Yeast & West

Ten (nearly) on Tuesday: Fishy Sweets & Dinosaurs

2012-02-28T22:28:00.002Z

1. Westboy went on a nursery trip last week. They went on a bus and a train to the museum, where they saw bugs and dinosaurs. He would've been thrilled with just the bus and train journeys, and was still grinning 2 days after the experience. It totally wore him out though, and he fell asleep on the buggy board on the way home.... I tried balancing the sleeping boy on the board as I went up and down kerbs, carrying him on my back while swerving the pushchair one-handed around dog poos and across roads, and finally settled on swapping the boys round. So there was a sleeping three-and-a-half year old in the pushchair, and a 13 month old riding on the buggy board. Westbaby LOVED it.

2. There's work going on in the house next door, so lots of building-noises during the day. The smell of the builders smoking somehow seems to fill my house too, which is not nice. Especially as I keep thinking that it's the washing machine about to explode or tea burning.

3. I discovered this blog this week, and love it. I was pretty obsessed with reading about midwifery-stuff even before having babies, and I think they've only increased that interest.

4. It's been a while since i gave anything up for lent. I think last time was when I was a postgrad student and I simultaneously gave up caffeine, make-up, and talking to a boy I really fancied (who is now my husband, so I probably shouldn't give up talking to him for 40 days). Anyway, this year I've signed up for 40Acts, in an attempt to focus on 'giving' instead of 'giving up'. I'm not managing to do every act, but I'm thinking more generously, so it's a step in the right direction. It's not too late to sign up if you like the idea of it and want to join in.

5. I haven't given up social media for lent, which might be why I like this article from Vicky Beeching's blog. (Anyone who has given it up probably hasn't read it, so it's likely to be a bit of a one-sided discussion really).

6. On an entirely different topic.... (that'll be potty training then) ...Westbaby now applauds whenever I go to the toilet (see 8).

7. This Seeds of Courage CD is fantastic. (I've linked to it before, although I've learnt to embed film clips since then, but it deserves another mention anyway because it truly is that good). It's verses of the Bible set to catchy yet remarkably non-cheesy music, aimed at kids, but I'm getting at least as much out of it as the boys. It's actually two identical CDs, the idea being to keep one and pass one on, which is just genius. The verses stick in your head, and are themed around courage, which has been much needed these past few weeks (Westboy's had assessments with a Speech & Language Therapist and Community Paediatrician, and my head's still spinning).

8. I've been giving Westboy Omega 3 supplements that look like shark-shaped jelly sweets. After dishing them out for a few days (& him eating them without complaint), I thought I'd check what they're like. Well, if you can imagine sardine-flavoured-Haribo, you'll be close. EEEEEeeeeeeeuuuw!!!

9. I read this article, arguing that having children might mean that writers and artists produce less, but that perhaps that isn't all bad. One quote that stood out for me was:

"It's not that I don't like a break now and then. I just don't buy the idea that the break is "because I'm worth it" or that I'm taking "the time to be me". What is "me", if not the sum of all my relationships and obligations?"

"Me-time" is something I've been pondering recently. I definitely function better if I've had a break at the weekend, -ideally an hour to grab a coffee by myself and process my thoughts. I definitelyneed time by myself to recharge my energy and enthusiasm (typical introvert!). However, the idea that I might be more "me" when I'm preparing tea with Westbaby balanced on my hip and Westboy leaping around the kitchen than when I'm sitting in a cafe eating flapjack and reading a novel is an interesting (and challenging!) one.

10. And to finish, some photos of the loveliness that is brothers playing happily together. (well, in one of them Westboy is asleep and Westbaby is attacking him, but he's smiling so sweetly that we'll pretend that they're playing happily...)

Have a good week! Check what the other ten-on-tuesday-ers have written (Sarah, Jo, Lucy, Hannah & Britgirl), & give it a go if you like (that's aimed especially at Lyn and Laura this week!) :-)

InstaFriday - West Kirby and Sefton Park

2012-02-24T09:50:00.000Z

We went on a walk round the windsurfing lake in West Kirby last Saturday. It was a beautiful sunny day, but with a freezing cold wind. Joseph was asleep in the sling on my back, Beniah was jumping in puddles of sea water, and Tom and I were taking photos of the beautiful views. We'd met up with someone else who posts photos on Instagram, and her little boy. It was a strange experience connecting social networking stuff with real life, but a good thing to do.

This one's from a walk in Sefton Park with the boys one sunny afternoon this week.

Ten on Tuesday: Pancakes & Thai Curry

2012-02-21T21:54:00.001Z

1. Westboy was ill yesterday, so we had to delay the start of half-term by a day. Westbaby was not impressed. He kept bringing his shoes and his brother's nursery bag to me.

2. Smartie sandwiches sound good. I obviously wouldn't put them in my child's lunchbox though. (Yup, that's totally hypocritical).

3. Some music...

4. Being dairy-free on Shrove Tuesday is a pain. I experimented with oat milk this year. Not entirely successfully.

5. We went for a very cold walk round the windsurfing lake in West Kirby on Saturday. (More photos to follow, later this week). Sunny, but achingly cold. I still hadn't quite defrosted by bedtime.

6. The Very Lazy Co (the ones who make Very Lazy Garlic and Very Lazy Ginger) have started making Very Lazy Thai Green Curry paste. It's wonderful stuff, so I stocked up when it was on special offer. It's the kind of thing I always intend to make from scratch, but have never managed.

7. More music. Elbow this time. (I saw them play live over ten years ago now, which makes me feel pretty old). This is sublime...

8. I'm reading "How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk" by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. It's excellent, and one I reckon I'll come back to repeatedly over the next few years.

