Random ramblings

I've been slack this week with posting here, I know that. It's just been a bit of a slack week all round! Miss Z has had gastro for the last 2 days, so she, I and the washing machine are all exhausted. She's back to her chirpy self today, so all is well. Wish I could say the same for the washing maching, but it's making some strange noises. Rebellion, I suspect.

It's pissing down with rain (again) so I'm thinking it's soup time. I want to share the recipe for my favouritest soup in the universe just because I want to share the love!!

SPICY THAI PUMPKIN SOUP

Butternut pumpkin (as much as you want)

Red Thai chilli paste (homemade much, much better)

Onion, chillies, garlic and coriander (as much as you want)

Olive oil

Stock (chicken or veggie, whatever floats your boat)

1 tin coconut milk

• Peel the pumpkin and cut into large chunks


• Drizzle lightly with olive oil, s&p if you like it and roast in oven for around 20 minutes


• While this is roasting, chop up the onions, chillies, garlic and the roots of the coriander together with the chilli paste and stir fry in large pot until soft.


• Add pumpkin when roasted, and stir around for a bit to coat and mush all the yumminess together.


• Add stock to cover and simmer until it goes even mushier, I usually do it for 30 - 60 minutes on low.


• Let it cool a wee bit and whizz the crap out of it with a bamix until relatively smooth, but not too smooth, as a few chunky bits are yummo.


• Return to heat, add coconut milk and re-heat, but try not to let it boil or the coconut milk can go wonky.

Serve with toasted garlic Turkish bread and eat until full.

Repeat until no soup left.

I often make a huge vat of this stuff at the weekend and live on it for most of the week!

OK, so there's a soup recipe. What else shall I ramble about? Oh, I know. I meant to post this other favourite picture of Miss Z the other day but couldn't find which file it was buried in. Now I've found it so here you go...

Well, the kitchen is screaming at me to please clean it up and then make soup in it, so that's it for now. I found some great wedding readings online last night, so will share them later.

*J*

Some of my favourite small person pics

I have all these old pictures of the kids, and some of them are so special to me, not to mention cuter than a very cute thing, so I may as well proudly display some of my favourites!

This is one of Miss Z, taken when she was probably around 3 months old. She is STILL ridiculously photogenic, and puts her mother to utter shame in this regard. Oh well, I prefer to be BEHIND the camera anyway!

This is another one I have framed on the wall. It's taken at Easter 2005, so Miss Z would have been about 8 months old, M was 6 and B a mature 8 years old.

*J*

*SIGH*

Sick kids.

Need I say more? Well, actually, for my own sanity, yes, I do!

Poor little Miss Z has a nasty cold. It's not that bad, and she's not miserable or feverish, it's just your common cold, but it has led to sleep deprivation of the worst kind - like 3 nights in a row.

I do so love co-sleeping with my littlest little person, really I do. I can't sleep properly on the rare occasions she ends up either in her own room or with one of her brothers, but 3 nights in a row now of coughing, spluttering, tossing and turning, sniffing, snorting, dribbling, whinging and other acts of non-sleep are taking their toll.

Z is fine! She sleeps through the above noises she's making with the greatest of ease. Sadly, I don't. Those worried-mama vibes just seem to be attuned to the slightest movement, the slightest noise.

The obvious solution is to put her in her own room for a night or two, I realise that, but this soppy mummy can't bring herself to evict a sick child to a cold, soulless, comfortless room... OMG, listen to yourself, T! PUT THE CHILD IN HER OWN ROOM TONIGHT!

I know I won't.

*Yawn* Contemplating a nap now...

*J*

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the Mummies, expecting Mummies and wannabe Mummies out there!

I have been well loved today. I awoke to the rather terrifying sound of pots and pans clashing in the kitchen, with not-so-well hushed stage whispers of the boys arguing about who was making what, and how it should all be done.

A short time later my bedroom door opened and in came my two beautiful boys with a tray of breakfast (scrambled eggs, bacon and oj), some beautiful handmade cards and a bunch of flowers. Teary much? I grabbed for the camera (stragetically left next to the bed last night on the offchance I may need it) only to find the batteries dead. D'OH! Oh well, that's what mobile phones are for, right? Snapped a shot with the mobile, and as much as I'd love to share it with you, I have no freaking idea how to upload it from my mobile!

Eggs and Bacon was merely the first course, my friends, there were pancakes and coffee to follow! For someone who doesn't often actually eat breakfast at all, I scoffed the lot. Funny how food made by someone else just tastes so-o-o-o-o much better!

We've since been round to visit my mum, and are now back home just chilling out.

I thought I'd share the poem 11 year old B wrote for me in his card, because it had me in stitches!

"Mum,
You're the best Mum Ever!
You will do it in any weather
You make our lives perfect
And it's really really worth it!
You help me when I'm feeling sad
Mad or even Bad
You help me when I'm down and blue
and that's just some of the reasons
Why I Love You!

