Gnash

We did too. They don't. I wasn't making any judgement either way on it, just providing the information. What seems unfair to me is that it is based on the income of one person, rather than the household.

Congratulations Not having any family to share in the childcare is a bugger. After a bit of persuasion and juggling, both my boy's sets of grandparents look after him a day a week, so we only need 3 days a week childcare. That's about £550 per month, and would be about £850 if it was 5 days. I read an article a few weeks back where it said Scotland had the highest childcare costs of any UK region. I get the childcare vouchers through my work, as Skyline says they are definitely worth looking into (although the benefit will be reduced for higher rate taxpayers as of next year). My wife is a student though, so we're paying for everything on my income. It really focusses the mind on getting the best possible deals / rates for everything and cutting back on luxuries.

The soya-based formula my boy is on costs £4000 for the first year, although he shouldn't need it after that. Same as the soya-based formula, it stinks - keep your nose well clear of the burping zone. My wife tasted some and retched almost immediately. Callum seems happy enough with it though, and it only took 3 days until he was taking it as well (in fact, better) than his previous milk.

If you ignore Cobo, that was an good ride and an excellent day for the 2 Sky riders. Unfortunately for them, Cobo's ascent up the Angliru was awesome. It was actually pretty heartening to see riders of the quality of Wiggins swaying across the road, barely able to keep the pedals turning. That climb was brutal.

I think he's all right, but he's clearly not doing the commentary just for ITV4, and it really shows the benefit of having a co-commentator / summariser - just listening to one voice the whole time is weird. To be fair with Phil Liggett, at least there is the comedy aspect of him getting everything completely wrong.

Aye, I hope you're right. And right on cue, Callum has come home from nursery with a few sniffles! It's very minor though, and no suggestion from the nursery that he needs to stay at home.

Thanks - that's some helpful advice. I'm probably over-reacting to comments made by some very frustrated parents, but the consensus on here seems to be that it's not as bad as I've heard. One of the nurseries is very reputable and has some the best care commission reports in the area. Of course, it's very difficult even for parents to tell the difference between genuine illness, a bad day for the child that the nursery have misinterpreted as illness, and the nursery making up an illness to get rid of a difficult child for a day or two. And there will be grey areas between the three.

You've missed the point, although to be fair, that's probably because I didn't explain it well enough in the first place. If my child has diarrhoea, as in your example, I've no problem being called to take him home. I wouldn't want him to infect the other kids, and I wouldn't want my son to be infected with an illness from another child. So on that point I completely agree with you. My issue is with nurseries telling parents their child is ill just because they're being difficult or crying a lot. This is either because they genuinely (but mistakenly) think the child is ill, or know they're not ill and just can't be bothered looking after them when they're being difficult. This hasn't happened to me personally yet, but I have heard other parents telling me this has happened to them. If it's the nursery's judgement that the child is ill and needs to be removed from the nursery, they should be giving a refund for the time the child isn't there. It's already very difficult being a working parent, without losing time and money because of illnesses invented by a nursery. That's time and money I can't really afford to lose, since there I'm the only one bringing in an income (my wife is a student so is neither available to look after Callum nor receives any income). Well, exactly. Employers aren't obliged to pay you, and how can you sort out alternative childcare arrangements if the child is deemed too ill to be looked after with other children? My own employer is fairly reasonable, and I'm sure that if I occasionally (once every few months, say) need to take time off to take my child home from nursery, that won't be a problem. But what if it happens every couple of weeks, like I have heard of in one case? My pay would certainly be docked.

The thing I'm most concerned about is the nursery telling us we need to take him home because he's ill. Well, the reason he's at the nursery is because neither of his parents are available to look after him. If they try any of that shite with us, I'll be demanding a refund for the time he's not there, at the very least.

First day at nursery for the wee man today. They said he was fine - well, we'll see how they get on when he's in a bad mood! Hopefully all the stories I've heard about kids being ill 50% of the time with stuff they've caught at nursery are wide of the mark...

Great ride from Froome to take the red jersey. Wiggins went out too quickly and paid for it at the end, but he still did pretty well. Given how good they have looked in the mountains, they both have to be considered contenders now.

