An award!

I was really flattered to receive the following award from Susana at Our Homeschool Fun last week. Susana writes a fantastic blog full of interesting tips and ideas and all the things she's done with her three children - soon to be four! and I am amazed she finds time to do it all, on top of homeschooling and housekeeping. If you don't know her already, and you have a minute, stop by there.



To accept the award, I have to pass it on to 15 blogs that I have newly discovered and enjoy reading. I've put something about each one so you can see if any spark your interest.

Godspace - my favourite - currently running a series called "what is a spiritual practice?" and accepting submissions for it. Check her out!
Yummy Mammy - life as a single mum in another country, trying to move home.
Future Mama is learning about babies, pregnancy and the like, writing funny stuff and hosting cool giveaways.
Blue Cotton Memory has five boys, some grown up already, and a lot of wisdom to share.
Down to earth is all about gardening and making things at home, simply. Great recipes and ideas.
Filth Wizardry - Full of fun, messy ideas for kids!
Hans and Shinta live in the Faroe Islands. Never heard of it? It's between Denmark and Iceland. Go have a look, she's organising a round-the-world trip for a toy bear for a sick child - perhaps you'd like to host him?
The Artful Parent - the title is self-explanatory, I think.
Traveling the Blogosphere - featuring lots of different blogs from around the world. Lovely.
Wise Craft - has a lovely fabric flower tutorial which is on my to-do list! and lots of other things.
Unplug Your Kids - currently on holiday but usually full of ideas.
Your Cool Friend Cheryl - cool and funny. Kids and crafts.
Five Orange Potatoes - this site has everything, but I love it because of the garden and flower related stuff. Oh, and the activities. And...
4 Crazy Kings - Where I get lots of craft ideas!
Steadfast At Home - I love her thoughts about being feminine (which I'm not!) And about her garden.

Open Ended Art - yellow collage

Click here to see what everyone else did for OEA!

Not only did we start on this late, but it was not a very auspicious beginning:

After your milkshake, would you like to do a collage?
What's a collage?
It's when I give you glue and paper and you do some sticking.
No. I want to drink my milkshake.
Of course, but when you've finished your milkshake?
No. I want to play in my house.
How about if I give you the paper and you can stick it to your house?
Hmm. No.

Ah. So I tried again after the milkshake:

Would you like to do some sticking now?
No.
Not even if Mummy comes and watches you?
Yeah! Sure! Sure!

Bingo. Must remember to specify that first, next time!

Here's what he did before getting bored:

Click on the photo to get a closer look

An advert for the local bus service, fireworks, Swiss flag with yellow cheese cross (from a magazine). It's Swiss national day soon, can you tell? Also an old handprint and a bunch of the sticky-backed plastic that we used in our OEA with paint last time! Which is why those bits are yellow... and in fact he had already added them to the house, when it was still just an Ikea cardboard box.

To use up the leftover glue, I made serendipity squares - first time I've made them. They're not quite finished yet so no photos. But here's my lovely boy in his newly decorated house instead!

The handprint is one we made for party invitations back when he was turning one!

MTM - weather!

We've had a lot of hot weather and thunderstorms recently, including the largest hailstones we have ever had, I think. (nothing like what you get in America of course, but still the size of large marbles).

So here is our tin - I think these ideas were my own but I've seen so many other tins that maybe I have been inspired elsewhere and forgotten it. If you've done a weather tin let me know and I'll link to you! and don't forget to click here to see what everyone else did this week.

Pickled onion hailstones, yellow nasturtium-sun in blue banana-yoghurt sky, bread and marmite thunderclouds and yellow pepper lightning, white bread/cheese/marmite cumulus cloud. Served on upside down lasagna tray for thunder noise!

Froglet absolutely loved playing with this meal.

Look Mummy, the thunderclouds have arrived...
*bangs them together while making thundery growling noises*
I'm going to dip it in here to make blue thunderclouds. Why are you writing down what I said? ... what's a blog?

The great thing about pickled onion hailstones is they accurately portray what a hailstone looks like inside as well as outside! Marmite is British yeast extract (Aussies and Kiwis also have it but theirs is slightly different).

