We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo

Or rather we went on Sunday. Luke gave me a Zoofriends membership for my birthday so Jacob and I can go whenever we want. Also it can be used at the Melbourne Zoo which will be very useful in September when we take a trip there.

From the ferry on the way there

An elephant, I'm not sure who.

A Fennec Fox

A Meercat enjoying the heat lamp

A baby hippo


An Ibex (I think)Jacob Brown, a longbeaked Corella

A Wedge Tailed Eagle

The city from the Zoo. Notice the dark clouds; stormed not long after this and we had to wait on the dock for the ferry during the thunder and lightening, luckily under cover.

My Birthday

In keeping with family tradition here's my last night of 30

We had a picnic on my birthday, it was lovely and sunny but pretty cold.

Blogging for a good cause

A friend in Malaysia, Rachel is in an international scrapbook competition and needs our support.
Basically she's one of the final few and as well as judging their entries immunity is also important. Anyway how it works is like this

• 2 points scored if her blog post on PSA Challenge 10 has more than 5 comments.
• 2 points scored for every third party (that's us) that mentions Rachel and Project Scrap Away (including links) on your own blog and leaves a comment on Project Scrap Away's Immunity blog post (you just need to write your name + Rachel's friend and a link back to your blog).

So get blogging!

He conquers...

The Destruction

and the Destructor

Expecting the return

I have just ordered myself a new mooncup apparently you need a bigger size if you have given birth or you're over 30 years how depressing is that? While my period still hasn't returned due to Jacob breastfeeding, the number of times he is feeding is getting less so it may not be long before I need it.

So because of this I have a discount code for three friends - if you want this please leave a comment.

If you're a bit dubious or squeamish please be reassured that with a bit of practice it's extremely easy to use a mooncup. It's much much cheaper than using tampons and it feels much healthier and cleaner too.

edited to add: all the discount codes were taken, please don't comment asking for one.

Baker hard at work

No not me - Jacob

(you might want to turn the sound down those bowls are loud!)

5 Things

Penny tagged anyone who was so inclined to do this meme and while I'd like to be on an incline so I can get some sleep or is that reclined? I also was inclined to give this a whirl


5 things found in my bag:

1. Elizabeth Arden 8 hour Lip Balm in Berry

2. Teething Spray

3. Changing Mat

4. Merino Blanket

5. BabyBanz Sunglasses

5 favourite things in my craft room: (what craft room?)

1. My sewing machine

2. My PC

3. my paper and card all waiting for me to have time and inspiration

4. My bag of ribbons

5. My new elephant stamp from smiggle

5 things I have always wanted to do:

1. Visit New York City

2. Have a white Christmas

3. See a dugong

4. Spend the whole day at a spa being pampered

5. Write a book

5 things I am currently into:

1. Baking

2. Breastfeeding

3. Babywearing

4. Designing my dream kitchen (I can dream)

5. Scrapbooking

5 people I am tagging:

Whoever feels inclined

Menu Plan Monday

I didn't get a menu plan up last week although I did have a plan. We're still eating the fabulous chicken soup/stew that Luke made - it was enough for 4 meals! We bought safety gates yesterday for the bottom of the stairs, the laundry and ordered another one for the top of the stairs.
The laundry leads into the downstairs toilet which is really the cats domain , they have their 2 litter boxes in there and at times it's a little messy. We've hopefully cut down on some of that mess by replacing the small shallow box with a big box that has a lid with a door in it so the litter shouldn't all end up on the floor but even so we don't want Jacob rolling around in there. We've also put their food and water bowls in the laundry behind the fence as Jacob's already upset their water twice. I think this maybe a sanctuary for them along with the stairs.


Monday - Spinach, ricotta and pine nut lasagne
Tuesday - Chicken Soup, rolls and Queen of Puddings
Wednesday - Cottage Pie
Thursday - Slow Cooker Beef Casserole with couscous, roasted pumpkin and leeks in a cheese sauce
Friday - Lamb casserole with oven sautéed potatoes and steamed broccoli
Saturday - Luke's probably cooking something this night
Sunday - Beef Fried Rice (we just bought a new wok at IKEA)

Oy vey you can tell it's winter can't you? Lots of casseroles and other hearty fare. All the casseroles and the soup are coming out of the freezer; I've been stocking up.

Ta da!

