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.
Filed under Veggie-baby | Comment (0)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.
Filed under Blog Stuff | Comment (0)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.
Weekend in Chester
We’ve just come back from a lovely weekend in Chester. We stayed in a caravan at Fir Trees caravan park, and it was lovely. Really nice caravan, just what you need for a weekend away. If I had once criticism, it would be that there wasn’t really any open space in the park, for children to play, or just to wander round or anything.
We got there on the Friday, via Cheshire Oaks outlet place where we had lunch at Pizza Express – which was very cute because as part of the children’s menu, they do a ‘Bambinocino’, which is steamed milk with the chocolate sprinkles so Evie could have her own little ‘latte’ just like mummy! I was actually reasonably impressed with their children’s menu. Evie had some doughballs (which we all shared) a little salad (cucumber, cherry tomatoes and pepper, but all cut up into child friendly size bits), a mini pizza, ice cream and her ‘coffee’. Then I went for a wander and managed to buy Henry some new clothes, and he totally charmed all the staff in the shops!
On Saturday, we decided to go to Beeston Castle, which seemed like a really good idea until we arrived with two over tired children who’d fallen asleep in the car, and then realised that the car park is at the bottom of a very steep, not very buggy friendly hill, and the castle is right at the top. So we changed our minds and headed for somewhere else. Then we drove past an ice cream farm that had a play area, animals, and lots of ice cream. Unloaded sleepy, grumpy children, got halfway across the car park, and Evie had a meltdown and declared the whole thing to be “too windy”. I decided it was actually pretty windy, and no point forcing her to go if it’s all outside and she’s not going to enjoy it. So loaded everyone back into the car. Then went to Chester city centre, which is absolutely lovely, but is probably the worst place ever to take a pram. Still, we looked in a few shops and had a coffee.
Sunday was the big day, and we went to Chester Zoo.
We saw loads of animals (obviously!) but the tiger was Evie’s favourite.
Then there was the elephants
And this is me having a very in depth discussion about giraffe poo!
Here’s Henry being carried in his Moby wrap while Evie has a little break and rides in the buggy
And because Evie was SO good all day – she got a HUGE helium ballon. Meet Laurence the Lion. More about Laurence later!
On the Monday we had to go home. I was tidying up inside, and Newt was packing the car. Being a man, he decided that he could carry everything at once, ie, two big bags, and Laurence (I didn’t realise this, or I would have pointed out that this was a stupid idea). It was a very windy day (anyone guess where I’m going with this one?). Yup, I’m inside and I suddenly hear a piercing scream. I turn and look and Laurence is legging it across the caravan park, and Newt is splatted across the floor. I run out, and make sure Newt can walk (yes he can, but there’s lots of blood), and then give Evie a big hug. Fortunately Laurence had a fairly hefty weight attached to him, so a kind lady further down managed to catch him. Laurence was returned to Evie, Newt had no broken bones, and miraculously no broken teeth, just some fairly spectacular grazes. Once everyone was patched up and calm, we finished loading the car, and tied Laurence to the headguard!
Then we went off to the Blue Planet aquarium. Looked at lots of fish – there were sharks, but Evie liked the ‘Nemo’ fish best.
All in all we had a great time, and decided that we really should do more weekend breaks – just to get away from it all.
And in case that’s not enough photos, there are more in the Gallery.
Filed under Holidays and Family Days | Comment (0)Busy day yesterday
Had a lie in in the morning, which was lovely. Then because it was such a gorgeous day here, we went to Daisy Nook garden centre. Along with the rest of the North West. It was so busy that by the time we got there, they’d completely run out of cakes in the cafe. Could have been a big disaster, but Missy Moo decided that a ‘hot cross mouse’ (hot cross bun to the rest of us) would suffice instead. I bought her a couple of little plant pots for her bedroom, now just need to find a very sturdy and not at all delicate plant to go in them. Also bought some sweet pea seeds, and my mum bought sunflower and green bean seeds. We did try sunflowers last year, but I was rubbish, went on holiday and they died.
When we came home, I put together another Ikea Expedit storage unit. Took a great chunk of skin off my hands in doing so – but it’s up, and Evie’s room is much tidier. Still have three Benno DVD storage units to put up though. Also made some celeriac puree for Henry, who has the most enormous appetite! But celeriac is a stupid vegetable. Yes, it tastes quite nice, but I’m really not sure it’s worth all the hassle of trying to peel it.
Today, M&S came, and finally actually delivered and installed the last of my furniture. It’s now all OK, and all in place – only about 8 months after I first ordered it! They did still try to deliver another two bedside tables that I’ve never ordered though….
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