How am I old enough to have a 3 year old?

James turns 3 tomorrow, however unbelievable that seems. We had a little party for him today and had lots of fun. I do need to brag about the cake that Gareth and I made. We have never made a 'character'/shape cake before, but I do think that our fire engine did come out well.

Birthday Boy waking up

Is it ready yet?

A Good Bye cuddle with Bebe

Happy Birthday My Baby Boy!

Hiya Moomies

I found out today on Facebook that I am the Featured Blog, so I thought I would say Hi, welcome, and please feel free to ask me anything in the comments. I will then try my best to answer them later in the week.
Thanks,
Janine

Reason to feel good.....

Happy Anniversary My Love! 4 years on and we are still laughing.

Love and Laughter......

Granny Pearce

05 May 1933 - 07 October 2010

Rest in Peace my Dear Granny. I will always love you. You are one of the most beautiful women that I ever had the pleasure to know. I will always remember how unbelievably strong you were. How happy you were, how you loved to have us around. How you always thought we all needed to be fed because we were all too thin. I will remember the holidays we had at your house when I was a child, how much love there always was. I will always remember making apricot jam in your kitchen, how you taught us to crack the pips from the apricots to get the pectin. I will always remember how you made us jump when something scary was on TV. I will always remember you my Dear Granny.

I will always regret never bringing James to meet you Granny. I am so sorry. If I could go back in time and change things I would. I know that you were so excited when you found out that I was having a baby, and I know that even though you had never met him that you had a special place in your heart for him. I will regret never writing a letter back to you like I had promised. I kept meaning to do it, but I just never got there because I wanted to print some photos of James to send to you and something always got in the way.

I love you Granny and I will miss you. I know that you are watching us from above and smiling at me Granny. I know that if anybody on this Earth was going to Heaven that it was you Granny. You were special. You loved Everyone. You made Everyone laugh and you made time for Everyone. Nothing was more important than your family and Church Granny, and for that I will always be grateful. Here on Earth there is a big hole missing that you filled, but up in Heaven I know the Angels are singing Hallelujah, one of Angels have returned home. They are probably busy throwing a party in your honour.... and don't worry Granny I have remembered what you said, I won't mourn you, I will instead Celebrate your life. I won't wear black, I will wear bright colours and I will cook a feast fit for King (although I would think you are better than King any day.), but first I just need to find a solution for these silly tears Granny. I promise that once they stop I will celebrate you and have a party like you will never forget. The party will be filled love and laughter just the way you would have wanted it to be.

I love you Granny. xxx

(Oh and Granny if you you could have someone send me your Apricot Jam and your Cheese Spread recipe that will be much appreciated.)

Loosing a bit of myself....

Well, I realise that normally that would be a bad thing, but this is actually a good thing. I have decided (once again) that I am tired of being fat, so I joined Slimming World last week Thursday. It is a lot easier than I thought. At first the 'diet' sounded really complicated, but once I tried it, I can tell you hand over heart that it is the easiest 'diet' I have ever been on. I have not gone hungry once or even felt deprived of anything. In fact on Tuesday night, I accidently found myself eating James' giant chocolate buttons, and I still managed to loose weight this week. I lost 1.14kg's (2.5 lbs) in my first week. I first had mixed feelings about having such a small loss in my first week because when I tried Weight Watchers I lost almost triple that in my first week, but this plan is a lot easier to stick too and there is nothing wrong with a slow loss. The slower you loose it the longer it will stay off. They tell you at Slimming World that nothing banned, and really nothing is banned. I am following the extra easy plan which means that I get Super Free Foods (all raw fruit and most veg), free foods (the rest of the veg, pasta, rice, cous cous, etc, fat free yoghurt, fat free cottage cheese, most meats with the fat cut off), my household basics (i.e. worcestershire sauce). Those foods are all free and I can eat as much of them as I like. I can't cook them in oil, unless I count the oil as syns, but I can use a low calorie spray for free. Then you have an A choice and a B choice you have to have everyday. An A choice is a measured portion of milk or cheese that contains calcuim and a B choice is a measured portion of a cereal, cereal bar, wholemeal bread, etc. It contains fibre. And then you get your syns. You are allowed 5-15 syns a day, and everything else counts as a syn. So I can still have chocolate or crisps or wine or sugar, etc, etc, etc, but I do need to count them.

