Let's just call them Yogi and Boo Boo

We had a picnic out in the garden this lunchtime with free-ranging chickens. We thought it would be lovely. Leigh and I both had sandwiches, the boys have toast and crackers with some grapes, apple and pear puree for afters. Leo also had some tomato.

We sat ourselves pretty close to the blueberry bush so when the chickens came up behind us and started pinching blueberries we thought nothing of it. Then they began circling Leo who had a piece of toast in each fist. Correction. Did have a piece of toast in each fist!!! Bubbles was very interested in it and eventually managed to snatch a piece out of Leo's hand. Then as we were trying to fend off Dax, she ran across the picnic rugs, straight over Zachary's crackers and tipping over the pot of pear puree. Although that wasn't so bad as she then ate the spilt puree from the rug and cleaned it up. Next a piece of toast was half-inched from Zachary's plate and the birds chased each other across the lawn for it! There's something about toast which just sends them completely mental. Leigh had a small amount of a nut, celery and apple salad on his plate. Dax pinched the last peanut, ate it, then daintly wiped the mayonnaise from her beak onto the rug. All during this we were trying to keep both chickens away from Leo and his toast and breadstick...fail. The breadstick got snatched and then Dax had a go at Leo's toes!!! Picnics with the chickens? Never again!!! Well...never on the lawn again!

We're not expecting any blueberries this year..

The combination of free-ranging chickens and a blueberry bush in the garden is proving to be an interesting combination. First they began by just pecking off the unripe berries from the lower branches. Now some of the berries are ripening, so they're pecking off the ripe berries from the lower branches. Okay, so we're thinking that the higher ones are pretty safe. Wrong! Chickens can jump and flap quite effectively...

Ready -


Set -


Go!

Some milestones

Leo's hit a few milestones over the last few days. His first tooth is making an appearance - at least we can see the place where it will come through, although it doesn't seem to have actually cut yet. There are also strong indications that he's thinking about crawling - he got onto his hands and knees in the bathroom this evening and I don't think it'll be long until he works it out! Two on the move. Not sure how good that'll be!!!!

He had his first swimming lesson on Friday and that was ace. He really seemed to love being in the water and spent most of the lesson splashing around. He was also very calm when he had to lay on his back and I'm so pleased he's taken to it well. It's really important to me that even if the boys can't swim for a while yet, that they're confident in the water and understand simple water safety. Finally this evening Leo managed to vomit in Zachary's hair. That's never happened before. And hopefully never again!

My little magpie

So this morning in Zachary's bed I found him (obviously!), Leo's spare sleepsuit and muslin (which started out the night on Leo's cot), a tub of Vicks and a packet of baby wipes (which started out the night on the shelves). Hmmm...night time shenanigans.

Meet the girls!

Here are Bubbles and Dax - new arrivals today.




Bubbles is the black hen, she's a Miss Pepperpot. Dax is the ginger Gingernut Ranger and they're great. An Omlet chap brought them and the chicken coop this morning, set it all up, explained how to work and clean it and even clipped their wing feathers. It was great. They have to stay in the run for 5 days to acclimatise and get used to going into the house to roost at night, but then we can let them out to run in the garden. The wing clipping is only done on one side so that the chickens are unbalanced if they try to flap, so hopefully they won't be able to jump the fence!

We were warned that they may not lay for a couple of days and that the first few eggs might be quite small or the shell not formed properly, but a couple of hours after they arrived, look what Leigh found in the nesting box!



And it was a double yolker!



The first day has been really good.

Under the sofa

Decided to clear under the sofa this evening. We held a small competition - winner being the person who guessed closest to the number of items under it. I guessed 25, Leigh 18. There were 36 - more if we'd counted each individual raisin rather than all of them as one group! Other delights included a fluffy ball of playdough, about £2.50 in change (including a £2 coin so not that huge a number of coins!), playing cards, half a cabbage (plastic!), a crayon and hair clip. Good job done.

Experimenting with alcohol

So recently I've tried Amaretto with cherry Coke (lovely), toffee vodka with Coke (also yum), and today - Pimms with Lilt. Yep, ran out of lemonade. Think I'll stick to lemonade in the future.

C-Day!

The chickens arrive tomorrow! It's all very exciting and a little bit scary too. Leigh's been talking about getting chickens for a couple of years now and finally the time seems right. We're getting 2 and an Omlet enclosure which should hopefully keep the local foxes out.

