Miscellaneous news, featuring the word 'why'

It has begun. Asking why. About everything. I should be glad that he is such a curious and intelligent child. He wants to know about the world around him. Yes, erm, of course I'm glad. Here's one conversation we had in the car on the M56:

Boy: 'I want a tiny pink cake.'
Me: 'I don't have any tiny pink cakes.'
Boy: 'Why?'
Me: Because I don't carry tiny pink cakes around with me.'
Boy: 'Why?'
And so on...

He's been extra whingy of late. Probably because his branchial sinuses are infected (holes in his neck, evolutionary remnant of gills that should have closed over in the womb but didn't). He had one week of antibiotic ointment, one week of ointment and amoxycillin and now we've ditched the ointment but have a course of clarithromycin. He has two of these holes in his neck. One is very red and oozing lots of green gunk. We saw a specialist when he was a baby (it took a couple of weeks to notice the holes, babies' necks being what they are) who said nothing could be done while he's little but surgery is a possibility when he's older if infection becomes a problem.

It has, consequently, been a long day and I am hitting the bottle. A crisp Soave. I am preparing dinner, which I suspect I am cooking for one. Little man has just eaten two bananas and three ryvitas and has now moved on to an apple. He helped me to grind some spices and has just tucked into some coriander seeds, which he loves. He learnt to say 'coriander'. He also learnt how to finely chop herbs with a rocking motion of the knife. Another word he's trying to say at the moment is 'cushions' and it's unfortunate that it's sounding more like 'cunts'.

I finally told him this morning that the chickens had died. I wanted to wait until we went to the allotment, otherwise I don't think he'd have quite grasped the abstract concept of death. But now he knows they are not there. I told him they had got old and died, rather than that they were torn apart by some sharp-toothed beastie. He took it all in his stride, as toddlers do, and demanded a little fork to do some digging.

We then visited great grandma's house. Little man pressed the big red button. Well, it is very big and very red and just screams 'press me'. The Lifeline people called to check grandma was ok. I had to explain it was a false alarm. I asked little man not to press the button again. 'Why?' he asked. 'Because I bloody well said so,' I wanted to reply.

How to make healthy pancakes

Disclaimer: This blog post contains absolutely no recipes for, or information about, healthy pancakes.

Step 1: Go shopping in your usual manner. Actually, we would normally walk to the Co-op, which is healthy, but today we drove, which is not, because we needed more shopping than I thought I could carry. When we get there, little man generally takes charge of one of those basket-on-wheels thingies while I get a normal basket too. He has a tendency to ram into old ladies. Who mostly coo in proper old lady fashion, but not always. Once you get to the queue, you have to get the small one to help unload the baskets onto the conveyor belt. This is a purely diversionary tactic to stop them running round and round the booze aisle with arms flailing dangerously close to the bottles. Near the checkout will be some of those plastic lemon-shaped lemon juice squeezy thingies. You will be required to purchase one.

Step 2: Make pancake batter in the usual manner. My recipe is in imperial: 4oz flour, one egg, half a pint of milk. Make a well in the flour, drop in the egg, start to draw in flour whilst slowly pouring in half the milk. Then bung in the rest of the milk and beat til bubbly. (Did I just tell you how to make pancake batter? I do apologise.) Important: You must be getting a bolognese sauce under way at the same time as you make the pancake batter. This allows the small one to spend plenty of time beating the batter while you juggle burning-hot pans full of scalding-hot fat from the mince. While you are pouring off the fat, the small one will knock over the bowl of batter. Approximately half of it will spill over the worktop and onto his jumper. Clear this up in a cheery, it's ok, it was an accident, manner. You have just saved approximately half the calories of a standard batch of pancakes.

Step 3: I forgot to mention the healthy carrots that made their way into the batter before it was spilt. The carrot circles you thought the small one might have liked to eat. But he/she will demand cucumber instead. Now is the time to fish out and bin (or rinse and compost) the carrot.