9. I like this necklace but initially thought it was made out of lego. Which might work quite well actually...

10. I love this letter to mums. At the moment I'm thinking lots about this bit:

"We live in a culture that doesn't value a slow and steady approach to living and certainly not childhood".

And I'll leave you with this excerpt:

"God knows the burdens you bear as a mother. If it's Jesus you want to be more like can I encourage you with this - Jesus is in the nose wiping, dirty bum changing, the floor washing, the night time nursing, the mommy snuggles, the tears (theirs and yours). Jesus was a servant and so are you. In the day to day life of mothering you are closer to Him than you realize. You are in a holy place."

Have a good week! Check what the other ten-on-tuesday-ers have written (Sarah, Jo, Lucy, Hannah & Britgirl), & give it a go if you like :-)

Thirteen on Thursday

2012-02-16T22:32:00.000Z

A late entry... The predictable consequence of half-term (no preschool), potty training Westboy & a poorly Westbaby.

1. You can generally tell how my week's going by how many "brownie in a mug"s I've made. We're running at one a day at the moment, which is baaaad.

2. I baked banana bread today (Partly to mask potty training odours).

3. Potty training. Urgh. Head here to see what Sarah's written. Timely advice round here, and reassurance that I'm not alone in getting the travel potty out in the weirdest of locations... Yesterday it was in the Mystery (Wavertree Park), attempting to use Westbaby's pushchair to shelter Westboy from passers-by and the icy cold wind. It turned out he didn't need to go after all.

4. My meal plans are currently revolving around the slow cooker and fantastic new potato ricer.

5. I've been getting the boys to help me make gnocchi. Potato-playdough, as far as they're concerned. (700-ish-g mash, 150g plain flour, a bit of salt. Mix. Roll into small balls & flatten with a fork. Chill. Tip into boiling water in a couple of batches. Drain when they float to the top. Serve with tomato sauce & bacon).

6. A lovely friend had her baby shower on Saturday at the London Carriageworks. :-)

7. Random ASDA substitution: 1kg mushrooms instead of a butternut squash.

8. Westbaby applauds his big brother when he uses the potty, then pulls the step over to the sink for him to wash his hands, and passes him a towel to dry them... I feel redundant.

9. I made one of these for Tom... I'm not sure how relaxing a massage can be with two small boys jumping on your head, but it's worth a try.

10. Westbaby said "apricot" this week (while I was chopping one up for him). His vocabulary generally consists of mama, dada, nana (Westboy), hello (when answering the phone), mwah (when kissing someone or wanting a kiss), and atchoo (when someone sneezes). So it was quite a leap from his usual range of words.

11. Rhubarb & custard Valentines day stained-glass window biscuits <3

12. A friend gave me one of these balls. It goes in the toilet to encourage small boys to wee 'accurately'. It was quite unnerving seeing it staring up each time I lifted the loo-seat, and I was contemplating taking a photo of it for on here. Sadly, before I did, I managed to flush it away. I don't think that's supposed to happen. I feel a mixture of guilt and relief.

13. There seemed to be a lot of dog poo on our walk to preschool last week... I counted (is that obsessive?!) And there were 29 along one road (roughly 600 metres). Grim.

The other ten-on-tuesday-ers are here: Sarah, Jo, Lucy, Hannah & Britgirl.

InstaFriday

2012-02-10T21:03:00.000Z

Instagram shots from the last couple of weeks...

Mmmm... I seem to have done quite a lot of baking recently. Cupcakes, Marmalade cake, the Dedication cake, some flapjack, and a couple of loaves of bread. As Westbaby & I aren't eating dairy products, it means that the only cakes I can eat are ones I've made myself, which is a pretty powerful motivator to bake ;-)

I just liked these green garage doors!

This is part of a fantastic display at Westboy's nursery (he's at the far left in the middle row). Every child's silhouette is up on the wall, cut out of black card, lifesize (or possibly bigger? I'm not sure). They used an OHP and drew round the projected image, -or an enlarged photo if they wouldn't stay still (I'm guessing Westboy was one of those...!).

It looks stunning.

Westboy and his Daddy looking out over the Mersey as a mist came rolling in across the river at sunset. Eerily quiet, freezing cold, and very beautiful.

The Billy Fury statue at the docks (lots of silhouettes this week!)

My phone lockscreen, for a challenge I was tagged into. A little bit of Orla Kiely loveliness

(actually a photo of some wrapping paper)

:-)

Ten on Tuesday

2012-02-07T21:15:00.000Z

1. Tonight both boys were in bed and asleep by 7.30pm, and Tom went back for seconds of lentil dahl. #somethingveryweirdisgoingon

2. Even more weirdly, why are Sarah and I simultaneously craving lentil dahl???

3. It was Westboy's dedication on Sunday, and we had grandparents and friends visiting. It was lovely to see everyone & we had a great time. And now I need a weekend to recover.

4. Most people advise waiting for warm weather to do potty training, so that the trainee can run around half-naked without getting too cold. Well, we certainly aren't following that advice. Westboy's getting very adept at adding and removing layers of clothing, however.

5. Yes, the photo is of the WRONG CHILD!!! Westbaby passes Westboy toys and puts hats on his brother's head while he's sitting on the potty.

6. (...And I really did cover the lounge floor with plastic. It was a great way of avoiding vacuuming for a week, I may try it again sometime).

7. Westboy & Daddy went to Tesco. With the choice of the whole shop, Westboy decided to buy a toy car, a pizza, and mushrooms. Mushrooms???

8. I would like my children to be good and quiet and never embarrass me in public. I don't think that's going to happen though, or even that it's really the best thing to hope for. And maybe it's not a sign of poor parenting after all?? Here's hoping.

