Category: Family

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Chocolate is GOOD FOR YOU

Unwrapping a lovely gift for my birthday, I eagerly opened the layers while anticipating a nice box of perfume or a little trinket.   Three faces beaming with delight stood in front of me, and I kept the smile frozen on my face as the last layer came adrift, to the sight of my favourite bar of chocolate – a HUGE one.  My heart sank to my boots and I instantly fought to find words to thank them, and give them all a huge kiss for.  Inside, I felt like weeping at the thought of another two inches on my hips.

Opening it up right away, I snapped sections off and handed the kids all one each.  They ran for little plastic bags from the kitchen and dropped their slabs into protective wrapping before slinking off into the sunset.  I was relieved that I had managed to hand out so much of the bar.

Is chocolate really that bad for us, or is it just that people don’t want us to actually enjoy something that does something with the endorphins in our brains that makes us think we’ve done a 12 mile run.   How have I managed to give myself such a guilt trip over eating one thing that I really do enjoy?

The guilt comes on with one square or ten squares.  If I eat it, I feel annoyed with myself, and I don’t think I am alone in that.

Why is chocolate good for us?

The Guardian reported that “A study by the German Institute of Human nutrition found that flavanols from cocoa boost the body’s supply of nitric oxide, which helps to lower blood pressure.”  I take that to mean eating chocolate is not all bad, even if it’s not dark chocolate.  One point to me.  By eating one square of regular chocolate a day, could I really be reducing my risk of stroke or heart attack?  That sounds like a nice prescription.

They reported the study from the European Heart Journal that flavanols in cocoa are the reason for the reduced blood pressure, and strokes could be reduced by the increase of blood around the brain.

1,568 people were studied, of which, 57% ate milk chocolate, 24% ate dark and 2% ate white chocolate.

Chocolate to excess!

Sadly, the study showed that the benefits were from eating a smallish amount of chocolate as part of the daily diet.   I am more convinced that it would be healthier to have just a few squares a day, but that isn’t easy to do when it’s just sitting there, looking at you and begging to be eaten.

Yes, chocolate is very high in calories, with upwards of 500 calories per hundred grams, so it’s not something that can be eaten without any thought at all.  We all know the damage that eating too many treats can do to our bodies, but some of us just can’t stop.

Why do we crave sweet things ?

Imagine a world where someone with foresight and creative ability found a safe way to avoid sugar cravings.  I, along with my craving affected sisters, would instantly transform them into a being of ever lasting hero worship, making them an overnight billionaire, and more famous than Mrs and Mrs Beckham.

In the real world, we have to do what we can.

Giving in to a sugar craving can send us into a downward spiral where the need to have something sweet takes over our lives.  We satisfy that need with some sugar and our bodies tell us to eat some more.  I have no idea why some of our bodies seem to work so sadly against us, but it is a constant fight to retain some semblance of normality and reducing the sugar need.

How to avoid sugar cravings.

A chocolate bar can be anything up to about 50% (and more) just of sugar.

It’s all about understanding the carbs !!!!  I know this, yet I still struggle, but it’s good to remind myself.   The good carbs will help us keep sugar cravings to a minimum.   Starches like vegetables and cereals do this by breaking down the carbs slowly, and not allowing the blood sugar to get to abnormal levels.

Some tricks to try and help reduce cravings are:

  • Look at the food we eat.  Processed food tends to be quite high in refined sugars, and might be hidden under names like, lactose, dextrose, fructose etc.
  • If you drink tea and coffee and use sugar, gradually cut down the amount of sugar you use, until you can stop altogether.  It really doesn’t take long before the taste of a hot drink with sugar will turn your stomach.
  • In general, white flour and rice has been processed.  Try to replace them with whole grain versions.  Do this by mixing the white with whole grain until you get the taste for it.
  • Try to eat regularly.  Skipping meals can make us more hungry when we do start to eat, and drop our blood sugar levels to increase cravings.  I struggle with this one as I am fine until I start eating in a day.  If I could just stop eating, like an alcoholic can just stop drinking, then I’d have no problem with controlling my weight.
  • Eat fruit and vegetables to replace sugary snacks.   Common sense, but I find there are days when I just can’t get the fruit I would like.
  • I’ve seen the recommendations to use a sugar substitute.   All I can say about that is “bleurgh.”  I’d rather do without than add a substitute.  I’ve used Agave Syrup and Stevia for the kids and cooking quite a bit.  They don’t seem to notice, so I’ll carry on with that.

