Too much Chocolate!

The Easter bunny and his Chocolate Easter Eggs have a lot to answer for.........  My beautiful perfect baby okay so maybe I am being a bit delusional has grown horns and turned into the Devil before my eyes.  I have lost count the number of times she has been on the naughty mat for not sharing, snatching things from her cousin and hitting my parents dog.  We have also been subjected to serious toddler melt downs with screaming which alternated between a youdle and a wail.  She has been quite horrid.

All that said we have had a good weekend catching up with friends and family and this year I got my act together and we made our own Easter presents.  I picked up some egg moulds a couple of weeks back in poundland.

My Weight Watchers Diet has gone out of the window this weekend!!!  I am not looking forward to my weigh in on Saturday!!!

Kids say the funniest things...

Yesterday morning Mimi tried to bite me.  At first I thought she wanted to give me a kiss or a lick but I was horrified when she sank her teeth in.  This is the first time she has done this.   So following all the usual tips from Joe Frost Mimi spent the next two minutes sitting or in her case screaming on the naughty mat. When her time was up I went and asked her to tell me what she had done wrong and why she had been made to sit on the naughty mat to which she replied all the correct answers.  I then said to her what mustn't you do and she replied "No Eating Mummy."  How I laughed.

Mimi is such a skinny mini that the new skirt I brought her from Gap didn't fit her and kept falling down.  This is happens a lot with trousers and skirts especially Monsoon ones.  I really wish all baby clothes came with  adjustable elastic waistbands.  So I had to carefully un-pick the waistband seam, pull the elastic a bit tighter (I cut off about 2 inches of elastic) then stitch it all back together.  It worked however it bunched the material up a bit too much on the waistband and made poor Mimi look like she has the biggest set of hips and bottom.  But hey she was happy with her new princess skirt and she is too young to worry about things like that.

Then we had a bit of a baking session.  We started out making pastry for a chicken pie and we kinda got a bit carried away.  First up we made some Cheese Stars.

Then we made some jam tarts

Eventually we made our chicken pie.  Which was delicious.  It was a bit of a mummy special - (I made it up as we went along!)  I meant to take a picture before it was cut up but totally forgot.

Having been stuck indoors for a few days I decided to take Mimi out for a couple of hours.  We popped over to Mama Feelgoods.  We had a lovely lunch and visited the amazing cake craft shop they have.  They have everything you could ever wish for when it comes to cake decorating.  We brought some lovely pink cake cases with flowers on and some purple glitter for the tops.  Now we just need to make them!!!  Maybe tomorrow?!?

Check out these great looking sandwiches we had a Mama Feelgoods.  Mimi had a Jam Sandwich and I had a toasted Brie and Bacon YUM YUM!

Last night I finished my latest book.  "Caught" Harlan Coben.  I brought this book ages ago but I found it so difficult to read in bed with my old glasses that it kind of got put to one side.  When I got my new glasses a few weeks back I picked it up again.  I would highly recommend this book.   It is a tremendous book with several story lines which all link together to keep you guessing right up until the end.  Basically a 17 year old girl goes missing for 3 months and the whole community imagines the worst.  A local reporter gets caught up in the twists when she embarks on her mission to bring down sexual predators via a televised sting operation.  

Does anyone remember the program on channel 4 a few years back called "The Book Group"?  I think I am talking 2002-03.  Anyway it was a great program which used to be on after "Teachers" (another great program).  It was about a random selection of people who got together on a regular basis to review a selection of books,  I used to watch it with my old flat mates, we thought it was great.  Check it out on you tube.  A few years ago after returning home having lived in London for a few years I thought it would be a good idea to set up a book club locally.  Nothing too serious somewhere to meet have a few glasses of wine and maybe discuss a book or two.  Trouble was no one was interested.  I did try a few on-line book clubs but they all took it far too seriously.  It was expected that you would try and read a zillion books a week.  I suppose it was one of those things.  Anyway - what to read next?   

Today I finally got round to making some cakes to take to my sisters tomorrow.  Check out the pink cases and purple glitter!!!

Toddler trauma No2: Moving into a "Big Girls" bed.

Well here we are the last day of the summer holidays.  I go back to work tomorrow morning (Tueday).  It does feel really strange.  However because I am only part time I am in for one day and then not back again until Friday.

We decided that we should finally take the plunge and move Mimi into a big bed.  We have held off for so long with her cot that she was almost at the point of outgrowing it.  We have previously attempted taking the bars off the side of the cot but it was so traumatic that we put them back.

Oh my big girl.

It was all very exciting.  She thought it was great.  Lots of shrieking and jumping.  She looks so tiny in a jumbo bed.  We did consider buying a toddler bed but decided that with a spare single bed in the loft we would just use that instead and save ourselves some pennies.

It didn't start off too well.  I must have taken her back to her bed at least 10 times.  I would sit down and in she would come again.  When I stood up to go and take her back she would run off screaming in delight.  She thought it was one big game.  Therefore starting as we mean to go on today Mike put up a baby gate on her bedroom door.  This appears to have had the desired effect.  She stood there screaming for a while at lunch time but she did settle ok and tonight not a peep out of her.  Fingers crossed!

This morning J rang to say that it was a really low tide and did we fancy rock pooling.  So first thing we popped down to the beach.  Mimi had a great time with her net fishing for prawns and crabs.  J using just a little child's net managed to catch a fair few prawns.  Mimi got very wet but had fun jumping about in the little streams.

A while back I noticed that I had lost my sense of smell.  It was one of those weird things where I can't really pin point when I lost it.  I have to teach Food Technology at school and after a few near misses with some cakes I eventually decided that I would go to the doctors about it.  I felt really silly.  However loss of smell is more common than people realise.  Additionally it is a recognised condition known as Anosmia.  The long of short of the story is that I have been diagnosed as having Anosmia.  Unfortunately because the nerve endings are very delicate if they have been damaged by a cold or virus then the upshot is that I have lost it and it will never come back.  The consultant said that basically I will have to go for a CT scan and if it comes back clear then I will have to just learn to live with it.
It is something that hadn't really worried me very much until I had to start working in Food Technology as I seriously can not smell burning food, gas or contaminated foods.