9. I keep hearing snippets about dodgy ethics behind mobile phones, but have been choosing to unhear them because I LIKE my iPhone very much, thank you. Anyway, I can't keep burying my head in the sand, so I've signed the petition for Apple to make the iPhone 5 ethical. Ironically, from my iPhone.

10. We went to the Museum of Liverpool yesterday. The light was incredible, and as we were leaving a fog was rolling in from the Mersey. Stunning! (Westbaby was asleep, hence his absence from photos).

The other ten-on-tuesday-ers are here: Sarah, Jo, Lucy, Hannah & Britgirl.

Chocolate-Marmalade Cake

2012-02-02T21:19:00.000Z

This cake is a combination of a couple of recipes... A marmalade loaf cake from Nigel Slater's "The Kitchen Diaries", that I've made a few times before, with it's original orange icing drizzled over the top, and a cake called "Nigella's Clementine Cake" from the Green & Black's recipe book.

The Nigella cake is wonderful, but involves boiling 5 clementines for 2 hours, before cooling and pulping them. This puree is then added to other ingredients, including 6 eggs and 250g ground almonds, -so it's a costly cake, both in terms of time and money.

Last time I made Nigel's marmalade cake I realised that the flavour was similar to Nigella's, without all the clementine-pulping, so I thought I'd experiment with the Green & Blacks topping. This involves covering the top of the cake with a grated or finely chopped bar of dark chocolate as soon as it comes out of the oven, so that it melts and then solidifies as the cake cools. The ideal chocolate would be Green & Blacks Maya Gold, but normal plain chocolate works well enough. It's tricky to cut the cake neatly once the chocolate has cooled (see photo!), but the crisp chocolate crust perfectly complements the soft, slightly-bitter, orange-flecked cake underneath.

Chocolate-Marmalade Cake

175g butter (or Vitalite in my dairy-free-ness)

175g caster sugar

1 orange

3 eggs

75g marmalade (or "orange jam", as Westboy calls it)

175g self-raising flour

100g dark chocolate

Set the oven to 180C/Gas4.

Line a loaf tin* (25cmx11cmx7cm).

Beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.

Gradually add the eggs, beating thoroughly between each addition.

Beat in the marmalade and the grated orange zest.

Fold in the flour.

Gently stir in the juice of half the orange.

Spoon the mixture into the lined tin, smoothing the top.

Bake for 40 minutes, checking after 35 minutes with a metal skewer.

Remove from the oven and immediately sprinkle the grated or finely chopped chocolate over the top of the cake while still in the tin.

Leave to cool completely in the tin.

(The original recipe omitted the chocolate, but used 2 tablespoons of orange juice mixed with 100g icing sugar to make a runny frosting, which was drizzled over the cooled cake)

*Part of the reason for all these loaf cakes at the moment is that my Mum bought me some loaf tin liners, so I don't have to do any complicated origami to line loaf tins and save some time. hurray!

Ten on Tuesday: Even Buzz Lightyear

2012-01-31T21:16:00.000Z

1. I reckon I need to rename my children 'Cakeboy' and 'Cakebaby' this week...

2. Love this...

3. I'm considering dying my hair auburn, possibly as a consequence.

4. Wow wow wow. This is an amazing letter from a mum to her son....

"I roll all your shirts and stack them, one upon the other, like all the years, and know that this is just the beginning of the leavings. I bite my lip hard and try to be brave, like the day you were born. How could my mothering take so many u-turns and still get here so fast?
I remember when you were small enough to hold in my arms, warm against me, this sun bathed stone, us engraved into rock here. I hadn’t known how fast the wings would come and that you would fly into the dark, into the sun, and so soon. That when you became a man, I’d feel so empty – and so very fulfilled".

Ann Voskamp

5. Westboy fell asleep at the table yesterday lunchtime, so I took the opportunity to cut his hair. He totally freaks out at haircuts, so won't let a proper hairdresser near him. It feels like such a betrayal of trust to cut someone's hair while they're asleep though. I'm convinced it's the kind of thing that will give him 'issues' in the future. And I'm really really bad at cutting hair, so they're *bad* haircuts. Poor boy. I probably ought to put the money I'm saving on hairdressers into a fund for counselling when he's older.

6. This is brilliant, challenging stuff. It's far easier to blog about cupcakes and family days out than sleep problems, struggling to potty train a reluctant 3 1/2 year old, and speech therapy, but then that subtley slips into image-management rubbish.

"It’s too easy for us women to get caught up in this comparison business. I had Alpha Mother – there may be others in our sisterhood channelling their own “superwhatever”. Let’s say “No More!” to this quiet conspiracy that keeps us all bound and chained. Let’s resolve to love each other and celebrate our idiosyncrasies together. What’s that you say? But you’re not a perfect parent? Guess what? Neither am I!"

Alphamothernomore

7. Yesterday i found myself saying "Even Buzz Lightyear has to sit on the naughty step sometimes".

(Blurry covert photo, ...ssshh!)

8. Blogger stats tells me that someone found this blog by Googling "owl ice cream". I like that.

9. It's good to see the positive aspects of introversion being noticed.

10. Thanks for all the lovely feedback on the Sleep post. I've changed some of the settings, so hopefully my blog will stop randomly deleting people's comments (sorry!).

The other ten-on-tuesday-ers are here: Sarah, Jo, Lucy, Hannah & Britgirl.

If you've got a blog and a 'ten', feel free to join in!

Tagged: What's on your iPod?

2012-01-31T11:33:00.001Z

Sarah at partyofseven tagged me to take part in this. I have to 'shuffle' and see what the first five tracks are.... (It's not technically 'my' ipod, which is going to be my excuse if anything embarrassing comes up).