We have friends who have chickens and they seem to get on really well with them, and we went to a demonstration of the Omlet coops last year so we have some idea what we're letting ourselves in for.

The most tricky thing so far has been deciding on names for them! Leigh wanted Dax and Kira to start with but that was a bit too Trekky. Although I can hardly talk when my suggestion was Jane and Hercule. Leigh reminded me that they're both girls so I suggested Tuppence (as in Beresford - Partners in Crime) and Jane. Jane didn't seem all that popular however - Zachary's suggestion was Bubbles, though as Leigh was washing up at the time, it may not be that reliable!

So for a while it was going to be Bubbles and Tuppence...until a friend pointed out that 'tuppence' is Derbyshire slang for lady bits. Um. Bessie and Bunter were considered but Leigh pointed out that if we pick a pair of names and one dies, that won't be great. We have now determined on a pair of names...but you'll have to wait until they're here!

A glut of strawberries

Went fruit picking this morning and it was great! We tried to find some PYO last year but failed miserably - this year however, Leigh's excellent searching turned up Scaddow's farm, which is just outside Ticknall on the A514. Not too far from us.

So off we trotted and found strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants and gooseberries aplenty (well, there will be more raspberries in a couple of weeks). Leigh was anxious that we got plenty of strawberries, so despite Zachary eating them almost faster than we could pick them, we managed a full punnet. Discovered Leo also likes strawberries and raspberries. Well, what he enjoys is squashing the fruit in his fist until it is almost just juice and then jamming the whole thing in his mouth. Funny and very messy! Both he and I tried to look nonchalant as we passed the paying area - Leo with a juice covered face, and me with a juice covered shoulder where he'd rested.

We ended up buying 2 kilos of strawberries. Far more than were actually needed. So this afternoon and evening, Leigh has made 2 lots of strawberry icecream, one lot of strawberry frozen yoghurt lollies and a double quantity of mixed fruit jam. It all smells fabulous, and there's still a huge pot of very ripe strawberries in the fridge. Good job we have guests tomorrow!

Yet more roof

Well, it's still going! Roofer reckons another day's work and he should be done our side - bar the chimney which affects boths rooves. Next door is having 4 skylights put in so roofer has been focussing on finishing us so that the scaffolding at the back can come down.

There still seems to be some edging to do and finishing off bits, but it's looking good!

Bad mother and clumsy wife

It really has been a spectacular day for me. Started off by dropping the last jar of homemade marmalade on the kitchen floor at breakfast, smashing said jar and sending shards of glass skittering across the room. In which neither Zachary nor I had anything on our feet! Classy.

While I was getting dressed, Zachary had got hold of my makeup bag which I do let him look through. He had a play with the eyeshadow - for some reason (and I'm not going to disabuse him of this just yet!) he applies it to his nose and chin. I neglected to clean it off and he had a shiny sparkly nose for the rest of the day! We had a pretty good morning with music then some baking and I took the boys to the Westfield Centre in the afternoon for some shopping and play.

By the time I got to the car park, both of them had fallen asleep, and being pretty tired myself, I rested my head back...and dropped off. Only to be woken by a very concerned parking attendant who wanted to make sure we were all right! Very embarrassing!!! When we got home, I needed to cook up some mince and wanted to clean up the kitchen as well. Zachary was happily playing with his playdough, and Leo was playing with...well, a tea bag. Leigh had a new glass tea mug delivered today and there were some individually foil-wrapped sample tea bags included. Leo got hold of one in the front room and I thought 'it'll be okay for him to carrying on chewing it...it's keeping him happy.' Hmmmmm. Turned around first time from washing up, spotted that one tea bag packet had come open and threw it away. Turned around second time to see Leo with tea bag string in one hand, soggy empty tea bag in the other and absolutely plastered in tea leaves (raspberry and rosehip tea, which his mouth smelt of for the rest of the evening!), his mouth, his hands, his clothes and all over the floor! Whooops.

So vacuumed up the mess and gave Leo a rice cake. Much better. Zachary carried on vacuuming for me and doing a good job (he kept turning it off, sighing and saying 'bit hot' before turning it back on again. What a martyr!). Then he came over for a banana - I off-handedly said that he should wait until after dinner, but the banana bunch mysteriously vanished and when I looked round, he was trying to stuff one up the vacuum cleaner hose!! Disaster safely averted, I returned to the washing up and promptly broke the handle off Leigh's new mug. Yes, the lovely glass one which arrived today.

I really should not be let out of the house.

More roofing!

