Jet loves baking, and he is always asking to make things. Usually involving chocolate. I gave up trying to get Jet to embrace healthy cake – he never ate it, so it was just a waste of ingredients. And maybe he’s right – maybe baked foods shouldn’t be healthy, maybe they should be sweet and crumbly and delicious. Putting in the right quantities of butter and sugar results in food creations that my children will actually eat. So I’m going with that! Continue reading
On Monday we began the holidays by spending the morning mooching about in our pyjamas trying to get our breath back a bit after our awesome barbecue the day before. Jet did some drawing whilst Stella (who had done some drawing on her legs) helped me with the washing – she loves to take it out of the machine and put it in the basket. Continue reading
A few months ago, Chris had a vision of a deck at the back of the garden. This was largely conceived as a *simple* way to cover up all the rubble, broken glass and oil drum fire debris left behind by previous homeowners that used to constitute the end third of the garden. Without ever having done it before, he placed a ceremonial pencil behind his ear and started saying things like “4 bee 2” like a pro, and lo and behold, a deck took shape.
Throughout the summer, the children take it in turns to ruin our day, one of them always waking us up at silly o’clock whilst the other slumbers on undisturbed, as if they got together one night after lights out and drew up a rudimentary schedule. Today was Stella’s turn to trot into our room at 5.10 and try to squash her freezing cold feet between my thighs as I stared blearily at the clock in disbelief.
Welcome back to my series on Pinterest fails, where you can laugh with me, but never at me as I attempt things that look like a good idea.
In this instances, I have to be honest – I didn’t see this on Pinterest, although I am fairly certain it would be on there. Neither is this, strictly speaking, a complete fail. If I only had one child, it would have been, but luckily Stella came to the rescue! In addition, the failure of this is partly self-induced. But my blog, my rules, okay?!
Continue reading
Along with the rest of the population, Jet has been quite hot this week. Whenever the mood takes him he is to be found parading in the altogether.
My house and garden are now littered with discarded pants and I have become more accustomed to the sight of my boy’s bits and bobs than I would care to be. Continue reading
5.30pm… Chris got up with the kids, so I lay in bed for a bit, bracing myself for the day. I showered and dressed whilst they all had breakfast.
7am… I bribed Jet with ‘gummy bears’ (he thinks his multivitamins are a delicious treat – a fact I use to my advantage) to get himself dressed, which he managed to do all by himself whilst I put Stella’s clothes on. I managed to fill the paddling pool so the water could warm up a bit before the kids would go in it later, a small act of unusual preparedness which made me feel like I was winning at life. Chris left for work before 7.30.
8 am… We walked to Enfield without too much trouble, although Jet did want to hold my hand to walk on a variety of walls, which was tricky given the pushchair and shopping trolley.
8.30pm… We went to the fishmongers where Stella was cooed over by one fellow customer, whilst Jet impressed another by eating an alarming quantity of ice from the shellfish display 
But in his defence it was really hot today, and at least it took his mind off running away. Continue reading
Stella is lactose intolerant. Whilst she can have a little bit of dairy here and there, she’d run into trouble if she ate a substantial amount of lactose.
I wanted to make her some dairy-free ice creams to enjoy in the warmer weather, having done so in previous years for Jet who has no food intolerances. So here’s my recipe for fruity frozen yoghurt bites – made with greek yoghurt for Jet and coconut yoghurt for Stella. Continue reading
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