We can take the flag out later and stick it in the muddy ground where the plants are growing.
*When asked what for:* For fun! And to show that it's windy.
The hailstones are dropping out of the thunderclouds...
bang! It went in the sun!... bang! It went in the blue sky!

We were meant to have snow too, but I hadn't had chance to make it so we had it as a snack later instead:

Chocolate and coconut snowman, strawberries hidden under cream snowclouds.

Look Mummy, I made an eye and a nose for the snowman.

Open Ended Art: Yellow Paint

This time I got to choose what materials Froglet needed for his craft. Yellow paint was a given. We also had white sticky-backed plastic, a paint roller, scissors, a pen, imitation canvas (the sort of textured paper you get for oil or acrylic painting) and red and blue tempera. Because we only have red, yellow and blue tempera. We should really invest in another colour, like white.

I asked Froglet whether he wanted to cut up the SBP himself, or wanted me to cut it, or wanted me to draw shapes for him to cut. He chose the latter, and announced that he would like birds. We ended up with two birds, an egg, two cars and some squares. After a bit of a meltdown when the first car lost its wheels in the cutting process, peace was restored and everything else cut out rather well. I cut some thin strips from the scraps, which Froglet thought might be trees. One of the scraps looked a bit like a whale, so we used that too. Then I helped him peel the back off the SBP - he couldn't manage it himself - and he stuck all the bits onto the paper.

It's a forest, with cars and birds and a dolphin.

Some rearranging was necessary before the final result was deemed acceptable. Fortunately this stuff peels off nicely.

Next we made three pots of yellow paint and talked about what colours might result if we mixed in a drop of red to one and a drop of blue to the other. Froglet thought red and yellow might produce green, then after stirring a bit he suggested pink, and finally orange. He got blue and yellow right first time. Then we discussed whether the orange paint was really orange or whether it was still more yellow, and the same for the green. After that I let him loose with the paint roller.

After waiting for it to dry and peeling off the SBP, here is the end result.

The daddy duck is in this car and the other one is the visitors car.

I love how the greeny-yellow has dried almost fluorescent. Froglet was still in painting mode when he had finished the first masterpiece, so he did this on a sheet of Ikea packing paper (note to self: this stuff is way too thin for paint!)

He had more fun than last time and we stretched the project over a couple of days too! Check out what the other crafty mums and kids did for the blog carnival here:

Organising meals

This post is part of the ABCand123 picnic. Sort of. Click here to see how everyone else organises their space.

My mother, parent of four children all neatly spaced three years apart, was extremely organised. She had a huge diary in a drawer of its own, and any time we wanted to do or plan anything, or had school trips or whatever, we would be instructed to go and put it in her diary. Menus were prepared in advance, shopping was never done without a list, meals were served reliably on time, the house was neat, with a place for everything, and so on. (Did I mention my mum later became a teacher? Unsurprisingly, she's very good at it.)

Sadly, not much of this has rubbed off on me, although I am told that at 2 years old I was very tidy and had a home for everything. The two things I have retained are the diary, and the menu planning. It saves so much money and stress when you go to the shops armed with a list. It saves time too - leaving more time to teach and/or play with your kids! And it means you're sure they're getting a balanced diet. Of course I don't always stick exactly to the list - if things are on special offer we will buy those too and throw them in the freezer for when they do come up on the menu.

I have two sets of menus, which live in a folder on top of my freezer: 4 weeks of cold-weather menus including items such as cottage pie, lasagna and hot pasta dishes, and 4 weeks (newly drawn-up) of summer menus listing salads, bread-based meals and other things that require minimal cooking. Who wants to slave over a stove in summer?

Each of the folder menus comes with two shopping lists at the bottom of the page - one for Monday and one for Friday. These lists only include things that I don't always have in, or run out of quickly, like tomatoes. Then we have a "staples" list full of all the stuff that I always have in and replace as soon as I run out even if we have no plan to use it immediately.