Please excuse the terrible quality of this. Why is it I always take videos of my progeny at night when the lighting is poor?
Anyway this is Jacob getting up on his hands and knees and rocking. He's so almost crawling I bet he can taste it.
Notice how the cat runs past to entice him too. Also that sound just before the cat's entrance is not thunder but the cats rumpusing upstairs.
Also Jacob is shouting - he's grumpy, this was shot about 5.45pm and he has a cold but I think it's mostly frustration

Menu Plan Monday

Monday - Sesame chicken served with rice and steamed asian greens and ricotta puddings

Tuesday - Pepperoni and Broccoli Fettuccine
Wednesday - Mushroom and Barley Soup with Toasted Sourdough bread and Bread and Butter Pudding made with Croissants and Cranberries
Thursday - Mince Stroganoff and steamed vegetables
Friday - Tuna Macaroni Bake served with Steamed vegetables
Saturday - Hmmm not sure Luke might be creative again
Sunday - corn fritters with bacon, relish, sour cream and salad

We've had a good week and this one is shaping up well too. Although Luke has been home sick today and might have strep throat again :-(
Luke did make the most amazing dinner on Saturday night, it was a Nigel Slater recipe of a slow cooked chicken soup/stew with chicken pieces, large chucks of veges, barley and herbs. It was delicious and very restorative.
The Mushroom and Barley Soup is a Maggie Beer recipe from the program The Cook and Chef on ABC. Repeats are also currently being shown on the Food Channel on Foxtel so Jacob and I watch it at least once a day during the week. It involves Maggie Beer (the cook) and Simon Bryant (the chef) the executive chef at the Hilton Adelaide. Every week they cook favourite dishes in their own styles and do small segments on local producers and ingredients. I love their banter and their food and look forward to every new episode.

Which Shakespeare Play are you?

Apparently I am Much Ado About Nothing
Based on your results, we believe you to be a quick-witted, light-hearted romantic who is probably very charming and charismatic. While your stubbornness may sometimes get the better of you, we are confident that you always eventually come to your senses and do what's best. You probably have a lot of friends and we like you too!
You scored 24% = Tragic, 58% = Comic, 39% = Romantic, 35% = Historic

UnRead

Pinched from Mim at Mim's Muddle
What we have here is the top 100 or so books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Mim said
"Not going to do the underlining because often I'd already read for pleasure books that were later assigned as school reading. So, bold means I’ve read it, whether for school or for fun. Italic means I started and didn’t finish. Plain text means I haven’t even tried."

I second this as I read so fast that I always finished books I studied and often reread them

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary (was a bookclub book whoops!)
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities (just never grabbed me)
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace (again never got into it)
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin (I loved this although it took a couple of attempts to start it)
The Kite Runner (seen the movie, will not read the book, far too traumatic)
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods (this is genius)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys (must try this one, Luke loved it)
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir

The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

First Solids

First taste of rice cereal

I help

Not quite as tasty as I first thought

Jacob had his first taste of solids on Sunday and he's doing well. He loooves pumpkin and sometimes lunges at the spoon when eating it. So far he's tried apple, pumpkin, peach, and rice cereal and today we're going to give carrot a go.

Family

Last Thursday we flew to Brisbane to visit my husband's parents. It was a visit that we'd looked towards with reluctance and trepidation as it was the first time we'd seen them since Luke told them he'd been sexually abused as a child. Their reaction had been very discouraging but my brave husband needed to sort this issue out with them so we went.

From the moment of arrival the air was filled with tension, my FIL went through the gestures of greeting us, my MIL went to a workshop instead. When she did arrive home she was "too tired" to cook and then disappeared as early as possible to her room. The next day this pattern continued - every time Luke spoke they ignored him or spoke over the top of him in case he might say something they didn't want to hear. The only person they show genuine interest in or affection for was Jacob.

Finally on Saturday afternoon Luke asked to speak with them and they proceeded to attack us. First of all MIL's health somehow was our fault then we had behaved badly over the weekend then our parenting was at fault. They were not responsible for anything. They also did not believe Luke about the abuse.
So we left.
We packed up our clothes, toiletries and Jacob's toys and left. We got a flight home that night and were so glad to reach the comfort and safety of our own home.

MIL told us she had not raised the issue because she knew we would leave because Luke does not listen. We flew an awful long way and spent a lot of money to be there and all Luke wanted was for them to listen to him and show some concern. If you knew you were in danger of losing your son and grandson would you not try to fix this? Right up until the minute we left they could not unbend themselves to ask him if he was ok or how he was coping.