I hope you have the best Mother's Day ever! And be spoiled all day like Brekky-in-bed, a night out to Brilliant 5 star accomodation, Restaurants + Hotels. All in 1 day? You betcha!
And if that's too much you don't have to because it's Mother's Day! You do what you want, where and when you want it and how you want it. All day, ok now I'm jealous.
Love B"

I think he's been watching too much Getaway or something!!

*Sigh* I do love these kids. Now to get them to finish cleaning up the kitchen after their gourmet extravaganza this morning...

*J*

RIP Dummy

We've had the proverbial blood, sweat and more tears than I can count on this one, but Miss Z seems to have finally accepted the departure of the Dummy, taken from this house last Sunday night by the Dummy Fairy, to be (washed over and over) passed on to some poor wee baby who has no dummy to call their own.

Oh, and what a week it's been. The Big Decision to put in the SMS to the Dummy Fairy Hotline was made quite easily about an hour before bedtime. Miss Z seemed quietly confident in her decision, snuggled up to me happily at sleeptime and off she went to the Land of Nod with not a D-word in sight. God Bless co-sleeping, by the way, I don't think this would have worked at all if we didn't have each other to cuddle in the darkest hour of the dummy-less night!

Day Two, or, as I like to call it affectionately, Armageddon, wasn't quite so love and roses. Oh no. We weren't happy with the Dummy Fairy at all. We called her some quite rude names, some of which made Mummy blush and reconsider her liberal approach to venting road rage openly in front of the children! I believe at one point we HATED the DF, who STOLE our dummy and who gives a flying %&*^ about the poor wee babies with no dummies to call their own - let them SUFFER and their parents should buy them their own anyway, because they're just MEAN to take ours....

You get the picture.

Several glasses of wine and many, many cuddles later, Miss Z sobbed herself to sleep, shuddering with every breath with snot and tears smearing all over my crispy clean 1000 thread count white pillowcase...

Deep breath. She's asleep. Everything else is meaningless.

Well, we're now on Day Six. She hasn't slept before 10:00pm any night since then, and is, as I type this, awake watching the Golden Compass with her brothers (I don't even want to know what the three of them are doing to my 1000 thread count sheets, as I know I saw someone furtively smuggling in a banana about an hour ago) but there is silence and, this is as much as I can ask for , having cruelly deprived my beloved daughter of her D-U-M-M-Y.

Oh, and on that, WTF did I think that spelling it out would mean that she didn't know what I was talking about? She's known what D-U-M-M-Y means since around the age of 20 months. *sigh* Sometimes us mums can be a bit dense.

The screams, tantrums and defiant poses have continued all week, lessing in their ferocity ever-so-slightly each night. Tonight we had a doozy of a floor show as I was cleaning the kitchen, but I'm going to put that down to her natural feminine aversion to housework, as I'm SURE she has to be over the dummy thing by now.

Anyway, with my trusty glass of wine at my side, I'd like to raise a cyber-toast to that mythical and all-powerful being, the Goddess of Straight Teeth, the Dummy Fairy. Let the dearly departed dummy bring hours of peace and tranquility to some other family. And let them ditch the bloody thing well before the child's 3rd birthday.

Oh yeah, and wash it really, really, really well. God only knows where that thing has been!!

RIP Dummy,

*J*

Introducing...

... my little people, all too quickly turning into my big people!

This is B, my Biggest Person. He is the action kid, the sportsman, the life of the party, the one who occasionally forgets the boundaries of socially acceptable enthusiasm in his quest to constantly be on the go!

This picture was taken last month in Denmark, on the south coast of WA. The weather was unseasonably toasty and delicious, but the water was FREEZING! No worries for B, give him water, he's in fish mode! As my other 2 kids and myself sat shivering on the wet sand, he frolicked in the ocean, climbing about the rocks like a crab. Insane? Very possibly, but I love his spirit, his boundless energy and his very big heart.

M is my middle child, and official mini-me. He is the gentle soul, the deep thinker, the gourmet chef, wannabe architect and utter bookworm. I was told by friends and strangers alike from the time he was about 2 months old that this was a unique child, and this is proving more and more true every day. I feel he has struggled a bit in being so incredibly different from his larger-than-life big brother, but is now really coming to find his own little niche in the world.

He shares my love of books, and even of fantasy books (we heart magic!) and I love being able to dicuss our latest favourites in excruciating detail between chopping veggies and stirring concoctions on the stove.

And then we have Miss Z. Charmer of all-she-meets, bearer of big-blue-eyes, and more attitude than you swing a cat at! Miss Z has the knack of reducing her mother to a quivering jelly-like mass of self-doubt and sheer terror while those others who know her refuse to admit she's anything but charming, pliable and serene! I love her gutsiness, her confidence, her never-ending supply of drama-queen facial expressions and the fact that she calls me both Mama and Dada indescriminately. This child was meant for the stage!

So there you have it. This is my family, my source of delight as well as wrinkles and grey hairs, and the most important people in my life. It's funny, they've been a bit cheeky today, and I've been a bit short with them, but writing this out has simply blown all that away just leaving me with the good stuff... those warm fuzzies of motherhood :-)

*J*