What is Samuel up to?

Books June 2010 - June 2011

Open
By Andre Agassi
Out of all the books listed here, I enjoyed this one the most. It is very well-written (J.R. Moehringer put it together). Agassi expressed his opinions and detailed events very honestly. It was surprising to learn how much agassi hated tennis and sad to learn about his childhood and the influences of his father. I read a lot of it on the train to work. I was totally immersed in the book that sitting down at work typing away on the computer afterwards felt very strange. Highly recommended.

A pressure cooker saved my life- How to Have It All, Do It All, and Keep It All Together By Juanita Phillips AND
love wisdom motherhood - conversations with inspiring women By Jessica Rowe
These two books are both written by newsreaders about motherhood. Juanita Philips wrote about her own motherhood struggles while Jessica Rowe wroute about other womens thoughts and experiences of motherhood and work. Juanita talked about her role-reversal experiment (she worked full time while hubby stayed at home and looked after kids) and how that nearly broke the marriage. And Jessica wrote about Heidi Middleton (co-owner of Sass & Bide fastion label) dealing with breast-cancer while pregnant with her second child, how tired Gail Kelly (Wespac CEO) felt when her triplets were young(she also had a older child before the triplets), Collette Dinnigan as a single parent, Quentin Bryce (Governor general) nearly had a breakdown and other stories. It's comforting to know that even all of these well-known Mums had a lot of help from familiy and outside help, they still struggle with balancing it all.

Tea time for the traditionally built
By Alexander McCall Smith

The art of racing in the rain
By Garth Stein
Sad story.

Eat pray love
By Elisabeth Gilbert
An interesting real-story and page-turner. I found myself reading it slowly as to save pages so I could enjoy the book a little longer. The movie was a little disjointed and confusing I thought.

Yum char

We had a yummy yum char lunch on Friday after Lara's ballet. We timed the outing according to Sam's sleep routine and didn't have to wait long for food. We ordered 8 dishes, incuding a plate of soy chicken, a plate of white bait and other dumpling dishes. Lara didn't stop eating during the meal and Sam sat throught the whole meal and ate more food than any 10-month old I know! We really enjoyed this simple outing after some stressful time ealier this month.

We made a swift decision at the beginning of June to take Sam away from daycare. Sam's now on his 6th course of antibiotics and has another cold. I worry about his recurrent ear infection and wanted time for his ears to recover. The decision was made quickly but not lightly. We didn't know what the consequences of this decision meant. And for the 48 hours afterwards, unexpected events made things even more uncertain for us. Now we know Simon and I will both work part time for the next couple of months so we can look after Sam between us. We will find out if this arrangement works and see how things pen out after that.

Sam sucking on a deep-fried white bait @ yum char and Lara looking very pleased with a full tummy!

My 'harvest hub' bag

I've been using "Harvest Hub" for fruit and veg in the last 4 weeks on a friend's recommendation. I like that fact that it's a community co-op that buy fresh produce in bulk and in season. The produce has been good. A couple of the mandarins last week were dry (nothing beats our own on the tree!) and some of the potatoes seemed a bit old the week before. Generally speaking, most things were nice and fresh. You don't know what'll be in the bag so it's a surprise every time. The varieties had been great. The small bag ($17) has been sufficient in covering our weekly consumption of fruit and veg. It saves a lot of money because I go to the shops less often.

The picture shown here was last weeks bag. It had silverbeet, cauiflower, sweet potato, beans, grapes and rockmelon, among other things.


In this week's bag, there are:
6 small potatos, a small head of brocolli, 1/4 purple cabbage, 2 large carrots, 2 tomatoes, 2 onions, a small turnip, a bunch of corriander, a small avocardo, 3 pears, 3 mandarins, 2 oranges, 4 kiwi fruit, 1/2 pineapple, 6 apples (red varieties). The small bag will increase in price to $20 next week but it's still good value for money I think.