Step 4: Having resisted the urge to swig wine straight from the bottle at midday and transferred the bolognese to the slow cooker, fire up your frying pan. Make the first pancake and present it to the child. Sprinkle on a little sugar and allow the small one to squirt on some lemon juice. They will put on an excessive amount. Present the small one with knife and fork. They will declare at this point that they don't like pancakes.

Step 5: Eat the rest of the pancakes yourself while the child squirts lemon juice onto their plate and laps it up like a cat. They will eventually move on to squirting it directly into their mouth. When there is about one nano-gram left in the lemon juice container, they will declare they do not like it and pull a funny face. Oh good, you will reply, because it's all gone.

Step 6: Congratulate yourself on your child's vitamin C intake, give them something else for lunch and clear up the mess.

Topics of conversation

It's 8.30am. So far today the boy and I have discussed:

• The fact that the bumpy bits on his hands are called knuckles, which are a type of joint, and that we need them so we can move our fingers.
• The relative states of happiness of baby fly and daddy fly, whose sadness can be assuaged only by being stuffed in my dressing gown pocket for a while then removed and fed multigrain hoops.
• The crescent-moon like shape of broken multigrain hoops (own-brand, people, don't tell me off). Who'd have thought he knew the word 'crescent' even if he does pronounce it like it begins with a 'p'?
• The technical specifications of the cast of Chuggington, including wipers, horns, lights, colours, shininess and top speeds.
• What colour we should paint our front door. The boy chose blue, which is good because that's what I already decided and I've bought the paint.
• The difference between a 2D picture of a circle and a 3D wooden sphere.
• Many other topics, including snails, buses, Baa Baa Black Sheep, missing mummy and daddy when they go to work, what we might sing at Jo Jingles, mummy's need for tea, daffodils, wallpaper, fish, sewing machines, the Insey Winsey Spider game and the fluffiness of dressing gowns.

Right now...

• Little man is looking extraordinarily cute in his fluffy new dressing gown. Thank you grandma and grandad.
• He is playing his new incey wincey spider game by himself, by which I mean he's shaking the dice and counting the spiders (four).
• We're having breakfast after a bit of a lie-in. I gave B the usual 'it's too early to hide from dinosaurs' spiel when he first arrived in my room then realised it was twenty to eight so sang the 'Mummy loves B/what shall we do today?' mash-up instead.
• I want to take the Christmas tree down but suppose I should wait until Saturday.
• I'm wondering with amusement what little man will make of YO! Sushi, which is where we're going for lunch.
• At the moment he's eating some peppered salami, but eating all the peppery bit at once and telling me it's too spiky. Oh, now he's telling me to eat the pepper 'snake'.
• The new toy  house is taking up a lot of room in the dining room, which is required for a family dinner tonight.
• I'm trying to decide which sling to take on the train to Liverpool, which is a tough one because B usually walks everywhere these days (everywhere usually being ten minutes into our local town). In fact, it must be weeks and weeks since I carried him.
• I'm going to make my second cup of tea and still lamenting the absence of a nice man to do it for me, although I can't stand the thought of actually having to share my house with someone else at the moment.

Transformation

Another hour or so of picking and feeling like I was playing twister whilst getting scratched by raspberry canes and nettled... and I had another 1.4kg of strawberries. There was only one thing for it. I think I've made jam before although I don't have a distinct memory of it so I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing. The result is very dark, but the strawberries were very ripe and they took a while to reach setting point so they were very well boiled.

Three nice things

1. Cross stitched hearts on linen. They may become an embellishment on some kind of little bag or picture made from my fabric stash, which is mostly old clothes.
2. Flowers in a salad, namely pansies and chive heads. Salad is good at the moment. Lettuce, radishes, beetroot, mangetout and courgettes are all provided from my dad's allotment. Herbs and flowers from the pots in my back yard.
3. The lighthouse on Ynys Llandwyn. The picture is not great as it was pissing down with rain and I got drenched. I wanted to take pictures of the pretty snails all over the island, but the camera was getting too wet. On the other hand, if it hadn't been raining, the snails wouldn't have all been out.

I love those blogs I read that often come with beautiful photography. The sort that inspires you to get off your backside and do something creative. My pictures are very much point and shoot I'm afraid.