Damien Rice - Cannonball

Counting Crows - Anna Begins

The Reindeer Section - Budapest

(I couldn't see a video for this, so you get Cartwheels instead)

Denison Witmer - Are You A Dreamer?

Sigur Ros - Track 2

(Oh. Dear. This is what I walked down the aisle to. Track 3 is beautiful, serene, atmospheric gorgeousness. Track 2 is the sound of tapes being chewed up in a murky cave. Bit of a mix-up. Thankfully the marriage is going well, despite it).

Shuffle's obviously having a melancholy reflective day :-(

InstaFriday

2012-01-27T23:33:00.002Z

Instagram photos from the past couple of weeks...

A sunny morning in Greenbank park

Dusk at Otterspool Promenade

Our paper city (from www.madebyjoel.com)

Chinatown

Walking to nursery school

Surviving long-term sleep deprivation

2012-01-26T20:42:00.001Z

I love sleep. Sleep deprivation would not have been my choice at all. However, having had so many broken nights from two insomniac babies, I thought I'd write a bit about how I cope with it. A couple of people have asked me about it recently, and it might be helpful for anyone else going through similar things (Feel free not to read this if that isn't you. Other people's lack of sleep really isn't that interesting, is it?!). I really try not to write Facebook statuses about sleep, so it feels kind of self-indulgent to blog about it.

As a baby, Westboy fought sleep at bedtime & naptimes, took ages to get to sleep, never stayed asleep for more than 30 minutes during the day, woke every hour through the evening and at least every two hours throughout the night until he was almost 2. ...By then I was pregnant with Westbaby, who also wakes repeatedly through the evening and night at age 1, and rarely naps for longer than half an hour stretches during the day. Westboy still takes a long time to settle at bedtime and wakes during the night. It feels like everybody else's children sleep better than this (but it might just be that the parents of children like mine are quietly sobbing somewhere).

I have notebooks documenting Westboy's sleep at various points, and for a while I was resettling him over 30 times a night. Yep, three-oh. And some of that 'resettling' took an hour or two. I actually have very little memory of this period of my life, which is probably a good thing. I do remember getting back into bed at 6.55am on the day of my PhD graduation, knowing that my alarm would go off at 7am. I was desperately hoping that noone would ask me what I'd studied for my thesis that day because I could barely remember my own name. I've had times of sitting at toddler groups, eyes glazed, struggling to chat with other mums through a fog of tiredness, and the months I spent working when Westboy was 8-13 months old were really tough.

We tried all kinds of strategies to improve Westboy's sleep. None worked particularly well, and most backfired. For example, introducing a dreamfeed to encourage him to sleep longer at night triggered a new waking time when the feed was due, with no longer stretch after it. Our reluctant attempts at controlled crying were met with several hours of hysterical screaming followed by him vomiting. When he was cleaned-up and eventually fell asleep exhausted he still woke an hour later.

I felt as though my decisions to breastfeed and to not continue controlled crying disqualified me from complaining about the situation. While they may have contributed, I actually feel that my boys (especially Westboy) simply don't need much sleep, have unusual sleep patterns, and struggle to relax enough to get to sleep (all very much like their Dad). ....But it's a difficult one to be objective about, so I could be very wrong!

This article by Dr Sears, and this one by the Analytical Armadillo resonate with my experience.

I've decided to write down some of the survival strategies I've found. I hope that this might help other people, and be a reminder to myself.

Change your expectations

What you think you're dealing with is broken sleep. Actually, probably the bigger issue is feeling that your baby's sleep doesn't match your expectations, or that he doesn't do what other people's babies do. If you can tackle those expectations and comparisons, and accept that 'normal' covers a vast spectrum of baby behaviours including sleep, then you're well on the way to surviving the lack of sleep. As there's such huge variation between babies in terms of weight, temperament, and when they reach developmental milestones, it's probable that 'normal' sleep varies too. From those infants who sleep from bedtime until breakfast from the early weeks, to the duracell baby with infinite energy and no 'off' switch. (This is assuming that you've ruled out the major things that might affect your baby's sleep, e.g. too hot, too cold, too light, too dark, itchy, teething, ear infections, reflux, -so that it is 'normal' sleep, as far as you know).

(Try to) stop comparing

I found it much harder to cope with Westboy's night-waking than Westbaby's, despite having an older child to look after this time. I reckon that's partly because I have fewer friends with the same age babies to compare with Westbaby. Those comparisons make it many many times more difficult to deal with the sleep deprivation. Accepting that your baby is doing what's normal for him or her makes coping with lack of sleep much less emotionally-charged and complicated.

I'm not suggesting isolating yourself from friends with the same age babies, but I think it is necessary to be aware of the subtle competitions that go on, and protect yourself when that would be unhelpful. Rather than talking to everyone about sleep, find a couple of sympathetic people who 'get it', especially if they've been through it themselves. Repeating and rehearsing how disrupted my sleep had been didn't help me to feel better about it. I had to ask some people not to ask me about sleep, so that I didn't have to answer questions about it.

It will pass. Find ways to stay sane until it does.

1. Don't count or time night wakings. I have notebooks full of Westboy's waking times as a baby. They're fascinating to look at now, and the occasional night keeping a note of wakings is useful to track any progress. However, it's a habit that probably only reinforced how bad the situation was and how little sleep I was getting.

2. Keep your baby as near as possible. We put Westboy in his own room when he outgrew his moses basket, which meant properly getting up (and waking up) to settle him during the night. With Westbaby, we created space for the cot in our room. It's a squash, but it's so much better. We've also had times of co-sleeping and have found that helped at some stages too (there's advice on safe co-sleeping here).

3. Having an iPhone has made a massive difference to the experience of being awake in the night with Westbaby. I've done online supermarket shops, chatted on Facebook to my brother in Australia, researched all kinds of things from coats to reflux, emailed friends, read blogs, looked at photos from all over the world on Instagram, and written endless lists of what I'll do during the daytime.