Nice one, that's fairly young I think. We just got Callum (8.5 months) sleeping through the night. But I think we could have done it a lot earlier - we were waking him up to give him a big (260ml) feed at about 11pm every night, and because he would wolf it down in 10 minutes, we thought he'd never make it for 11-12 hours without getting hungry. We decided to try anyway, and the first night he slept from 7.30pm-6.15am, and since then he's only been awake (well, woken us up) before 7am once or twice. He's just got to the mobile stage as well, crawling about everywhere and using anything and everything to haul himself to his feet. Great to see him progressing, but it's huge amount of work.

Yes, it's been fantastic entertainment. Well done to the organisers, although it would be great if there's some way they could reduce the number of crashes.

So Evans wins - not surprising at all, but the margin of victory was. The Schlecks actually did pretty good time trials but Evans was phenomenal. Good at see Voeckler stay ahead of Contador as well. I agree with that. Cavendish is obviously not built to be a GC contender, but he's by far the best road sprinter at the moment. In that respect he's far more impressive than Evans or the Schlecks. Sometimes he comes across as a bit of a dick, sometimes as a good guy. Same as Evans and the Schlecks. There's two reasons for that - he doesn't have the acceleration to attack like Andy or Contador, and his time trial is much better so as long as he can stay with them in the mountains, he'll win. Which is exactly what happened. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the way Evans rode the Tour this year.

Woah, I never said I believed them. And I only watch ITV4 because I don't have Sky / cable.

Great stage. Excellent attack by Andy, but another 2km and they'd have caught him. 2km less and he'd be almost out of sight. That's narrowed the race down to 4 contenders anyway. I'd still make Evans the favourite, because unless the Schlecks take more time out of him tomorrow, he'll almost certainly get past them in the TT. And I wouldn't discount Voeckler. I know he's not meant to be be great in the TT, but then he's not meant to be great in mountains. It was a big stretch for ITV4 to say he'd be a big contender next year, though, because the peloton will never let him get such a big gap from a breakaway again. That's not how the time gaps work. It's not where the leader is, it's the chasers. And even if the gap was coming down because the chasers were on the steepest part of the climb, it would be because they were cycling up it faster then Andy.

Another win for Cav. Just looking at the all-time stage winners list, there's every chance he could top the list by the end of his career. He's currently on 19 and Eddie Merckx is way out in front on 34. If he gets only 4 stage wins per tour for the next few years, he'll surpass Merckx's total before the end of the 2015 Tour. In fact if he doesn't come up against any serious injury / drugs / competition then he could rack up 40+ wins.

The problem with that logic is that you'll never get away from the suspicion of cheating. The alternative point of view is that he's just that bit better than everyone else.

Whatever Contador has done, he shouldn't be getting shoved off his bike.

Well done Hushovd for sticking with the main contenders and staying in yellow. What happened to Vinokourov in the last stretch? He must completely collapsed as he looked like getting the win and yellow with 1km to go.

People's incorrect perceptions shouldn't be a factor. If people are too thick to understand the basics of how it works, they shouldn't be going to uni anyway. Another point against it is that it completely discriminates against people from better off backgrounds whose parents don't give them any money to get through uni. Their financial situation is the same as the students from the poor backgrounds.

Interesting. I hold the conflicting and probably less popular opinion that new parents should be paid a high percentage of their salary to look after their child in the first year, and a lower percentage for each year until they go to school. Only for the first 2 children though. I agree with the government's position on university tuition fees, except for allowing students from low income backgrounds to get in for free. The whole point is that they don't have to pay the fees back until they are earning decent money, which means their background is irrelevant. Women can reduce the probability of being sexually assaulted by wearing less sexually provocative clothing on a night out. All drugs should be legalised and controlled. It's not for society to tell people they can't screw their lives up if that's what they want to do, and the rest of us might as well get some tax revenue from it. Scottish independence would be shit. It's already a disgrace that the gaelic language receives public funding, and that sort of nonsense would be far worse if Scotland was independent. I like John Terry. I hate Jose Mourinho.

My son Callum has really small hands and feet, but is a beast at 21 pounds and 6 months. On the more general point of baby size, even the size at birth doesn't give a good indication of how they'll grow. My wife's pal had an enormous 11 pound baby who's only 12 pounds after 3 months.

That's what we were told and we were told that was the official advice - presumably from the NHS. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if different parents are getting different advice though. As you say, I don't think bathing a baby daily from birth is going to be a problem, so long as it's done sensibly.

I pretty much agree with the above posters, but the official advice for the first few months is once every two or three days. We've bathed our baby every day from about 3 months.