I'm being dragged off to see the snails in the fish tank now. They're not supposed to be there, but I don't suppose they're doing any harm. So bye for now.

The ultimate spag bol

Yeah, I know everyone can make spag bol, but I find this combination of ingredients particularly scrummy so I thought I'd share.

You need:
Decent minced beef (you know, preferably without chewy bits)
Pancetta
Onion
Carrot
Celery
Garlic
Tinned toms
Tom puree
Beef stock cube (I know, highly inauthentic and a big cheat)
Red wine
Oregano, bay leaves, nutmeg

What you do:
Finely chop the onion, celery, carrot and garlic.

Brown the mince in some olive oil, drain off the excess fat and stick it in a bowl to vacate the pan. I tend to use about a kg of beef and make a reasonably big batch for freezing.

Brown the pancetta and stick it in the bowl with the mince.

Bung the veg in the pan and soften over a low heat, stirring every now and again. Then return the meat to the pan.

Now pour in a generous slurp of wine. I'd go for at least half a bottle, preferably two thirds. Also add the toms, a whole tube of tom puree or tinned equivalent, beef stock cube and herbs. I go for a couple of bay leaves, a desert spoon or so of dried oregano and a generous grating of nutmeg.

Now comes the crucial bit. Get it up to the boil, give it all a good stir together, then turn it down to the lowest heat you can and ignore it for a couple of hours. Maybe three. Or so. You can stir it every now and again but it's not that important. I'd recommend going out for a walk in the sunshine.

If it's boiled dry and stuck by the time you get back, you obviously didn't put enough wine in. Perhaps you were saving it to drink? Well don't be stingy, open another bottle!

Serve with the pasta shape of your toddler's choice and a sprinkling of grated Parmesan. We like spaghetti (big comedy factor) or penne (opportunity for sticking your fingers inside the tubes). If you're cunning like me, you'll grate a big block of Parmesan at a time and bung it in a tub in the freezer.

Some people talk of such things as chicken livers. Some may use half pork mince. Feel free to tell me if your ultimate spag bol differs from mine in some delicious way.

Strange days

This has been one of them. Little man slept until 9am. Yes, you read that right. 9am. Of course, he had a little cry at around half five to make sure I got woken up, then he went back to sleep. I got up at 8am and had a cup of tea. I took in the veg delivery. I thought, bugger it, I'm going to risk him waking up in the middle of my shower. He didn't. I got dressed. I went and made another cuppa. He finally woke up.

I would normally think, oh well, he obviously had some catching up to do. But I'm supposed to be looking out for symptoms of Lyme disease after finding a tick chomping on his leg on Tuesday. Flu-like symptoms and 'bull's eye' shaped rashes. I decided not to panic when he seemed like his usual crazy self. I asked him who I should vote for at the polling station, but he didn't seem to have an opinion on the matter. He was too busy showing everyone his daisies, which he then tried to put in my hair.

At lunchtime, I made myself a big salad with a carefully measured portion of posh feta containing precisely 14 grammes of fat. Little man decided he liked feta. For the first time ever. So I ate some of the ham I'd bought for him as a change from cheddar cheese or houmous. Still, I'm steadily losing weight. The goal now is to be 10 stone something. I don't care if it's 10 stone 13 and a half pounds as long as it's 10 stone something. Unfortunately I'd have to lose over another stone for my BMI to be supposedly normal. My conversation with the doctor about this is another story. No doc, losing weight has not changed my bra size.

After his lie-in, little man wasn't sleepy at his usual time, but not long after lunch he was flagging so we had a drive up the expressway and back. Then I carried him inside and we both went to bed. For another of those two-hour afternoon naps. It sounds blissful, but actually it just made me feel grotty afterwards. I had to go into the backyard for some fresh air in an attempt to wake up again. I swapped bulbs for French marigolds and pelargoniums in some of my containers and potted up some herb seedlings. Little man, meanwhile, threw sand off the decking onto the concrete area below. I've asked him not to, it seems such a waste and makes a mess. I've tried taking him back inside when he does it but he still goes back to it again next time. I figure it's not important enough to make an issue of.

