It's the Baby Monster!

At least, that's what Roo calls his little brother when he is covered in food after another food-exploring session in the kitchen. So far he has helped himself to banana, pear, strawberries, raspberries, red pepper, courgette, green beans, broccoli, tomatoes, egg, cheese, bread, potato and porridge as well as less healthy options such as chips (in a Dingle chippy), ice cream (mmm... Murphy's Baked Banana flavour, Dingle again) and chocolate cake (an exception for Mum's special birthday). Even our visitors, who were new to baby-led weaning (BLW), embraced this voyage of discovery. Not a puree in sight for this adventurous little epicurean.

Sneaky sneaky Mama!

Here it is- proof that Roo can eat veg... When it's cunningly disguised as cookie dough. Oatmeal raisin and courgette cookies to be exact, from the cookbook I mentioned in my last post.
Meanwhile I've been in the new republic of Miltonia, otherwise known as cleaning up the house for our lovely visitors, due in 3 days' time.

On a more prosaic note, Babba Roo ate some cauliflower today. Wow, so what, you might say, but that is really quite an event in this house! Then again, it was pureed and cunningly hidden in some fluffy, buttery mashed potato, (an idea I got from my latest library cookbook find Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld). She purees all sorts of veggies and hides them in things as diverse as chicken nuggets and brownies. I'm quite looking forward to making oatmeal cookies with pureed courgettes (or zucchinis, as our American friends like to call them). Off we go!
On the subject of food, his younger brother has started solids in the last week or two. Solids before 1 are supposed to be fun and he certainly takes to the task with much gusto. He looks so cute sitting in his booster seat, trying to fit his food-filled fist into his mouth. I'm going down the Baby Led Weaning route this time, partly because of the afore-mentioned aversion to vegetables and am eagerly awaiting a book on the subject.

Jesus, the Little Prince and the fox?

Today at Mass, Fr Noonan read an extract from one of my favourite books, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, at the start of his sermon. It was the bit where the Little Prince meets the fox, who explains to him about 'taming' him and the two becoming friends. At first, the Little Prince says he is too busy, but the fox convinces him that it is worth being patient and taking the time needed to tame him so they can be friends. The priest was making a parallel between the excerpt and today's Gospel, where Jesus encourages the Apostles to retreat to a quiet place and rest after they have been out preaching the Good News. Fr Noonan said that we try to cram so many activities into our lives and those of our children that we have no time to reflect on things. 'No time to stop and stare', I suppose.

The mad, co-incidental thing is, I photo-copied that Little Prince extract for one of my English lessons in the school next-door to the church, when I was doing my teaching practice there nearly two years ago.

Sweetness and Light

I've been listening to a wonderful programme on the radio. You canlisten to it here. It's all about one of my favourite subjects: Bees.
I didn't know til now that the phrase 'Sweetness and light' originates from the importance of bees in providing honey and beeswax to our ancestors. One of the guests was a lovely wise fella with a Kerry accent called McGiollaCoda, the same surname as the man who gave the introductory Bee course (aka one of the best birthday pressies ever) that Lee sent me on last year.

Hope springs eternal

Today I planted out some Basil that Mum gave me at the weekend. I haven't had a lot of luck with Basil in the past. But if the weather is fairly warm and I can keep the slugs at bay, it may have a chance. Some good reasons to be hopeful, eh?
Roo got a new delivery of sand, but was reluctant to stay outside without me around.

Big Buzz

We were woken today by the postman for the second morning running. Yesterday he had a birthday parcel from my dear Australian friend and today it was this little lavender plant, courtesy of the Jordan's cereal bars we eat a lot of. It had managed to come all the way to our house intact and then got dropped by the postman. He always seems to be in a right tear.
Anyway, I got a chance to plant it while the two lads were asleep. Luckily, because if I'd attempted it while Roo was with me I'd have got nowhere. It was very windy, although sunny and warm, and he wasn't on for staying outside at all. To put it mildly. He just about agreed to water it for me when he got up. So here's our busy little bee helping our newest addition settle into its role as an official 'Buzz Stop'.

All aboard!

Trains and space exploration are Babba's main interests at the moment. In common with most other little boys, I suppose. Today we visited a great playground while doing the weekly shop. Roo was so delighted when we finally got there ('course he spotted it at the beginning of the trip)- it was so sweet. He practically floated in, 'the playground, yay!'
Job satisfaction is simple enough to come by in this game.

C'est quoi?

I found the following while looking for a french translation of the Our Father. It's mad seeing it written down like this and realising that every language in the world has its own text-speak.

Le « Notre père » en SMS (Français)
Ntr pR kié ociE ke tn nm swasanktFié ke tn regn viN keta volonT swafêt sr la tR como ciL don-ns ojordwi ntr p1 2 c’jour pardon-ns no ofenç cm ns pardonon oçi à cE ki ns on ofenC &ne ns soumé pa à latentation mè Dlivr-ns dumal amN

The Spoonbugs have emerged

Their air-drying clay exoskeletons have hardened overnight so they have emerged from their spoon dens.
Unfortunately, seconds after this picture was taken, an over-zealous toddler naturalist knocked two of their legs off, so they've had emergency surgery and are recovering in spoonbug hospital.

