Today I baked a chocolate chiffon cake with a filling of chocolate butter icing and frosted with chocolate ganache. I baked it to celebrate the birthday of one of the mum’s in my mothers’ group. The girls came home, there were six of us and there’s a quarter of the cake left. I am very glad that they liked the cake, that everyone had two servings and we had a relaxed time.

What is absolutely sickening though is that once I finished piping the icing and before I washed out the icing gun…
I ate all the remaining chocolate icing. I cleaned the bowl out with my fingers. I even put the icing nozzle in my mouth and squeezed the frosting right into my mouth.

Since Mia’s birth — and sometime before that — I have eaten umpteen packets of Timtam, many cakes, croissants with dollops of butter on them. I drink full cream milk. I also drink very sweet coffee; two teaspoons of sugar in each cup. Sometimes three cups a day.

But none of the above compares to what I’ve done in the last month and a half. All by myself, I have drank 15 litres of Coca Cola. I hate myself.

Anyway, I particularly enjoy making something up when the whip-up turns out really tasty and does not require me to prepare a side dish/salad. This chicken curry recipe is a modification of a typical Indian chicken curry.
I made it for dinner last night and we’ll be eating the leftovers today. Since it has vegetables in the curry, I happily skipped making any salad and felt really good about serving ‘healthy’ food. The recipe uses very little oil, mild spices and can include whatever vegies you have in your fridge/pantry. I used carrots, potatoes and zucchini; you could also add capsicum, okra, beans, water chestnuts, eggplant, bamboo shoot, baby corn….the choice is endless. Hope you like this one.

INGREDIENTS

This is what is happening in my courtyard. Everywhere I look these bloody bugs are running around, their bums stuck together,  producing baby bugs. I absolutely hate them because a) They are destroying my plants and b) they are having blatant sex in my courtyard while I’m not having any and definitely not any in the courtyard.
I’d spotted these bugs* in early spring and hadn’t killed them thinking they looked so pretty and were harmless. I was an absolute idiot. Now they are everywhere and are bloody destructive. I bought some marigold saplings — apparently marigold has insecticidal properties — hoping the flowers would deter pests. The saplings were the first to be devoured. Now these bugs are attacking everything from my tomatoes, strawberries, capsicum and chilli plants to my nasturtium saplings (which I grew from seeds) and the passion fruit.
(* the bugs are Harlequin bugs aka fire bugs, scientific name Dindymus versicolor. They are evil. Here’s how you get rid of them.)

It’s like they mock me by having a bloody party in every corner I look. They are on the wall running up and down. I’m watching TV and then I see them — bums joined — scurrying all over the French doors. If not they are prancing on my outdoor-table, line dancing on the clothes line, sunning themselves, getting a tan and just generally lounging around when not generally screwing-around. All this when I’ve already written about the this-service-is-temporarily-unavailable situation that I’ve been enduring.

Though yesterday my dear doctor finally gave the go ahead. (“You’ve been blaming it on the doctor, have you?” she said, I told her she has nice hair). She did say that it could be different. (Please note, not necessarily ‘nice’ different). While ‘physically’ everything is in perfect working condition — please report for regular servicing after six months — it’s the mental-area where there might be problems. No, I am not mental (thankyouverymuch), just that I think I am (I am) a tad anxious.

Then the doctor said that it’s a good idea to perhaps build it up, you know, romantically. All my hopes were dashed at that one. Romantic and baby just don’t go together in my book. Like romantic dinner = restaurant = who will babysit? Or baby will cry in restaurant. Romantic dinner = at home = who is cooking and who will do the cleaning-up later? Romantic movie = not happening because can’t take baby to movie shows. Romantic movie at home = baby teething, uncertain pattern, we ate all the popcorn last night and if I drink anymore Coke I will think about my jelly-belly and that’s certainly not romantic. Romantic massage = love the idea, but definitely don’t want to give one and what if baby wakes up in the middle of it? Romantic = can’t think of anything more and that’s the problem.

And then I get stressed with wondering about wonder-when-it-will-happen and go outside for some fresh air and what do I see? Bloody sexually active bugs. I’ve had it. I’m going to exterminate the last of them and if that means I will be reborn as a bug, so be it.

It’s 2pm and I’m very nervous. Typing this out is also taking a while because I’m hitting the keys very, very gently. I’ve put the cellphone on silent and have killed two flies who were inside my house and buzzing too loudly. I even ran to the other room when I had a minor sneeze attack. I am dying to have some cold milk but dreading opening the fridge door lest it’s too noisy. All this tiptoeing has been going on for the last 40 minutes. Mia is finally asleep and I’m terrified of doing anything that might wake her up. And the only place she’d sleep is in her Bjorn bouncing-chair (I’m in love with it).

Since last Thursday (Dec 2), whenever I’m trying to put her to bed in the morning hours, Mia seems to be fighting with me a lot. That was the first day she was awake for almost 10 hours in the morning. Now it seems she is not only fighting each time I’m trying to put her to bed, she’s also fighting each time I try to feed her. Earlier she would drink at least 100 ml straight up, have a play then drink the rest of her milk and go off to sleep (say 180-240 ml in all). Now she drinks say 40-60 ml and then fights, fights, fights if I try to feed her more.

BUT, when she is awake, she seems pretty happy and does not cry. As in the only time she throws a complete fit — crying, arching back, tears, LOTS of screaming, body-going-rigid — is WHEN I try to give her more milk once she’s drank some (and spat out the bottle). In fact if I even show her the bottle — and she doesn’t want to drink — she starts grizzling. The moment I put her down or hide the bottle, she starts smiling or babbling and is generally happy. She does finish her feed but instead of her usual patten of eat-play-eat-sleep, she now spreads it out over two hours, without any sleep at the end of it. I don’t know what’s happening.

Mia will be five months on Dec 17th. Is she big enough to skip morning sleep? Should I stop trying to put her to bed in the morning/afternoon? Will that not overtire her? Is she under-feeding? While she fights in the morning, at night she has her feed and goes to bed with little fighting…and then sleeps for 8-10 hours. Is that all the sleep she needs? Am I getting unnecessarily worked up? Mia’s also teething (front two little toothies coming out) and touches/pulls her right ear a lot, even while asleep. She’s also started drooling a fair bit and chews on her right index finger.

Is the no-sleep-food-fight behaviour because of teething? I am using a bit of Bonjela teething gel, is there anything else I can use/do? Any of you who have undergone something similar or have any suggestions on what I could do, please share, it would be much appreciated.

PS: To the hour, she’s up. I looked at her, she smiled and then blew raspberries at me. Sigh.