Luke's psychiatrist told Luke that while he does not support breaking up family relationships, in very rare cases the relationship is too "toxic" to be saved and that in his opinion Luke did everything he possible could to save it.
While Luke is making his peace with this, I grieve for my husband, apart from a brother who seems to be supporting his parents' view point, they are the only family he has.

Luckily my parents seem to love and care for him more than his own. They have been nothing but supportive and concerned through this whole ordeal and treat him as if he was their own son.

You've come a long way baby

I watched the first video I shot of Jacob rolling last night and was just amazed at the difference in the past few months. He now confidently and quickly rolls from back to front and front to back and is now rolling across the floor to his destinations. It's not the most accurate way to travel and he's often frustrated but he's also very very close to commando crawling.

The video is so dark but I can't find a way to lighten it, way beyond my IT skills

Menu Plan Tuesday

Sigh I was trying to post this yesterday afternoon but life got in the way.
Things got a bit turned around last week and I ended swapping meals around to different days. Tuesday night we actually went out to our local RSL for dinner and Sunday night I had a terrible headache and slept for a couple of hours so we had takeaways. We didn't have the felafel or the cottage pie. So here's this week

Monday - Felafel with pita, hummus, yoghurt, relish and salad (this, as always, was yummy)
Tuesday - Dunsandel Store's Macaroni Cheese
Wednesday - Chickpea Curry with fragrant rice, peas, naan bread, and gulab jamun

On Thursday we're flying to Brisbane to spend 5 days with my in-laws so I don't have to plan the rest of the week - Yay! I'll make the Cottage Pie on Monday when we get back and that will probably yield enough for dinner that night, another meal which I'll pop in the freezer and maybe even lunch for Luke the next day.

Menu Plan Monday

I didn't update about our previous week so I'll attempt to catch you up now while my muesli baking.
Tonight's dinner was delicious although a bit fiddly to make. The gulab jamun (a cheese dumpling in a very sweet syup) was out of a tin and an experiment but I'll buy it again, it gives a nice finish as a dessert after a curry.

Monday - Lamb Kofta with turmeric rice, naan bread, peas and gulab jamun
Tuesday - Chicken Fried Rice with Asian greens
Wednesday - Devilled Sausages with mashed potatoes, peas and carrots
Thursday - Felafel with pita, yoghurt, hummus and salad
Friday - Crumbed Fish Fillets with Gratin Dauphinois and steamed veg
Saturday - Steak with baked potatoes and steamed veg
Sunday - Cottage Pie

The previous week we went to a lecture on Starting Solids at the Early Childhood Health Centre. Jacob is so ready for this to the point where he avidly watches everything I eat and stops breastfeeding if I'm eating because he wants some. However we're going up to Brisbane over Anzac weekend and I don't want to be fussing around mixing up rice cereal while up there so I'm going to wait until we get home. Jacob will be a week away from 6 months then and the WHO recommendation is to wait until 6 months as is the ECHC especially as Luke has a tree nut allergy so while I do feel a bit mean, I think it's the best option.
I also went to a session on Discipline without Distress with Judy Arnall who was visiting from Canada. I'll write a little more about this another time.

Last week I took Jacob to my old work for the first time. He was much fussed over and was on his best behaviour, very smiley and laughing so I was very proud and pleased that they'd all seen my gorgeous boy at his best.
Luke had Friday off so we tried to make the most of it by a walk to the library and then a picnic in Centennial Park where we could see horses being ridden as well as lots of people walking, riding bikes and making other uses of the park.
Saturday we went to the Orange Grove Markets held at the Orange Grove Primary School which is within a 20 minute walk of our house.

Sunday we went to view the photos we'd had taken the previous weekend. This was a "free session" deal with a voucher for $290 for a session and 1 5 x7 photo. Of course they're trying to get you to buy other photos which they sell at astronomical prices but as the photos were decidedly disappointing we stuck to our guns and ordered our free photo and nothing else.

Menu Plan Monday

Will she finally post this on a Monday?

Monday - Alu Mattar Sukhe with fragrant rice
Tuesday - Beef and Haloumi Skewers with caper butter, corn tortillas and a peach tart
Wednesday - Lamb casserole with mashed potatoes and peas
Thursday - Beef Stroganoff with rice and green beans
Friday - Garlic Prawns with angelhair pasta
Saturday - Barbecued Chops (lamb for me and pork for Luke)
Sunday - Spinach Soufflé and salad

whew!
More about our week later

Is it Thursday already?

