Boys!

Oh dear, Hugo is sooooooo naughty. He's driving us all to distraction. Can you believe he - at age 5 - actually pokes his tongue out at the teacher!!!!! In 40 years of being an infants teacher I never saw the like.

Emma wouldn't dream of misbehaving for a teacher, though she can be very trying at home.

Just when I was looking for a pic...

Got this from your Facebook page, Lina. I think it is a wonderful idea and the relationship with his cat will probably last longer than any he might have with a human partner!

Am feeling fine this morning, after a sleep of 10hrs 23 mins.

Must do some ancestry today, as it's a while since I have, and yesterday another cousin got in touch, telling me he's had his father's DNA done and that's how he found the connection. I find it absolutely mind-blowing.

I also plan to do some Thermomix cooking - bread, butter, and an apple cake. Will probably have visitors tomorrow, so will do a shepherd's pie, this time with sweet potatoes, which are apparently healthier than ordinary ones.

Had an email from the Thermomix company, assuring us that, as long as we follow directions, ours won't blow boiling liquid all over us. I hope they're right, as I'm really nervous now, after a lot of bad publicity.

Nanny's morning schoolroom

It's more than a fortnight since my last post. I just can't keep up with myself and sleep problems are driving me mad. Sometimes I go night after night with about 3 hours' sleep, then drop from exhaustion. The fitbit measures the exact length of time I sleep. This week: Sun - 14hr 31min; Mon - 4hr 3mins; Tues - 13h 15mins; last night - 6hr 58min.

These wild fluctuations are far from normal, so I went to the doctor about it on Tuesday. It was a middle-aged Indian woman, whom I saw for the first time. She took my problem seriously, where others have not. Not that I've bothered to mention it often. The first thing she did was change one lot of medication, the second, send me for a blood test. I've been seriously depressed, too, so she's looking into counselling for me.

When she asked me what I do, she laughed and said no wonder I was tired, as that's far too much. But that still doesn't explain the insomnia leading to a mammoth sleep. She actually gave me a hug as I was leaving!

The pic today is my kitchen first thing in the morning. Both Emma and Hugo are making wonderful progress with my reading books, 'Sounds of Reading'. Emma was doing what Hugo (now 5yrs 8mths) is doing now when she was four. Given that at the beginning of kinder he was one year behind in language development, he's catching up very quickly, and loves working with Nanny.

The Thermomix is getting a good workout! The other Sunday I had guests for lunch and made the dip, the bread, the butter, the soup and the main chicken course + rice in it. The creme caramel was made the ordinary way.

Unfortunately there are BIG problems with Thermomixes exploding and burning the cooks. I'm very cross that I wasn't made aware of this before I bought mine. Of course, if I had been told, I never would have bought it.

In heaven!

After a long-lasting addiction I've managed to tear myself away from BBC radio 4 and right now I'm listening to an Italian station featuring 60s hits! Earlier, while doing that, I made my first loaf of five-seed bread in the Thermomix AND some butter!!!

The warm bread is so delicious I ate about one third of it as soon as it was cool enough to cut. It was really very easy to make, using the Thermomix. And, to be honest, I really had no idea that butter is simply cream beaten so hard the liquid (butter milk) is forced out. How embarrassing to be so ignorant. I vaguely remember my grandmother making butter when I was little, but had no understanding of what was happening.

Some time back I reserved Dodie Smith's 'A Tale of Two Families', a novel which was discussed on Radio 4, and the library emailed this morning to tell me it's arrived - they had actually bought it specially for me! 

Yesterday I had a tooth pulled and am not supposed to exercise, so won't go to aquazumba this evening, will read the book instead. It's quite exciting having a new routine.

Emma, Hugo and Manami just came down and tried the bread and butter, giving both the thumbs up! From now on I'll make my own bread every day. Winifred, it won't take me long to get back the $2,089 the Thermomix cost. According to my maths, I only have to bake two loaves of bread per week for the next 12 years.

An email just popped in, from a new-found cousin in Hawaii, telling me she might come and visit me in a year or two. Wow! One of her daughters lives in New Zealand, so she can stop off here on the way to visit her. Our grandparents were siblings. My father died in 1969 yet her father is still living. Our great-grandmother was pregnant from 1870 to 1893 - 23 years!! Oh for the good old days - not!

Goodness, gracious me! It's getting even more exciting! Just phoned my sister to tell her about the cousin and she was on the point of phoning me to tell me her daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, Mia and Tyler, are coming to Sydney soon!!! They will be en route from New York where they live, via the kids' great-grandmother in Japan.