Chocolate is GOOD FOR YOU? 

Perhaps if I can change my mindset into thinking and believing that chocolate really is good for me, it will lose the love / hate relationship I now have with it.  I want to enjoy eating it, and be able to control how much of a bar I eat.

My new mantra…

Chocolate is good for you, chocolate is good for you, chocolate is good for you, chocolate is good for you, chocolate IS good for you.

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Unpicking Parenting Ideology: understanding the power of ‘memes’, by Shanta Everington

A guest post today from Shanta Everington.  I know what I think of the methods of some parenting gurus, but we all have to make up our own minds without influencing others, don’t we.  An interesting piece, from a writer who is passionate about choice.

 Shanta Everington is the author of four published books, including non-prescriptive parenting books, Baby’s First Year: A Parent’s Guide and The Terrible Twos: A Parent’s Guide with Need2Know Books.  She runs a parenting book blog at www.parentguideuk.wordpress.com and a writing website at www.shantaeverington.co.uk.

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Unpicking Parenting Ideology: understanding the power of ‘memes’
by Shanta Everington

This week, there was a heated debate on the BabyCalm blog about the rights and wrongs of controlled crying, following publication of (some say flawed) research that indicated that it was not harmful.  Parents on both sides of the fence wanted to convince the other side that they were right.

We all know that people are individuals, right?  With vastly differing temperaments, likes, dislikes, values, beliefs systems and world views.

So why do we have to agree that ‘one size fits all’?  Similarly, many baby care books will have you believe that all your life experience – all those years spent building a unique frame of reference from which to view the world – is meaningless, because THIS IS THE RIGHT WAY.

“it is every mother’s responsibility to create her own unique version of motherhood”
from The Idle Parent by Tom Hodgkinson

When my son was fifteen months old, Channel 4 aired its controversial series, ‘Bringing up baby’, which compared techniques which were popular in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies via six families with new babies trialling three different approaches to baby care under the guidance of three mentors.

Here are the three approaches and the captions from the Channel 4 website:

  • The 1950s: Dr Frederic Truby King’s Strict Routine Method, ‘Routine, fresh air and show baby who’s boss.’
  • The 1960s: Dr Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Childcare, ‘Chuck out the rule book and shower babies with love.’
  • The 1970s: Jean Liedloff’s Continuum Concept, ‘Sling in your baby and join the tribe.’

The Truby King method, although created in the 1950s, seemed to be making a comeback when I became a mother six years ago. When I’d visit the health centre, some professionals spoke to me like there was only one way to do things.    ‘Put the baby down.’  ‘You mustn’t give into him.’ ‘He’s just trying it on.’ blah blah blah.

The idea that babies are somehow Machiavellian for wanting to be loved and held is frankly scary.  I knew my parents had the Dr Spock book (the biggest selling book in history, second only to the Bible) and I was reassured by Dr Spock’s advice, ‘Trust yourself; you know more than you think you do’.

I’d never heard of the Continuum Concept, which is based on the lifestyle of Yequana tribes, but I was interested in it for the very reason that suggesting that mothers hold babes ‘in arms’ until they can crawl was the extreme opposite of the ‘put him down or he’ll get used to being held’ propaganda.

I never missed an episode.  What I loved about this programme was the acknowledgement (at last!) that there are different approaches and that they are all based on underlying belief and value systems.  Each approach offered vastly different advice on every aspect of parenting.