So as you can see this is not really a diet, but more of a healthy eating plan, its really easy and I am never hungry. I was inspired to join Slimming World because of Gemma. She is a girl that I went to school with, and someone that I consider to be a friend. Gemma lost 32.5kg's (71.5lbs) in 1 year 10 months with them. That to me is absolutely amazing and I am so proud of her. I figure that if she can do it then I can at least attempt it. I need to do something about my weight, especially seen as Gareth and I would like to evenually give James a sibling...... so watch out world I have started.

To help with the weight loss Gareth has also bought me an exercise bike. It is lovely and silent. We got it off Ebay for just £10.50. I have used to it every morning and night since Sunday and can proudly tell you that I am already doing half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evenings. Its great, I just set it up in front of the TV and I cycle my heart out.

Ok, now you all go have a weekend.

A story and Shepherds Pie

Hi! We are back from camping, in fact we have been for a while... I would have blogged (I think), but well, I was ill. We got back from camping on the bank holiday weekend and then by the time we had caught up on the washing, seen the necessary friends, restocked the house with food, etc, etc, it was Thursday and I suddenly got a pain in my upper right side. I thought the pain would pass, it did for a few hours, but by Friday evening it was back and just kept getting worse. I lost my appetite and I was very nauseous. Saturday we went to a kids birthday party and I had to leave early to go the the Out of Hours Clinic as I was not right and getting worse. The nice doctor at the clinic told me that she thinks it was my gall bladder and that she could either put me in hospital for the weekend or send me home with some pain killers if I promised to see my GP on Monday. She gave me codeine as painkillers, and boy did they mess with my head. It felt like my body was floating away from my head. On Monday I saw my GP who was convinced that I need to be admitted to hospital, she said that she would get in contact with the surgical team and give me a call back within an hour to confirm. Well, when she phoned an hour later she told me that because I don't have a fever that the doctors are happy for me to stay at home on pain killers, but I would still need an ultrasound and see my specialist. She told me that she would need to give me Morphine syrup to be on, but only if I got someone to assist with James... apparently you can't be alone with a two year old while you are on Morphine (gee, I wonder why?). So, Gareth took off work while I basically slept the pain away. Wednesday night I did start developing a fever, but it went on its own, and have had a few more since then. But, the pain has subsided and the fevers are now gone. Gareth has gone back to work and I am still waiting for my appointments for the ultrasound and specialist to come through. Oh, and what I had was called Biliary Colic.... apparently it will come back again and again, I am not looking forward to that.

I thought seen as I have not blogged for a while that I would share my Shepherds Pie recipe with you. It is actually a Weight Watchers recipe, but the most delicious Shepherds Pie that I have ever had. I think that it has actually become Gareth's favourite food. Although I must also tell you that I do alter this recipe quite often as I change the veg a bit. Sometimes I like to add courgettes, or add sweet potato into the mash, etc. Tonight I am adding leeks and taking out the celery, I also adding mushrooms and in the mash I am adding a swede. Basically I look at what veg I have in the house and work around that.