Last chance corn

Roo planted these pots with sweetcorn today. It's a bit late in the growing season, but it seems like a waste of Lee's hard work in clearing the veggie patch not to put plants there. And could it possibly encourage Roo to eat vegetables?

Babba Nana Bread

I am enjoying making things from Tana Ramsay's Family Kitchen. Last night I had a couple of too-ripe bananas to use up, so I tried her version of Banana bread. It varies from my usual recipe in that it has apple in it (rather than sultanas), and no vanilla essence. I thought Babba Roo might prefer it, now that he has gone off food with 'bits' in it. So here's the version I tried, only without salt and with wholemeal self-raising flour.


85g soft butter
150g sugar (soft brown Muscovado, etc)
2 large beaten eggs
4 mashed medium ripe bananas
1 grated apple
250g wholemeal self-raising flour
¼ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp grated nutmeg

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs gradually and beat.
Mix in the apple and bananas. Sift in the flour and spices and mix well.
Scrape into a lined 2lb loaf tin and bake at 180ºC for 40-45 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.
Allow to cool in the tin for 20-30 minutes on a wire rack. Eat. Make appreciative noises, such as 'mmmmm, tayshy, myummy'.

Just sending this picture of our now clear veggie patch. Thanks to Lee for all his hard graft in scorching heat on Friday to clear the weeds and grass -a haven for slugs. Anything we plant should have a chance now.
It's back to our old roles again now...

Spotty & Shaggy go to the Fair

Yes, that's a goat pulling the cart. They reserved the right to refuse people on the grounds of weight.

We visited Charleville show today on the last day of Lee's holidays. Here are some of the things that caught our eye.

An old Steam tractor. Little Red was there too.

Roo took this photo of some of the vintage cars. There was a huge array of them.

And this little cutie is a baby alpaca. With the longest eyelashes ever.

Bad news for slugs

I can't understand why there isn't a queue of birds around our vegetable patch. I've just been out there and it is full of slugs munching on various bits of our plants. Big ones for main course, small ones for starters. Yum Yum. If you're a bird. All we seem to have is a skangery family of magpies. So I've been squishing and slicing. I'm not squeamish anymore. I used to give them a beery send-off, but now I despatch them quickly, so angry am I at their gluttonous robbery.

Yesterday, over some coffee and some iced lemon slices, we caught up with a dear friend over from America.
It was her first time meeting Lou, who she gave lots of cuddles. He in turn gave her plenty of smiles.
It's so great to see her and I always feel very fortunate to catch up with her as she only has a few days' holidays and she has a lot of relatives and friends to squeeze in. This time we met her fella for the first time and he seems a grand solid dependable lovely chap. They make a really cute couple.

Happy Day Dada!

We had a great day today involving bouncy castles, bric-a-brac bargains, book browsing, ham and tomato sandwiches, sausage hot dogs... Yes it was the Village Fete today.
In the evening we had Chocolate cake in honour of Father's Day. 'Happy Days Daddy' as Roo put it.

Sofa wars

We were in Kilkenny yesterday looking at second-hand stuff. The weather wasn't as promising as the day before. First we visited a salvage yard where we saw nice wrought iron gates and a circular seat that is designed to go round the trunk of a tree. It was very well-organised with everything laid out in easy to find piles- handy if you know what you're looking for. We just need a house and garden to put the things in! Then we headed into the city centre to find the Vintage Design Studio. It's in the Irishtown area, run by the extremely approachable and helpful Noel Green. He advised us on the best (cheapest) place to park and didn't seem to mind Roo clambering over the cool 20th century furniture including the egg chair in the window (pictured) which really took his fancy and looked like it was straight out of a Bond film. We were in search of a sofa and saw two with different merits. We went away to think about it and came back to find another couple looking at the same sofa which they'd seen online for considerably more than this one's asking price. Noel was quite shocked, not least because it had been sitting in his shop for a while and then suddenly had a few people interested in it.
We spent some time strolling around Kikenny's streets, stopping for lunch in Cafe Sol and coffee in Caffe 1 just down the street from the furniture shop.
It's become clear that Babba Roo has got very grown up in the last few weeks with great progress in his language and other areas. He can get quite cross if you try to get him to do something he doesn't agree with, such as eat one more mouthful or use a spoon instead of a fork (regardless of how big it might be). Poonch, meanwhile, is cutting his first tooth, although you'd never guess from his ever-cheerful exterior.

Sun, sea and shilly drinks

'What is an espresso martini?' I asked. The waiter smiled and explained: Kahlua, vanilla vodka and a shot of espresso: 'it looks a bit like a Guinness'. 'You must get one of those!' I said to Lee. It's what 007 drinks when he really needs to stay awake. And so it arrived. The perfect end to a lovely meal at the Tannery.

We called in for a special treat after a busy day on Clonea strand. This holiday lark is tough, you know, but it's got to be done!