seven months old

smalls is seven months old

She is our joy baby.

She loves to smile and play.

This week she has started crawling. It started out as a backwards wriggle and then on to a clumsy forward shuffle but now she is much more purposed. She is most often found crawling towards mama at sleepy times. 

Lucy is so pleased to have a crawling playmate. To her, crawling is the best trick ever but Norah does not crawl nearly fast enough an Lucy tries to pick up her sister or drag her across the floor. It hasn't affected their relationship too much so far...

There are still no sign of teeth but sweet gurgles and monosybalic words can be heard coming out of Norah's mouth. Da da ba ba and most notably ma ma when she is sad.

She can roll, but like her sister prefers not to except at bed time when she rolls straight onto her tummy and falls asleep. It's funny that Lucy did the same thing. (Except it took me much longer to realise this was the cure to her sleeping woes.)

My favourite thing that Norah does is called the flappy bird. When she sees a face she likes her eyes light up and she waves both her arms and legs about like a sweet baby bird. THAT is worth coming home for. 

She's now having food at every meal time and is taking to it well. Finger food is a favourite but she'll eat almost anything.

She is learning and growing so fast. It is a great joy to watch my two girls play and laugh and hold hands in the car. 

Norah is such a sweet sweet treat.

Pumpkin and kale lasagne

I'm getting a bit foody on the blog lately aren't I?

Here's my latest

bunch of kale

quarter small pumpkin

onion

4 cloves of garlic

2 carrots

zucchini 

jar of passata

3 large Swiss brown mushrooms

packet of fresh lasagne sheets 

500g tub of cottage cheese

200g tasty cheese

Peel and chop pumpkin into slices and roast in the oven at 180* along with half the garlic, olive oil and some pepper.

While it's roasting heat a pan with some olive oil. Chop the mushrooms and grate the zucchini and carrot. Fry in the pan till soft. Add the passata and cook till bubbling.

Rinse the kale and cut off the stalks.

Layer half the lasagne sheets on the bottom of a large ovenproof dish.

Top with a layer of kale.

Add half the passata vege mix and smooth out over the kale. Then add a layer of pumpkin.

Dollop half the cottage cheese on the next layer and sprinkle half the cheese. Then repeat.

Sheets. Kale. Vege. Pumpkin. Cottage. Cheese. 

Bake in the oven for around 40 mins or until the tip is melts and brown.

Enjoy!

bread

Lu is especially fond of what is known in our house as a bacon roll. It's a bacon and cheese roll but that doesn't slip off the tongue quite as easily.

They're a shopping treat or a college bread box treat. But the other day we had no bacon rolls.

So we made some with the help of our friend Jamie Oliver.

I've made bread a few times before but enjoyed it so much more when I could watch little hands kneeling the dough. It was lovely to teach my little girl the magical properties of yeast and watch her eyes widen as we opened the oven to find seven freshly baked rolls.

We had no bacon so just made cheese rolls but I feel like bread baking may just have to become a weekly activity. I think it's good for the soul.

The green ones have dollops of pesto in the middle. Delicious.

six months old

smalls is six months old

She's sitting up and trying like caraaazy to crawl. She'll lean, pop her hands down, rise up on all fours and then...face plant. I'm not sure how long it will take her but she's keen to be moving round with her big sister.

She continues to be a happy little fella but much more in a routine than Lucy ever has been. When it's sleep time she really has to sleep and won't be strung on by social interaction. We may have ourselves an introvert.

She adores her big sister and Lucy really loves trying to pick Norah up from aforementioned face plants. She's not quite strong enough yet. Lucy's been teaching Norah to talk,

"Ask nicely baby."

"You have to talk baby."

"Say hello Lucy."

"Say thank you."

Norah's been chugging away at solids. She's still struggling with the whole tongue thrust concept but we endure. I'm taking it as less of a nutrition thing an more of a learning how to eat thing. There's time.

She's loving milk at the moment. It's so strange for her but I'm glad. She was doing some almost whole day stretches refusing to feed and that was less than ideal.

I look at this kid and I just see Myl all the time. The smaller, cuter, girlier version but Myl just the same. 

My precious little blue eyed babe.