Ok, the recipe -
Serves 4
20 minutes to Prepare, 1hr 20-35 minutes to cook

Ingredients -
Low fat cooking spray
1 onion, finely chopped
180g Carrots, peeled and finely chopped
2 sticks celery, finely chopped
500g lamb mince
400g tin chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
300ml hot lamb stock
1 tbsp fresh rosemary leaves, chopped
1 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
650g floury potatoes, peeled and chopped

Method
1. Mist a pan with low fat cooking spray and add the onion, carrots and celery. Cook over a medium heat, stirring, for 5 minutes, then add the mince and continue to cook, stirring for a further 5-8 minutes, or until most of the liquid has evaporated. Add the tomatoes, tomato puree, rosemary and Worcestershire sauce, and bring to a simmer. Reduce the heat and cook gently, stirring occasionally, for 30 - 35 minutes or until the sauce has thickened. Season to taste.
2. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180C. Place the potatoes in a large pan of water, cover and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and boil gently for 10-15 minutes or until tender. Drain thoroughly and return to the pan. Season with salt and pepper and mash until smooth.
3. Spoon the lamb into a 1.5 litre ovenproof dish and top with the mashed potato. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes or until the top is crisp.

Sien jou later......

(Although we may be back sooner than planned, as there are severe weather warnings out for heavy rain and flooding)

M is for Miserable.....

Its raining, we have had very little sleep and James is getting sick....

Our Star Child

About 2 months ago we started a Star Chart for James. In order to get a star he needed to go to bed when we told him to (8pm) and he needed to stay there. Well, today he got his last sticker.

The promise had been that if he completed all 28 sticker spaces that he would then get a scooter. James has been wanting a scooter since May month. He loves them and always wants to go on his friends scooters. We realised last week that he was coming to the end of his sticker chart so we ordered him one and it arrived this morning. All day today he has been over excited, but he knew that he had to wait for Daddy to get home to get his scooter as Daddy had to build it. So, when Gareth walked in the door tonight, instead of his usual Hello Daddy from James, he got, Hello Daddy, come build my scooter. He barely gave Gareth a chance to put his bag down. He wanted it now. So here is James about 10 minutes after Gareth got home from work on his scooter.

10 photos from Summer 2010

Hello

Hi, I know that I have not updated in a while, but we have been busy. I can't say exactly what with because I am not sure, but I do know we went camping somewhere in that not too sure what we were doing busy-ness. And guess what we discovered? James is allergic to the carpet in our house. His eczema disappeared completely while we were gone. We did start a new cortizone cream called Betnovate RD (Brillant stuff) and a new shower gel emollient called Dermol 200, and from the Thursday from when we left to the Sunday when we returned his eczema disappeared before our eyes, it was like watching a magic trick. Then Monday all was fine, Tuesday he got red angry patches on his feet and since then it has just spread upwards. We know that cleaning the carpets won't make any difference as we recently cleaned them and that made no difference to his eczema then, so the only conclusion must be that there is wool in the carpet that is irritating his skin. The solution is that we need to move to a house that is not carpeted. Unfortunately we won't be able to move for at least the next 4 months, but I thinking probably not until January. I have spoken to the estate agents and they will bear us in mind if something comes up that fits our needs, but for now I am just keeping him out of the house as much as possible. We can't keep socks on him as they make him hot, especially on the summers days, and heat makes eczema more itchy, and while we do try and encourage him to wear his slippers, he is 2 years old...

Pay It Forward

I visited Alanah's blog and found an idea on there that I quite liked. Its called Pay It Forward.

Here is what happens:

- I will make a handmade gift for the first 3 people who comment on this post.

- I have 365 days to do it in.

- What it will be and when it will arrive will be a total surprise.

The catch is that you must participate as well:

- You must have a blog

- And before you leave a comment here, write up a pay it forward post on your blog to keep the fun going.

Now I must warn you that I am not that crafty, but I figure that I have 365 days and I can learn. It could be a fun challenge.

So, who is going to comment?

She thinks there is hope

As promised, even though it is a bit delayed, here is an update on the Dermo Nurses first and second visit.

