my-speck

i'm pregnant and it's going to be a rollercoaster

apple poppyseed cinnamon muffins September 28, 2011

Filed under: activities for kids,cooking,eating,Parenting,Raising a Child,vegetarian — rakster @ 11:12 am
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The muffins we made on Saturday are a staple around our house – simple, sugar-free (just honey), take about 5 minutes + cooking time, and can be done with pretty much any fruit you have about.  The original recipe calls for blueberries, but we usually do apple.  They are so simple, kids can help measure, mix, spoon and they are ready in a jiffy.

cupcakes! AKA apple cinnamon poppyseed muffins

apple poppyseed cinnamon muffins

1 banana, mashed

¼ cup vegetable oil

…“ cup honey

¾ cup milk

1 cup wholemeal self-raising flour

1 cup white self-raising flour

½ cup poppyseeds

big dash ground cinnamon

finely grated zest 1 lemon

2 medium-large granny smith apples, diced 1cm or smaller cubes

method

  1. Mix together banana, oil, honey and milk.
  2. Add the flours, poppyseeds, cinnamon and zest and mix very lightly (remember that muffin batter should only be just mixed).
  3. Stir in the apple.
  4. Spoon into 12 lightly greased muffin pans. Bake in a preheated moderate (180°C) oven for about 20 minutes.

notes

  • serve warm! they don’t need butter that way
  • they freeze well
  • works fine with frozen/defrosted bananas (i always put my oops forgot about those bananas in the freezer for cooking.  Just skinned and in a freezer bag/container.
  • you can substitute pretty much any fruit, or a combination, or put more or less to your tastes.

variations

blueberry

substitute 1 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen) for the apple, and omit the poppyseeds, cinnamon and lemon zest.

source

the original blueberry recipe from: Creber, Ann. (1988) The Almost Healthy Cookbook p13

 

 

P.S.  Always looking for new muffin recipes – let me know if you have a favourite!

 

what i should have taken a photo of…(and bad parent of the day award) September 26, 2011

Filed under: bad parent of the day award,development stages,Parenting,Raising a Child,swimming — rakster @ 2:11 pm

what I should have photographed.

not the morning tea consumption post-swim:

morning tea at the pool – muffin, watermelon and strawberry

more interesting would have been:

  • me when I took that photo, sitting in the sun at a public pool in my bra and undies.  Yes, with a towel on top, but a relatively small, doesn’t cover all the bits towel.  Because I love to expose my post-pregnancy bits in all their glory at the local public swimming pool with my two children in tow.
  • my clothes at the time this photo was taken.  Ah, there: you can see my skirt in the background, on the table, behind the morning tea.  Because I thought a little fashion display would be in order at the public pool.
  • me, when I came up out of the shallow kids pool after jumping in wearing all my clothes as my big boy lost his footing and decided that instead of kicking, he would just sink during his “mum, please I want to swim here by myself before my lesson” swim.  I wonder about my face.  Bedraggled, I’m sure about; happy to have retrieved a small one from drowning, yes, also sure about; slightly guilty for letting him in the pool by himself where he has been fine 1000 times before, yes, also that.  Yes, I had my swimmers on underneath.  thankfully.   (WE HAVE A WINNER!!! Bad parent of the day award: ME!!).
  • me, sitting there at the side of the pool wrapped in a towel and freezing my ass off for the duration of his lesson.  Trying to hold the 3month old without soaking her too…
  • or better still, a video of the wonderful swimming lesson.  Where for the second week running the normal teacher didn’t show and we had a fill-in.  So my big boy who has missed 3 months of lessons due to me pulling him out after little L joined us because he had developed a fear of the swimming lessons when his last teacher was away repeatedly and he had to go in by himself with a stranger each week (gee I wonder why that upsets a less-than-two year old) made it through the first 10 minutes fine, then cried between his turn for the next 20 minutes.  Hopefully asking the teacher each time they finished one activity, “finished now?”.  Because I had promised him if he finished the lesson we could go for a swim together.

Consolation prize for me was that he loved our swim together! And enjoyed the morning tea thoroughly.  And there is no visual evidence of my bits being exposed at the pool.

love mum

 

P.S. thanks to Baby Mac for the inspiration for this post as her swimming experience this morning sounded just as traumatic so I thought I’d share too.

 

Saturday morning breakfast… September 24, 2011

Filed under: activities for kids,cooking,development stages,Parenting,playing,Raising a Child — rakster @ 10:02 am

“Mum, can we make cupcakes?”

Mmmm..  I don’t think he’ll know the difference between cupcakes and sugar-free apple and cinnamon and poppyseed muffins….

Let’s cook!

eating the spoon

can I lick the spoon now??

We mixed the batter, licked the spoon and baked.

They turned out well:

cupcakes! AKA apple cinnamon poppyseed muffins

off to the garden for breakfast:

Eating the end result!

 

and she was listening…sleep… September 23, 2011

Filed under: activities for kids,baby stuff,baby's feelings,dancing,development stages,exercise,exhaustion,family,imitation,Parenting,playing,Raising a Child — rakster @ 12:49 pm
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So, after my last post where I complained about the lack of sleep…

My little darling slept right from 7pm to 3:30am last night. Woo hoo! I got more than 3 hours of sleep in a row!

