Nearly harvest again

Our mandarin tree is full of mandarines again. They are green at the moment but hopfully will strat to ripe soon! Simon gave me a new task of doing a mandarin marmalade this winter. Better start researching for a nice recipe!

Eczema and vegetarian cookbook

Sam has eczema since he was a newborn, on and off, sometimes not so good but mostly managable. It got worse when he was around 6-7 months. He had red patches all over his arms and legs but none under his nappy. Doctor suggested we change laundry powder. A acquaintance at daycare told me her specialist recommended pure soap as her son had bad eczema too. I switched to pure soap for Sam's clothes, but we still use normal detergent for ours(omo sensetive). It probably helped Sam's skin somewhat, well enough for us to forget about it for a while until it started again at the end of last year. The eczema was the worst ever, it was not on and off, it was ON all the time! Sam would scratch his skin, it bled and healed and you could see little red blood marks everywhere. The itch would made him awake at night(otherwise he always sleeps through) and made him irritable during the day. Doctor prescribed cortisone cream (elocon) and said eczema is a chronic disease we need to manage. Sam was only 18 months old and my lovely baby boy, for his sake I need to believe I can find a solution for his eczema. Anyway I started doing research on the internet and looking at alternative medicines. We took Sam to see a Chinese doctor for herbal cream and he had acupuncture. I was also looking at naturopaths.

It was during that time that I came across this website : Eczema - One family's solution . As soon as I saw it, I remembered we had changed back to detergent for Sam's clothes at around the time his eczema got worse. I was very moved by this Mum's determination to fix her son's eczema and I realised detergent exposure was probably the main reason Sam's eczema got worse. I can relate to the "water in bucket" analogy of allergy on the website - Sam's bucket was full (he had a lot more exposture to detergent) and that made him susceptible to allergens that he could usually tolerate, like grass. Now we only use pure soap to wash clothes for the whole family, we also switched to a detergent-free dishwashing liquid. I'm watchful for anything that has SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate) or similar. Food was another big contributor to Sam's eczema problem.

A book I read recommend eating only veges and brown rice for two weeks then slowly introduce food to determine the 'culprit'. It sounded like a good idea but very hard to implement. Sam is in daycare 4 days a week. It is very hard to control his food intake during those days, it's even harder for me to cook tasty food with only vegetables. I know I need to learn to cook more tasty vegetarian food so I bought a new cookbook "River cottage veg everyday" to help me. Every dish in this book looks so yummy and I want to make every dish in this book! So far, I made beetroot and walnut hummus (page 300), oven-dried tomatoes (page 304), pistachio dukka (page 294), roasted pasnip chips (page 357) and Tahini-dressed courgette and green bean salad (page 74). I will be making more even when Simon and the kids don't share my enthusiasm unfortunately...

Apple picking at Bilpin

This trip was supposed to be steam train rides, apple picking was a do-if-we-have-time event. Apple-picking became the main event when we arrived at the zig-zag railway and found it closed due to unexpected maintenance. What a disappointment! Thank goodness for apples to cheer us up. The day was beautifully sunny. Driving up the Bell Line of road was lovely. We heard the distinctive high-pitch ringing sound the Bell birds made when we wound our windows down. Being Easter Saturday, there was a small traffic jam at Richmond. We managed to stop at Fruti Tutti for lunch and ice-cream but due to time constrain, drove right past Mt Tomah national park. The Fuji and Pink lady apples we picked were nice, Sam had 3 and didnt have much for dinner afterwards. There are also plums/apricots to pick if we go at the right time.

First term of school

I can't believe how fast the first term of school went. This blog entry was changed from first week of school to first month then the fist term of school!



The few weeks leading to Lara's start at 'big' school were busy days. Not only was I trying to get everything ready (uniforms, shoes, socks, school bags, swimming gear, lunch boxes to name a few - there were a lot of things to buy!), I also planned special activities for Lara, we went swimming and skating, went to the beach, had playdates and watched 'The Muppets'. Lara was very excited with the prospect of going to school 'every day'.

Lara's first day at school was smooth and uneventful. We had our cameras and took a couple of quick pics but as advised we didn't make a big deal of it. We left Lara as soon as she settled in the classroom. It was good as there was no time for Lara or us to get too sentimental. Getting upset or emotional would not help Lara or us in this situation.

Lara made some new friends and seemed to take this new school thing matter-of-factly. She loved school and complained about school being too short. The first couple of weeks of school was perfect. Then she got sick, vomiting, temperature and had to stay home for 3 days. After that it was complaint of tummy aches. To cut a long story short, the recurren tummy aches, we found later, was due to not drinking enough water (apparently very common in school kids) not bullying as I suspected.

Swimming classes started at week 2 and homework at week 5. There were readers to read every night and sight words to revise (when I remember). My life was extremely busy with class funcitons, playdates and plays-in-the-park, pencil-shapening and literacy volunteering. There are special days to remember (Harmony days all kids wore orange, healthy-lunch-day $5 but no lunch etc), lost properties to find (Lara seemed to lose at least one item of clothing every week), and so many notes going back and forth. I felt like I have two part-time jobs!

Even though I am busy with work at the moment, I'm very happy about this short break called school holiday! Somehow I managed to volunteer to do more reading and pencil-sharpening next term!! Hopefully things run smoothly next term.