Visit One: She looks at his skin, and is happy that there is no longer a 'crispness' to the skin, it means that I am doing a good job on moisturising him often, but his skin is still red, angry and inflamed. She wants me to carry on using the antibiotic cream until her next visit. She is also sending a letter to my GP practise to prescibe a new bath additive(one with anti itch in it), a new shampoo, a new shower gel type emollient, a new stronger, higher sedative, anti histamine and a new cream. She also wants to change his cortizone cream for the body to the strongest one available, but we need to finish with the antibiotic one first.

Inbetween: Phone the GP practise 2 days later, they have not received the fax from the Dermo dept. Follow up with Dermo nurse who refaxes it. Go see GP practise the next day, first they tell me that it has not been received and then they find it. They ask me to collect the prescription later in the day. I fetch it at 5pm and take it to the pharmacy, who don't have everything, but order it in for Monday. The only prescribed him a 200ml bath oil and a 50g cream - they are both finished already and more has been ordered. Dumb Ass GP.

Visit two: Dermo nurse is not here long, she is happy with his skin. She does not think that we need the strongest cortizone cream anymore. In fact she tells me to stop using the antibiotic one and go onto our usual one once a day (we were on twice a day before antibiotic), and after 2 weeks his eczema should be clear. And to carry on with the rest of the products in the usual way.

Today: His sleep has gone back to topsy turvy. He has scabs all over his body from scratching, but his skin is not quite as red and angry. So I am not sure if we are starting a flare up or one is busy going away.

I must admit that I do think that the Dermo nurse is a bit loopy if she thinks that in 2 weeks his skin will be clear, but I am really hoping that she is right and I will have to eat my words.

She will be back a week from today. In the mean time she has asked me to keep a food diary so that we can see if there are any foods affecting him and if we should send him for an allergy test (yay!). I have not started this yet as I am going away on for the night on Friday night to meet some Internet Friends, some of which I have known for 3.5 years already, but have never met in person (I am very excited and nervous about this). But, due to this, I will start the food diary on Sunday as I get back Saturday night after James' bedtime. And yes, I could ask Gareth to do it while I am away, and yes, he is a loving and caring Dad, but lets face it, he is a man, so Sunday it is. And then I have to keep the diary for 6 weeks.

I did it!!!

And I have the medal to prove it. I did the Race for Life 10k this morning, and while I must admit I only ran over the start line and walked the rest of the way, I am still proud of myself and Gaelyn for completing it. And I had expected us to finish in 2 hours, so when we finished in 1 hour 47 minutes I was very happy.
And here is a dorky picture of me after I had finished.

(The dermo nurse is coming back tomorrow morning, after that I will update you on James' eczema journey)

More News to Follow.....

Good News - the Dermatology Nurse is expected to be here within the next hour

Bad News - the GP changed one of James' creams yesterday and he reacted to it, which means that it started burning him and he started screaming. Thats the third cream that has done this. He also has an antibiotic cream as some parts of his eczema are infected again.

*Most GP's only get an hours training on skin care, my GP however only works at the GP practise one day a week because the rest of the week she works at the skin clinic. She specialises in dermatology. The only reason she has referred us now is because she does not have the resources to teach me how to do the wet wraps at the GP practise.

Eczema here, Eczema there, Eczema Everywhere

Depending on how well you know me or my family or you know how severe James' eczema is. You will know how it rules our lives. How I only wear certain clothing at home as he needs to be creamed 5-6 times (sometimes more) a day and the creams are oily. How only getting 3 hours sleep is almost normal in this house because he is so itchy. How we can only wash his hair once a week because of the special bath additives that go into his bath. How he only wears 100% cotton. How his bedding is all anti allergy and 100% cotton. How we have visited the doctor almost every Monday since the beginning of the year. How we have 5 different creams, 1 anti-histamine, 1 bath additive and 1 special shampoo that need to be used on him on a regular basis. How we have used adult strength creams, sedatives and antibiotics on him to treat the eczema and they all failed too. And how we are really getting impatient waiting for the dermatologist to contact us, because after 2.5 years of battle we have finally been referred to him/her. Here are 2 photo's of his eczema, so you know that I am not exaggerating. I did alter the colour on the second photo a bit, just because he was moving and the camera never picked up the redness properly. This is just a slight indication because he does have it all over, including in his scalp and over his eyes.

