I am pleased to be the second featured member here on Minti. I have just one great person to try and follow on from, fortunately not stacks! I am looking forward to reading more about all of you others to come along...

Starting with name, location, how many children.

My name is Helen (other initials are R S, and I picked this as a username in 2004…who said imagination is dead?) and I live in a medium-sized coastal town in Sussex, England (bottom of the map, just right of middle). I haven’t *quite* got around to getting married yet, but will have been with my boyfriend, Nick, for 14 years next month. We have two children, Leala, who is 28 months and Nyle, 8 months.

How did you find Minti?

I was assisted in this one – a techie friend (KatiePiatt on here) spotted the launch of the site on some techie site and put me on to it. We had been discussing getting together a list of websites and good information for pregnant friends, and then maybe taking it further, and she thought this would be a good site to look in to. I must confess that the compilation of our helpful list has fallen down in priority as I spend the time I had planned for that on here!

What's your favourite thing or feature at Minti?

I love all the varied articles. I have learnt so many things that I didn’t realise I needed to know through browsing the articles and comments. I would like to thank so many people for making my life easier and more interesting already, but it would take so long, so just thanks to all of you for sharing your experiences. I find Minti as a whole a great place to pick up hints and tips, and to provoke thought.

I just love seeing my little ones grow and mature, and learn to get along with each other and the world. Just this evening I was watching them both standing kissing their reflections in the mirror – Nyle because he saw another little boy, Leala because she was aware it was getting a good reaction from me, and because Nyle was doing it. It’s just great to see how they view the world and being almost able to watch their brains tick – something lost as we learn to hide our emotions.

I think that the first thing that comes to mind is trying to do my best in bringing them both up to be decent, pleasant people to be around. I know this might sound a bit heavy at such a young age, but I want to give them good examples and react the right way to make sure they learn good lessons. I am forever reassessing why I am doing one thing rather than another, e.g. when Leala misbehaves or when Nyle won’t eat his dinner. I also try to find ways to develop them in a positive fashion.

What's the best parenting advice you've ever gotten from someone?

I think that it is probably to always put your baby down to bed whilst they are still awake. I believe that good sleep patterns are crucial to a fully functioning family and I have used various strategies to build on this basic advice in order to try and teach my children to self-soothe and so get decent sleep. Touch wood, they are both doing pretty well right now!