Continuum Concept parents carried babies in slings twenty-four-seven and slept with them at night.  Truby King parents put the babies in their cots and shut the door, discouraged from picking up a crying baby.  Continuum Concept parents fed on demand, at least the mothers did, from the breast, of course.

Truby King parents fed from the bottle according to a strict timetable and with minimum cuddling which would ‘only encourage them’ to expect it.  Dr Spock parents, in the absence of any rules, just did what felt right.

In Winning Parent, Winning Child, Jan Fortune-Wood explores the origin and power of parenting ideas and discusses the Darwinian concept of ‘memes’, ideas that, like genes, self-replicate.

She says,

‘Some of the most powerful and deeply ingrained ideas we have as parents are not just single ideas, but groups of ideas that work together.  These have been called “memeplexes” and examples are religions, ideologies, languages, alternative therapies and lifestyles.’ 

She explains that we need to have a critical eye on such memeplexes, which as well as containing useful ideas, may often contain harmful ideas that inhibit our thinking about parenting.

So-called ‘progressive’ parenting ideology can be as unforgiving and rigid as the fifties methods. Although a  lot of The Continuum Concept principles corresponded with my own instincts, I also found the assertion that the deprivation of the ‘in-arms’ stage is the root cause of all evil (we’re talking drug addiction, mental illness, criminality, the lot) and that the Yequana’s way of life is the only ‘right’ way to live is frankly ridiculous. Some parents and babies love ‘baby-wearing, co-sleeping, breastfeeding on demand’ and some don’t. Is it not possible to want to breast feed but not co-sleep or vice versa?!

As parents, we need to decide for ourselves what we are comfortable with, what style of parenting fits our own set of beliefs, our value system, our world view and our babies’ temperaments. We don’t have to buy into any particular ‘parenting religion’. We CAN pick and choose!

 

 

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My scabby lounge makeover – before and after. What this blog paid for.

Who says blogging doesn’t pay for anything…  My lounge was badly in need of a makeover.  Actually, it’s badly been needing a makeover for a few years now, but with the kids, and middlers propensity for temper tantrums and trashing things when his medication wears off, I really didn’t see the point of doing it.

The front lounge was last done roughly about 12 years ago and the carpet never, ever, showed any dirt.  I had no real excuse to replace it.

The lounge had deteriorated to such an extent, that the single chair in this picture had to be thrown out about six weeks ago.  Middler in a nervous mood one day, picked at it until the leather broke and then pulled it apart.  It was beyond saving.   There was a three seater which is out of view, but sadly this is the only image I can find of my lounge as it was (that tells you how I felt about it).  Boring, old fashioned and unbelievably tired.

I began to get embarrassed about it when people came to the house and that’s never good.  I didn’t want to spend blogging money on necessities as it would have disappeared into the general pot of daily living, so a new makeover was planned and executed in less than 10 days from start to finish.

Here are the pix of the end results.  Ok, the suites are not what I would choose ideally, but they fitted within my budget and were immediately available.   The TV is NOT going back into this room and it’s going to be my chill out and reading room, or a visitors only place.  It’s too light a carpet for anything else and it smells all nice and new.  I wonder how long we will be able to keep it up though.

The man was determined to lay it himself and bought a kicker to do the job.  It took him a couple of hours and saved me £120 from the original bill.

 

I just need to add a photo wall next.

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Introducing cats to cats. You Tube Video Find (Cute)

I found this on Youtube, and I really couldn’t resist sharing it.  I once had to introduce a teensy kitten to two adult cats and the process was pretty similar.  We had our cats eye each other up through glass doors for a few days, but the steps seem to be pretty common and I still get asked how to introduce cats.

The cats protection league has a section titled : How can I introduce my new cat to my existing cat? which gives us good pointers on how to make the introductions slowly and with care to make sure that they accept each other.

The general steps for introducing cats to each other seems to be.

1.  Allow the animals to smell and see each other through a door for a few days, each cat with plenty food, water and comfort.

2. Slowly introduce them to each other by scent on your clothes, and on hands until they get used to the scent of each other.