But just to show you that none of this gets James down, here is a photo of him trying to hide in his Daddy's closet. He is a proper little trooper.

It's puzzling

I decided that I would try and make dinner early tonight so that we can all eat together (this has not happened for about the last week) so while I was in the kitchen making some pasta dish for tonight James decided to stay in the lounge. I left him with no TV and what I cam back to surprised. I was very impressed with my son. We have some puzzles that we leave on a shelf at his height, and normally he drives me mad with them because he pours all the pieces together and then I need to sort out the puzzles. There are about 5 puzzles and the smallest one has 20 pieces. They are all 3+ or 4+ (years not months. So when I walked into the lounge and I found this -

I was pleasantly surprised. My 2.5 year old son had done the fire truck 20 piece puzzle all by himself. There was no one here to help him. I am impressed.

So, we got a more difficult one. Its like a road map the next one, and I did give him some guidance, but he managed to do most of it by himself

Does this piece fit here?

Mmmm, where is that missing piece?

So now, while I have been blogging this James has started on the next puzzle, its a 4 year + puzzle with 24 quite small pieces, and he is already a third of the way through.

Lazy lunch?

I think this gives a whole new meaning to a Lazy lunch.....

Ice Lollies

Summer days are approaching us now, and we have had lovely sunshine this weekend. It was lovely and hot, and that only means one thing, its time for ice creams. But, Gareth does complain that I give James too much ice cream, so I thought the way to get around this would be to make him some yoghurt ice lollies. Yesterday I went to Poundstretcher and I bought an 8 pack ice lolly mould and then we came home and James helped me make the ice lollies.

We added about 250g mulled strawberries, one banana, a cup of natural yoghurt, 2 spoons of creme fraiche and a few squeezes of honey together and put them all in the blender.

Blended them all together.

Adjusted the taste to suit us. And then I put the smoothie mixture in the mould to freeze (and then in the freezer, duh!)

James drank the left over smoothie mix.

And today he is enjoying the Yoghurt Ice Lollies, and trust me when I say that he really likes it, and Gareth is not complaining.

I am proud of myself...

I have been teaching myself to sew in the evenings while Gareth studies. And to explain my sewing ability, well lets just say that they only subject I failed in school was Needlework, its not a talent that I have. But today I finished my first project all by myself from start to finish.... and this is the result.....

Now we are trying to convince James that he needs to take the romper off. As you can see, there are some threads still hanging off of it, but he loves it. It is a bit wonky and lopsided in places, but I have learnt a lot. Next project is finishing off a Cape for James and then I am making him a Monster Protection Blanket because he has been scared of them a lot lately, and this fear seems to be growing.....

Monsters

As some of you know, James and I are hostages at home this week. James may not leave the house as he has German Measles, otherwise known as Rubella. We saw the doctor on Sunday and he said that the only treatment for German Measles is to rest, and paracetamol if the temperature gets too high. Well, have you ever asked a 2 year old to rest, its one of lifes jokes. I have been playing DVD's that he likes and trying to do some quiet activities like puzzles and read books. Unfortunately my son wants to run around and kick a ball and go bounce on the bed. Yes, he is sick, but he is two and that means that he takes extra long naps, but still has energy, but it also means that he screams at me a lot more and even the smallest of things will make him cry. Any suggestions on how to keep him rested will be well received.

This afternoon we build Monsters with his Megabloks.

This is the Monster that we built together

And this is a video of James wanting to build a Monster while I held my camera phone, that is why the quality is not great.

On tomorrow's agenda are drawing and playdough.

You Capture: Yellow

This week on You Capture the theme is yellow.... and I am afraid that this is all that I could come up with, sorry. I had thought about doing James wearing his yellow arm bands or wearing his yellow helmet, but my camera then died (I think the batteries went bye bye) so this is all that I have this week.