At tea-time, he ate cabbage, having shunned anything remotely resembling a leaf ever since weaning. A strange day indeed. At least tonight he's only taken a small toy car to bed. Not like the tambourine I had to remove last night.

Sticky tea bread recipe

This is from Delia's Frugal Food, which I frugally bought at a second-hand bookshop. It's a really easy cake and rather yummy and as someone requested the recipe I thought I'd share it with everyone.

You need to find:
150ml water
150g caster sugar
110g sultanas
110g butter
1tsp bicarb of soda
1 large egg
I tsp baking powder
175g plain flour

Preheat your oven to 180C or gas 4 or guess if, like me, you are new to having a fan oven.
Grease a 450g/1lb loaf tin. Delia says line it with greaseproof paper but what's the point in having non-stick bakeware if you have to line it? I grease and flour mine and it hasn't stuck yet.
Get a pan and stick in it the water, sugar, sultanas, butter and bicarb. Bring it to the boil, stirring it all together, then boil for ten minutes. It has an explosive tendency to boil over and you need to keep stirring it down or lifting it off the heat for a second. But whatever you do, do not leave it alone to attend to the needs of a child or the gloop will end up all over your hob. What you can be doing is sifting your flour and baking powder and beating your egg.
Then take it off the heat and let it cool enough so that when you stick the egg in it won't scramble. I put the pan in the sink with an inch of cold water round it. Stir the egg in, then the flour and baking powder. Give it a good old mix until it's all smooth, pour it in the tin and bake for about an hour and a half in the middle of the oven. Feel free to go out for a stroll in the sunshine while it's cooking, but when I got back after an hour and twenty minutes my latest loaf was a bit dried out.
Don't forget to enjoy the caramelly tasting bits left in the pan and on the spoon.
Enjoy the cake with a lovely cuppa.
Apparently it gets better if you keep it for a few days in an airtight tin. Mine have never had the chance.

Curtain call

I've finished my first ever pair of curtains. Blackout lined ones picturing lions, elephants, hippos and giraffes - all wearing party crowns - for little man's room. I'm very proud, even though they're a bit bodged in places. I had to rip out one seam when I realised I'd put the bottom hem at the top. The linings are only sewn in at the top rather than the proper way of having them sewn in all round. The finished product could do with being a couple of inches shorter. On the final line of sewing on the header tape of the second curtain the top thread started snapping for no apparent reason. I still don't know what most of the buttons and dials on my sewing machine do. But still, they look ok.

So next up are two matching pairs for the living room/dining room. And a panel to replace the horrible grubby nets that are covering the meters and fuse box in a glass-fronted cupboard. It's amazing how you stop noticing such hideous things after a while but they are really not attractive, even for people unafflicted with my extreme dislike of net curtains.

In other news, I've lost seven pounds. The diet is pretty basic: one piece of toast for breakfast, cup-a-soup for lunch, a couple of bits of fruit and a normal dinner. Oh, and a lot less wine. It doesn't even happen every day. I still go out for lunch sometimes. I still have the odd bacon butty or slice of cake. But it appears to be working and doesn't take much brainpower. Which is good, because I'm incapable of even planning to have bread in the house to make tomorrow morning's toast. According to my BMI I'm still obese, which is somewhat surprising and probably has a lot to do with my K cups.

Baked beans and a glass of water...

= one happy toddler.

He decided not to eat the salmon fishcakey nugget things we made for tea. But he had a lot of the accompanying baked beans. Then he put his hand in the bowl and squidged them through his fingers. Then he poured them into his glass of water. As tends to happen with toddler pouring, quite a lot went on the table. He put his hand in the glass and gave them a good mix. Then he poured the mix back into his bowl. As tends to happen with toddler pouring, quite a lot went on the table. And down his front. And into his lap. He poured it back and to, back and to. Most of the water was soon on the table. Fewer and fewer beans went from bowl to glass and back again.

