BUT…as soon as a  friend of mine who has two little hens popped over for a little visit, my little darling became a case study from one of the parent help books that are desperately read. I know these situations must be hard for Rooster- if someone were to come and unpack my make-up and try it out willy-nilly or even take it away from me- it would freak me out. Not sure I would start beating my friend with the mascara but I’d not take it lightly- and I’m the sharing kind. Sometimes it’s just hard to see the change in Rooster as he struggles with others. I have this urge just to try and tell friends that he’s actually a good kid, you should have seen him a half an hour ago- but I try not too because what they think isn’t as important as how Rooster feels coming out of experiences like this. On the other hand I want to say- hey that’s his stuff, he has a right to want to play with it and not have you claim it. LEAVE IT ALONE and just watch him play. (chuckle)

Fun times!

Chocolate Buttermilk Cake

Ingredients:

500ml flour

500ml sugar

Pinch of Salt

5ml Bicarbonate of Soda

125g Butter/marg

250ml water

125ml oil

125ml cocoa powder

2 extra large eggs

125ml buttermilk or plain yoghurt

Method:

Heat butter, water, oil, and cocoa powder in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Remove from heat and cool.

Sift flour, sugar, salt, bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl.

Pour cocoa mixture into the flour and mix well. (I use a spoon)

Whisk eggs and buttermilk together and add to the cake mixture.

Pour into greased ringpan – Bake at 180˚c. The recipe suggests for 30 min but I have to bake mine for an hour before it’s done

Remove from the oven and cool in the pan for 5 minutes before turning it out onto a wire rack.

Icing:

60g butter/marg

30ml cocoa powder

45ml buttermilk or plain yoghurt

5ml vanilla essence

375ml icing sugar

Melt Marg in microwave for 1 minute- stir in other ingredients.

Rooster is almost two now- he still crows as day breaks so his nickname remains the same. Children give a mother an opportunity to grow- especially seeing as I have from 6am to start. Without Rooster, my life would be pretty much the same every day. Go to work, come home, cook, clean, relax, read. My life now isn’t much different from that now but  he adds an element of fun and growth. I’m constantly having to check up on things, particularly myself on how to best manage: a tantrum, a squished banana into the lounge suite, filling time, developing a young mind, being the a good wife while trying to be a good mother and remembering that I’m allowed to enjoy these things and laugh at them too.

So to start or restart my blogging marathon (I never was much of a runner), here are some things I laugh about which help me along this journey of growing:

• My own jokes. Sure not everyone thinks they’re funny but boy no-one gets my jokes like I do.
• Some of the things Rooster says to me: Mom, stop in the name of the law! ; No way; Peeese (please) ; “Hurray,mom, my happy birday milkshake.
• My husband. (remember I say laugh about not at!)
• My family. (sometimes you can’t help laughing at…)
• Having a dance off/Family’s got talent with my niece and nephews. Watching how seriously they concentrate is so funny!
• Old journal entries.
• Teenage photos- I choose laughing over crying.
• Fashion- looking back I thought 80′s fashion was a foe pah, I laugh that some mistakes keep on happening.
• Tigger- put on the subtitles and read a long as your children watch- he’s so funny! Reminds me of my brother. I’m glad I know he doesn’t read my blogg.

There’s much place for laughter and “I be having it”.

I really struggled at first to breastfeed. I was supplementing with formula from a cup at first so that Rooster wouldn’t get used to the bottle and would take to the breast eventually. It was so rewarding when we both got it right eventually. I never thought he would latch on for another seventeen months and beyond. My theory was, give him until a year and then we’ll see. Up until that time he was having four or five feeds a day. Realising that he was enjoying these feeds more than needing them I started tailoring down.

I first started skipping the midday feed, then I lost the second morning one, then the mid afternoon and now I’m left with the two most difficult ones to abandon. I realised distraction from it wasn’t such a big deal and never to deny it when I knew he really wanted it.  My next task is to tackle the morning feed which he wakes me at about 5am for. It was wonderful losing the day time feeds. I felt liberated wearing non-feeding bras again. I was surprised the milk stayed. It’s amazing how my body creates the stuff. It’s the best long life milk ever: sitting just warmer than room temperature for hours at a time without fermenting. Marvellous!