Here's an update photo of the roof - this is the section at the back of the house as seen from the loft window, and the work area. The front of the house now seems to be done, but I think there's a section still needing tiling. It looks a bit awkward to get to, but as we're into week 3 now I'm hoping it doesn't take too much longer. I'm tending to keep out of the garden in the day in case of falling debris and am missing it!

Also had Emma and Rachel over today with Edward and Isabelle and took some more piccies. Here they are with Leo at Rachel's party in March...



and here they are today.



What a lovely bunch of babies. Although something tells me there may be trouble brewing when they all get together!

Feeding children, cleaning bottoms and housework

This seems to have pretty much been my day today. Well, actually that's a bit of a fib to get some sympathy (!) but the first part of the afternoon went like this. After lunch (feeding children), went straight out to ASDA. Fed both children snacks round ASDA to stop them interfering with each other in the trolley (Zachary just can't get far enough away to stop Leo stealing things from him!). Zachary filled his nappy in the car on the way home. Got home, unpacked shopping. Changed Leo's nappy and gave him some milk in the hope he would go to sleep. No joy - for reasons which will become clear later. Changed Zachary's nappy. While doing this, Leo filled his nappy (aha - probably the reason for not dropping off...maybe). When I returned from putting Leo's nappy into the nappy bucket, Zachary was standing by the kitchen bin filling his again. Changed his nappy again, applied cream for his eczema to hands and arms, hung out the washing.

But then played with Playdough, and did other non-titular stuff. Now both boys in bed and I have wine and Maltesers to hand, the prospect of 2 (yes count them, 2) garden fete thingys tomorrow and a BBQ with friends on Sunday. Brilliant!

Plum Tomato and Mustard Seed tart

(picture taken just after it came out of the oven - lots of steam in the photo!)

Leigh went to the BBC Good Food show last week and came back with a recipe card from the British Tomato Growers' Association - this recipe is from the card. Despite the fact that I completely forgot to put in the basil and the recipe doesn't actually give a measurement for baking powder (consequently I was slightly surprised when reading through instruction 3 and had to read it several times before realising it wasn't just my eyes!) [I used about half a tsp] it came out really well and tasted great. Especially the crust - the recipe suggests you can replace the crust with ready made puff pastry for a speedier option...but I say don't! The crust is yummy!

Ingredients :
300g British plum tomatoes
30g butter
10g soft light brown sugar
a good squeeze of lemon juice
1 tsp black mustard seeds (didn't have any in the cupboard so I used normal mustard seeds)
a handful of fresh basil leaves

for the crust :
100f self-raising flour
pinch of dry mustard powder
pinch of cayenne pepper
1 tsp black mustard seeds
15g freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 tbspn olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2-3 tbspn for mixing

1. Grease an 18cm/7" flan tin (I used a pie dish) with some of the butter. Put the rest of the butter into a bowl and mix with the sugar, lemon juice, mustard seeds and season with salt and ground black pepper. Spread this mixture over the base of the tin.

2. Cut the tomatoes in half horizontally. Arrange them cut side down on top of the butter to completely cover the base of the tin. Shred the basil leaves and scatter them on top of the tomatoes.

3. Set the oven to 220C/200C fan/425F/gas 7. Sift the flour, baking powder, mustard and cayenne pepper into a mixing bowl. Season with salt and pepper and stir in the mustard seeds, Parmesan and oil. Mix together with a knife and then rub in with fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Bind to a soft but firm dough with the milk.

4. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead gently until smooth. Roll to a circle about 5mm/ 1/4" thick to fit the top of the tin. Lay it on top of the tomatoes and press down lightly, tucking the edge in around the tomatoes.

5. Bake for 5 minutes until the crust is crisp and golden. Loosed the edge with a knife then turn the tart upside down onto a serving plate. Decorate with basil leaves and serve straight away (mine sat on the oven for over an hour before we ate. It was still great, but I should think the pastry is slightly crisper if you eat straightaway).

Apricot and almond bakewell

I've been wanting to try this recipe out for a while, but was slightly disappointed when I read the recipe again, to see that it uses pre-made pastry. So I cobbled together a sweet shortcrust pastry from one of Delia Smith's recipes in How to Cook Book 1. Unfortunately I failed to weigh the pastry once I'd made it so don't know if I made 400g or not! Also, interestingly, Delia recommends using butter at room temperature for making pastry, whereas I had always believed that it should be chilled. Room temperature butter makes the pastry much softer, and easier to work and roll and still tasted great. The other problem I had was that I don't think my tin was big enough - I think it needed to be deeper as I had an overflow problem (all the bits hacked off before the photo taken!) and still had filling left over! But it worked in the end, just need to invest in a bigger tin...

