Thursday, 3 March 2016

Prepping for Mother's Day

Eve holding my Mother's Day daffodil

At the beginning of the week, the children made finger print Mother's Day cards at nursery. They made pictures of flowers with their fingers. Eve loved showing me her paintings when she gave me the card this week. Each child was given a daffodil (not yet in bloom) to give to their mum. Eve and I carefully took ours home the other day. I showed her how to cut the end of the stem and we put it in a glass of water in the kitchen, where she could see it. I told her that we would watch it for a couple of days and then we would see the flower open. 


Yesterday, during Daddy-Daughter morning the daffodil opened. Eve raced off to nursery that afternoon clutching the flower to show all her friends. Daddy said that she was very excited. When I collected her last night I expected the flower to be most probably destroyed by happy little fingers, but the nursery staff managed to find it. So, Eve and I took it home again. I'm glad that they found it as I was quite excited myself at seeing the lovely flower that she gave me. It's reminded me of when Claire and I were young. We didn't have much money, so we would go and pick flowers from the hedgerows in Cornwall, or pick some daffodils from a verge to give our mum for Mother's Day - I guess we'd probably get told off for doing that nowadays.


Eve is looking so grown up. I put my hair in bunches one morning before work, walked into the lounge to see that Daddy had put Eve's hair in bunches too. She was thrilled that we both had our hair the same way. However, we still have struggles getting dressed in the mornings. She was particularly upset this morning as I told her that a man would be taking photos of her and her friends at nursery today. I guess I didn't explain it very well - the thought of it probably scared her, just like Father Christmas! 


Thankfully when she arrived at nursery she was happy to be with her friends and easily settled down with the nursery staff. She's very sociable and will happily sit on the lap of lots of different adult carers. I didn't realise that it's World Book Day today, otherwise I guess I would have dressed her up as Goldilocks, we did manage to put her in a wintry dress and trainers for her photo shoot though. Makes a nice change to her usual leggings :-)


On Monday evening Eve and I had a real struggle during bath time, whilst Daddy was out at work. We both went to bed tearful, upset and exhausted. It was with great thanks to the universe that the following evening Eve was really well behaved. First off, she walked straight up the stairs holding onto the bannisters with ease. That's the first time that she has walked upstairs 'quickly' and with confidence. Her friend Agnes who is 2 months younger flies up and down the stairs after her older sister Elodie. It's interesting to see how quickly kids take things onboard when they have siblings. That night Eve also took off each piece of her clothing by herself and put most of it in the laundry box. Eve felt proud that she had done well walking up the stairs and taking off her clothes; both these key areas helped her feel happier with the bath time routine, which was great.



We had the best bath we've had for a while, and whilst reading Goldilocks to her in bed that night (her favourite at the moment; though I must admit I am getting bored of reading it night after night - but there are worse things I could be doing, right?!), we said 'sorry' to each other about the previous night's events. After she said sorry she asked me to kiss her. I came downstairs feeling elated, after feeling utterly miserable the previous night. I could tell that she knew she had upset me the night before. During bath time I try reasoning with her, explaining and questioning; I hope, and think that she is slowly taking these words on board.

Whilst pottering about at home last weekend, feeling positive vibes from the increase in sunlight, I finally got around to making some super food bars. I've been meaning to do it for ages, and have been a follower of Emily Von Euw, This Rawsome Vegan Life, for many years. Her recipes are amazing. Of course, I didn't have some of the ingredients listed in this recipe, so I followed it loosely. I think I chucked in too many cacao nibs, and as I didn't have dates I put in apricots and prunes, and some goji berries so the overall flavour was a bit confusing, as my husband put it. But they tasted pretty great to me. (A word of warning, these things are serious super poop bars!)

See recipe below. 
They are easy to make - you set them in the fridge, so no cooking involved:

You could make the mixture into cup cakes or balls if you wanted, instead of bars. I used the Nutribullet to mix the ingredients together, and it worked well. Now that I've done them once, I think I'll become hooked on making other strange and wonderful snacks. I did offer one to Eve, she looked at it for a moment and then decided against it. Ah well...more for Mama.

Cup cake version with melted cacao nibs on top

I guess we have a bit of time before we have to start worrying about this, but I noticed that a local mum had posted about Kiddle this week on Facebook. It's a safe search engine that kids can use; it has no connection to Google. 

                                                                 http://www.kiddle.co/

I'm sure that by the time Eve is at this stage there'll be some other search engine, or hopefully Google will make their own; as they do everything the best :-)


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