The lists work in conjunction with my boards. Here they are:

Hopefully you can see that the left board is mostly like a diary with the week laid out and upcoming dates written at the bottom. The right hand board has a set of my cold-weather menus (minus lists) pinned up behind it - I still have to change those - and a space to write up our to-do lists, one for each of us, and another for items we have just run out of and items we wish to acquire on our next trip to the UK. When I make my Monday shopping list, I use the menu, the staples list, the freezer list - of which more in a minute - and the board, and write it all down in the order that I will find it in the supermarket. (I hate it when they move the shelves around! Fortunately that rarely happens here.)

I do have a real diary for writing in long-term dates too, but the board is so easy to use because it's just there. It's just a piece of plastic from a very large picture frame, cut in half (it broke when it fell off the wall, that's what gave me the idea of doing this), and with the edges covered in black electrical tape so they aren't sharp. The two pieces are on adjoining cupboard doors above the kitchen counter. They're only attached at the top so I can get under them, albeit with some difficulty, to change the menus when needed. The whiteboard pen doesn't wipe off very well , even with cleaning alcohol, because the plastic isn't really intended for use as a white board, but it wipes off well enough to see what is current and what isn't. I love having the two layers so I can move things around temporarily with arrows and so on.

The freezer is also very organised:


The numbers at the top refer to which drawer an item is in. Numbers following items refer to either how many bags of something there are (e.g. two packets of mince), or how many portions in the one bag (e.g. lemon chicken to serve three people). Only I know which ones are which! Things get crossed off as they are used, and written up on the board if they need renewing.

My fridge does not benefit from this system, because it is a filing place for all sorts of pictures and coupons and informative papers. My mother, of course, would keep these neatly in her diary, in its special drawer.

Blue impossible pie

Today Froglet and I decided to use up some leftover coconut by making impossible pie. And since ABC&123 are looking for blue or brown activities, we decided to make it blue. Hopefully they've not beaten me to posting this time! *laughs*

When I say we decided, I mean I decided. Because I, and not my son, am the boss, despite his apparent disagreement. Just because you are steadfast in your belief does not mean that you are right, Froglet.

Impossible pie, in case you've not come across it before, is named thus because it's a self-cruster. My recipe asked for a 10 inch pie dish (25 cm), but mine was 11 inch (28 cm). How is that possible? Or should I have measured the base rather than the rim? Anyway, we also have tiny pie dishes so I halved the recipe and used five of those, although I think six would have been better.

The halved recipe runs as follows:

2 eggs
25 g (1 oz) margarine
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup plain flour
1/2 cup coconut
1 cup milk
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup sugar
pinch of salt (1/8 tsp!)

and blue food colouring, of course. We added the blue colouring to the milk, and then added some more when it was all blended because it looked more green than blue.

My cup measure is 250 ml, in case you're using different cups.

Blend all together, pour into greased pie dishes (4 inches/10 cm), bake at 160 C for about 40 minutes (fan assisted oven). The original recipe said 175 C for 1 hour, but that was for the full recipe in a large pie dish so I adjusted. You may need to fiddle with this a bit for your oven.

When it was all cooked, the coconut was supposed to end up on top, the eggy bit in the middle and the crust on the bottom... and it did! Very thin crust, but I think it was always thin.

I will have these pieces, and two of that one, Mummy.

I'm happy to say it met with approval!

On being a permanent expatriate

I've been an expat for almost as long as I can remember. There was a brief lull after my sister was born when we moved back to the UK for about 3 years, but then we were off again. Oh, and I returned to the UK to study, meet and marry my husband. No I didn't study my husband. I studied languages. Perhaps not surprising, when you've grown up in several of them.

Less than two years after our wedding, we were leaving the UK for good (well, probably). That was 6 years ago. So for 22 years of my life I have lived in places that were not only abroad, but were not even English-speaking.

