Wednesday Baking day!

Wednesdays have become something of a regular baking day with the children. During the school pick up time, it was raining heavily, very cold and very windy. It feels so good to be able to come home, shut the world out and get changed into our comfy pyjamas and warm slippers at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Then after a quick snack, sleeves rolled up, hands washed and aprons on!
R is so excited about her ability to read and write sentences so she was able to pick out the ingredients we needed from my baking bag. R and K took turns to crack eggs, whisk them, add the carefully measured ingredients as chosen by R from her Princess Book of Baking. There were no squabbles, arguments or rifts of rivalry. Just lovely pleasantness, chit chat and bonding, not to mention all the hidden learning going on!
I am full of gratitude for the quality time that I enjoy with my children. I cannot think of a better way to spend an afternoon with them when it's horrible outside than to work together on our little projects. Our next task will be making Christmas cards, and others we have lined up are decorating jars, scrap-booking and writing journals.
We turned out 2 batches of muffins, one plain and one chocolate batch. After dinner, we set about the task of decorating these with buttercream, jelly candy butterflies and multi coloured polka dots.
Then of course it was tasting time!

And the washing up afterwards.....

And finally a lovely cup of coffee from my new Tassimo T40 machine which I got in a better than half price deal!

My Girly Girl

I gave myself a pampering session and a bath but the most satisfying part of the day was nursing my poor little baby girl back to her normal self after a night of being sick. It was a relief to see that it was only a 24 hour bug and it went through her system very quickly.

My little R is a girly girl. She loves glitter, princesses, mermaids, Barbies, hair accessories, pink clothes, dresses with sequins and frills that twirl. She is choosy about the way her hair is styled and will not allow it to be cut, or even trimmed. I haven't been able to get her hair cut since she was 2 years old. All it needs is some tidying, but she refuses to have it cut half an inch. But I love all this about her! 

I find it fascinating that she is like this without my influence. As a baby, I used to dress her in pink babygros with heart and strawberry motifs but that is as far as I've gone when it comes to gender stereotyping. Most of her wardrobe is full of clothes of all imaginable colours, but the ones she wears the most are the pink ones. As she's turned 5 this year, I gave her the party she loves, which is a princess party complete with princess dress and princess cake. Up until now, she has not had a girly party, and there's no time like the present, because before I know it she might have grown out of the girly phase.

I had a personal training session at the gym which went really well. I found myself feeling very driven and determined. I promised myself that as soon as I go back to work, I will do some personal training sessions.
As I was walking home from the gym, I crossed paths with a transgender male. The man was dressed as a woman, in a knee length skirt, pick capped sleeve t-shirt, long, straightened hair, (possibly a wig?) and make up on his face. But what gave him away was his angular jaws, and his manly legs. I've never seen one in person before and it was strange to see him right there in front of me. I wonder how one ends up that way, being confused about their gender. It's such a core part of who we are, and the most fundamental part of out identity is whether we are a male of a female, yet some people cannot bring themselves to accept the body they were born with. What an incomprehensibly traumatic experience.

I then started thinking that some day my children will see these sorts of people and start asking me awkward questions. My daughter has already started with the questions. I love the scientific questions she asks me. Like, where does rain come from? How does it stay up in the sky? Why can we see the moon in the sky in the daytime and at the same time as the sun? It's endless. But I love answering them, and I often find myself stuck. I hope that both of my children never lose that wonder. So I make a huge effort out of making their learning fun.

I have a question of my own here: How can one person have so much capacity to love another?

Halloween Half Term

My plans for half term were to spend a lot of quality time with the children, as on school days the time in between school pick up until bedtime just seems to evaporate. There is always so much to be done during the week, whether it's a school activity, swimming lesson or playdate, then cook dinner, reading and bath followed by the bedtime routine. The one thing which we never ever miss out is our bedtime story. We snuggle up into my king bed with me in the middle and each child either side of me, with their chosen story for the night. It's the favourite part of my day, firstly because I get lots of cuddles and giggles, and second it means that I am closer to my daily 'me time'!

One of the quality time activities I planned was baking of course! R had received a cookbook as a birthday present as well as a baking set, apron and hat so we decided to put these to use. She took her time poring over every pretty picture of baked goodies and settled on a few of her favourites. The next step was to find all the ingredients and this meant a trip to Tesco because R had picked some of the most intricately decorated recipes that I did not have all the ingredients for. Luckily I managed to go on my own to do the shopping otherwise R would have wanted to buy everything on the shelves. It was just as well, because I very nearly did this myself! There was a 3 for 2 offer and I just had to make the most of this and replenish my supplies of baking ingredients. I now have a huge bag of supplies in the middle of my kitchen and I need a whole cupboard for baking! This means a major reorganisation of my kitchen, which I have left for another day...for now we can use them straight from the bag in the middle of my kitchen.

So far we have made chocolate biscuits and vanilla biscuits. For the first effort, there were ok but a little too greasy. I accidentally added too much sugar because I measured the wrong quantity and realised just as soon as I had put it into to mixture, which is irreversible. But the children still ate what they made and were very pleased with them. Somehow I forgot to take a picture of the finished goods, but I did managed to get a picture of them in the process.

We also went to Bekonscot Model Village, which I have not been back to myself since I was a child. The weather was always going to be a nuisance as it is an outdoor attraction, but I had to take the chance as R has been asking to go for a whole week. As it turned out, the sun was shining on the way there, and when we arrived it started to rain. That didn't stop us as we had our umbrellas with us and we could carry on along the route through the village. Luckily the rain wasn't heavy and only lasted for 5 minutes and then stopped and for the rest of the time it was quite bright. The rain never dampens the children's excitement at whatever they may be doing. They were thrilled at feeling like giants among a zoo, funfair, castle, hotel, horse racing and mini steam train among many. We ended up going around the village three times and then they spent some time in the very pretty and colourful playground there.