On the North Sea

This is the town we are staying in this second week in Scotland:

Nothing much else to report.

The best blueberry pancakes

The blueberry pancakes I made for breakfast this morning were the best I have ever made. They even earned me a kiss from Bronnie.

So to share the love, here's the recipe:

1 cup (250g) self-raising flour
2 eggs, separated
something like 3/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon melted butter
extra butter for cooking
blueberries (fresh or frozen, but fresh is MUCH better)

Beat the eggwhites until stiff. Mix everything else separately, except for the blueberries. Add the milk slowly - the consistency should be thicker than for regular pancakes. Stir in the beaten eggwhites - be gentle, you don't want to destroy all the bubbles. The batter should end up being foamy.

Melt butter in a pan over a medium heat, dollop half a ladleful of batter into the pan, drop some blueberries on top, turn when golden on bottom. It's best not to make the pancakes too big otherwise they don't cook so well in the middle. Melt new butter in the pan for every batch.

Serve with maple syrup. And proffer your cheek for kisses!

I made double the quantites above, which fed 3 regular adults, one breastfeeding adult, one toddler, one pre-schooler, and one baby.

He looked away at the wrong moment

Highland fun

Fishing

- I'm going to catch a fish in my net. A big one. Not a mummy one, a papa one. And not a baby. A papa. And then we're going to take him home, and then we're going to cook him, and then we're going to eat him for dinner.

And then two seconds after I took the photo, he fell over in the mud. That was the end of fishing.

The best fun he's ever had

Och aye

We're in Scotland! We're in the middle of nowhere in the Western Highlands, where driving 10 miles on the narrow, windy road takes about an hour, and there's no mobile phone connnection, and no shops for 15 miles in either direction, and the temperature is around 10 degrees... but there's meant to be otters and pine martens frolicking on the shore, and we've seen deer, and hopefully we'll get to see puffins and dolphins and whales and basking sharks and selas, and Téo is hoping to see a monster in one of the lochs, and the view from the house is rather nice:

Plus we're here with good friends from Oz (Bronnie and family) which is the best of all.

Posting may be light for the next couple of weeks...

On the home front (II)

The floor of our house was once the floor of a sea. The shells of creatures that lived and died in the sea are still there:

This is cool, yes. But the floor of a sea is a soft silty place, which doesn't change much even millions of years later after it's turned into stone. So if a child were running around on the stone and happened to knock over something heavy, something like this for example:

... then you'd get five powdery holes in your new floor. Something like this in fact:

On the home front (I)

Before we moved from the small apartment, I wondered if maybe we would feel a bit lost in the big house, not being able to hear each other if we were in different rooms. I also wondered how I would maintain my supermummy ability of knowing exactly what my kids were up to all of the time.

I needn't have worried - the atrium does a very fine job of transmitting sound around the house. If the room windows are open, any sound made in one room bounces off the atrium walls into every other room, so you can hear what's going on as if it were happening right next to you.

This can be a bit disconcerting sometimes. We'll call out to find each other, but the answering I'm here! sounds like it was said a few centimetres away, no matter which room or what floor it came from.

And then today while I was on the toilet, I suddenly I heard the au pair and Téo speaking loudly just outside the door. Not wishing J to hear me going about my business I hung on... and then saw the bathroom window was open. Realising they were actually elsewhere in the house, I carried on... and then had the awful thought that if I could hear them like they were next to me, could they hear me like I was next to them??

C and I need to urgently do some sound checks.

Belated birthday wishes

I have a beautiful goddaughter in Australia.

Isn't she beautiful?

I don't know her very well.

For a few years back in the 90s I spent a lot of time with her parents, especially her dad, who worked at the same place as me. He was one of my best and closest friends. But that was over 10 years ago now. I went to live overseas for a year and never returned - and in the meantime she came into existence and was born and became a toddler and then a little girl and then a young girl. In all that time, I've spent maybe a whole day in her presence. In two hour fragments, up to 18 months apart.