There's something incredibly odd about not being at home in your own country. To many people there's something pretty odd about not feeling patriotic towards your own country - although as I've said before, Brits aren't as patriotic as other nationalities. And there's something quite strange about turning up at university to find that although you speak English perfectly, with a perfect RP accent, and understand the correct use of shall/will, everyone else appears to have learnt something rather different. My husband once told me that I sound like a character out of an Enid Blyton book. Well yes. I've never read any of the books he grew up with - if I hadn't returned to the UK when I did, I might have missed out on Harry Potter - but Enid Blyton was readily available on my librarian-mothers shelves.

As a child I rather liked being an expat. I liked attending the local school, learning to speak fluent French but being able to switch back into English for any secrets I wanted to share with my sister. I'm sorry to say I rather looked down on people who "couldn't be bothered" to learn the local language and try to fit in, who spoke of "going home" for Christmas, as if they were not living long-term in this country. As I and my 3 siblings were quick learners, we were always perfectly contented and at home where we were.

But now, as an adult, in a country where the local tongue is more dialect than language, spoken rather than written, and as such very nearly unlearnable without tremendous effort, I find a whole new aspect of being a permanent expat. Loneliness. I realise why it mattered so much to my mother when her friends moved back "home", as they invariably did. There is something special about being with another native speaker of your own tongue, that almost no non-native speaker, however good, can quite attain. (I wonder if my friends felt this when I was a teenager - or perhaps it doesn't apply if you grew up somewhere and are effectively a native). That certainty of understanding as much as anyone can understand, of being understood in the same way. No need to watch the face of your interlocutor carefully to detect the slightest hint of "you just lost me". Out here, such moments are rare. Or if not rare, then at least infrequent enough that you appreciate them when they come.

Not that we have no friends. We have lovely, wonderful friends. Many, if not most, are expats themselves. (Some are even reading this!) But here's where the second special aspect of expatriate-dom comes in. Distance. Live in a country that speaks your language, or where you speak its, and friends can be just round the corner, in the house across the road, at church which is only a ten minute walk away. Some will be acquaintances and others will be kindred spirits. But live abroad and suddenly your options are limited. It's hard to be a kindred spirit when you're not sure you understand each other all the time. Perhaps no one speaks your language in your neighbourhood. The kindred spirits you stumble across might live nearly two hours drive away. Or they might rely on public transport, making a ten-minute car drive an hour-long trek. Your church might meet in the next city, because it's hard to worship in a language you command imperfectly even on your best day. (Church becomes study!) And that wouldn't matter elsewhere, because you wouldn't rely on those people, the ones so far away. You would have your network close by, as well. Here, distance becomes important.

And then of course, just living becomes hard work. If you want to go out, you need a babysitter - your friends network is too spread out to help much, and of course, the grandparents are elsewhere. Nearly all your sons little friends at playgroup speak dialect. (Your son comes home and speaks dialect to you, and gets frustrated when you don't understand!) Shopping becomes tricky. The Engineer bewilders people when, on business trips to the US or the UK, he starts excitedly chattering away to a shop assistant. It doesn't happen here - it would if we spoke fluently, no doubt. The toilets desperately need the attention of a plumber but just the thought of having to try to explain over the phone is daunting.

It's amazing what we take for granted as children. The ability to easily understand and be understood, to learn quickly and fit in, to call the place you live home and be fully settled and content there. I'm grateful for those things, grateful that my parents settled when I was still young enough to cope, that I was exposed to enough languages as a child to cope now, even when it is hard work.

Who knows, in 25 years time Froglet may be writing something like the above. Perhaps to him, born and bred in Switzerland, living in England would be expatriation.

MTM plus one

We did do our tin yesterday but I got delayed posting. This weeks Muffin Tin Monday theme was Dips & Sauces - click through to Her Cup Overfloweth to see what the other fab mums have done for theirs.

We had three dips and various pretty boring things to put in them. From front to back: redcurrant yoghurt, salsa, homemade cheese dip. Tacos, slices of nectarine and apple, carrot sticks, and frankfurters in the middle.

I think Froglet has never had salsa, tacos or cheese dip before - well I know he hasn't had this cheese dip because I made it up as I went along today! It's philadelphia cheese, milk, dried thyme and basil. Mmmm. He didn't like the dip on carrots, but did like it on the sausages. He didn't want to dip anything in the yoghurt at all, and asked where his spoon was for that!

