Touchstones

We went to church today, and had a lovely community lunch to celebrate the ordination of our new OLM (Ordained Local Minister – a kind of voluntary vicar).

Then Evie and I went to Touchstones in Rochdale – it’s the local art gallery, and on the last sunday of the month, they have a family arty/crafty activity session.  We’ve never been before, but I think we’ll definitely go again.  Today we made a little pencil holder like a house, and a model of the first ever Co-op – because it all started in Rochdale you know!  Evie did the colouring in and sticking, I was in charge of cutting out.  Except that the co-op model was tricky!

Here’s our efforts!

After we’d made our models, we went for a look round the gallery. They had an exhibition of Victorian paintings there, and they have the origianal of ‘A Special Pleader’ by Charles Barber. You’re bound to know it, I’ve seen it in all kinds of places, in case you can’t see the link, it’s the little girl standing in a corner crying, with a collie looking on. Well, yes, I saw the original! i’ve not been to many art galleries (not really my kind of thing to be honest), but it was actually really cool to see the original of something that’s so famous.

A day at the park

Today we all went to Chadderton Hall Park. It wasn’t raining when we set off, but typically it was by the time we got there. But it wasn’t too heavy, so we still managed to have a walk around, and then we went for coffee and cake at the cafe.

I then managed to get my workout mojo back, and went off to the gym. really wasn’t looking forward to it, but now I’ve been I do feel better, and less inclined to eat rubbish, knowing how hard I’ve worked to get rid of just a few hundred calories!

I also took a trip to Asda to buy a couple of things we needed, and managed to find myself a new knitting bag! I’ve been looking for a while for one that doesn’t look like a grannies knitting bag, but the ones I’ve seen are all well over £70, which seems like a lot for a knitting bag. But today I found a nice looking and big holdall for the grand total of £8 – so I now have a fab new knitting bag. I’ll take a pic when I can find the camera!

Bulgur wheat salad

I made this yesterday and it was lovely.
I just sort of made it up as I went along, so my quantities might be a bit out. This made enough to serve me and my husband as a side dish, with a little left over.

75g bulgur wheat
2 tomatoes
cucumber
1 large or 2 small peppers (whichever colour you prefer)
2-3 spring onions
1 small can mixed beans in water
Olive oil (optional)

Cook the bulgur wheat according to the instructions on the packet. I covered mine with water and left for 30 mins (actually, I used veg stock instead of plain water to give it a bit more flavour).
Chop the peppers, spring onions, cucumber and tomatoes.
When the bulghar wheat is cooked, put it in a pan over a VERY low heat (the lowest you can).
Stir in the peppers and spring onion and a tiny drizzle of olive oil if you want to. The heat is just to help the flavours develop.
Stir in the canned beans (drained)
Give it a few minutes, then take it off the heat, and add in the tomatoes and cucumber.

I like it slightly warm, but I’m sure it would also be nice cold.
It’s just like couscous salad really, but bulgur wheat is lower GI, has a bit more fibre and is (IMHO) a bit more tasty.

We had it as a side dish with some quorn fillets (done like garlic lemon chicken), and a green salad. But I think because it’s got all the beans in it, it would be a great lunch on it’s own. And I’m sure you could put whatever veg you like in there.

I got in!!!

I’m really really excited. I’ve got a place on the MClin Res (Masters of Clinical Research) at Manchester Uni, to start in September. I’ll be doing it part time, and so it will take me two years, and I know that with two young children it’s going to be really hard. But I so want to do this because I hope eventually to be a research midwife, either working in a hospital, or a research unit at a University, or even as a lecturer, and I know I need to do this to help me move towards that goal.

So, so pleased about this!!

Swimming

Today we had a successful swimming lesson!

It was Evie’s third lesson, and she hasn’t been very impressed so far, and last week she spent 25 minutes of a 30 minute lesson crying and yelling “I want my mummy!”. But today I decided I was going to swim in the big pool while she had her lesson in the little pool. And it was a big success no crying (after I initially left her at least), and she even enjoyed her lesson. And as a bonus I got to swim in peace for half an hour, and then Evie got to play with mummy in the big pool.

Success! We celebrated with toasted teacakes, lattes and vimto.

Lovely weather

Finally the weather here is starting to feel a bit more like spring! So everyone is feeling much brighter. The kids have been out in the garden, and I even managed to get a bit sunburned on a recent trip to a friend’s house – we were in the garden all afternoon knitting.

I’ve been working on my clapotis done in gorgeous yarn from Fyberspates.  I’m absolutely loving knitting it.

Feeding the kids

Had a good day today.  Went to Morrisons, which is not exciting in itself, but as we had literally no food in the house, I had to take Evie there for her lunch.  She had children’s macaroni cheese with garlic bread, and apple slices, and also polished off half of my mum’s chips with mayonnaise!  Eating out with veggie children is generally not much fun.  There’s often little choice as an adult, but for the kids it’s even worse.  It’s always macaroni cheese, pizza or spaghetti and tomato sauce.  I just wish they’d make a bit more of an effort and maybe do something with a few more veggies, or some lentils or something.  Some places will do small portions of adult meals, but often these aren’t much more inspiring.