Win for the weekend.

I however went to bed with another case of mild-mastitis, so not feeling 100%, so the lack of eating regularly made it slightly worse and I felt like total crap this morning :(. Have since made up for that by shoving poor little L on the boob at every available waking moment. A few panadols later, I’m feeling alright..

this is what I feel like when I wake up. thankfully there is no-one to take photos of me.

….
Spent the morning at O’s daycare, as he was feeling like he needed some more mummy time. I went in and read some books, playing in the garden with the kids, then went to his ‘body gumbo’ (or body bumbo as he says) class. A bit of a mix between dance/movement and yoga. It was fun. I think I enjoyed it more than he did. I can now do my salute to the sun with an animal impression at each different position. WIN! We will now be doing more yoga/play at home. It rocked.

….

now I am enjoying some me-time while little L sleeps and O is at daycare.

the sleeping babe - I got her cot out a week ago so she has her own space in our room.

 

sleepy-head Luna, 13 weeks old

…

Tonight I am going out with my amazing sisters, all four of us, for a drink. So perfect timing with the whole lots of sleep last night.

 

🙂 have a good weekend everyone!

 

sleep. Or lack of it. September 21, 2011

Filed under: Parenting — rakster @ 2:06 pm

this morning as I drove O to Oscar I realised I was almost wandering off the road in the car. And thought, “Gee, I wonder what the matter is?”

And then at the pool chatting with a friend, she quietly said, “you’re yelling” as I recounted the distribution of laundry-doing-tasks in our house at the moment (all me: washing, hanging, folding; clothes and everything else). Oops.

The lack of sleep for going on three months is really starting to get to me. This morning was a winner, with the little babe awake at 4am for an hour (unusual), then snorting-through-her-snot-cold for the next half-hour so I couldn’t sleep, then the 2 year old waking up at 5:30 am and declaring, “I’m awake, Mummy!” at the top of his voice. Then proceeding to get up instead of going back to bed, and whilst I didn’t get up, I heard him talking at the top of his voice till I did get up at 6:30. ..

yeah. So basically in addition to the normal night feeding, I didn’t get a wink of sleep after 4am.

Not a coherent mummy.

I am recalling that #1 slept through the night from about 8 weeks to six months. Gee I wish #2 would do the same.

My sister has suggested I just eat more chocolate. Though I bought some clothes yesterday and in the interest of not having to buy any more, I think I need to lay off that…

…

This phase of life has to be nature’s little way of ensuring there is a decent gap between siblings.

…

 

Juggling a temper with an ear infection… and cuteness.. September 15, 2011

Filed under: activities for kids,baby stuff,baby's feelings,Communication,cooking,development stages,family,healthcare,Parenting,playing,Raising a Child,speaking — rakster @ 2:12 pm

Day three of an ear-infected, cranky little boy. And a sleeping-a-lot-trying-to-fight-it-off little babe.

Mummy is going a bit stir crazy. She was seen stalking the neighbour’s cat with a squirt gun this afternoon through the back garden… By a workman who she didn’t notice in the other neighbour’s garden. Nice look. He waited until she had been down there for about 5 minutes acting like a dodgy commando-action-hero actor before he made his presence known by raucous laughter. She was a tad embarrased. But granted, she was doing it as the blasted cat was trying to eat her two new chickens. And for some light self-entertainment (she makes her own fun). The workman graciously pointed out where the chickens had gone and where the cat was hiding when his laughter subsided.

As you can see, fours days with two children at home all day, one of whom is on full whine/tantrum/attention-needing at all waking hours, with very little adult human interaction, has left her unable to speak in the first person anymore. She has reverted to full third-person child-speak. God-knows why.

The only saving grace was a few minutes last night when she was preparing dinner. Little O was very excited to be at the big table on his new grown-up big chair and was entertaining his sister with the gift she so carefully chose for him when she was born.

entertaining the little sister


cuteness.

drilling - hard work

 

A new low in Australian Politics – denying a pair to a father to attend to the birth of his child September 9, 2011

Filed under: Parenting — rakster @ 3:08 pm

Grandstanding in politics is frequent. But our current opposition leader’s position – where he is refusing to guarantee a ‘pair’ for a father about to have a child if the father is absent from parliament during a crucial vote in our no-outright-majority-parliament – has to be a new low.

Surely it’s more important for a father to be present for the birth of his child, whenever that occurs, than be present for a vote on whatever is before parliament, whenever that occurs.

I am simply appalled that there is an attempt at point-scoring and blatant media-attention-seeking focus on such an issue.

The poor child & mother.

 

Please Return September 1, 2011

Filed under: baby's feelings — rakster @ 3:40 pm

Ever thought about shipping your kids back?

Well….Please Return

… we have too!

Just kidding. Thought this was kinda funny though.

O went through a few too many pairs of undies at daycare yesterday, so had to come home in a loaner pair. Hence the ‘please return’. Couldn’t resist getting a shot!

P.S. and yes, in the background is the totally awesome chalkboard that his dad made for him months ago that is in our kitchen/dining. I meant to post about it, truly, but just never have yet. Used daily with glee.