Sadly most of this didn't get eaten, because I was badly organised and we ended up having our afternoon snack about an hour before dinner time. Ah well. The Engineer and I enjoyed it so much that it's now been added to our permanent summer menu plan!

Ooooh!

I was excited this morning to see that Future Mama had put up the results of the one of her giveaways that I had actually entered. Didn't think I'd win because hey, the lady has 400 followers! But of course I checked anyway and oh my goodness YES I WON. Froglet and Nutmeg were slightly puzzled at the outburst of laughing excitedness that ensued.

My prize (there were several winners) is a gift voucher to this lovely Etsy shop by GeorgiaBlue, who sells beautiful hair clips for girls (well obviously for girls. How many boys wear hair clips? Clearly the excitement has impaired my ability to speak sensible English). And I am particularly thrilled about this because with a bit of luck Nutmeg will be able to wear a couple to Zia's wedding, which is in just a few weeks. She doesn't have very long hair yet and I've not had much luck finding pretty clips for her here. So yay!

Now, the prizegiving over at Future Mama's blog isn't quite over - there's still one set open until midnight tonight, again with several possible winners, so hurry over there and check it out. And even if you aren't one for giveaways, check her out. She writes much better than me!

Giveaways are so exciting aren't they? (There's that word again. Someone give me a synonym!) And now I'm looking for ideas for one of my own, so tell me: what would you like to win - or what have you won in the past?

Open Ended Art: Tissue paper

This time I actually found open ended art rather stressful. Yesterday we did tissue paper. When we talked about it the previous night Froglet seemed to have some very clear ideas about what he was going to do and what he would need to do it, so today I just asked him to tell me what he needed and I would put it out. He chose three colours of tissue paper, white glue, water, paintbrushes and green glitter. (Yesterday he mentioned toilet rolls but as he didn't reiterate it today I didn't bother reminding him).

Then we sat down and I watched while he gave a running commentary on what he was doing.

Look, it makes the glue red! Maybe the flies will come and watch me do it. They will enjoy doing that with their mummies and daddies... Look the glue goes all watery and runny! I'm going to stick some of this T-shirt paper on.

After the initial discovery that painting with water on the red paper made the paper under it go red too, but that it didn't work with the pink paper, he stopped being very interested in the tissue, and mainly wanted to paint glue and water onto the page and add glitter to it. The picture below is meant to show how the glitter was actually floating about on the water!

I'm getting water on the sparkles so they will go fizzy like that volcano. I don't like them floating. I will put some glue in the water.

Eventually I got tired of this and stopped watching - it stresses me out thinking that he will ultimately make a hole in the page through wetting it over and over, and then he will get really upset and frustrated and refuse to do anything else for the rest of the day. I don't like it when that sort of thing happens, it leaves both of us with a bad feeling about crafts. And it frustrates me in advance knowing it's likely to happen.

However, it didn't happen - perhaps because he didn't carry on for very much longer once I had stopped watching! This is the final product. More glitter than tissue paper, but never mind. I'll do a different tissue paper craft with him later in the week - maybe fabric dying, then he can do whatever he likes with it and I can cut it up to do something with later.

This all goes to show that I am not very good at being hands-off! Something to work on - I blame my personality type. ;-)

Check out what everyone else has done with their tissue paper here.

Crafty Tuesday 2: Birds

This should have been last weeks instalment - that didn't work out but never mind. I chose the topic birds because of this mobile. Zia made it for her own room when she was still at school, and then passed it on to Froglet when he was born. Now it is in Nutmeg's room, and I thought we might decorate the rest of her room with birds too. Her second name actually means dove, so it seems appropriate!

Hopefully you can see from the picture how it was made. Four squares of that squishy craft foam stuff, rolled up to make head, body and wings, and then a long triangle for the tail.

And so without further ado, here are all the birds we have made over the last few weeks.

