Cake of Wonder, Cake of Joy.

This is the most incredible cake I've ever made. It's a bit messy - but oh lord it's tasty! 

This is a chocolate and coconut battenburg - with chocolate fudge where silly people put that horrible marzipan. Food colouring? Why, when there's chocolate?! Mmmmmmmmmcaaaaaaaaake

I ought to post the recipe - but it's late, and I'm tired, and feel a bit sick from eating so much cake - so I'll do that tomorrow :-D

Big round up.

I haven't blogged since Monday - that's only two days but it feels like an eternity! I haven't got time to write up and post the blogs that are in my mind but I have had an amusing day with my boys so I'm sharing pictures instead!

This morning Roman decided he wanted a snack - so he toddled into the kitchen, helped himself to a spoon from the drawer and the jar of peanut butter from the cupboard and was eating it like yogurt (that's my boy!) 

Excuse his blurry, freaky face in these - the focus is on the peanut butter. As is  only right, if you ask me! Mmmmmmmmpeanutbutterrrrrrrrr

Hm, it's a bit claggy Mummy

Not so claggy that I want to stop eating it though! GIMME MORE!

Once I'd convinced Roman to stop eating a jar of delicious fat he bored of me and headed into the living room, and shut the door so he didn't have to look at me. I can kind of see his point - I was a mess and my PJs were covered in peanut butter. 

Since Roman was ignoring me (in a sulk because I hid the jar) I played with Jasper instead; I make and sell taggies and though I've not sold any for a while (busy Momma!) I've a stash of them in a drawer for when I get time to list them (hahahahahahahahahahahaha) and Roman had been in there and fished one out for Jasper when he was crying; one of the jungle themed ones? No. Aeroplane themed? No. Pink fluffy bunny rabbit? Obviously. 

A little later I tried to take it off Jazz - but nope, he was having none of it - a few minutes clutched in his sweaty vice grip and it's true love - he and "Binky" (Roman can't say blankey or blanket) are inseperable. Even with all these other toys to distract him! 

He did manage some FAB giggles for me though - playing peepo from behind Binky! 

After all that hilarity it was (apparently) time for a snooze - so Roman stripped off (?) and hid behind the sofa cushion for a little nap. Jasper cuddled into me, held onto Binky and sucked his thumb and was soon fast asleep too.

I thought they were both asleep - so nipped into the kitchen to make myself a coffee; hearing unexpected noise I came back through to the lounge and Roman had got up (from behind the sofa cushion) and emptied out the drawers to find a video (Toy Story) which he'd put on and was dancing in the middle of the room singing along! 

"What a mess Mummy!"

Doomed to fail!

Saturday was such a great day - and we seemed to get LOADS done, including all curling up together at the end of the day to watch a film, so on Sunday I was running on a bit of a high. 


I was up at half seven with Roman and left Alex in bed for a lie in, fed Jasper, fed Roman and the day was clear, the flat was pretty tidy and I was feeling very positive - so I followed *some* of the advice from my health visitor and wrote myself a to-do list for the day.


His advice (yes, his, male HV, he's great) was that if I wrote a to-do list I'd get a feeling of pride and positivity because I'd be able to cross things off rather than giving myself a hard time for doing too little. Only his advice was to put things like "got out of bed, got every one dressed, fed the toddler some fruit at some point, mission accomplished" and everything above that is a bonus and an achievement. On Saturday I got to write (and cross off, haha!) so many extras that I had a bit of a false sense of my own supreme awesomeness - so I wrote a BIG list on Sunday. 


I won't put the entire list here but it was 17 items long and highlights were;


>make seven plaster moulds of the children's hands and or feet
>bake three cakes from a very complicated, so far untried recipe
>redecorate the bathroom


from those three things alone you can see I was, perhaps, being a little over ambitious. By lunchtime I was falling very, very far behind my self imposed time table and I was feeling panicked, angry, scared and like the biggest failure in the world. There was a brief minute I was standing with a toddler pulling on my leg, rocking a baby who was crying, trying to type on the laptop I'd balanced on top of some dirty breakfast pans to find the ingredients for the complicated cake so I could write a list to pop to asda to get the missing items and shouting at my poor husband for daring to exist and I had a little out of body experience and thought "look at you Locke; look at you - you're acting like a mad woman." 


We went to asda where I bought lots of chocolate.


We came home and I threw out my list.


I put on my PJs, grabbed the douvet, put on a DVD and cuddled up with my family. It was wonderful.


When you're struggling you need to back off - you need to enjoy the minute you're in right now, because if you can't do that you're going to spoil the minutes that are coming up. You can't PLAN a nice moment - you can just feel them. I threw out my list and I enjoyed the moment.

Silent Sunday