A song to love...

I discovered David Bowie's music when i met my husband. I mean i knew who he was but never listened enough to actually like the music he was singing. Because of my hubby i fell in love of some of  Bowie's songs.
Song "Kooks" is one of them. I hold it dear in my heart. I used to listen to this song a lot when i was pregnant with my daughter. It uses to relax me...Then after she was born i used to put it on because she was relaxing or stop crying.
Do you know the song? If you don't listen to it it's not like his other songs:

Do you have such a song? If you do why not share and i will listen them for you.

Constipation problems?!?

We all know what constipation is don't we? I never thought that it will affect my daughter from such a young age though.
Until about a couple of months ago we thought that we sorted out potty training. She was using the problem for both number 1 and number 2 without problems. Every now and then she would have an accident or two or maybe even have problems when she was trying to poo poo. But every time that happen we just made sure we feed her better or no starchy foods so that we will make the whole thing a bit easier,
She is still wearing nappies during the night. I'm not sure if it's late or not for a 3 years old but we were just not prepared for the night waking.
But then she started being dryer during the night so we decided to put her in a bed and give a try undies during the night too...
Unfortunately this is when she started to stop herself to poop too.
At first we thought she we constipated. But then I decided to speak to her and ask her if she makes poo poo at nursery. She said that kids at nursery only make wee wee and poo poo hurts and it's disgusting....
I told one of her teachers and she had no idea where the idea came why my daughter thinks like tis. Her teacher even start telling her that she makes poo poo at nursery too. I know! Funny!

My little boogie doesn't have any problems on making wee wee on the toilet and she doesn't have any accidents either so I really don't know how to solve this.
Now she started dirtying her underwear during the day as well....We still ask her to go on the toilet but she never stays long enough. She just makes wee wee. We always ask if she needs to poo poo and she says no. :( As soon as she gets up and start playing though...she will definitely try poop. Sometimes is just a little bit sometimes it's more... We always keep an eye on her and if we notice that she is pooping we ask her to go to the toilet. We even offer to sit with her in the bathroom. She either starts screaming or crying or both. We try as much as we can not to make a big deal out of it but it's hard and frustrating...
These days we always end up cleaning or washing her bum and replacing her underwear. Sometimes I feel like its better to just go back to nappies but I really don't like that solution.
We just don't know what to do anymore...we are just lost:(
If you have any advice it will be greatly appreciated. I looked for information online but I would prefer your thoughts rather the ones from google.
I really hope that this problem will get solved or will find a way to convince our daughter to use the toilet for poo poo too before our baby number two will be born.

Get your blanket out for Teddy Bear picnics!!!

This week the Royal parks are celebrating the updated playgrounds in the Richmond Park and Bushy Park by having three Teddy Bears’ picnics!
Such a wonderful way to celebrate the end of summer too!

So take your children and their favourite teddy or cuddly toy and go for a picnic and an afternoon of free craft activities, games and a ‘best dressed ted’ competition to Richmond Park or Bushy Park!

Children will be able to get creative and stretch their imaginations with a variety of craft activities at Richmond and Bushy Park picnics on the 29th, 30th and 31st August. There will also be a guest appearance from The Royal Parks’ very own teddy.
Very exciting isn't it?
If you love in London or the surrounding areas you already know what a fantastic place Richmond Park is!

Here's the list with the events:

Date: Wednesday 29th August
Time: 11:30am – 3.30pm – Best dressed Ted at 1.30pm
Location: Richmond Park, Petersham Gate Playground

Date: Thursday 30th August
Time: 11:30am – 3.30pm – Best dressed Ted at 1.30pm
Location: Richmond Park, Kingston Gate Playground

Date: Friday 31st August
Time: 11:30am – 3.30pm – Best dressed Ted at 1.30pm
Location: Bushy Park Playground

If you are going to the events please let me know how it all went and maybe you can even write about it if you are a blogger.

Below you can read a few things about how and why the upgrade of the park was done:

Thanks to funding from the London Marathon Charitable Trust large timber climbing frames, hammocks, a water play feature, swings and see-saws – to name but a few of the new additions – have been added across the three playgrounds. Children inspired by the London Marathon and London 2012 will be able to use the playgrounds to develop their social and play skills whilst maintaining a healthy balanced lifestyle.

Pergolas have been installed at Petersham Gate playground in Richmond Park and the Bushy Park playground to increase the amount of shade available for parents and the children, with additional seating created at all three.

Linda Lennon CBE, Chief Executive of The Royal Parks said:

“Now the playground works have been completed it is great to see children back playing and letting their imagination run wild – pretending to dig for buried treasure in the sand pit, climbing over the Scottish boulders rounded by ancient glacial rivers, or scaling the climbing frame. The Teddy Bears’ picnics will be a wonderful way to round off a very satisfying project and we look forward to seeing families there enjoying the day.

“We want our playgrounds to be exciting and fun while also reflecting their unique setting within the historic landscape. The Royal Parks’ landscape architect and park management teams have achieved this and added a wide array of equipment and features for younger children and more adventurous older children, to enjoy.”

So bring your teddy and a picnic and head to the playgrounds to celebrate the improvement works with us.