First, a coloured rice bird (and car). We got the suggestion to colour rice from Unplug Your Kids, and Froglet very much enjoyed bashing his about in a bag with food colouring and a bit of vinegar. We didn't have white rice, only the parboiled stuff, but I will be buying plain rice from an Indian shop soon so we can do this again because Froglet has really enjoyed playing with his rice, scooping and pouring and so on. I thought it would be interesting to do some sticking with it too:

Next, some contact paper painting. I really enjoyed this! I cut out several bird shapes and an egg from contact paper, and stuck them onto a piece of 12x12 scrapbooking paper. I thought it might hold up better than normal paper. I also put electrical tape over the edges of the paper to get a white edge. Then we put paint in Froglet's roller tray, gave him the roller and instructed him to cover the whole paper, which he did very happily. The round spots were made with the end of the roller. It's a complete coincidence that one little bird appears to be standing on a globe (spot), but I rather like it! We're going to do another of these at some point for Froglet's room, with trucks or planes, but I need the Engineer's help because I'm no good at drawing vehicles!

It's actually prettier than this in the flesh. The colours are better.

Froglet also made a little bird on a nest when we experimented with cornstarch clay a while back. He had seen it on one of the blogs I read, and wanted to do one too. I showed him on my own bit of clay how he could shape a bird's head and nest and eggs, but he did it all himself, I'm so proud of him!

And finally, a whole load of little matching birds. I made a stencil from cardboard and then just drew out a great number of them on cardboard of various colours. Some Froglet decorated with puffy paint after we finished using it for Open Ended Art the other day. Some he marbled with shaving cream - this is a lot of fun but our shaving cream smells very strong. Basically you put the shaving cream in a tray of some sort, then drip on as much food colouring as you like, wherever you like it, and stir to get that marbled effect. Press your bird down firmly onto the shaving cream, lift off and either scrape off the excess cream straight away with a spatula or leave to dry for a few minutes then wipe off with kitchen roll. We tried both and didn't see any difference.

Glitter-y, shaving cream-y, puffy paint-y.

The glittery set of birds was based on an idea we got from 4 Crazy Kings. I cut out the birds (the smaller birds are made from the bits cut out of the larger birds), then stuck some to some tissue paper on top of sticky-backed plastic. Others I just laid down on the white sticky-backed plastic directly. Then we filled them with glue and Froglet helped me sprinkle glitter and stars on them. The two he did by himself are the white one on the left and the small one at the top (I made the "Mummy" bird match his for that set). The ones directly on the plastic did not want to peel off without tearing the glue - we waited till they were dry of course - so I just cut off the plastic round the edges. They will be easy to stick onto something!

And that concludes this looong post. If you have a cool bird craft to share, please leave a link! :-)

Open Ended Art

Yes it's another blog carnival! I came across this blog when reading a post by Susana from Our Homeschool Fun:

Her carnival is about Open Ended Art, which is basically when you give your child the materials and then get completely hands-off and see what results. The more specific principles can be found here.

Last weeks topic was Puffy Paint. There is a recipe involving flour and water on the site but I'm not keen on using flour in craft materials because of maggots and stuff so I had a scout around and found a different recipe using shaving cream and glue instead. It's 2 parts shaving cream to one part glue. Mix and add food colouring as required.

We put in the food colouring first, with the glue. Froglet chose blue and yellow and we tried not to mix it too well, but in the process of trying to get it into a squeezy bottle it all got thoroughly mixed anyway. We discovered that our squeezy bottle was bit large for this sort of thing. Next time I would just make the white mix in the big bottle and then squeeze a bit of it into several small bottles along with a colour. But we would need small bottles, which I haven't managed to find yet.

You can see some rice got stuck to this one!

After the first couple of pictures we decided to add some more yellow colour (straight into the bottle, which Froglet then shook a bit) and some green glitter. We could have put in more really, then it would be more noticeable.

Several days later the paint is still puffy but a bit wrinkly as it has shrunk. I'm late posting, of course, so didn't get in on the McLinky, but we enjoyed doing this and will definitely participate again! This weeks topic will be Tissue Paper.