3. Allow them to be in the same room in your presence where you can supervise and ensure that a vulnerable cat is safe.

4. Take your time as some cats will take longer to get used to new cats than others.

I challenge you not to say awwwww at the end of this video introducing a kitten to a cat …

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FREE Telecare Systems for Special Needs, Eldercare or Disability

This post isn’t one for bleating or winging about what some of us can’t get, or miss out on for our disabled or elder care families.  This one I am actually very pleased with and at the same time, massively surprised about as it seems to be UK wide, but at what levels I am not quite sure.

It started at parents night at middlers special school.  The alarm system man was there to show off the systems that can be used to help families who need to know what is happening through the night.

Imagine waking up by hearing a crying child who’d been kicked out of their bed.  Imagine hearing a noise downstairs and then investigating to find a child with front and back doors open and four burners of the gas turned on !!!!!  The potential is enormous for many parents of special needs children.  Our solution was to have one adult sleep downstairs permanently.

I had asked doctors, consultants, social workers and more for solutions to it, and the only answers I could get were to lock the doors so he couldn’t get downstairs, or put new doors on so that they could be locked.  I had visions of horror in the event of fire, or if something happened and the kids couldn’t get downstairs or out of the front door as the key is under my pillow.

Cutting a long story short, coming across these alarms is kind of bitter-sweet.  We’ve struggled for years, when there was a solution on our doorsteps, and one that the council also provides for free here.  The only charge is for things like elder care fall alerts at  £1.80 a week to link up to a call centre.

The equipment is free for us in Aberdeen, and it looks free from a lot of the local authorities I’ve had a look at.  I think Aberdeenshire is £4 month, but I think most people could stretch to that for peace of mind.

After persuading my mother that she needed an alert too after falling downstairs and making this mess of herself, she finally gave in to the fact that there needs to be some way of raising an alarm when I’m here as well as when I’m away.  I was two rooms away and had no idea she had fallen face first from the top to the bottom of the stairs.

The picture was 2 days after falling.  By 5 days, the bruising had joined up under her eyes and cheekbones.  The kids said that her bruises were “growing”.   Although she looks nowhere near her 77 years, she has arthritis which makes falling actually quite easy.  There were no broken bones which amazed me.

She has two pendants and a wrist watch style fall alert.  If she falls with the watch on, it automatically sends an alert to my wrist watch and to the care centre, just in case I don’t hear it.   She can use the pendants to either just get my attention, or to go to a call centre for help if I am not here.

We have a door alarm on middlers door which is actually quite small (wandering alert).  It goes to a unit which I keep beside my bed and wakes me up if his door is opened.  He doesn’t know how I know that he has left his room and I can usher him back to his bedroom and safety.

Alert Handset

In Aberdeen, they are raising awareness of the systems as too few people seem to know about them.  My first question was “how much will it cost”.  Sceptical as usual….    The equipment was installed within 2 weeks of my initial self referral.  An assessor came out to do an assessment of what would be needed, and two fitters came a mere few days later to install all the equipment.

The service was absolutely amazing, and I don’t say that lightly.

If you know someone who could benefit from peace of mind, let them know to look for it in their area.  They really are worth having and I have to say it again, I have been enormously impressed by the Aberdeen Telecare Information Service.

We’re sleeping easier and the wrecked lounge come bedroom is getting a makeover to celebrate it’s return to being solely a lounge.

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Painting with Acrylics on a Dreary & Drab Afternoon

Forget that it’s summer now as the weather has been atrocious.  I had the kids with me last week when we went out and about to get some cheapie new curtains for the lounge I am decorating.  Ok, the curtains didn’t end up as cheap as I was hoping to get them, but they’re certainly a bargain compared to the old faded drapes they are replacing.

Popping in to the Staples at Berryden, which is pretty close by, we really just went for a browse.  We came out with a basket full of cheap goodies and new school bags for August.  The kids were most excited about their find of some cheap artists canvas boxes, and the prospect of painting with acrylics.

Fab tracing by littlest.