Lol I had my post all prepared Sunday night ready to add a few comments and then upload and I forgot all about it. I was going to call it "Finally Menu Plan Monday! "

We've stuck to the menu plan so far this week and I'm really looking forward to tonight's dinner. I mastered the concept of fried rice a couple of week ago with some leftover rice I cooked up for my lunch , was just playing around really, experimenting and we had hardly anything to go in it so I added chopped up omelette, garlic and peas and it was great. So I'm expanding and this time I'll have cooked chicken, spring onions (called shallots here), omelette, garlic, corn kernels and peas. Hopefully Luke will like it as he used to make his own fried rice (more Thai style) in his bachelor days which was heavy on the lemon, garlic, chilli and soy and not really to my taste.

Monday - Greek Style Lamb on Couscous
Tuesday - Corned Beef with Mashed Potatoes, Cabbage, Carrots and Mustard Sauce
Wednesday - Frypan Cauliflower Cheese with Wild Rice
Thursday - Chicken Fried Rice with Asian greens
Friday - Tuna and Macaroni Bake with Steamed veges
Saturday - Barbecued Ribs, baked potatoes, coleslaw and a green salad followed by a Lemon Frozen Pudding and fruit
Sunday - Sausage Rolls and leftover salad

We're having friends for dinner again this Saturday, different friends so we're trying the same menu again as it was very successful last time.
The Easter Show was fantastic and Jacob was amazing. We left the house at 9.15am to drive to the station and didn't get home until around 10pm. He slept a lot in his pram, far more than he normally sleeps during the day and was fed and changed in some crazy places but apart from a few grizzles around 9pm while I was eating my dinner and he wanted to be fed too, he was an angel. It was partly due to that the couple we were with helped out with him and carried him around a lot meaning that he could see everything and didn't get bored. He even slept during the motorcross and V6 ute stunt riding.
We did all the things your supposed to do at the show; woodchopping, cat show, dog show, Country Womens' Institute Cafe where we had sandwiches, scones and tea, best art, best cakes, jams, preserves, the Oak milk bar, Dagwood dogs (hotdog on a stick), the rides although I didn't participate in this, show bags. We didn't see much of the farm animals and when we went to see them it was closed for the day so next year we'll have to show Jacob the baby animals.

Whoops Menu Plan Thursday?

Well Easter has screwed me up, I keep thinking it's much earlier in the week than it is. We're doing really well with our meals though, I think the last time we had takeaways was when my Mum was here.
We had friends over for dinner on Saturday and had a lovely meal of barbecued ribs, baked potatoes, coleslaw and green salad. I also served pastizzis (Maltese spinach and ricotta pastries) with drinks and a lemon frozen pudding for dessert. We finished the evening with cheese, muscatel grapes, some divine blood plum paste and Muscat liquer and a good time was had by all. They have a little girl about two weeks older than Jacob and they were very cute together.

I roasted a leg of lamb for dinner Easter Sunday and then on Tuesday we had the leftover lamb in a white sauce with onions and mushrooms, very interesting. Monday we had veal cordon bleu from the freezer and Wednesday we had penne boscaiola, or at least my version of it. Tonight we had Tuna and Risoni Salad with a crusty loaf that I got free from Baker's Delight with my loyalty card. This is one of my favourite meals as it makes me feel very virtuous and healthy although the ricotta on the top of the salad probably detracts from this.

Tomorrow night it's frozen Swedish meatballs from IKEA and I'll try to remember the lingonberry sauce this time and Saturday we're having Beef and Haloumi Skewers with caper butter. Sunday we're having a Bacon, Leek and Potato Tart made using a frozen pie shell as I really don't have a hand for pastry.

We're going to the Easter Show this Saturday and I'm really looking forward to it. It's supposed to be amazing here and I'm particularly looking forward to the traditional events like the best sponge cake.
Jacob's just amazing, I had the new carseat installed in the car today and he looks so grown up. He now is rolling on to his front a lot and occasionally rolling from his front to his back which is a lot harder but usually he just yells for Mum to roll him back. He also is think about moving forward once he gets on to his front but not too inspired yet although I think it might be the cats that get him moving, he's very interested in them especially Puck.