Just a Little Bit Monica! February 25, 2009
Posted by graciek in Life in General.add a comment
Today I’ve been “just a little bit Monica” – i.e. Monica Gellar from Friends. I’ve been a whirling dervish of tidying freakiness!!! Woke up and unloaded the dishwasher. Swept the floors. Cleaned the leather sofas. Scrubbed the shower in the main bathroom (yuck filthy – 1mm layer of black slime – gross). Blitzed the kitchen. Changed the sheets.
Could it be I’ve suddenly become a tidy person? Nope – it’s because we have visitors coming to stay tomorrow 
In other news it’s Evie’s 7 month birthday, or should that be her 7th monthday? Can’t believe how fast time is flying by. She’s now eating solids very happily and also crawling too. No teeth as yet not properly recognisable words. Although the other night hubby was changing her before bed and I swear I heard her crying out “mummy, help me”.
So long for now! February 22, 2009
Posted by graciek in Family, Life in General.add a comment
My parents flew off to Singapore en-route back to the UK today. Much as I was worried about living together for 2 months (having not lived with them since I was 17) I really really enjoyed our time together and now will miss them. It seems like a blink ago that we were meeting them in Singapore en-route to our new lives in Australia. Now it’s 2 months later and they’re leaving us behind. Will seem strange knocking around the house by myself (well, just me, Evie and Mocha) during the day whilst hubby is at work. Also I think Evie really enjoyed having them here – always being cuddled and fed all manner of contraband (chocolate and biscuits) and never allowed to cry for more than 20 seconds before my Dad picked her up out of the cot. She’s in for a rude awakening tomorrow when Mummy doesn’t come running to get her each time she makes a noise. They’ll be back for another long visit next February. In the meantime I have just 3 days to tidy up the remainder of the house before the next relatives arrive on Thursday!!
A Date!! February 15, 2009
Posted by graciek in Going Out, Life in General.add a comment
We try not to do Valentine’s Day dates as everything is so contrived and at over-inflated prices. We went out on our first date since hubby’s birthday in September. My parents babysat Evie for the afternoon. We went out for a little drive around the different areas we’re thinking of buying houses in. Then off to the cinema to watch “He’s Just Not That Into You”. It was a terribly chickey chick flick but hubby seemed to enjoy it. It had a massive cast of people and I kept losing track of who knew whom. Not one I’d pay to go to the cinema again for, perhaps I’d consider it on DVD later. Afterwards we went out for dinner at Caesar’s Kitchen (or something like that) in Menai. It was your standard kinda American diner set up with the booths and the pizza/pasta fare. I had a rather nice Veal Parmigiana (with tagliatelle) and hubby had a pizza of some sort (think it was very Mediterranean with the olives and feta etc).
Valentine’s Day haul -
Me: Baileys & 2 glass gift set (the glasses match my 2 that are coming in the container) and a box of scrumscious Lindt dark chocolates
Him: Tooheys Dark Ale home brew set & box of bottles to brew it in (couldn’t find the fermenting bin though so he’ll have to wait a little longer)
House Shopping & Unwell Baby February 9, 2009
Posted by graciek in Evie, Life in General, Under the Weather.add a comment
We’ve now been to 3 Saturday’s worth of open houses looking for our next home. We went for a second viewing at a place we really liked on Saturday and today I sent off some questions to the estate agent. 2 hours later the agent got back to us, the house had just sold. They agreed a price and managed to exchange contracts at the same time. Wow they worked quickly. Well, I guess it was just not meant to be. I’m not too worried though as there are houses which fit our criteria coming onto the market everyday.