4. Take naps if you get the chance to (less easy when you have older children jumping on your head). I found it easier to think of the night as a series of 1-2 hour naps than a repeatedly interrupted 8-hour stretch.

5. Look after your skin, drink plenty of water, and invest in good make-up so that you don't feel shocked at how tired you look every time you pass a mirror. For me, mascara, lip gloss, concealer and painted toenails make a massive difference to how I feel I'm coping. And the occasional disbelieving compliment that I still look human on very broken sleep goes a long long way. (I should probably add 'exercise', but I always felt that I needed to conserve every bit of energy I had, so it'd be hypocritical. Walks around the park were about as much as I could manage).

6. Find books that encourage you. Not necessarily books about sleep, but ones that you find supportive and affirming (My favourites are: 'What Mother's Do: Especially When It Looks Like Nothing' by Naomi Stadlen, 'Barefoot in the Kitchen' by Alie Stibbe, 'The No-Cry Sleep Solution' by Elizabeth Pantley, 'Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches' by Rachael Jankovic, and the Dr Sears 'Baby Book' and website).

7. Work as a team with your husband, and look after him so that he can support you (that probably means having sex even when you're way too tired).

8. Take lots of photos & write little notes down of stuff your baby does when you get a chance. When you're out of the fog you'll wish you could remember it. I tried to intentionally enjoy cuddling my babies in the night, as precious moments that I wouldn't have experienced if they'd slept through, rather than wishing the time away.

9. It can seriously affect your mood and emotions, and can look lots like clinical depression. This radio 4 interview with author Helen Walsh and Professor Jim Horne discusses the possible effects of sleep deprivation on mental health. If you feel yourself slipping in that direction, seek help.

10. Caffeine. Sugar. Cake. More caffeine.

11. Know that you can survive it & it will get easier. One day. I'm still not great at coping with a really bad night, but it no longer scares me like it used to, because I've proven to myself that I can get through it.

12. Every parent will struggle with *something*. Whether it's when their child is a baby, toddler, preschooler, schoolage, teenager..... (It sounds a mean, but is sometimes a helpful perspective in emotional emergencies when someone's particularly smug about how well their baby sleeps).

13. Nod and smile at unwanted advice. Including this lot, if necessary.

Ten on Tuesday: Dragons & Popcorn

2012-01-24T21:27:00.000Z

1. I'm starting writing my ten on Saturday this week, rather than waiting until Tuesday night and ending up with a late late night. I've been thinking about how to not just manage my time, but also my energy. I start Monday with patience and enthusiasm, and get to Friday with an over-reliance on caffeine & Beebies.

2. I enjoyed the Chinese New Year parade in the city centre *SO* much. There are all these amazing things going on in this city, and I often think I should go to them but then don't, so it was great to be there. We managed to stand in just the right spot at just the right time to see dragons and firecrackers, which was fantastic. It reminded me of one of my favourite children's books: "Wow, City!" by Robert Neubecker, which has beautiful illustrations about a little girl's trip to New York with her Daddy.

3. Our favourite emergency pudding at the moment is popcorn with cinnamon sugar. Tom's warned me not to make it too often though, as it'll stop being a treat. As if there's such a thing as too much popcorn?!

4. Westbaby loves helping me with housework. Occasionally he is actually helpful, but mostly it's more of the clean-laundry-in-the-bath scenario. This week it was putting the dustpan & brush in the washing machine.

5. The boys have a new favourite game: carrying all the saucepans & lids to the opposite side of the kitchen and 'arranging' them. Westbaby is the instigator, his older brother assists. I think it may be an art installation (which Mummy keeps disrupting by tidying away...)

6. I made this heart banner. I think I've been reading too many American blogs and have started to think that decorating for Valentines day is normal here too...

7. I feel like I've been doing a crash-course in speech therapy, while waiting for Westboy's referral to materialise. Urgh. It's very interesting, but I'd really rather not have to know about these things.

8. Laura Marling playing in my car this week. I especially like the times when I start the engine & hear birdsong.

9. I find going to our local library pretty stressful. It has automatic doors that open onto a busy road, and my boys seem to shoot off in opposite directions and start pulling books off the shelves as soon as we're there. As a result, our trips to the library tend to be very quick and purposeful, and my book selection is impulsive and often pretty random. This time we seem to have done well though. The favourite, which is being requested repeatedly, is "The Troll" by Julia Donaldson.

10. These Tupler technique exercises are amazing, I lost 3 inches from my waist in the first 3 weeks of doing them, but... erm... they only work if you actually do them. I injured my ribs in mid-December, but think I've recovered enough to start again. So this is a bit of blog-accountability to get me motivated.

The other ten-on-tuesday-ers are here: Sarah, Jo, Lucy, Hannah & Britgirl.

Ten on Tuesday

2012-01-17T22:39:00.002Z

1. Westbaby keeps rearranging my piles of clean folded (but not yet put away) laundry. Usually into the dirty washing basket or the bath.

2. The combination of big changes to our routine (including Westboy stopping naps), coupled with important decisions has got me feeling anxious & overwhelmed. This was a good reminder that I don't know what I'm doing, but that's ok, really.

3. The loss of the nap also means that I have to be particularly 'high energy' and bouncy (which I so am not) in the afternoons to keep a whining Westboy awake until teatime.

4. We're enjoying playing with this paper city from the fantastic Made by Joel blog. I'm looking forward to making some toys from his new book too.

5. I don't think I've ever bought slippers before. I'm much happier either being barefoot or wearing cosy socks around the house. (I knitted some slippers once, but that's kind of different). I found these for £3 in Asda though, & like them lots.

