Chickens, vegetable patches, lots of work

Houses we liked, the last house we rented or even the house we currently live in all have one thing in common - a large backyard.

It is no surprise that our new house has just that. There are several vegetable patches, 4 citrus trees and a chicken coop in the backyard. There are wired frames for tomatoes to climb everywhere you see and lots of strawberries in summer according to the real estate agent. The vendor will leave the 2 chickens currently living there so we will also have 2 pet chickens. The thought of fresh eggs every morning is very appealing (whether the chickens will lay any eggs with a dog around is another matter). Hopefully Zebadee and the chickens will learn to be friends!

There are lots of work to do both inside and outside of the hosue. But it's all very exciting.


Nice day to play in the garden.

ps I'm reading Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, vegetable, miracle" at the moment. This book is about the year Barbara and her family living on a farm and only buy food raised in their own neighbourhood, grow it themselves or learn to live without it. We have no green thumbs and will be extremely happy if we manage not to kill all the existing vegetables growing in the new house!

Two and a half!

Talking to a two-and-a-half-year-old can be very entertaining. Here are some of the things Lara says:

"Lara reading... no talking, ok?" - Lara holding and reading a book
"Of course you can, Mummy" when I asked if I could share her biscuits or toys.
"Don't touch it!"
"I'm up...set" with pouty lips.
"Mattew crying... Mattew bump head" when Lara tells me of her day in daycare. She told me "Kyan sick. Kyan home" the other day when Kyan didn't come to daycare.
We only have a short ride home from daycare but I try to ask Lara what she did that day and who was there during the day. She's able to tell me more and more every day.
"Maybe Liz help" when I couldn't open the door to daycare.

Lara knows the names of most kids at daycare. She pointed to a Mum and a girl the other day and told me it was Ryan's Mum. I thought maybe she was confused when the lady turned to me and said she is Ryan's Mum and Ryan was at home that day. When Lara saw people she didn't know, she would ask me who they are. For example, she would point to the check-out girl at Wollies and asked me "Who's that?".

Lara's not toilet trained yet but she loves to sit on the toilet before bath and would sometimes tell me when she's weeing (on nappy). We just haven't timed it right so that she does the act of wee sitting on the toilet. It will happen soon I'm sure.

Blueberry pancakes

I made Nigella Lawson's "Ritz chicken" the other night. The chicken meat was extremely tender after they were marinated in buttermilk overnight. I made these pancakes using the rest of the buttermilk that weekend.
I prefer a "savory" breakfast, but it's nice to have something different for a change when we all sit down leisurely to have the first meal of the weekend without rushing.

Feeling guilty

At the beginning of June, Lara had a small cold. Like other cold she had, it startd with a bit of running nose and coughing. It could go either way from there - it could develope into a full-blown cold like she had many times last year or she could get better. Her cold seemed to go towards the second way this year thank god. She had a temperature on Monady night so I fully anticipated not being able to go to work and had warned work so. That week was a very busy one with a tight testing schedule of a project and a colleague on holiday. On Tuesday morning, Lara miraculously didn't have a temperature so I deicded to take the risk of taking her into daycare. Lara had watery eyes and generally didn't feel great so I was half waiting for a phone call to go and pick her up at midday but reasoned that I would have done some work by then. I didn't get the call and by Tuesday night, she looked a lot better but it didn't lessen my guilt of sending her to daycare ill.

I try to pick Lara up well before the daycare close time of 6pm. I often get there at arond 5.30pm but Lara is usually the last 2 or 3 remaining. I was the last one again the other week. When I arrived, Lara was reading "the baby owl" book with Liz. I flipped through the book to see what it is - it's about these baby owls waiting for Mummy to come home. And the sentence "Mummy always come back" is repeated again and again in the book. Liz told me they had been reading that book for at least 15 times in the last 20 minutes! Talking about feeling guilty, this one is definitely up there. I have to try to leave work even earlier....