jemjabella

Hungry?

At the end of last month I decided to try a meal-plan month. Plan your family meals for a set timespan, buy the necessary foods and don’t waste money on food that won’t get eaten because you’ve changed your mind when you get home from work. I’m surprised by how well it’s working; I expected to get fed up with the lack of spontaneity but in reality it’s been a blessing. If I know what I’m having ahead of time I can prep in advance and save time (and the leftovers make excellent work lunches). We’ve only cheated once (bought pizza instead) and that was because I was feeling naff.

By total coincidence I was approached about a week ago to see if I’d be interested in pushing a press release for “Hungry?“, the new innocent cookbook. I’m not (despite my age-old love for innocent), but the opportunity to get a freebie is something else entirely…

The book arrived at work, brightening up an otherwise crap afternoon (disclaimer: not indicative of usual feelings towards work). Couldn’t wait to get it home so I could figure out why it weighed so much! Turns out that as well as the 100 or so easy to cook recipes it also contains buckets of beautifully designed — and educational — spreads (that’s design speak, don’t you know):

And those are just the beginning… the book is absolutely ram-packed with the usual innocent one-liners and cute witticisms. The majority of recipes contain at least one portion of your “5 a day”. The pictures are fab and there’s even a binary caption under one (GEEK LOVE).

I was most fascinated to read about how the Chorleywood way has reduced bread to little more than a fatty bread-flavoured lump (paraphrasing) and how Howies “Doh Boy” campaign wants to change that. Having used the bread recipe that accompanies the text — which is just flour, yeast, salt and water .. oh, and time — I am now considering making my own bread by hand on a weekly basis. Domestic goddess? Damn right.

So next month the plan (pun!) is to carry on with the meal plans, and to integrate some of the innocent recipes. I had the book itself lined up for a give-away, but am selfishly thinking of keeping it to myself. Research purposes, you must understand. ;)

Photography by Creative Review. Borrowed because mine sucked ass.

PS. In case you’re wondering, tonight it’s toad in the hole :)

Ouch

I got called a mommy blogger yesterday. Ouch. It was a harmless remark, included in an otherwise genuine question, not intended to offend. And yet nearly 24 hours later I’m still thinking about it.

I guess what bothers me the most, aside from my distaste for the “PPP” / sponsored posts crap that most ‘mommy bloggers’ tend to involve themselves with, is the order of the words: Mommy. Blogger.

Now, I’ve been blogging for over 10 years. I’ve been a “mommy” (ick) for nearly 2. By my calculations, that’s a good 8 years of blogging where I’ve not been a mother. Even if I’d blogged about motherhood, babies, poo, breastfeeding and who knows what else each day since the conception of my child, the post count would still not come anything close to the total of non-parenting blog entries I have (or had) in my entire blogging history. My blogging is not defined by my ‘status’ as a mother, any more than Karl’s is defined by his as a father, or my sister’s as an aunt, or my child-free friends by their “lack” of offspring.

I am not a mommy blogger. I am just a blogger.

Life. Oh, Life. Toddler taming & more.

(This post has been constructed over a period of several days, snatching minutes here and there. If it seems choppy / all over the place, it’s because it is.)

Struggling to find the time to write at the minute.. life busy passing me by undocumented. It’s not like I don’t HAVE the time, it’s just that after I’ve spent all day juggling it around to fit toddler + work things in, I just want to crash on the sofa of an evening and hit up my homies in the q*bee irc / stick another House DVD on.

Dentistry

I had a tooth out last week. It was one I’d had a root canal on in 2006. Consider the dentist at the time said it was a close thing and may need to come out, I don’t think managing another 5 years was too bad. Let this be a lesson to you kiddies: if you spend your teenage years eating crap and not brushing, your teeth will die. (That and the hyperemesis, but short of not having kids there was no getting ’round that.) Anyway, extraction… worse than childbirth. It didn’t hurt, it was just terrifying. I’m a nervous patient anyway — I get butterflies if I’m just going in for a check-up — so the whole “ripping tooth out of mouth” thing was too much. At least you get something to show for it out of giving birth!

