Waterfalls

Boy Lacer has become obsessed by waterfalls, which is a bit strange as we live nowhere near any and he’s only seen a few every now and then when on holiday in Wales and the last one was ages ago. I think he likes the downness of them, in the same way as he likes lifts because they go down to (as well as up). So consequently as he now likes waterfalls, he likes recreating them in the bath and this is the boy who normally hates baths, with a screaming vengeance. So when I happened to mention that he was having a bath this evening (although not at that point literally about to have one, I was giving him advance warning), he went “ooh bath”, took me by the hand and marched me straight to the bathroom. He insisted on giving the bath a quick rinse down first himself with the shower attachment, then ran the bath himself (with a little bit of monitoring from me to make sure that it was the right temperature) and then with some help to get undressed and into the bath, it was bath time! Lots of ‘waterfalls’ were made courtesy of a watering can and two empty bubble bath bottles. Hair was washed with only a minimum of wimpering and then I let him play for a little longer and . .  . he . . . sat . . . down in the bath, I should say that since Boy Lacer has been able to stand in the bath, he has hated baths so much, he has refused to sit down in the bath, so we’ve been washing him basically by hand now for over a year . . . and . . . then . . . he . . . sat . . . down, wow and you know what else? He stayed sitting down.

 

and he's even drawing waterfalls, this one was from today.

Little boxes for big things

I’m trying to have a highly organised day today, getting all the little things done. Of course I haven’t got them all done but I’ll feel less guilty when I’m writing tomorrow (I’m not happy with my writing schedule this week, as there’s a coffee morning to go to during my Thursday session, I have to go, I organised it). I’ve listed and got rid of my massive clothes airer in half an hour on Freecycle and listed a baby monitor on Ebay, made some phone calls, made some soup for the freezer and now I’ve sat down with some paperwork, Boy Lacer’s admission form for nursery. Now I’ve always known this was coming, since I filled in Girl Lacer’s admission forms, as although she was a breeze to fill in for, I couldn’t help noticing at the time the size of the boxes for ‘medical problems’ were tiny compared to the opus I knew I was going to have to write for Boy Lacer and today was the day. I didn’t even try in the end, I just wrote ‘see additional sheet’ and typed it (having it down on a hard disk will be necessary as I remember that once I’ve filled in the admission form, I’ll get another batch of paperwork back where I’ll have to write pretty much the same thing again). The box in question read

‘Has your child received treatment or been monitored for any of the following? – hearing / sight / development / behaviour / physical problems / speech & language / occupational therapy / psychology. (Please give details if yes)’,

OK then where was I going to start? For a start I managed to underline each category except for the first two (and if I’d been pedantic I could have underlined hearing, as Boy Lacer has had a hearing test), so I took each category and wrote about that and each category sounded so depressing and made Boy Lacer sound so awful, that in the end (as I was picturing the school’s SENCO and the head of nursery reading this, head in hands) I added an additional section, Boy Lacer’s positive points

Z’s skills – Z responds well to adults that he knows, he enjoys his current pre-school where he likes painting, story time, song time (which he joins in with) and playing on the slide and in the playhouses in the pre-school garden. Z loves drawing, books, computers and enjoys number work. Although Z shows little interest in playing with other children, he does play extremely well with his older sister, where they play a number of imaginative games. Z’s been lucky to have been ‘in the system’ far earlier than a lot of children diagnosed with asd (his developmental delay was picked up by chance when he was treated for recurring chest infections as a baby) and he has shown an amazing amount of progress.

There, feel better for being more positive, he’s a lovely little boy (most of the time) and I’m sure they’re going to love having him.

More Fay Ripley

I think the key theme emerging with Fay Ripley’s Family Food book is that the recipes are easy, very, and although I think I can count myself as a fairly accomplished cook, there’s nothing wrong with easy (as long as it still tastes nice) because easy normally means minimal time involved and I like that!

I made her quick chicken kiev on Friday night, in lieu of getting a Dominos Pizza (me and Mr. Lacer are a pizza advertisers wet dream, we just have to get sent a discount voucher for Dominos through our inbox and we’re always, guaranteed, “Oooh pizza!”, we did actually make the use of the voucher on Saturday night and it was the greasiest pizza I’ve ever had (and I’ve had a few), I couldn’t eat all of it and what I did eat made me feel ill, so there you go, Fay Ripley beats Dominos hands down (and cheaper)). Anyway, the chicken kiev was lovely, using a method I recognise from Jamie Oliver (although I’m sure he didn’t invent it), it’s basically chicken and veg, little bit of liquid, wrapped in foil, bunged in oven. To classify this as ‘chicken kiev’, it involved squidging in some butter mashed with garlic and parsley, into the chicken breast. I bunged in some sliced courgette (Ripley advised cherry tomatoes as well, bleurgh) as well and instead of the few tablespoons of chicken stock she recommeded, I did my few sloshes of soy sauce again and it all worked out very well. Mr. Lacer really liked it and he was scarred for life by his mother’s bad chicken.

The courgette by the way, although way more over cooked than I normally like it, was also delicious.

Then this lunch time I made her idiot-pro0f roast butternut squash soup and not only is it idiot proof, it’s completely and utterly minimal attention worthy, which is perfect if I’m trying to make something and it’s just me and Boy Lacer in the flat. It takes a while but that time is mostly spent in the oven, so it’s not like you’re involved there. You basically chop a butternut squash in half, scoop out the seeds, drizzle with olive oil and a few sprigs of rosemary and bung in the oven for an hour and a quarter, then scoop out the resulting softened flesh, whizz up, heat up together with some chicken stock and there’s your soup.

I have to admit it’s not the nicest butternut squash I’ve ever tasted (Tana Ramsay gets that award) but it still tastes lovely and the ease of making it counts for a lot. I tend to like my butternut squash at an almost baby food like consistency and this one is a lot thinner, it’s more of a mug soup rather than a bowl soup but as I’ve been thinking about mug soup recipes (for when Boy Lacer starts afternoon nursery, I am not going back to eating my lunch at 11.30am again, so I was thinking if I could have soup for lunch in a mug when I got back from taking him to nursery, it wouldn’t interrupt my writing time too much), so I will be making this again, probably start a production line in the kitchen with multiple butternut squashes roasting in the oven at the same time and then freezing the soup.