A whole afternoon was spent dabbing, dotting and drawing and my kids were engrossed until their canvas masterpieces were finished.

Middler wasn’t interested so I tried my best to get some sort of semblance of some kind of abstract flower.  Am completely ok with how amateur it is, but we all had a fabulous afternoon and are now eagerly awaiting some more blank canvases arriving from Amazon.

My “cough” masterpiece.

The kids bedrooms will be full of their own pictures soon.  We’re planning on possibly painting a larger canvas sheet with dots and dabs to match the new lounge when I eventually get it completely finished.  It’s a tempting blank canvas at the moment.

Littlest creation. He regrets adding the dark black line around his figure.

Eldest gave his dad this for fathers day, saying that it was a picture of his dad when he gets old.

I half wish I knew someone who was a street artist to do something fancy, but you can’t win them all can you.

 

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Carrot Cake with Scotty Brand Carrots

carrotcake4

This is a lush carrot cake and sooo easy to make.  I made this using the carrots we were so kindly given from Scotty Brand.

I used small loaf tins.

Yield – up to 6 small tins.

Ingredients

  • 4 oz castor sugar
  • 4 oz demerara or brown sugar
  • 8 oz butter
  • 8 oz self-raising flour, or plan flour with baking powder
  • 4 medium sizes eggs
  • 200g grated carrots
  • 100g chopped nuts
  • 250g mascapone cheese
  • sachet gelatine
  • cinnamon
  • nutmeg
  • topping
Method
  1. Cream butter and sugar together.
  2. Add eggs and mix until the batter becomes smooth.
  3. Sieve in self-raising flour and add the carrots.
  4. Mix until all ingredients are fully bended together.
  5. Fold in a teaspoon of cinnamon, nutmeg and the chopped nuts.
  6. Spoon out into baking cases, tins or trays.
  7. Bake in oven at approximately 160 F for about 12 – 15 minutes.  Oven times may vary depending on if it is fan assisted, gas or standard electrical.
  8. For the filling, wait until the cake is cool.
  9. Melt the gelatine and mix it with the mascapone.
  10. Cover top of cakes with the mascapone.
  11. Leave for half an hour to begin to set.
  12. Add decoration, or sprinkle top of cake with ground cinnamon.

 

 

 

 

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Bloggers Saving Lives – Help Us Sponsor Children for #shareniger

Who says bloggers don’t get anything done?  Well not us, that’s for sure, we do have blogger power.

Parent bloggers have raised enough for 6 children so far, and are on the way to 7 children in Niger for the next year.  Help us do more and expand the network willing to help.  Lots of us can’t justify the whole price at over £20 a month each, so the sponsorships are being gathered in a way that almost everyone can afford to join in with.

A subscription for anything from £1 gives us some to add to the pot, or even just a one of donation of whatever you can afford gives enough to sponsor a child for a year when it is added into the pot.  Some bloggers are doing a child share and for £6 a month, they are committing to 1/4 a child each.  Two children have just donated for 1/4 of a child.  How fabulous is that.

#ShareNiger came about when blogger Sian To went to West Africa and the Niger region with World Vision.  The trip was shared among our community by blogging and tweeting, and the media picked up on the stories.

How could anyone fail to be moved by the plight of this lady trying to keep her whole family alive on the pack of baby food she is given to feed just one child.

I know you need to know more.  I have pledged and paid for my 1/4, if you can pledge anything, a family will live a little easier in the Niger region.  Supported by World Vision, and with promises from the Government to pledge £1 for every £1 we raise, Sian and Merry Raymond are gathering bloggers together to sponsor children in the deprived area Sian visited.

If you can’t afford to give money towards sponsoring a child, you could help to do your bit by retweeting or blogging and helping raise awareness among your own online community.  For anyone who read this far, thank you for reading, and lets see us get to 10 children with the support of social media.

If you can join in, click here to sponsor a child in Niger.

Sian To –  Share Niger Story

Chris Mosler – Vaccines One Year On 

Merry Raymond – how to join us and sponsor a child in Niger.