I like to stay and keep him company while he finishes his tea. As he messes about a lot more than me, I tend to finish earlier than him. That's on the occasions when he doesn't decide almost as soon as we sit down that he doesn't really feel like sitting down to eat right now. Anyway, while it was nice to sit quietly for a few minutes, I couldn't stop thinking of the dishes that needed washing and all the packing that needed to be done before we go away tomorrow.

Eventually, he held up his hands and made the noises that mean, please mummy would you wipe off this awful mess; I just don't know where it came from. Then he had a yoghurt. Which he decided to eat with his fingers. I was very glad the plastic cloth was on the table because we had done some painting this morning.

Failing to plan

Since I decided to start watching what I eat, I would say my diet has actually gone downhill. It's difficult to plan when three days a week I work late, two or three days a week little man is with daddy, which overlap with me working to varying degrees and when I do plan to go food shopping something happens like the garage keeps hold of my car for two days instead of one. Oh, and little man is waking up maybe every third or fourth night for a cuddle so I'm tired and craving simple carbohydrates, like the tub of glace cherries I bought for baking.

So I've decided what I need is a big blackboard/whiteboard so I can get my head round what the hell I'm doing each week and therefore facilitate meal planning. This would also help me to avoid doing daft things like agreeing to meet a friend to go swimming with our little ones on a day when my little one isn't even going to be with me. It might also help the general fug in my head and my inability to remember what I did yesterday or am meant to be doing tomorrow.

Unexpected reactions to toast

The scenario: Little man is sitting at his breakfast bar (there's only room for one stool) with a cup of milk and bowl of cereal. Mummy is making toast. As she starts buttering it, little man says 'toh, toh'. Mummy says: 'You'd like some toast?' Little man nods. Mummy puts a couple of triangles of toast on a plate for little man and puts them in front of him. Little man wails. Clearly, mummy has done something wrong. She takes the toast away. Little man says 'toh, toh', reaching out his hand towards my plate. I offer him my plate and let him choose a piece of toast. He takes one and eats it.

Then there were the lunch choices:
'Would you like some soup?' (Red lentil, diet fare but tasty. Rejected by the boy, however, the day before.)
'No.'
'Would you like some cheese on toast?'
'No.'
'Would you like some beans?'
'No.'
In the end I gave him some oatcakes, cheese and tomatoes, which he picked at. I don't know how much oatcake ended up in his cup of water because he did it after I'd finished my lunch and was tidying the kitchen.

This evening he picked all the crispy bits off some potato wedges and ate only those bits. He kept biting bits off the mini sweetcorn and chewing them up. Then spitting them out.

I am struggling with the toddler psychology. The wrong-plate-colour tantrums. The getting-set-in-his-ways desire for oatcakes every day.

The dreaded and not-to-be-mentioned D word

Ok, ok, maybe just one resolution around the modern new year... but I don't like the word and all its connotations. I don't like the way it tries to make us all think we have to conform to some celebrity-fashion-tabloid-reality TV-plastic doll-someone somewhere is making a lot of money out of this... idea of what women should look like. However, I have been feeling somewhat unhealthy lately, in a backachy, less-than-glowing, pass me another slice of stilton kind of way. So I'm going on a diet. Did you notice the word or did I manage to sneak it in there while you were skim reading?

Not a bimbo-endorsed, join my club, buy my video, eat my breakfast cereal kind of diet. (Aaargh, I said it again.) Just a standard, healthy, cut the crap kind of diet. (Aargh!) A 'no thank you' to cake kind of diet (!). A being organised enough to not call into a handily placed, fat and salt-laden, morally problematic fast-food 'restaurant' kind of diet. [Anyone know a good lawyer?] A vegetable soup kind of diet, a smaller portion of pasta kind of diet, a not drinking in the week kind of diet.

Now where did I put my willpower? I seem to have misplaced it...

Preheat your ovens now...

I was going to give you a picture. But I didn't get round to it when they were fresh yesterday and now there are hardly any left. I'm referring to the gooey chocolate and ginger brownie thingies I made from Earthenwitch's recipe. Anyway, believe me, they were gorgeous. Worth nearly blowing up my parents' microwave in a mysterious butter and chocolate-melting incident. I don't have one of those hand-helder blender things meant for soup so I finely grated the ginger instead. And I can confirm it took 40 minutes in a standard gas oven on mark 5.