6. We visited Otterspool prom (surely one of the coldest places on earth?) with Heather and Dexter-dog. That cafe is so good... hot chocolate AND diggers??? Westboy feels obliged to rearrange the table numbers and takes ice cream orders off other customers however, which doesn't make it a very relaxing place to go.

7. I had a mini-spending-splurge on CDs with Christmas money, so we now have Florence & the Machine, Snow Patrol, and Adele in the car (well, not literally).

8. Nobody say "isn't it nice that none of us are sick at the moment". Oops. Within hours of those words being spoken, Westbaby had vomited :(

9. I'm rediscovering fruit toast. It kept me going through the first year of Westboy's life.

10. I love it when people give me bits of ribbon. These were from my lovely sister & wonderful parents-in-law. I might've mentioned before (perhaps?!), I have an etsy shop.

Linking up with Sarah, Jo, Lucy & Hannah.

Banana bread

2012-01-14T11:31:00.000Z

Well, more of a loaf-shaped cake really.

Whenever bananas go past their best, I peel them and freeze them in a freezer bag. They turn to mush as they defrost, so are perfect for lazy banana bread.

I used to follow the recipe in 'How to be a Domestic Goddess', but this one's easier, and doesn't rely on having eggs in the house. It's mostly from this vegan recipe book (I'm currently dairy-free & wanted some recipes that didn't demand ingredients that I can't eat), with Nigella's alcohol-soaked-sultanas added.

It's more fudgy & substantial than other banana breads I've made, which is good. And if it hangs around too long you could always spread some butter on it and pretend it really is bread.

100g sultanas

75ml rum (or other liquid. I used Stones Green Ginger wine once, and fruit juice would work too)

1 1/2 cups plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/3 cup oil

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

1 cup mashed banana (about 2 bananas)

1/3 cup milk (I use oat milk)

Put the sultanas and rum in a saucepan, heat until the liquid bubbles, then turn off the heat and leave to soak for at least ten minutes.

Preheat the oven to 175c/350f. Grease & line a loaf pan.

Combine the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda & salt.

Measure the oil, brown sugar, bananas and milk into a jug and mix using a handheld stick blender (or just mash the banana first and mix it all together).

Mix the dry and wet ingredients together until just combined, then mix in the sultanas.

Spread the mixture in the loaf pan, and bake for 45 minutes, until the top is golden and a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool.

Ten on Tuesday

2012-01-10T23:13:00.000Z

Back from Christmas, New Year and a lovely break in Devon, with a Ten on Tuesday...

1. We now have a lovely floor in our kitchen and hallway. The hall floor was taken up over 3 years ago, and the kitchen was an attractive mix of bare concrete and black polythene for a couple of months. It's amazing what you get used to, and it still takes me by surprise when I catch sight of gleaming laminate each morning. The process of getting it fitted was mildly traumatic, involving keeping two small children away from the house from 9am till 6pm on a drizzly December Monday on 3 hours sleep with an injured ribcage. Thankfully the results were worth it.

2. I had planned to make stained-glass-window biscuits for the lovely staff at Westboy's nursery (I have no idea what the etiquette is for Christmas presents for nursery school staff. Any ideas anyone??). I set off to buy the ingredients for the biscuits, and discovered that boiled sweets are almost impossible to find. Even with suggestions from Facebook friends I drew a blank. I ended up using Asda's 'Rosey Apples', which I'd bought just-in-case I couldn't find anything better. Fortunately they worked brilliantly, even giving an unintentionally Christmassy red and green colour scheme to the biscuits. (The original plan had been to involve Westboy in the baking of the biscuits, but it ended up being a tokenistic sprinkling of sweets, as we were under time pressure and my perfectionist tendencies kicked-in. Sorry!)

3. My other Christmas present creation was biscotti. Mostly Almond & Cinnamon flavour, but a couple of batches of Ginger, and one Ginger & Dark Chocolate. MMmmmm. I kept some for myself too. I really hope that noone has broken any teeth on them though. That would not be such a good Christmas present.

4. Westboy took part in two nativity plays: one as a shepherd, one as Joseph (the benefits of a small church). It was heart-meltingly cute to see him up on a stage, with an element of breath-holding-danger, because he might've done pretty much anything while up there (thankfully he didn't).

5. Westboy took up birdwatching while we were staying with Granny & Gramps. He was really hoping to see a woodpecker or an owl, apparently.

6. We didn't see any woodpeckers or owls, but saw some stunning beaches and rainbows while we were down there.

7. Westbaby had his first birthday while we were in Devon. It's been a wonderful year, but I'm really glad it's over. Reflux, recurrent mastitis, chicken pox, wisdom teeth removals, and a plethora of coughs, colds & tummy bugs make it one that I'd rather not repeat.

8. Both boys are turning into climbers. It's one of those sights that provokes both terror and pride.

9. I really like this article, reminding me to savour the best moments of being a mum rather than expecting to 'enjoy every minute' of it, and this article on the importance of boring unglamorous callings (I think being a mum qualifies as that!). (Yep, I'm blatently just using my blog as a dumping ground to bookmark articles that I'd like to be able to find at a later date...).

10. Today I've been filling out my tax return while listening to this.

Linking up with Sarah, Jo, Lucy & Hannah.

Ten on Tuesday

2011-12-06T14:42:00.001Z

A last-minute entry, linking up with the lovely ten-on-tuesday-ers: here, here and here.

1. Westboy was incredibly irritating last week. It turns out he was coming down with the D&V bug that's going round (a hideous double-whammy, where you think you're better and then it strikes again. Evil). And worse than a D&V bug? A D&V bug and a cough. So every time he coughed I thought he was going to vomit. I was very proud of my brainwave to tempt him to drink dioralyte by disguising it as a fruit shoot. They actually taste similarly grim. His choice of entertainment while lying on the sofa sobbing was Fred Dibnah's railway documentaries. I would honestly have prefered hours of 'beebies.

