Roller coaster of life

Sorry I’ve neglected my blog a lot recently. Life with a toddler, working part time & being a peer supporter is keeping me busy. To make things worse we’re selling & trying to buy a bigger place! We only went on the market last week, had interest from two people (unfortunately ones pulled out). Yesterday we did our first viewing of potential houses (1st time doing it, so a new experience). We loved the house, but couldn’t find any fault with it, which is good, but meant that we didn’t feel we’d be able to stand a chance at getting it at £16k under the asking price! Well today we were asked if we wanted to make an offer & I explained the estate agent our situation & asked if anyone had made any offers yet, they said there had been no offers. I decided I might as well offer what we can afford, the worst that can happen is they say no. Well it seems it was worth offering, as the couple are now looking at their finances to see whether they could afford to accept our offer! I thought there would be no chance & they’d turn it down straight away, so extremely surprised!!

On one hand I’m very excited that things appear to be going fast, but I’m hesitant to get my hopes up too much because I know it’s very likely that all of these potential positives could disappear as quick as they arrived.

On Monday we checked how much we could afford in terms of mortgage. We had a heart stopping & emotional crash when the application for our agreement was declined!! We left feeling worried that we’d never be able to afford a decent bigger place. We go for lunch & while hubby’s getting drinks, I get a call from the advisor. We weren’t declined after all, we’d been accepted. He had made a mistake on what he typed in!!

Royal Mail

Dear Royal Mail,

I see that as well as the expected yearly increase in postage cost, you have also changed the conditions of international mailings. ‘Airmail’ is now called International ‘Standard’ and surface mail has become ‘Economy’. The measurements now match the sizes for mailing in the UK.

My question to you is how do you send something that is only 24×16.5×0.5cm that is close to 100g? What would you send that heavy, that thin? Sheet gold?!

Unfortunately for us casual international mail users, who send letters abroad for pleasure, it means it’s cheaper to send two envelopes if there’s a risk of the envelope being over 0.5cm thick.

Dear daughter…

…my darling toddler, I appreciate that you have teeth coming through, which could be causing you pain & discomfort, which is why I offered you pain relief. You are still crying. I trying staying in the room quietly in case it was a separation anxiety thing – you sat yourself up & tried to reach me through the bars of your cot. I don’t like leaving you to cry, but it seems more affective than staying in the room with you, at least then there is a few minutes of silence before you start complaining again. I know I was foolish to not go to bed earlier and stayed up to eat and watch TV (that I’d prefer you didn’t watch). Your intermittent sleep/cry pattern is a tease to my sleep. Daddy can sleep through it, but those cries cut through my sleep, and leave me waiting to see if there will be more! If you’d like a happy, refreshed Mummy, then allowing me a bit more sleep would be much appreciated, I’ll never make up for the last few nights missed sleep, but one good night would be a token offering!

Yours with much love,
Your sleep deprived Mummy.

Breastfeeding Peer support training

Yesterday I had a phone call to say that I had a place on the accredited training to be a breastfeeding peer support! I put my name down & agreed with work that I would sacrifice alternate Sunday mornings if needed, to guarantee me the 10 Friday mornings free, so I’m really glad I’m able to do it! I’ve been trying to learn from others, but want to learn properly, so I’m not just going by my experience or other peoples 2nd hand advice!

My daughter is 15.5 months now & I’m still breastfeeding her. I never knew how long I’d keep going for, but after the difficult start, I’m kind of just seeing how it goes. She’s now up to 6 teeth fully through the gums & about 2-3 others trying to make an appearance, BUT she’s not been too bad in terms of biting, otherwise I probably would have stopped by now. I’d like to stop by 2, so I’m hoping her love of Mummy milk with fizzle out…or more likely a bit of tough love might be needed. She’ll happily drink cows milk from a sippy cup, but if I’m around she’ll always to get some directly! The hand down the top these days is her less subtle technique at getting her message across!

‘Not always right’ website

I love this website, there are always funny stories on it & normally updates with a new story at least every day.

I’ll fully admit I’ve copied and pasted from here

LIBRARY | HOUSTON, TX, USA
(I work at the circulation desk at a small academic library.)

Patron: *very red-faced* “Um, can you do something?”
Me: “…about?”
Patron: “There’s a woman in the computer lab and she… um…”
(My coworker and I finally manage to get it out of the stammering, embarrassed man that a woman apparently has breastfed her infant and forgot to ‘tuck herself back in’ after the infant was finished eating.)
Coworker: “Oh, boy. You want this one?”
Me: “Got it.”
(I walk up to the woman and lean down quietly to her ear.)
Me: “Ma’am, I’m very sorry, but we don’t allow open-drink containers in the library.”

Brilliant!

Banana omelette/pancake?

I can’t remember who suggested this to me, but I think it was someone on the Babycentre forum. Basically if you have some ripe bananas that need using up, mash one up and add in an egg and mix them together, then fry the mixture. You can either cook it in small circles or all of it as a big pancake. It’s often the best way to get my daughter to eat egg and banana – and I’m quite happy to eat what she doesn’t!

Snowflake (almost brownie) cake

I made these last night. I know Christmas is over (we also took down the decorations last night), but I realised I hadn’t used my silicon snow flake muffin tray (Aldi special). Well the last 2 days has been the closest to snow we’ve had so far this winter (with hail), so I decided to use it.

This was my chuck it together recipe, in other words: weigh eggs, everything else that measurement, with a bit more flour/cocoa. I ended up over doing the cocoa though, because I decided to use up the last of it, so it turned into a bit of a brownie consistency. I then added some milk! A bit odd in cake, but seemed to work. I used salt free butter, straight from the fridge, which caused some problems for the electric whisk!! In the end, with the addition of butter icing in the middle of them (& mini ones made with the rest of the cake mixture), they taste very good!

Basic cooking – white sauce

I am the type of person who likes to cook by look/feel rather than by following a recipe, when I can. I like to know the theory & then I can make adjustments. I’ve never been too sure about making white sauce, I’m not quite sure why, I’ve done it before, but then forgotten the measurements. I recently found it out again & made a note of it, so wanted to note it down here, to remind myself.

50g Butter (melted)
50g Flour
500ml Milk

Add ingredients to a pan in that order. The other day, I just wanted to make a small amount, so did 10g, 10g & 100ml!

Another recipe… that I want to try

I was going through the bookmarks I’ve saved on our computer, and came across this site and after a little bit of a look around, I spotted these recipes that I’d like to try out:
spinach and potato bites,potato pancakes
mini quiche
sugar & sweetener free jelly

It’s snowing…

…on my blog.

This was a cute feature that I couldn’t resist. There will be snow on my blog until 4th Jan. If you are feeling bored (or intrigued), move your mouse cursor left or right and watch the snow change direction!