Family life

It's been a week of ups and downs. The ups have included some fairly unexpected opportunities to go back to my previous incarnation as a writer. This will bring in some welcome money and is so far proving to be very enjoyable, as I'm remembering what I enjoyed about producing copy to order. The downs, well it was one big down really as I failed to get a job doing what I love- teaching. I am trying to be philosophical, however, and see that these two opposing kinds of fortune are both pointing to me spending a bit more time immersed in family life, rather than being pulled back to the outside world just at the moment.
With that in mind I wanted to share this family moment from today- P's first ride on Daddy's bike. Despite my mummy-wobbles about it, I've given in to the idea of a 'jumpseat'- a little saddle with a safety strap, attached to the top tube of C's bike, so that P can hold the handlebars and ride with him. I agreed to it for several reasons: I trust C's experience and safety riding bikes; I know that P will love it and that it will open a new world of possibilities for going out and about with P in the saddle and M in the buggy; it will help P's development as a cyclist himself; we bought a new and better fitting helmet for P's rapidly growing bonce.
Guess what? He loved it. We went for a ride/walk at Rampside, marred only by the filthy habits of some irresponsible dog owners who don't pick up after themselves.
After that it was home for a spot of cake decorating- tomorrow is not only Mother's Day but also my mother-in-law's birthday so some whipped cream cheese icing and edible gold stars (I know! How fabulous!) were in order to finish off the lemon sponge P and I made yesterday. Just got to work out how to transport it to her now...

Homemade

I know everyone says this, but I don't really 'do' New Year's Resolutions. However, this year, we have decided to try and reduce our reliance on supermarket shopping. It's for a lot of reasons, including environmental and political ones, which I may or may not expand on at another time.
There'll be more on how we're trying to do this later in the week, but basically it's a quiet revolution because most of the measures are things we've done before over the last few years, on and off. So it's a question of trying to do them all at the same time.
Home-baking is obviously already a regular fixture in our house, but nonetheless we'd slipped into buying quite a lot of ready-made stuff recently, including bread, breadsticks (P's snack of choice) and M's weaning baby-mush (known as 'goo' in our house).
This week is the 'start as we mean to go on' week, so therefore I duly made bread and used some leftover pizza dough and a little pesto (not homemade, I admit!) to make some breadsticks. I then cooked up two carrots, an apple and four tinned prunes to make some goo. Carrots take forever to cook, so I went off and built Duplo houses with P....and burned the goo. Believe me, burned carrot, apple and prune does not smell nice. Nor is it easy to remove from pans.
However, if I gave up that easily I might as well just go to Tesco right now, so I had another attempt and made sure I stayed by the stove this time. An initial whizz with the handheld mixer followed by blending in the liquidiser and we finally had a good approximation of one of M's favourite bought 'goo in a pouch' numbers. What's more she ate it. So far so goo(d).

Bread and bubblewrap

Nobody said motherhood was easy, and with P being very 'two' at the moment I'm living proof. With my nemesis day, Wednesday, looming, I was determined that we'd survive without too many tantrums. So a domestic morning of singing and playing instruments, drawing on big sheets of lining paper, cleaning the kitchen and hanging out washing was in order.
I also made bread. Didn't have time to knead it myself, so it was a breadmaker job for the proving process, finished off in the oven. Even without the soothing rhythm of kneading, just the smell and sight of new bread in the house is enough to give me a sense of wellbeing. Meanwhile, just before naptime, the delivery of a present for M (three apple trees and a pear tree- what a lovely idea!) provided P with his own therapy in the form of bubblewrap. He happily jumped, squished, stomped and popped as we wrapped up a morning that was more or less tantrum free. Hooray!

Egg

More poetic types than I could, and no doubt have, waxed lyrical about the simple beauty of eggs. This particular egg is beautiful to us though, as it came from our own lovely Penelope and was rather unexpected.
Poor Penelope has not had the easiest time in the last year or so. Her life partner and leader of the pack Beyonce passed away last Spring and due to the uncertainty of our housing situation, we've yet to replace her (soon though, we hope). Then she had to cope with not one, but two changes of location, ending up some 300 miles or so from where she began her egg-laying career. At three and a half, she's not exactly elderly in chicken terms, but after a fairly sparse and unreliable egg-laying season last summer we had quite accepted that she would be pet rather than provider in future.
We were delighted then, when with total seasonal appropriateness on Easter weekend, she began to lay again! So far we've had four perfect pale brown and freckly eggs in four days and I can't tell you how nice it was to make P's lunch using just about the freshest egg possible. The yolk was a dazzling yellow. Maybe Penelope likes the new food we've got her, or maybe she's appreciating the end of the long, cold winter as much as we are. Whatever the reason, it's amazing how homely it feels to have eggs from the garden, not to mention giving a great excuse for cakes, meringues, custard, mayonnaise, lemond curd etc. etc!