These fragments form a rough sense of her life... an 18-month old stubbornly insisting on using chopsticks to eat her rice... a three-year old using toilet roll binoculars to spot goats at the zoo... a three-and-a-half-year old proudly cuddling her new baby brother...a four-and-a-half-year old diving into a pool and colouring in princess drawings... a five-and-a-half-year old playing with my niece... a six-and-a-half-year old dutifully giving me a kiss... a seven-and-a-half year old playing Wii tennis. It's not much though.

The last time I saw her, she asked why I was taking so many photos. Because I don't see you very often, I replied. Because I want at least some record of this lovely girl whose childhood is passing me right by, is what I didn't say.

I don't imagine she has any sense of me, this stranger who appears every now and again with late Christmas and birthday presents.

And I'm late again this year in wishing her a happy birthday. But Anja, despite my almost complete lack of contact with you, I'd like you to know that I think of you often, and worry about whether you'll like clothes that I want to buy for you, and that even though we don't know one another I am still fiercely proud to be your godmother.

And that I hope one day, we will know each other.

Happy (slightly late) 8th birthday!!!

My cute boy (for his fairy godmother)

The door to my office, where I am working, just opened.

- Mummy, I'm going to tell you something wewy intewesting.

Téo comes in, looking around, clearly seeking inspiration.

- I'm just going to tell you...

He looks around some more.

- Ummmm....

He comes over, stalling.

- Ummmmmm.... J (the au pair) and me is going to play Memowy.

I give him a kiss.

- OK mummy, I'm leaving you to work. Goodbye!

Crashing back down to Earth

You know how how I wrote on the side that this blog is a way of trying to better keep in touch with you? Well I lied. Just a little, and more by omission than through a great big whopper, but I lied nevertheless.

Because you see, alongside my very real wish to let you know what's happening over here, I had a small secret dream. A dream of being discovered, of making it big in the blogging world. Not as big as Dooce - I'm not completely deluded - but at least having the bloggers I admire coming to my blog. Every day. As well as maybe a hundred or so other readers. And all of them commenting on how wonderful my posts are.

But for this dream to happen, people had to know I existed. So I plucked up my courage and left a comment on a blog I like. A comment that linked back to here.

And then I added a site monitor that keeps track of who's been visiting me.

And then I obsessively checked the site monitor, to see if the blogger had come to my blog.

Imagine my excitement when I saw that someone from his part of the world had visited me! And then my puzzlement when I saw that this person had spent exactly zero seconds here. Yes, zero seconds. That's basically clicking the back button before the page had even finished loading.

Huh? I thought. That can't be right. Why would someone click through and then not even read anything?

So I tried another blogger. And had a visit from her part of the world... which lasted for zero seconds.

What's the problem? I fumed. Do you not like the name of my blog, or the layout I chose? Are you really judging me on that?

I tried again. Same thing.

Hey, your blog's name isn't so great either. And I suffer through your less interesting posts and still loyally come back... give me a break here! Read a bit and I'm sure you'll love it!

I tried again. It was a really good comment. No visit at all this time.

I was getting desperate.

Desperate is a bad bad place to be. It makes you do things you wouldn't normally ever do, that you know are stupid even as you're doing them.

I'm too embarrassed to tell you what I actually did. Suffice to say that I bounced up to a group of strangers like an eager puppy, saying the equivalent of Please be my friend? Please? Pretty please? They politely turned away without even acknowledging my presence. I still shudder to think about it.

But one good thing came out of this - I no longer have the dream. And to prevent any further attention-seeking debacles, I have forbidden myself from ever leaving any comments ever again. Well, with the exception of friends' blogs (but even then I am worried that my comments may not come across as intended).

So what's written on the side is now the absolute truth. This blog is only for you, my dear friends and family - and just you reading my posts is way more attention than my very mundane life deserves.

But I wouldn't say no to a few more comments. Pretty please?

überwoman update

So last Friday I went to a friend's house for the afternoon. I forgot to take any food for Lukan and had to scab some off my friend. I remembered to take nappies (which is not always the case), but I forgot to change him. I also forgot Téo's bathers, even though I knew there would be water fun in the garden.

I did, however, bring home-made cupcakes.

Bounty

I love raspberries. I could eat them for every meal and never get sick of them. I really, really love them.