MTM - Pancake fillings

I was not feeling very inspired by todays Muffin Tin theme, but fortunately Froglet was too keen for me to pass on it. He has been asking for pancakes since Thursday and it hasn't worked out (I usually plan meals in advance). So, limited by the thought of pancakes, I was able to find inspiration and actually enjoyed making it too.

Big/Little: mushrooms, tomato wedges, cookie cutters, cheese rectangles... and snickerdoodles for dessert.

What you can't see is that the large tomato is actually pink rather than red. Very tasty too.

Froglet had fun with the cookie cutters, and ate everything, even a second helping of mushrooms.

I feel bad because loads of you commented on our tin last week and I didn't get round to commenting back, but will do so this week, I promise.

The things they say...

Some conversations we had with Froglet back in March. F = Froglet, M= mummy, D= Daddy

29 March

D: Get off me... GET OFF ME.
F: *mopes*
M: Did you not hear Daddy the first time?
F: I' not talking to you ever again!
D+M: *lol*
F: It's not funny!
D: Yes it is.
F: No it isn't.
M: You're talking to us right now!
D: Are you talking to us?
F: *pauses to consider* Yes. I know how you love me.

(later same day)

F: *comes into our bedroom stark naked*
M: Why are you naked?
F: Because I like being naked.
M: Would you like a bath, since you're naked anyway?
F: No. I will put my T-shirt on, then I won't be able to have a bath.

30 March, whilst having lunch

M: Stop slurping!
F: I'm not going to talk to you ever again.
M: You said that yesterday so I don't believe you.
F: I believe you.
M: See, you're talking to me already.
F: Well, be happy Mummy. Don't be cross. I love you very much.
M: *lol*
F: Some of your food from your mouth went splat on the table when you were laughing.

(a few minutes later)

M: *scribbling rapidly*
F: What are you doing?
M: I'm writing down what you said, so that Daddy can see it when he gets home.
F: *considers* I love you very much Mummy. Write it down, so that Daddy can see that.

Awwwww. I have to say that while I love the cute love-related bits, the bit I like most is the one about the food going splat. So very small-boy!

Eye infection

Oh no! My left eye has blown up to exciting proportions and the skin has gone all interesting. Which means I can't sit for ages posting. At least it's my day off so I can sleep and hope it gets better while it's shut. *sigh*
Bird crafts will have to wait for another day. But they are coming, we've done some pretty cool ones this week.

Sensory Muffin Tin Monday

Today there was no theme suggested over at Her Cup Overfloweth, so I decided to do a sensory tin. I was inspired by ABCand123 who have been asking for contributions for the Five Senses - and now I've logged on I see that they're actually doing that theme today. So hop over there for more sensory activities!

The tin itself is very close to the Monkey Bites we did as a copycat tin a few weeks ago, because those went down so well. I just added a couple of things with strong smells or specific feels. And this time I blindfolded Froglet and made him guess using the other four senses. At the end I took the blindfold off and let him tell me what he could see too.

The one you can't see is instant coffee powder. We also had banana pieces.

I did all four senses for each tin before passing on to the next one, which worked ok but I think next time I would have him smell all the tins in turn, then listen to them all in turn etc, because once he'd got in his mind that a tin sounded like x, he would keep guessing x if unsure, rather than reverting to I don't know or thinking of something else.

As you can see, there was nothing there that he guessed first by touch, although if we had done them in a different order I think he would have got raisins and water. Next time I would do touch before smell - I intended to this time but accidentally started writing smell first!
Froglet hadn't the faintest idea what the coffee was - when looking at it, he actually guessed brown sugar after I'd written down "don't know" - and that's because we don't drink coffee. We only have it in for guests. So no, I didn't make him drink it.

Check out HCO (link above) to see what the other creative mums have done this week.

My son

I have been reading on Blue Cotton Memory's blog and came across this post called Mother Words. Now you have to know that I had a really awful day on Friday. I'm not sure why, but this often seems to happen when I try to get things done. Being very task-oriented, wanting to get things done stresses me out because people keep getting in the way. By people I mean my beautiful children, mostly. So although I can't put my finger on anything in particular that was really bad, and can think of a lot of things that were nice, I came out of it feeling really tired and cross with the kids, and fraught.