Even though we’re weaning, it truly does amaze me how obscure it is to people, even to those who have breastfed, that there’s no hurry to get him off breast milk. Sure, I don’t want to still be breastfeeding in six months time. I just don’t see the point at this stage to get him attached to a bottle rather than the breast when he’s still so happy and I’m still ok with it. I don’t want to have to wean him twice. My husband also feels that it’s actually what the “mammers” have been made for and it’s keeping Rooster healthy so why not.  High five to that buddy.

More then weaning him, I’m going to have to wean myself from that close time together. On the upside, we can paint dad into winding down picture and not to forget sleepovers at the Grandparents. This is sounding promising!

Why do we wait so long to sort things out before they get out of hand?

This patient had waited too long to go to the hospital and now was in a bad way and I mean really REALLY bad. I too was in a situation were I was concerned that I had something wrong with me. I sat and waited for months, picturing my death, marrying my husband off to a suitable mother figure for Rooster- there were even tears as I thought of this. Unlike the poor patient, had waited in vane and after going to get things sorted realised I’m fine. But why did I have to sit worrying for so long without doing something about it?

What does all of this have to do with a haircut? Well, my Rooster is now 17months and had not had a haircut since he was born. He had started looking a little like Einstein but to me that was o.k.- smart kid looks like a smart guy and his curls were cute! Then we had Einstein mixed with a bit of Bob Marley with some dreads  from the way he sleeps. Love Bob’s music but not the do. Seriously, it’s just hair, it grows back. But I found I had some attachment to this hair. As if cutting  was cutting away my little baba and now he’s a big boy that needs haircuts from his dad (who did a superb job by the way). I filmed the whole thing, wanted to catch every lock and cringed with every scissor snip.

Now that it’s cut he looks cuter than ever!

It’s clear: time to “go and do and not sit and stew!” (John Bytheway)

You see, Rainbow ice-cream is a mix of vanilla, chocolate, strawberry (all yum) and then lime (not so yum) ice-cream. Dish up a bowl, it’s ice-cream so you’re naturally excited but then you hit the green lime parts and your whole ice-cream experience just seems tainted. You notice the green even more as it starts to melt and mix with the other flavours. As this begins to happen, it seems that all you can taste is the green and suddenly the other flavours don’t taste the same anymore.

This was similar to my first year. It didn’t take long to get used to the three flavours and I already loved chocolate ice-cream. I would try and scrape around the lime so that I wouldn’t get it but that wouldn’t work because then I’d just get upset as I tried so hard to remove the green.Eventually I realised, it’s best just to try another ice-cream flavour. One that you both like! That’s when year two rolled around and it was cookies and cream from then on!

Much like the pre-marriage and the first year were the first six weeks with my little one. The pre-baby stage is all about the birth. How is this bundle going to get out of the oven. We read, search, speak to professionals about the birth. Caesar, natural, natural, epidural? Another pre-birth topic is the baby room. What colour, what fabric? Do I go blue, pink or neutral? The birth is sometimes not how you planned or expected but the bundle arrives.  There’s so much to love about this little bundle- but there’s also a lot of lime!

Even for those to whom motherhood comes terribly naturally, your breasts are tender, you have to worry about whether they are producing enough. Bottle or breast, BOTTLE OR BREAST?  But the antenatal woman says breast and the pediatrician says bottle. AHHHHHH! There’s sleep deprivation which is a blog post on its own: one day feels like several days because you can’t remember when you last changed out of your pj’s. The crying, the pooping, the spewing! But…then the bundle smiles after six long weeks and “ding” I’d like a bowl of cookies and cream please?!

What’s fun to think back on now, is the superwoman complex I seemed to have at the beginning of both marriage and motherhood. I had to try and cook and clean, save the world too just show the world I CAN be a wife/mom. I really hope that “PJ power” doesn’t come back the second baby round.