Driving

My driving test is next week. Next week. It’s hard to believe I started lessons this time last year. FYI, I don’t recommend taking one 1-hour lesson a week. By the time the next week rolls around you’ve forgotten what you learned the week before. If I were to start over I think I’d take 2 hourly lessons from the start, possibly twice a week. I started taking 2 hour lessons a few months ago and I think it was then I actually started taking things in. According to the Direct.gov website, those who pass have had 47 hours of instructed practice and 20 private. I’ve only had instructed lessons but I’m about on par for average (bit over?)

Oh, toddlerhood!

Isabel is withholding again. She’s back on the lactulose, but we’re already giving her more than the previous dose and it’s not yet working (that is, it’s making her go, but not often enough to prevent the withholding and help her ‘forget’). Docs have talked about prescribing Movicol but aren’t willing to do this until she’s 2. Apart from the obvious problems this can cause internally if left, it’s so hard to watch my happy, smart little girl turn into a grumpy lump unwilling to talk / walk / do anything while we’re waiting on a poo. I’m also concerned about the impact this is likely to have on moving on from nappies. She’s already recognising when she’s wet, can undress herself, asks for her nappy off first thing etc so we’re hitting many of the ‘ready for potty’ signs, but I don’t want to rush things and start the bloody cycle all over again.

Talking of Isabel. Sleep, oh beautiful sleep. This is a big one, probably worthy of a blog post of its own but without the time to spare for that, I will say: Isabel sleeps through the night now (95% of the time). She started sleeping longer patches around 16 months and by 18-19 months was going through all or most of the night. This is A Big Deal in parenting circles (seriously) because apparently the worthiness of your parenting is directly proportional to the amount your child sleeps. [roll eyes] Anyway, after having been quite vocal in the past on “cry it out” / “controlled crying” techniques to get even tiny babies to sleep unaided (in case you missed it, I think it’s bloody cruel) I can finally say FUCK YOU to the co-sleeping / gentle parenting naysayers. My kid learnt to sleep all by herself, no “training” necessary. Now just to stop her from kicking me in the head as she performs ‘snow angels’ in bed…

Blogging

I’ve moved my posts from jemturner.co.uk back to here. I liked having a blog where I could be more geeky and mention more work-related stuff but it was adding another level of stress to have to maintain a separate site. I’m going to drop a standard “here’s what I do, here’s how to contact me” page on jemturner.co.uk and do the rest from here. It goes hand in hand with adopting the tagline “on parenting, pets and PHP” which alliterates nicely. :) (You may have noticed me farting about with the title on the homepage for a while…)

…aaand, that’s all (for now) folks!

Amazing Mama / Midwifery Blog

I wasn’t originally going to post this link, and settled for sharing it privately with a couple of friends. However, after having spent several hours immersed in it this evening I can’t NOT share it:

“Navelgazing Midwife”

It’s not often I enjoy reading a blog as much as I have this one, particularly ones about aspects of childbirth and parenting. Most of the blogs I read that are pro-breastfeeding / natural parenting etc become repetitive, and many are patronising or condescending towards those who choose to meander from the crunchiest path possible (“you VACCINATE? gosh, you must be able to see the mercury emanating from your child”, etc). To me, reading her experiences with birth are as much about feminism and supporting women as they are about the actual process of birth.

The honest approach of this amazing lady — who is a mum, an experienced midwife and doula — is just so refreshing to read. Love it.

Sat in the car…

…next to Izz, who’s fast asleep in her car seat. Typing feels weird, because the skin on my fingers has been shredded from shovelling gravel and lifting concrete.

We went out to try and buy Isabel a slide yesterday, and while we couldn’t find one (end of season, all shops seem to be swapping garden lines for other stuff) we did find a batch of turf on offer. And so, with our long term plan to turf the garden and the unwillingness to pass up on a bargain, we bought it… 21 rolls. (Note: without measuring the garden.)

And so we’re turning this:

into (yes, ok, it’s photoshopped. badly. come on, I’m using a touchpad!):

So, as well as not measuring, here’s some other things we didn’t do:

• Look at/check how much gravel was actually in the back garden
• Check how the stone patio circle thing was put in place
• Look up how to lay turf

Discovering that you have an area of about 1.8m x 3m covered by 6 inches of gravel and a patio stuck in place with 3 inches of concrete and another 2 of builders sand, after you’ve already bought the turf? Incentive to work harder, ha. We’re 3/4 done…

Bitten off more than we could chew? Perhaps. But it was a bargin! ;)