(Fraught. That's a good word, isn't it? My mother used it a lot when I was little. She had four of us, so that's probably why!)

Anyway I had this awful day and then I came across the afore-mentioned post and so I thought yeah, I should try to see the good side of my lovely boy. Because he is lovely. Like right now he is doing something quietly elsewhere. I love it when that happens. (Hopefully it doesn't mean he's doing something dodgy!)

My boy's love language appears to be words of encouragement, like me. This is the child who will of his own accord notice me wearing something new, and say, without being prompted "what a pretty skirt Mummy, don't you look pretty in that skirt." Who voluntarily says "I like you Mummy. Especially when you're cross with me." (He means "except". We're working on it!) He is so sweet.

He's very snuggly, and very good-tempered most of the time. (This also annoys me sometimes. There's nothing like shouting at someone who listens quietly and then goes off happily singing to himself as if nothing had just happened!) And he still thinks his sister is adorable, even after 5 months.

Look, there they are.

Anyway, coming back to the post I mentioned before. She talks about looking at your child's annoying traits and seeing what good there is in them.

Well, my son doesn't listen. I guess it's sometimes because he is focusing so much on what he's doing that he isn't paying attention to anything else. Hey, he sounds like me as a kid. And sometimes it's because he's already on his feet running to do the first half of what you're saying, without waiting for the second half. He's actually very helpful like that. I can't remember when I last washed out Nutmeg's potty, he usually does it for me while I'm putting her new nappy on.

He can't stop when you say stop. If I hear him banging a door and call "Leave it", it carries on banging until I actually advance on him menacingly, at which point he will explain "I'm just trying to make it stay closed" (this happened on Friday too). Maybe he's task-oriented like his mother? I guess that could be good in some ways, like when he needs to do homework when he's bigger.

And he can't be quiet for very long. This is one of the reasons my other blog is called I Need A Garden - I need one for him, not just the plants! He charges up and down our living room like a mad thing knocking over anything that gets near him. But at least he's never going to get fat. He's climbing on the back of my chair, singing in German and exhorting me to come on, thing I am singing to, as I type. So I had better do so.

Meal of the week - pasta salad and milkshake

Our favourite meal this week is sweet chilli salad and mango milkshake.

The salad is my adaptation of a recipe from a Nicola Graimes cookbook called Baby & Toddler Meal Planner, which I can wholeheartedly recommend, but which unfortunately appears no longer to be available new. ISBN 1842732471, in case anyone wants it. She has many other books though.

The original recipe involves red pesto rather than chilli, but we prefer this.

Sweet chilli salad

Ingredients:
Cherry tomatoes - 10
Red bell pepper - 1/2
(Sweetcorn - 2 tbsp)
Pasta (we used shell pasta) - 250 g
Ham (or chopped cooked frankfurters) - 6 slices
Plain yoghurt or mayonnaise - 2 tbsp
Ketchup or tomato paste - 2 tsp
Thai sweet chilli sauce, to taste!

Quantities are an estimate of what I use for three people, but you'll need to adapt it to suit your own appetite. We are not big fans of sweetcorn so I normally leave that out.

Cook pasta, rinse in cold water and drain. Meanwhile, quarter tomatoes and dice pepper. Chop up ham. Mix all together and add chilli sauce until desired taste/spiciness is achieved. Enjoy!

Mango milkshake

Ingredients:
Most of a mango (because your child ate some while you were chopping it up!)
Milk (about 600-700 ml)
Vanilla ice-cream

Put mango, milk and ice-cream into a blender or jug with handheld blender. Froglet likes to help me with this, under strict hands-on supervision of course. Blend. Serve!

The ice-cream makes the shake properly cold and thick. You could leave it out and use frozen mango instead, or just fresh mango if you prefer a runnier shake. You could probably also replace the milk with juice of some sort to make a smoothie. We make a lot of milkshakes in summer here, it's a great way to help get your five a day.