A rare moment

The boy has been a bit out of sorts the last few days. Nothing specific but just a bit snuggly and sleepy and not quite his usual high energy self. It meant a rare opportunity to get a pic of him asleep though as he was out for the count enough for me to open the curtains and crash around the room at the end of his nap.

He seems a bit better this morning so he's been helping me sort the recycling out. He carried the big blue box into the house himself when it was empty and gave a pretty good go when it was full too. It's helpful to have someone happy to do things low down at the moment as once I'm on the floor getting up again isn't easy!

Culture

Another trip out with Daddy today into Oxford. Much fun was had watching the workmen.

And then playing with erm I mean interacting with the illustrated manuscripts at the Bodleian.

Underneath

It's been a day for dens. The dining table has been utlised between all meals as a haven for small boys and animals. (Mummy got in on the act too but at 36 weeks pregnant getting out again wasn't pretty!)

The boys spends a lot of his day on the phone (old mobiles and toys) having pretend conversations with various people. I don't really know where he gets his obsession from as I hate using the phone.

When he wasn't under the table he was under a chair or under the duvet (although he seems to have lost the art of having a nap in the last few days which is poor timing for my stage of pregnancy).

Under the table is usually where the dog spends mealtimes so as soon as he saw the fur being put down he thought it was for him! He made an exit when one too many toys got thrown in though.

Ways to buy a bit of peace and quiet.

Take a pause from sorting washing and check your mail whilst drinking a big mug of coffee.

Give a small boy an apricot chewy bar and he might just take himself off to read a book.

Allow one small boy to raid the kitchen drawer and have fun with a roll of bin bags...

Daddy Time

I'm not sure who had the most fun yesterday. The boy and his dad took a bus to the train station and then spent time watching trains and buses and people. There's work on the line south of here so there were lots of buses of passengers disgorging and lots of trains starting out from here. A cup of milk and the cost of the bus ticket and it made for a cheap date.

We don't watch tv with Isaac - I figure there'll be plenty of years of tv watching in his future and the longer we can keep him out of the habit the better (plus I can't bear kids' tv). But we do watch the odd bit of sport and as the Winter Olympics are on at the moment we've been watching a bit of skiing so this morning the boy announced he was going to ski.

(Photos from Matthew's new toy - an iPhone)

Crayons

Mostly when I've offered the boy crayons to draw with he's been more interested in biting them or breaking them but he seems to finding the crayon love at the moment.

It's Matthew's birthday this weekend and as his first love is the dog I've been trying to get some good photos... the dog is less than impressed though at being a star.

He did deign to have his tummy rubbed for a bit though which gave me chance to snap his grey chin.

Daily Bread

I've had this book on my Amazon wishlist for a while now after seeing it mentioned on Kat's Blog but not having set eyes on it in the flesh I didn't know how useful it would be as we can always make bread in our bread maker. Kat came up trumps again this morning though with links to this blog which is not only beautiful but has a recipe from the book. So the obvious course of action for the day was to make a batch of no knead bread.

The toddler didn't understand the no knead part and spent a lot of time getting messy and having fun with the sludgy dough - I don't know if the dough should be this wet or if I didn't get the conversions quite right, I'll try it again next week and take a bit more time working out the proper recipe instead of just winging it.

The bowl is from Cley and was a present to Matthew from my mum one Christmas when he was going through a bread making phase. You really do need a very big bowl for this bread so it was perfect.

It's been cold again here so it took a good few hours to prove so this isn't a lunchtime bread on the first day you make it but there's plenty of dough to keep some in the fridge and use one subsequent days.

Whilst it was on its second proving we did a bit of prep for dinner and some reading at the same time.

The boy helped with the chopping of the herbs.

And then the bread was ready. I wasn't convinced that a grapefruit sized piece would be enough for us for one meal but it would have been okay. As I made two loaves though we had a bit extra and the rest will make fantastic bruschetta tomorrow. I'd say the texture is more like ciabatta than french bread but that may be because it was so wet - she's not kidding when she says you'll need floured hands to shape the dough. Actually the dough wasn't shaped as it was so wet I just sort of plonked it on the board and hoped. The one on the right wasn't keen to get off the board into the oven and so has cous cous on the top as I'd put a mix of cous cous and flour on the board to stop them sticking.

So there you go - fresh bread, green beans, tomato and herbs, fried halloumi and raw carrots. A yummy dinner even if I do say so myself.