2. I found this lovely nativity set. We used it on crèche on Sunday, abandoning our usual strategy of using the same theme as the adults. (Judgement?? Hmmm... Let's skip to Christmas, right?!). I love this Russian-doll-style nativity set too.

3. Westbaby is walking & had his feet measured for the first time. Yikes, he's a toddler. That happened fast.

4. My etsy shop is up and running!!! woooooooooooooooohooooooooooooooooo!!! I've had a lovely response to it, and it's been on my to do list for over a year, so just getting it done is wonderful. (...and in time for Christmas, so if you're looking for a gift for your sister, friend, mum, etc. head over and take a look... need to improve my self-promotion skills). I think I could lose myself in Etsy for several days, -so much beautiful stuff to see.

5. My current media fixes are Radio 6 during the day, Rev. & Strictly while washing up, Glee when tidying toys away, and the latest Lisa Hannigan album while driving (maybe not a great choice, given that one track is called 'Safe Travels (Don't Die)' and another 'Sleep'. Might need to stick another CD in the car...).

6. I've started doing my weekly food shop online. It's only marginally less stressful than Asda in a hailstorm with no suitable trolley and two small boys, as something always seems to go wrong at the payment stage. But at least I haven't ended up with 600 kilograms of onions, yet, which is always a possibility when you can't see what you're buying.

7. Autumn mirror (soon to be replaced by Christmas decorations, so better blog it before it's gone...)

8. Westbaby is like an Andrex puppy with thumbs. Any toilet roll he gets hold of ends up unrolled and shredded.

9. I'm ashamed to admit this, but I am incredibly excited about our new house-related purchase. A dehumidifier. I am fed up of wiping condensation off windows and mould from walls. And it's utterly fascinating, and really quite gross, seeing how much moisture it's able to suck out of the air in a fairly short amount of time.

10. Right, well, I'm used to the kind of writing where numerous academics pick apart every last punctuation mark and make you wait several years before what you've written goes public, so just hitting a 'publish' button is very unnerving, but here it goes....

Gruffalo Bread

2011-12-02T21:35:00.001Z

This is Westboy's interpretation of the Gruffalo, depicted in bread rolls:

I'm not entirely sure which is the mouse, fox, owl, snake, & Gruffalo, or even why he thought it was Gruffalo bread (apart from having read the Gruffalo lots recently), but I like it... and it's more appetising than roasted fox, owl ice-cream, scrambled snake and Gruffalo crumble!

[It's the basic white bread recipe again, but with a shorter baking time, -about 18 minutes]

A very speedy ten on a slightly hassled Tuesday...

2011-11-22T09:56:00.001Z

1. Bullet point blogging. Awesome. I'm too tired to fully form thoughts & blog posts. And sentences too, it seems.

2. I had a lovely 45 minute web chat with my brother in Brisbane at 3am last night, so maybe being up with insomniac babies does have advantages...???

3. Westboy has started saying "I'm very tidy". What he means is "I'm very tired". Yes, I'm very tidy too.

4. Me: "It's Mummy and Daddy's anniversary on Sunday. Seven years ago we got married". Westboy: "Oh no!"

5. ...And I spent it puking. Annual expensive-dinner-out thoroughly derailed.

6. I'd really hoped to get my Etsy shop up and running over the weekend, but due to '5' it didn't happen. Hopefully sometime this week I'll get it all sorted.

7. It's the last Inspired@Oomoo craft evening before Christmas this Saturday (26th November). 6-9pm at the lovely Oomoo cafe on Smithdown Road. A wonderfully chilled way to get some present shopping done and spend time drinking coffee & eating cake with friends.

8. I bought a pack of mini Weetabix last week. I'm sure it's partly because I love their current tv ad. A family are eating breakfast together, comparing what the day has in store for them. Boy. Dad. Toddler. (Why's Mum left out??? I think I have a Mums-are-underrated complex). Anyway, I've started mentally editing my days into the Weetabix format.

9. I'm a clothes hoarder. I've recently lost some weight, so I've been delving into the back of my wardrobe and have discovered a whole load of clothes that I'd forgotten about. It's great! Like going shopping without spending any money.

10. This is amazing (both for the scarf-wearing inspiration, and the editing)

Etsy

2011-11-18T17:40:00.001Z

I've been taking product photos and getting my Etsy shop ready this week (in the snatches of time when the boys are both asleep!). I'm looking forward to launching it soon, but here's a preview...

...So exciting!

Spicy Butternut Soup & Crusty White Bread

2011-11-14T13:55:00.001Z

Time for some food I think!

And to honour the title of this blog, some bread.

In our house homemade bread is usually an accompaniment to soup (because that's the only way to convince Tom that a bowl of liquidised vegetables is in fact a meal...).

This is definitely my 'soup of the season'. I discovered it while flicking through magazines, waiting for a haircut (I think it was in Good Housekeeping). It's a perfect Autumn soup. Mildly spicy, velvety smooth, and downright delicious!

The bread was made roughly to Nigella's basic white loaf recipe from 'How to be a Domestic Goddess'. I went through a phase of saving and freezing potato water (water that potatoes have been boiled in, -apparently it keeps the bread fresher for longer). However, I realised that this was an unnecessary eccentricity, given that loaves rarely make it through to the following day.