I also made a lovely sticky tea bread the other day from my new Frugal Food book by Delia Smith. Here's how:

Stick this lot in a pan and bring it to the boil: 150ml water, 150g caster sugar, 110g sultanas, 110g butter and 1 tsp bicarb of soda. Boil for 10 mins but don't leave it or it'll boil over. Take it off the heat and let it cool for as long as your patience lasts. Add 1 large, beaten, egg, 175g sifted plain flour and 1 tsp baking powder sifted in with the flour. Mix. Bung it in a greased and floured 1lb (I know, 450g, I'm mixing my measurements up but loaf tins are designed in lbs!) loaf tin and stick it in a gas mark 4 oven for an hour and a half. When it's cool enough, cut a generous slice and enjoy. It's very portable too for packed lunches/eating at your desk.

I realise I'm not blogging much at the moment. Most of the time I'm just feeling sorry for myself and don't have much to say that wouldn't be a bit gloomy.

Windy day at the seaside

New Brighton. Wirral. Not to be confused with Brighton, Sussex. Windy day. Turbines turning. Waves splashing over the prom wall. Interesting view of Liverpool's scrapyards. Container ships being guided into dock by tugs. Pigeons to be chased. Stones to be examined. New knitted mittens to be waved. All polished off with a fish and chip lunch, at which little man suddenly found his appetite, which meant we were all waiting for him to finish for a change.

BLW: A year on

It occurred to me the other day that little man has been eating real food for more than a year now. Well, when the fancy takes him anyway. I've often wondered when you qualify as an 'oldie' on the forum; I think we must be there now.

So here's a round-up of today's eating shenanigans. Little man had a very restless night and was awake early so it was cornflakes (dry) at about quarter to seven, followed by blueberries, followed by a few bites of mummy's toast. And a few slurps of milk.

At Tiny Talk he did his usual trick of flashing a cute smile to get extra biscuits then had a banana too. At the supermarket he wanted to buy a melon, but we were only getting some lunch to share with allgrownup and her boy. Little man did have to have some of the baguette in the car on the way there though. He later tucked into houmous, pasta salad, bean salad, sliced chicken and cherry tomatoes but rejected the Lancashire cheese. Allgrownup's new daughter slept through it in her mummy's sling but got crumbs on her head.

Little man fell asleep in the car on the way home. And stayed asleep. After nearly an hour I got him out of the car thinking that would wake him up but that he had been in the car seat for quite long enough. He went back to sleep in my arms and we both snuggled on the sofa for another hour. Consequently, he was having a snack of raisins at 4.30pm when he woke up, as I started to cook tea.

Tea was a phased affair. He started opening cupboards and demanding breadsticks, so I put on the peas and sweetcorn far too early and we had those first. Ten minutes later potato wedges were ready - he has now decided he eats potato after several months of avoiding it in any form. Ten minutes after that lamb kofta meatballs in tomato sauce from the local butcher's were finally cooked through but he only wanted a couple of mouthfuls by then. Yoghurt for pudding, which went all down the front of his clean jumper as usual; I should know better by now. And a few grapes.

So there you go... one year on and I no longer worry about all the things that used to seem so important: precise timings, quantities, nutritional balance at every single meal, why he won't eat broccoli (A BLW sin), and when on earth he is going to stop making such a bloody mess...

Spuds-u-like?

Salmon, sauteed potatoes with rosemary and courgette and broad beans in garlicky butter. That's what we had for tea. Little man saw me dig up the potatoes and examined them in all their muddy glory. He saw me pick the courgette and he saw me pick and pod the broad beans. Now the theory goes that this means he will be more interested in eating the end product...

While I was cooking he made up a little concoction of his own consisting of the ends of the courgettes, a handful of broad bean skins and a few bits of garlic peel. He stirred these into a mug-full of cold water, then drank the water. He made a grab for the cornflakes, which always happens just before teatime, but luckily was distracted by the discovery that the rock that lives on the kitchen windowledge fits nicely into a ladle.

