Twittering about it live!
I’ve been so neglectful over here
Sucked into the vortex of sleeplessness
A child who is choosing to cry. SCREAM. For hours. All night.
He cries and I leave him
Thinking
He will go back to sleep
He never EVER does
Just getting louder or more mournful
So that when I go in
OH THE RAGE he bestows upon me
The ‘just WHERE THE HELL have you been’ screams of indignation
He won’t let me pick him up
Choosing to thrash around in his anger
Soak in his vitriol for just a few more minutes
And then I am allowed to scoop him up
To be slapped and clawed at
Screamed at in my ear
Ah, the choir of angels I say to myself
Just like Felix was
Exactly the same
This has been going on for the last two or so weeks but it might well have been years
It sucks the very life out of you
Making days pass in a hazy shade of grey
With occasional swoons of exhaustion where you think you might just fall down dead
But you don’t
Buoyed by reality
Head above water
Knowing it will pass in due course
And that the games and giggles and kisses and mimicking and general edibleness are oxygen enough
to keep going.
These are Jasper’s absolute favourite. He eats one bite of the biscuit to get to the jammy middle, eats that then hands the rest off to any grateful passer by. Normally Grover or his father. I’ve got a few recipes for these types of biccies but this one is probably the easiest and they all seem to taste the same so in my book that makes this one the winner.
Jammy Jewels Donna Hay Magazine: annual kids issue 2008
180g butter
1 cup caster sugar
1 egg
2 cups sifted plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
your favourite jam
Preheat oven to 180C
Cream the butter and sugar until light and creamy then add the egg and mix well
Add the flour and baking powder and mix until it comes together as a dough
Use your hands to roll tablespoons of the dough into balls then place on baking tray allowing a bit of room to spread during cooking
Push your finger into the centre to make a hole and fill with jam
Bake for 10 minutes until golden and add more jam to the holes while the biscuits are hot*.
* we never did this, just putting a decent heaped amount in the hole before cooking seemed plenty for this family!
Apple and apple and berries/sultanas/rhubarb crumble are pretty regular in our house and the boys do, on occasion, help me make the crumble. This allowed them to do the lot and they were lovely. That said, they were ridiculously sweet and I would reduce the sugar mixed with the berries by a third, if not a half.
Berried Treasure Pots
Donna Hay Magazine: annual kids issue 2008
Preheat oven to 180C
This was, by far, the most favourite thing the boys made. They loved making them and eating them. I’m seriously considering investing in more Chinese steamers to produce more than half a dozen at a time.
Moon Dumplings
Donna Hay magazine: annual kids edition 2008