The recipe goes something like this: 500g strong white flour, 1 sachet fast action yeast, 1/2 tbsp salt, 1tbsp sunflower oil (Nigella says butter, but I need it to be dairy-free), and about 300ml warm water. I dissolve the salt in the water and mix the oil in too. Stir the yeast and flour, then add as much of the liquid as is needed to just form a dough. Knead in a mixer for 4 minutes (or about 15 mins by hand). Cover with oiled cling film and allow to rise for an hour, until doubled in size. Knock the dough back, form it into a ball, and place on a floured baking sheet or in a loaf tin. Cover this with the cling film and prove for half an hour. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 220C. Remove the cling film, slash the top of the loaf, and bake for 25-35 minutes, until there's a hollow sound when you tap the bottom of the loaf.

For the soup: roast a butternut squash with a little oil until soft (this can be done as unpeeled slices, or peeled and diced). I usually do this in with the baking bread, but it doesn't take quite as long to cook, so make sure it doesn't burn. Heat a little oil in a large pan, and add (chopped) a large onion, small red chilli, garlic clove, large potato, carrot, 1tsp ground coriander, and a bay leaf. Cook gently for about 20 minutes until soft. Stir it occasionally. Add the roasted squash flesh, along with a 400ml tin of coconut milk, 1 litre vegetable stock, and plenty of seasoning. Leave to bubble for a few minutes, then discard the bay leaf (remember to do this, unlike me! I had to do some emergency sieving to remove the flecks of green from the soup). Give the soup a quick whiz with a stick blender. I overdid the chilli the first time, and it was fairly fiery despite having fished out as much as I could see. This time, I overcompensated, and would've liked a little more spice.

I kept some of the roasted butternut squash aside for Westbaby, and both boys devoured the bread.

Ten on Tuesday

2011-11-08T21:07:00.000Z

1. I'm still not sure whether this is a blog, or a very public diary that no-one knows about. This says that introverts need space to reflect and process their thoughts each day, and suggests writing a blog as way to achieve this. Well, I'm definitely an introvert, and I certainly need space to reflect, but I'm still a bit apprehensive about shouting my thoughts to a roomful of strangers. Or even people I know. Or maybe especially people I know.

2. I've just spent a week at my Mum & Dad's with Westboy and Westbaby, while our kitchen floor was ripped out, damp-proofed and replaced. Westboy missed Daddy so much. One night he woke and could only be resettled by a facetime call. They ended up both falling asleep face-to-face across a wi-fi connection. Very cute & really quite bizarre.

3. At my parents', Westbaby slept in my old cot, and Westboy slept in my old bed. Surreal.

4. I went to a couple of toddler groups while I was away. I've never met so many nannies! It was a bit of a culture shock.

5. This week Westbaby slept for 4 hours in the night. That's no big achievement for most nearly-10-month olds, but both of my boys have been appalling at sleeping. Westboy woke every hour or two until around his second birthday, and Westbaby seems to be heading down a similar route.... I don't talk to many people about how my boys sleep anymore. It mostly just attracts unsolicited advice, of the "have you tried..." variety. I've either tried it, have a good reason why I'm not going to try it, or simply lack the energy to try it. And anyway, it's a bit boring hearing about someone else's sleep, or lack of sleep, isn't it?!

6. I need to teach my boys to catch spiders. As.Soon.As.Possible. Tom won't, so I had to catch an enormous one that was guarding the stairs. [shudder]

7. I love this. I'm trying to work out which one to start with...

8. At church, we try to cover to the same theme in crèche as the main preach, in some form or other. I'm leading on Sunday, and it's on 'Beasts' in Revelation. Yikes! How do you tackle that one with a bunch of 0-3 year olds?!

9. Westboy has started calling me "muddy". He has difficulty with some speech sounds and has been referred for speech therapy. He had been calling me "baddy", so this is a heart-melting improvement :-)

10. We made this amazing stuff. Westboy played with it for ages. It's 1 scoop of baby oil mixed with 5 scoops of plain flour (the scoop I used was 1/4 US cup, because I didn't have much oil, but that made plenty for some good playing). It makes a silky smooth crumble mix, that holds together like moon sand, so you can sculpt and build sandcastles, cakes, ramps, ...and whatever else your imagination chooses. We mixed it in an ice cream tub, and played with it on a tray, using measuring spoons, silicone cupcake cases, and a car. It smells nice and moisturises your hands too (I hate how playdough smells and dries my skin out!). To keep Westbaby occupied, I sprinkled some flour on the floor, and we drew in it and enjoyed exploring the texture of it. Then they both took it in turns to help me clean up (ha ha ha!)

[Yeah, our floor is covered with black plastic. It's just until other bits of floor are dry enough to lay laminate. It's a pain, but worked well for drawing flour pictures!]

Autumn flashback

2011-11-06T21:32:00.000Z

It's been beautifully autumnal this week (in that lovely golden-leaves-and-blue-skies way, not the soggy-rainy-cold type of autumnal that we often expect).

I've had the song 'Autumn Days' buzzing round my head. We sang it in assembly when I was at primary school, but I remember it was banned, because everyone used to sing "be-dooby-doo-doo" at the end of the chorus.

Well, that might not actually be the reason why we stopped singing it. It could've been the end of Autumn. Or teachers deciding that more specifically Christian songs with deeper theological truths would be more appropriate for our times of collective worship...

...but that's the reason I remember.

While I was visiting Mum & Dad's, I found some art I did at school. Most of it is homeworks from year 7, so I was 11 years old (except the 'quilled' tree, which is from when I was about age 9, I think).

Here's a little autumn medley of recent photos, old art, and with an imaginary soundtrack of "Autumn Days"...

Autumn days, when the grass is jewelled

And the silk inside a chestnut shell

Jet planes meeting in the air to be refuelled

All these things I love so well

So I mustn’t forget

No, I mustn’t forget

To say a great big thank you

I mustn’t forget.

(be-dooby-doo-doo!)