Roofing

The roofing work is still progressing and the builder's told us he hopes to be finished by the weekend - hurrah. Then we can organise getting one wall of our bedroom replastered (there's a large damp, mouldy patch from when we had the slipped tiles, which has caused the plaster to crack...and the last occupants put up the curtain rails very badly, so we have an excuse to get all their holes filled in properly!), and finally decorating the bugger. Must get on with curtains...

The builder's asked us to pay half the bill in cash, which is a not inconsiderable amount - certainly more than the £10 I used to withdraw at a time for spending! Went to the bank to sort this out today - when I gave the amount I needed, the cashier looked slightly uneasy and asked why I needed it. Was suddenly seized by the urge to tell her I was leaving my husband and needed the cash to run away with just to see what her reaction would be. Sadly I'm too sensible for such things in reality!

The christening of Isabelle Pinhorn

Lovely christening of our friends' little girl today. The service all went very well, everyone looked brilliant and the lunch was great. Zachary is really starting to get to know our friends well, and be comfortable playing with them without us which is great to see. He had a lot of fun playing the hand game, and 'extreme' row, row, row your boat!

Zachary and Leo were pretty much penned in in the middle of a pew with us and both of them were really well behaved and managed the entire hour and a bit of service without a meltdown. Zachary was hilarious and had me in stitches by the end of the service - some of the ways he found to amuse himself - taking out my hairclips, standing on my lap shouting at some friends sitting a few rows back from us, doing his Sportacus moves on Leigh's lap (yes, in the pew!), bundling onto my lap for a group hug with me and Leo while shouting 'Daddy join in,' and finally during the last hymn while I was carrying him, pointing forcefully to the front of the church and shouting 'stop!' Funny.

Roof work begins in earnest

Today the roof looks quite different. A lot of banging around up there has resulted in us now being slateless! Or at least slateless as far as I can see. So things are moving on and we'll see what happens tomorrow - it's quite exciting really. And in my own sad little way, I rescued a slate from the skip for us to keep. No idea as yet what on earth I'm going to do with it, but it's a piece of history of the house.

Photos taken at lunchtime :

Productive morning

You quite quickly forget how much housework you can get done when there are no children around! A job which can take a good twenty minutes to complete when Zachary is in a helpful mood, can be done in a couple of minutes on my own. So, Zachary at nursery this morning, Leigh out at Good Food Show, Leo is in bed asleep, housework is done (well...some of it! Some I am leaving til tomorrow), cake in the oven and I have time to blog at 11 in the morning!!! It's a crazy, crazy world.

Weather is fab today - can hear the builders on the roof, and am hoping to get out to see some friends this afternoon. Rock and roll.

Leo - sock monster

I was playing on the floor with the boys yesterday. Leo had already removed one of his own socks, when he launched himself at one of Zachary's. Zachary, not happy with this, removed his own sock and hid it behind his back. Leo launches himself at the other foot, which still has a sock on it. So Zachary again removes sock and hides it! Leo launches himself at my sock. There is no stopping him! Mind you, Zachary got his own back later on when he woke Leo up in bed with a very loud rendition of 'Old Donald.' We heard Leo cry over the monitor and then Zachary announced 'Leo crying' very loudly!

On the whole though, the boys are sharing well in the bedroom. We moved Leo in last weekend so they've had nearly a week together. We've had to change the bedtime routine a bit - before moving rooms, Leo had not yet mastered the art of putting himself to sleep at night (ably abetted by us of course, as we've been happily rocking him to sleep for 6 months!). So we combined Leo going into Zachary's room with an attempt at some controlled crying to try and get him to learn to go to sleep on his own. Maybe not the wisest thing to try! But it isn't going too badly - Zachary now comes downstairs for his bedtime story/ies while Leo goes to sleep upstairs and then Z joins him about 20 minutes later. We had about 25 minutes crying the first couple of nights, then a couple of night of about 5 minutes and tonight no crying at all. Which is brilliant. Leo was very tired today though so whether tonight's feat will be repeated is anyone's guess, but I'm happy that it's happened once at least! We found with Zachary (although he was a couple of months older) that the controlled crying worked pretty quickly with him which was surprising. You think you're going to have horrendous nights like the first one for weeks, but then it sorts itself out and they get the hang of the new routine. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.