I looked for places to go, baby groups to attend, local information, bank holidays, how to register for schools, you name it I looked for it  and for the most part I couldn't find it.  A while ago, due to my frustration I set up the 'East Coast Mum's' facebook group which in the end had over 100 members, I often shared information I saw online that I thought might interest other Mums, everything from local events to scheduled power cuts and enjoyed spreading the word to those who might not have heard, here it's not always that easy to know what's going on! Over the last 4 years things have improved a lot but our little bit of Cyprus seems to have always been sadly neglected! Well, no...

Yesterday, for the first time in the two years I have known my friend Sam we finally escaped the kids for the whole day and had a day out without the little darlings! We went to Nicosia to the Baby, Toddler and Christening exhibition held at the Cyprus State Pavilion.  I was really looking forward to it, and after attending several events in Cyprus which didn't live up to my expectations was intrigued to see how successful it would be. Before I get moaned at, I realise Cyprus is not England, and that it is a small country but often I get frustrated with how easily things could be improved - events are not always well publicised and I feel the internet  / social media is rarely used to its full potential,  not that I claim to be an expert by any means but if I can see ways to improve things then they must be there! I was excited to see in the run up to the exhibition that the organisers were using their facebook page along with various groups t...

One of the downfalls of moving to another country is leaving your friends and family behind, it is a daunting prospect to be alone in a new country with no support network to rely on. When we first moved to Cyprus in November 2009 we were extremely lucky as by chance I had 'met' someone online who not only had a baby the same age as mine but a husband on the pool team and through them AJ got a place on the team and we met a nice group of people. There are not a lot of organised baby groups in this area  and without them it is hard as a 'stay at home' Mum to meet people so I was overjoyed (I may have even done a little dance!) when I found Mum's in Cyprus . It is a brilliant social network created by the lovely Carrine, is a Mum who was suffering a similar problem and wanted to meet more people. 'Mums in Cyprus' is a website community by Mums for Mums, it provides a platform for communication, advice and friendship. Since it's launch in January 2010...