Rhyb - I wouldnt worry about DS not sitting or crawling, every kid has their own time frame for milestones! My eldest is a whiz kid, was crawling and cruising at 6mths and walking at 10mths full time, had an extensive vocab by one blah blah blah but Ripley, totally different story! He didnt crawl til 8.5mths (he went from commando to knee crawling pretty quickly though) and really surprised us by walking at 11mths, I honestly expected it to be more like 14mths! He's such a chilled out dude and likes doing things in his own time, he obviously just wanted to do it when he felt like it and once he made the decision to its was all systems go from there. Aiden may very well be the same, he'll be slow to take it up but once he does it'll be a split second change and he'll be off and running (or crawling in your case). I thought the reason behind Jetts eagerness to do everything early was being in childcare one day a week but Ripley has had his big brothers leadership in things like that and STILL took his sweet time so blows the learn off other kids theory out of the water. Same goes for speech (although I do think it helped Jett some in that department). Playgroup is always a good thing for kids though, there is only so much us mums can give them and other kids tend to be what they are looking for at times. If we were in Cairns Id offer my boys as playmate's
Poo on your xp's mother too, silly woman, whats wrong with pre-loved goods as long as their clean and in good nick? I own a few little op-shop gems that I love to wear! I consider it being $$ concious which isnt a bad thing at all.