Weekend Round Up

This has been one of the best weekends that we have had for a while. During the week the colour on our TV went bye bye, your choices were yellow or white.... not the best idea. So yesterday we splurged a little bit and bought our first TV. We have never bought a TV before, I was given one for my 20th birthday from my family, in the US we lived in furnished accommodation and when we moved to the UK we lived without a TV for the first 6 months and then Gareth's sister gave us her old CRT TV when she upgraded. And when I say we splurged we got a Samsung 40" LCD Full H 1080p TV (I am not even sure what half of those mean). The TV is being delivered tomorrow and really we can not wait. We never splurge. In fact it normally takes us 6 months to decide on which pair of shoes to buy if it is going to cost more than £20. We are just not spenders. Gareth also got a new phone yesterday as his old one is almost dead. He inherited it almost 3 years ago when we first arrived in the UK, and by that stage it was someones old phone that they had upgraded. This is the first mobile phone that Gareth has ever bought.

Today Gareth did the BHF Cycle ride, but unfortunately got a puncture and then lost a bolt on his bike so instead of doing the full 66 miles, he only did 25 miles. I am still proud of him. This afternoon we decided to go to Moors Valley Country Park, and by golly, it is a lovely place. There is no entrance fee, just a parking fee and there is so much to do. We decided to take James on the mini steam engine trains (there was a fee for that) and he loved it. I am sorry that I forgot to take a photo of it. And then we hired some mountain bikes and went for bike rides down the trails through the trees, and while I am sore tonight, it was still worth it and something that we will definitely consider again. It was a lot of fun. We then had some yummy ice creams. I had New Forest Oriental Ginger flavour. If you are in the UK and have not tried it yet, do yourself a favour and give it a try, it is absolutely delicious.



And that was our weekend.

*I know these are not the best quality photos. They were taken with my phone as we forgot the camera at home.

You Capture: Sweet

This week on You Capture the theme is sweet.

I thought the dessert that I was giving James after his lunch today would be a good place to look.

The hand in the picture belongs to James. He could not wait for me to finish taking a photo of his food.

The After Effect....

Independence

I love that James is getting older, and how well he does things now. His speech is coming along really well. Today he told me that he does not have a bra on (yes, maybe its time for a talk about boys and girls), and 2 nights ago I was running late with getting supper ready when in marches my son and says "Is my supper ready yet?". I was flabbergasted.

He has started to pedal his tricycle and can steer it all by himself, and on Saturday while we were waiting for Gareth in Halfords, James climbed on a 12" bicycle and actually pedalled it around the display all by himself. Lets just say we know what we are getting him for his birthday this year. The bike's age recommendation was from 3-5 years old, and again, I was flabbergasted.

But, with all the up's comes the down's, and while I do understand that it is a good thing, it-is-very-frustrating-thing too. James has started to dress himself. 'No Mommy, James will do it' is what I hear A LOT! He puts on his own trousers, his own socks and his own shoes, and so far he can put his t-shirts on over his head, but does not quite manage to get his arms in. And while this was cute the first 10 times, it is now just very frustrating. But I am lucky because some days he actually lets me choose his clothes, most days he has to choose his own.... and he always wants to wear Green Freaking Trousers, why, I don't know. Except that he only has 1 pair of green trousers and then when I tell him that it is in the wash, he tells me to fix it. 'Fix it Mommy, fix it'. Cheeky sod.

Picnik

I will never look at photo's the same way again. I think this Picnik might just become my new favourite website.

From this:

To this -


(I know the second photo is not perfect, but I do think that it is still an improvement)

You Capture: Fresh

I have decided to start partaking in You Capture, if nothing else it will get me blogging more often.

This weeks topic was Fresh.

This is what I thought of first:

The fresh bread was still warm when I took the photo, and it smelled very yummy.