As I read and hear about those who are nearing the altar or the birth bed, I’m reminded of those times. They really made me stretch myself but I got through it and for those who are nearing or in it, so will you!

Forest Gump was wrong- Life is like a bowl of Rainbow ice-cream.

My sister passed this recipe on to me after receiving it from some American guy. This is almost as easy as buying and making the snowflake ready mix stuff and seriously gooood!

Very Yummy Brownies

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups flour

½ tsp salt

1 cup soft margarine

2 cups sugar

4 beaten eggs

2 tsp vanilla

½ cup cocoa

1 crushed milk choc (optional)

Method:

Mix together with an electric beater.

Bake at 180°c for 20-25 min in a baking tray. (Not a cookie sheet)

I usually cut them when they are cool so that you get straight edges but I understand if you can’t wait that long because they’re just too delicious!

“The exercises below have been adapted from a ProBlogger post. Most of the names have been modeled after popular social media services such as Twitter, RSS, Blogger, etc,

1. Cyber Squats. Set your chair aside for a few minutes and instead move to a semi-squat position with thighs parallel to the floor. Hold for 1 minute.

2. RSS Raises. As you’re sitting at your desk, straighten your knees and lift your legs out in front of you.

3. Ten Minute “Move it!” Break. Alternate jogging in place with jumping jacks – do a minute of each and repeat 5 times.

4. Twitter Tummy Tone. Tighten your abdominal muscles for 30 seconds and then release.

5. Social Squeezes. Tighten your gluteal muscles for 30 seconds and then release.

6. Ten Minute “Move it!” Break. Grab a step stool and climb up and down.

7. Inbox Incline. While you’re sitting with your feet on the floor, raise your heels so you are on the balls of your feet and lower them.

8. Ten Minute “Move it!” Break. Do walking lunges around the house. You can add some weights and do bicep curls at the same time.

9. Blogger Breather. Close your eyes and focus on your breath. Count to 10 as you slowly inhale through your nose, thinking positive thoughts. Exhale through your mouth, again counting to 10. Release all the tension and stress out of your body.

10. Sign Off Stretches. Shoulder shrugs – with your head at your chest, shrug your shoulders up and down. Neck Rolls – relax your shoulders and let your head roll forward. Slowly rotate your head in a circle. Repeat five times.

P ushups
S itups
L unges
S quats

Exercises that can be done with just body weight: PLSS.”

Available at: http://casesblog.blogspot.com/

Starting with those a little further down the food chain:  my husband has become an avid gardener especially in the large veggie garden at church and my son and I have become avid tag-alongs. We had noticed the bird life in the area, especially so ever since my son makes a hadida sound every time he hears a bird. We noticed these two love-birds, plovers. You could tell these two just adored each other the way they would follow each other around and protect one another from the mini human that kept on wanting to catch up with them, making rather strange noises. The next visit we noticed spring had sprung and they had their own “mini-me” to protect and scurry around. Unfortunately with life and nature as it were, we find the things we want to protect the most are more vulnerable. This mother plover stood vigilantly  next to her deceased baby and wouldn’t move.  When we came near, it would try distract us away. My heart was so sad for this little thing. I couldn’t help imagining my own response in the loss of my little one.

Then there’s a guy I used to know who lost his daughter in a freak accident. She was four. How do you cope with having a little body running around one day and the next day they’re not there. They’ve left a black hole. How does a mother wake up in the morning and continue on after something like that happens. Surprisingly they have. They seem to be working  on this bringing them closer together as a family instead of tearing them apart. Still it must be hard.

I then bumped into a mother who has a cancer suffering son. He’s in hospital in critical condition after being the most active and bright young man. How does a mother deal with that? This women then had the audacity to ask how I was. Who cares about anyone else when you’re going through something so HUGE!?!

These are just a few examples of the “it’s just nature” that I don’t like and wish there was a refresh button where all the hurt and pain could disappear. However, these creatures make me look at my life with my little Rooster and the Husband with a greater perspective of how the world should be, how I should act and how I must care!