 

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Project 366 Day 5/365 – Summer Sun

Summer Sun – we go to a club every week that we help run.  For my special needs child it really is his lifeline out of school.  With other children that he can relate, he doesn’t have to worry about what is said or done.  If another special needs child says something out of turn, it really is because they just don’t like each other, and nothing to do with their disabilities.  It is lovely to see these kids acting like kids, and the mums get to have a coffee and a chat with other mums that “get it”.  Friendship is fabulous.

It’s nice to see kids making the most of the sun, even it if it is just to laze about on the grass.

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We’re jinxed…. Just send us the bill….

You could be forgiven for thinking I’ve thrown in the towel and decided to be Miss Misery Guts this week.

Looking back on it, it’s not going to be all plain sailing to fix, but hey, we’re all alive, and I can afford to put food on the table for my kids.  So – why on earth have I been finding myself almost biting my nails and nervously chewing my hair with appliance breakdowns?

Answer me this, just who invented the full moon phase?   Whoever that was must have been a wizard of epic proportions to be able to smite us down with such a wave of an electric wand.

I’m not in the slightest bit paranoid for thinking that the lunar phase of the mood is responsible for the breaking down of electrical currents, and the shortening of the lives of our favoured and prized household machinery gadgets.

Starting slowly, the trouble brewed gently.  A fridge that doesn’t keep food cold is no use in a home where you need a week worth of school dinner ingredients on those hallowed cool shelves.  Buying fruit on Friday and having it go rotten by Monday really hits home about how we depend on our American Style Fridge Freezer.

After three weeks of looking for a side by side American style fridge I could afford, I admitted defeat and signed on the dotted line for an early delivery on Thursday this week of a regular American style fridge freezer.

The dishwasher chronicles have gone on for a while, so it was no stranger that it decided to give up the ghost and join the old fridge freezer in the graveyard for electrical appliances.

That would be enough for most people, wouldn’t it?

Not for us apparently.

With a rare blast of sunshine on Thursday, kidlets went out into the garden to play a little footie, as you do when you’re an adolescent boy wanting to show off your newly found testosterone injected strength.

Good neighbours are hard to find and we’ve got two.  Thankfully neighbour across the fence next door understands the problems with middler, even if we rarely ever see or speak to them.  Middler had decided to start bullying them, which ended in two broken windows in their newly (expensively) built extension,as he decided to use their window as target practice for the chuckies around our patio.

Profuse apologies and embarrassed conversations led to taking measurements to get the toughened glass window units replaced.  Thankfully we have contacts who have given us the units at cost, and we can also fit them for zero labour charge.

If we’d had to pay labour, we’d likely have been into the thousand bracket instead of the hundreds to fix.  Middler is now grounded for the rest of his natural born existence.

Friday morning came and went in a flurry of activity and under breath muttering as I blamed the man, completely unfairly, of switching off the boiler before he departed for money making activities.

Getting the kids ready for school with chattering teeth and cold showers really made the start to my day complete.  With massive foresight, I refused to go for a combi boiler when we installed our last one and insisted on the dual, so we still have the gas fire in the lounge and electric for hot water.

The engineer has been and he’s not sure if the fan has gone, or if it is just the transformer so another 3 day wait for a teeny transformer.  If that doesn’t work, there’s no point in getting the fan as it costs about half the price of a new boiler.  What’s worse is that the boiler is only about 7 years old, and I’m gutted at the cost implications, especially as the one I grew up with chugged along for over 20 years.

Tuesday came and I decided to vacuüm the lounge.  This proved to be an exercise that needed much wrestling with tube, hose and uncoupled couplings care of Dyson jigsaw puzzle hoovers.

Determined not to get to appliance 4, and disaster 5 of the week, a pair of sugar tongs managed to shift the contents of the last hoover user, a 12 year old whose top drawer is likely to have been vacuumed, as it is the hiding place he stuffs empty sweetie wrappers he has illicitly procured from the kitchen.

What more can possibly go wrong?