Evie has been having a funny turn this last weekend. Friday morning she woke up and she was burning up. Took her temperature and it was 37.9. Over the next 24 hours it got higher and higher till at 5am Saturday she was over 39 deg C. 2 hours later she woke up and it was back down to 37.3. Other than the extreme temperature she was perfectly normal, happy and smiling away (even when I gave her a cold bath). She had quite a few doses of baby paracetamol too to help control it. By Saturday evening she was getting warmer again. Sunday morning she was back down to normal temperatures and stayed that way. It was quite scary as it’s the first time she’s been ill and I was panicking away. But cos of the lack of any other symptoms we felt she was ok. Sunday she was off her food a little (well, she was still eating most of it, but not her usual ravenous ways). This morning she was fine but she got a little heat rash on her neck. Over the next 1/2 hr she suddenly seemed to develop plenty of tiny red spots on her chest, back and some on her face. Bathtime made it worse. Then she had a nap and the spots went down. Thinking it was just heat rash we just let her sleep it off. Searching on the internet it would appear she probably has got Roseola Infantum – sudden fever for 2-3 days followed by rash once the fever subsides. My parents made me worry a bit as they thought she had developed measles, but she had no other symptoms. We’ll see tomorrow morning if she is any worse then I will take her to the doctors.
Totally Skint February 6, 2009
Posted by graciek in Australia, Life in General, Money.Tags: exchanging money
add a comment
Well, after a whole week of watching and waiting for the exchange rate between GBP and AUD to spike (which it actually didn’t really, it just fluctuated) we finally bit the bullet and changed our UK money over. We’re using a company called UK Forex (also Oz Forex), which seems to have good rates (approx 0.01c less than interbank lending and has no fees/commission on sums greater than £10k). Last weekend it stopped at 2.29AUD to 1GBP and it went down all week (with a couple of spikes when the AU rescue package wasn’t a shoe in and GBP interest rate cut was announced). Nothing major to report unlike October 2008 when it hit 2.7! Managed to get 2.229 in the end. Shortly afterwards it fell below 2.2 so we got in there just in time. It was very scary sending all our money off into the ether. I had to send it in £10k batches through Nationwide online banking. Hopefully it will appear in our Oz bank by the end of next week (given that UK Forex probably won’t receive it until say Wednesday). So it’s going to be a nervous week next week wondering where our money has gone.
Now I can go back to my real life where I’m not sat there watching graphs!!! How sad am I?
Turkey Bolognaise for Baby February 5, 2009
Posted by graciek in Evie, Life in General, Recipes.add a comment
So Evie has been having “solid” foods since Christmas Day. This last week or so I’ve been trying her with some slightly larger lumps/mush rather than sloppy puree to see if she can get the hang of swallowing. We first realised she was ready for lumpy food when she started breaking off mushed up bits of melon and orange and consuming them (prior to this we always grabbed the bits out of her mouth in case of choking). So I was sitting here today eating my lasagne. Evie was so interested and everytime I put a forkful in my mouth her mouth opened expectantly (she prob has my Garfield genes). I thought, let me see if she likes a tiny bit of tomato, then a bit of carrot, bit of mushroom, then a tiny bit of mince. She absolutely loved it. Surprisingly she was actually chewing (quite a feat when you have no teeth), which I guess she must have learnt by watching the adults eating – not only that she was chewing with her mouth closed (so polite!!). Anyway, I decided to whip up some improvised bolognaise for her meals this week. Here’s my recipe (it’s not nutritionally quantified or anything, but just a simplified version of what we have, which is probably better for when she finally eats what we do it will be familiar at least).
Ingredients:
- 150g of minced turkey
- 3 tbs of tomato paste/passata (pure tomato only, not cook in sauce/Dolmio type affair)
- 1 small carrot
- 1 tsp of olive oil
- 2 mushrooms
- 1 tbs of sweetcorn
- 1/4 of an onion
- pinch of mixed herbs
Instructions:
1. Dice the onions really small (I chopped them up till they were about 2mm x 2mm) and soften by frying in the oil
2. Add the turkey mince and mash it round with the spatula whilst it’s cooking to remove any large lumps
3. Chop up the mushrooms into tiny pieces, add to mixture
4. Peel and grate the carrot into the mixture
5. Add the sweetcorn
6. Once the meat is all cooked then add the tomato paste & herbs
7. Add water to make sauce to desired thickness
8. Cook for about another 5 mins then let cool
9. Use stick blender for short bursts (just to knock out any large lumps, but not too much as you don’t want to make it into puree)
10. Put into ice cube trays ready for the rest of the week’s meals
Now babies are not supposed to have gluten before 12 months or something, so I didn’t make pasta for her. I intend to give her 1 cube of the bolognaise sauce per 2 cubes of something starchy (in this case it will be accompanied with the sweet potato and spinach ice cubes).