Henry had a spinach and something or other pouch from Plum Baby – personally I thought it tasted weird because it also had apple in it, but he seemed to like it.

But the really exciting news is that he ate cauliflower!  A new taste, and also a bit of texture, because when you puree cauliflower, you don’t get a wonderfully smooth puree like you do with butternut squash, or sweet potato and the like.  You get sort of miniscule bits of cauliflower in a sort of watery base.  Sounds disgusting, and doesn’t look a lot better.  But I mixed in a bit of baby rice to sort of bind it all together, and then added some cream cheese to make it into a kind of cauliflower cheese.  At first he really wasn’t keen – I think because of the new texture, but after a bit of protesting, he ate the lot.  And then had some fromage frais.  I can’t believe how much he loves solids – totally different to Evie, who I’m sure didn’t swallow anything vaguely approaching real food until she was 10 months old!

I did quite a bit of baby cooking yesterday, so now he has some cubes of lentils in the freezer, along with some mini yogurt pots full of cauliflower, and red pepper and courgette.  The red pepper and courgette was actually quite nice pureed, and Evie had some yesterday as a pasta sauce.

Holly

We had to have Holly put to sleep on Friday.

I’m really, really sad about it, but I think it was the right decision.  I basically had two options – sedate and x-ray again to see how much fluid had cleared off her lungs, and then see what was going on with tumours, or to euthanase.  As she hadn’t got much better (if at all) on the medication in the past week, I decided it wasn’t fair to put her through more tests, and sedation and medication, when the best we could really hope for would be more drugs to extend her life a little bit.  So I decided to say goodbye to her.  And that has to be the hardest, most grown-up decision I’ve ever had to make.  Huge thanks to my wonderful, wonderful vet for being totally honest with me, giving me all my options, and helping me make that decision without trying to push me one way or another.  Thank you.

The end was so quick – far faster than I’d expected, and very peaceful and painless for Hol.  She just fell into a deep sleep, and now I’m sure she’s in kitty heaven – sunbathing, eating prawns and cheese sauce, and chasing birds.

Holly was about 16-17 years old, which isn’t bad going at all.  I’ll miss her so much because she was so easy going, so loving and friendly, so good with Evie – just generally wonderful.  She loved boxes and sitting on bits of paper – I remember her trying to cram her rather big bum onto a tiny till receipt once, and also she tried to sit in the shoe box from Evie’s first shoes – never going to happen!!  We’ve been through so many rough times together, and she was my constant.  She would always be there when I got home from work. Would always want strokes and loves, and would sleep on my bed at night.  I’ll miss her so much, but at least now she’s not in pain or struggling any more.

Changes

So, some changes round here.  And a promise to blog a little bit more often.

I’ve merged all the veggie baby stuff into here, because if I can’t manage to post on one blog, I don’t stand a chance of keeping up with two.  But Henry’s just started weaning now, so any veggie-children-like topics will be tagged as ‘veggie baby’.

I’ve changed the theme – I like it.  Lighter and brighter.  I haven’t got the sidebars sorted properly yet though, because Mr Newt has not given me the proper permissions and I can’t get to them at the moment.

And I’ve changed the name!  I think it probably sums up what I’ll be blogging about a bit better than ‘littlerach’ – but I can’t change my domain name, that’s here to stay.  So I hope you like it, and if you stopped reading (because I stopped writing!) then I hope you’ll join me again.

Emergency vet visit

Had to take Holly cat to the energency vet today. She’s lost a LOT of weight over the last month or so, and I was going to take her to our vet tomorrow, but then she was sick and started coughing blood (according to DH). She felt really rattly so I took her down. The vet didn’t seem very optimistic. Her said her kidneys were small, and she had a painful lump in her stomach. He gave me various options, and in the end we opted for some blood tests which they did there and then. They came out better than expected – no evidence of dehydration or kidney failure, possibly an infection. So she’s had injections of painkillers, antibiotics and anti sickness drugs, and she’ll have to go to our vet tomorrow, and probably have a scan. then they’ll decide whether this lump is a blockage (probably not) or a tumour (much more likely) and whether or not it can be removed.

She’s been really off her food, so I’ve bought a variety of stuff to try to tempt her – but when you have more than one cat, it’s difficult to work out who is eating what!

I’ve got my fingers crossed for tomorrow, but I’m also being realistic, and thinking that she probably won’t be with us for very much longer.
I’ll be devastated when that time comes. She’s about 17 years old, and I’ve had her for 16 of those. She’s seem me through some really bad times, and I can’t imagine the house without her. But I’ll worry about that when the time comes.