So then it follows that C's parents' raspberry patch is one of my favourite places on Earth. I feel like a kid in a candy store whenever I'm out there. It's just too good to be true that I can stroll amongst the bushes and eat as many as I want. As many as I want!!

It's not only too good to be true because they are so deliciously yummy, it's also too good to be true because in the shops they cost a small fortune. And I am eating them for free. As many as I want. As many as I want!!

I really am incredulous about this - that I really can eat as many raspberries as I want and there will still be enough for C's parents. This is despite C's mother assuring me there are too many for them to ever eat, and despite the fact that in winter she gives me milk cartons full of frozen raspberries to empty out her freezer. I find it even harder to believe there's enough now, with Téo and Lukan also gobbling them up as fast as they can (and don't think that a baby can't keep up with the rest of us!)

This is from last year - we filled the container and the three of us managed to empty it in one sitting.

So last weekend when C's parents went away and told us we could pick as many raspberries as we liked, I couldn't help but want to guard them as the precious things they are.

- Téo, we are picking these for dessert. Don't eat them now, put them straight into the container.

- OK mummy, I understand what you're saying.

And he did collect them without eating any... until he saw C gorging himself. And Lukan too.

I resolutely kept on collecting them for dessert... but then started to get a bit tired of being the only one doing this. And there were just so many raspberries. I'd think I'd have stipped a section bare, and then I'd look back at a different angle and see clusters of bright red berries that I'd missed.

So I started eating the odd one here and there. It wasn't long before I descended into full-blown gluttony. And still there were more raspberries waiting to be picked.

Despite us all eating our fill, we collected two containers' worth. Two days in a row.

The third day I was actually thankful it was raining so we didn't have to go pick more (a sunny day would mean more ripe raspberries and there was no way I could let them rot on the bushes, even if we hadn't yet eaten all the ones we had collected). And another two days later, when we were struggling to eat the last of the collected raspberries before they went off, I finally accepted that the raspberry patch really does produce an awful lot of raspberries.

Just after I finished cleaning the windows

Why did this make me cry?

A couple of weeks ago, a blogger I read posted this video:


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Lukan was on my lap while I watched it, and when the other people started dancing too, I started sobbing.

I'm still finding it hard to articulate why - why it was that a happy video of people dancing should make me so so sad. Why it should remind me of all that is wrong in the world instead of all that is good. Why it should make me think of the painful aspects of life instead of the wonder that it is.

But there I was, face pressed into Lukan's head, his soft baby hair plastered to my skin, wishing with all my might that he will have a peaceful life free of war, misunderstanding, suffering, loneliness, any kind of misery. Crying for the millions of people for whom this is not the case, and fearful that it may not be the case for my children either.

We're here!

Hello! Sorry for being MIA this past week, but here we are! In our big new house!

Even with boxes scattered everywhere, serious questions about where to put things (like beer in the too-small fridge, and 6 boxes of stuff from the old kitchen that doesn't fit into the new one*), and no blinds, sink or stove, already I feel we are breathing easier. Like we are more at home.

Téo happily plays outside by himself. He's been to his grandparents' every day to pick raspberries and cherries and strawberries. Work has started on restoring the barn across the street - meaning there's diggers and dump trucks and cement trucks to watch.

Lukan no longer gets left in a room by himself so often. He plays happily by himself in the open kitchen/living room while we do things around him. We no longer have to tiptoe around during his naps. There's room for both boys to play chasings inside.

Even when the au pair's here, the house doesn't feel anywhere near crowded. And I think we've struck gold with her. She seems to be perfect - very good with the kids, discrete, tidy, helpful.

Last night was the first night in ages where I haven't collapsed into bed, totally exhausted, eyes immediately shut for sleep. I lay looking up through the skylight above our bed, soaking in the silence, aware of my sleeping children in the next room, watching a lazy cloud swell and unfurl in the last light of a midsummer night. I have never felt so lucky.

*I know this is the universe telling me for a second time that we really don't need so much stuff, but we'll probably buy a cupboard for it all anyway.

Oh, and we don't think Lukan did have chicken pox - even though he had a high temperature the day before, he also had a heat rash ... I think the bigger spots were rash spots that became a little infected. In any case, he never got any more spots, and they cleared up in a few days. So, phew.