So we sit down and eat. He stuffs in a load of salmon. He has a second helping of salmon. He puts a piece of courgette in his mouth and immediately spits it out again. Then he tries to get out of his highchair having not touched any of the other food.

'Try some of the potato,' I say. He ignores me. I drag my chair round so I'm next to him instead of facing him and take a piece of his potato. I nibble it. 'Yum yum,' I say. 'These are the potatoes we dug up from the garden.' He takes a piece. He nibbles it. He stuffs it in and proceeds to eat most of the spuds I've given him. I then move on to the broad beans. I eat one. 'Try a bean,' I say, going to eat another one myself. He leans forward and eats the one I'm holding. I proceed to feed him broad beans until they are all gone, at great risk to my fingers now that he has a respectable number of teeth.

Was he waiting for me to check that his potatoes weren't poisoned? Does he like the novelty of being fed after a year of baby-led weaning? A year in which I still haven't worked out how to predict what he will or won't eat on any particular day. He's obviously fickle. Just like mummy.

Thanks to my dad for actually planting the potatoes, broad beans and courgettes, which I would probably have never got round to.

And thanks to Cave Mother for giving me an award! Unfortunately I can't work out how to add a picture anywhere other than at the top of the text, so I can't include the 'One Lovely Blog Award' icon here:

Today's discoveries

• that the path past the dilapidated cottage and smashed-up car at the edge of Yarrow Valley Country Park actually follows the river for another couple of miles and is lovely.


• that my new walking shoes are very comfy.


• that I am still not built for running however exuberant I feel about skipping along a riverbank without a twenty-something pound toddler on my back.


• that Cono Sur Pinot Noir is currently half-price in Somerfield.


• that it is impossible to drive slowly whilst listening to Hungarian Gypsy music.


• that knitted mushroom stems look quite rude.


• that someone has made a sculpture of Angelina Jolie breastfeeding her twins. No idea if she actually does.


• that sometimes I am quite lucky, like when I leave my camera on the garden bench all afternoon while I am in work and the weather stays dry, which also means that my sheets on the line are nice and dry.


• that Sunday night can be pasta night as well as pizza night.


• that scruffy-looking nerf herder is probably the best insult ever invented.
• that although I am perfectly capable of changing a lightbulb it is very tiresome having to do everything myself.
• that the layout of these blog thingies can be very frustrating at times. Give me Quark XPress any time.

Pancakes

Got home from Wigan to find a for-sale sign outside my house, even though the HIP isn't done yet and I haven't okayed any sale blurb yet. About an hour later estate agent is on phone saying there's a woman from Newton-le-Willows sitting outside and could she have a look round. Er... I would have liked time to tidy up!? And she made it sound like Newton-le-Willows is a very long way away. Anyway, I guess it's good to clock up the first viewing even if I did have to hastily remove my Mooncup from the bathroom windowledge. The chickens are proving to be a talking point.

I made pancakes for tea with a choice of two savoury fillings: spinach in a cheese sauce, or bacon, mushroom and tomato. It wasn't difficult but involved a lot of utensils and pans and juggling a lot of ingredients and timings. But I thought it would be fun. I thought little man would like to watch. No, he liked to grab any utensil within reach - bearing in mind that he's standing between my main work surface and the sink where all the dirty things are being chucked - then drop them out of the open window. No amount of asking him to stop made any difference. So i had to decide whether to a) move all my stuff to another, more cluttered work surface or b) shut the window despite it suddenly being warm and sunny. a) was no good because the boy was only stood there to keep him amused and if I moved elsewhere he would just start getting up to more mischief elsewhere. So I shut the window. Then I got him to come outside with me while I picked up all the stuff he had dropped and I made out that he was helping to bring it all back in. Like, who am I kidding?

Oh, and he didn't eat any of the pancakes. Not one tiny mouthful.

That was just one episode in a continuous cycle of toddler mischief today. I seem to end most days feeling completely frazzled at the moment. And then I feel guilty that we haven't had some kind of fairytale wonderful day in which I haven't occasionally snapped at him. To top it off he seems to be teething again and is waking up at random times of the night.