John Bryant, Chairman of the London Marathon Charitable Trust, said:

“The Trust is delighted to join in partnership with The Royal Parks to ensure these valuable play facilities remain available to all, providing varied and challenging experiences for younger members of the community. We know that one of the first opportunities for exercise open to many children is in a local playground and we are pleased to be making a lasting contribution to the fitness of these youngsters.

“In the year of the Olympic and Paralympic Games it is appropriate that the Trust should fund a facility which will enhance the health legacy of the Games.”

Redevelopment of the three playgrounds in Richmond and Bushy Parks began in 2010 with an award of £225,000 funding from the London Marathon Trust. The main aim of the project is to create a challenging and stimulating environment for play while also increasing capacity and accessibility.

Consultation with playground visitors identified a need to improve provision for children aged under 5 and a need for more challenging equipment for children aged 8-12. A selection of equipment including a nest swing, see-saws, play sculptures and a turtle drum have all been installed to accommodate the younger age group. In addition climbing frames and balance beams have been installed as a physical challenge for the 8-12 year olds while the introduction of a water play feature and play boulders allows opportunity for social play.

Fruit cake with peaches

When my mum was here last she wrote me a couple of my favourite recipes in a notebook. Recipes for cakes that I like her cooking/baking.
Finally last weekend when some of the peaches we bought from the market were starting to turn I decided to bake her fruit cake.

Ingredients:

- 5 eggs
- 1 1/2 cup of sugar
- 10 tbsp of oil
- 1 cup of milk
- 2 1/2 cups of plain flour
- 5 tsp. of bicarbonate of soda mixed with the juice of a lemon
- fruits - I used peaches and I cut them in small slices; you can use cherries,sour cherries,plums or apricots too though; it's really up to you.

Preparation:

Beat the white with sugar until the composition becomes hard. After add the yolks,oil,milk,flour and the mixture of bicarbonate of soda and lemon. Make sure you mix very easy.
I used a round baking tin but you can use any type as long as its big enough for the composition. Oil the baking tin and sprinkle some flour as well.
Pour the composition in the baking tin and after add the fruits that you previously cut in small pieces.
Put in the oven at about 180 C for about 45 min. My oven gets hot quite fast. Make sure is done by using a wooden skewer. When the skewer comes out clean it means it's cooked. You can also use a tooth pick too.
Enjoy!

First baby vending machine from Ella's Kitchen

I think Ella's Kitchen had a great idea with this new vending machine! It is first of it's kind for kids and I would love to see one of them in the train stations instead of the vending machines full with unhealthy crisps and chocolate!

From the picture above you can see that the vending machine is made for little people and fingers. My daughter loves to put her coins to get water from a normal machine and I'm sure she will be really happy to use this one too.
Unfortunately I was unable to take my daughter to Lollibop last weekend do we couldn't test the vending machine live. We are really gutted but well hopefully there will be more of them shortly.
If you are reading this and you are one of the blog usual readers you know that we love Ella's Kitchen in our house. The Ella's Kitchen products been there for us since I start my daughter weaning. Their products are very easy to use for little hand s and practical for parents to carry in the changing bag without spillages. To tell you the truth I like some of the purees too and I ate them before. LOL.

Here's what Ella's Kitchen has to say in their press release:

The world’s first vending machine for babies especially designed to dispense healthy snacks for tiny tots has been revealed today by Ella’s Kitchen. The vending machine has taken specialists over four months to develop and construct with bespoke features to make it easy for toddlers to operate. Standing at only 115cm tall, it is perfectly sized for the average one year old to dispense their favourite snacks.

Thought to be the world’s tiniest, the vending machine has been created by baby and toddler food experts Ella’s Kitchen following new research revealing that up to 82 per cent of British parents struggle to find healthy foods for their little ones whilst on the move.

58 per cent of parents have been forced to feed their children un-healthy foods such as sweets or crisps when they’re out of the house due to the lack of healthier options available. Other factors driving parents to feed their little ones un-healthy foods include “they prefer junk food,” “they deserve a treat every once in a while” and “it’s less hassle.”

The mini vending machine will be filled with Ella’s Kitchen’s healthy, handy and tasty snacks to show parents that foods for kids on the go don’t need to be restricted to sugary or salty foods. It will vend 12 varieties of snacks from Smoothie Fruits to Nibbly Fingers and new Puffits.

With over a quarter of parents (27 per cent) feeding their children at least twice a day whilst out of home, the vending machine aims to raise awareness of the difficulties parents have finding healthy snacks on the go. Toddlers have tiny tummies that need to be regularly topped up with small snacks to maintain their energy levels as they grow and explore the world around them. Ella’s Kitchen snacks are aimed at little ones from seven months and contain 100% organic ingredients with absolutely no concentrates or refined sugars.

The top hotspots with a lack of toddler-friendly snacks on offer were revealed as:
Beaches (43 per cent)
Parks or playgrounds (38 per cent)
Shopping centres (36 per cent)
Theme parks (33 per cent)
Zoos or farms (29 per cent)

Paul Lindley, Ella’s Dad and founder of Ella’s Kitchen, comments: “By creating the first tiny vending machine, we hope to stimulate little ones’ senses and encourage them to enjoy eating healthy foods from a young age. Our snack products are designed to be healthy, handy and fun for both parents and their children allowing them to spend more time exploring the big outdoors without worrying about finding healthy foods.

I really hope that Ella's Kitchen will get these vending machines out on the market soon before my baby will be born in December.

Silent Sunday 26/8

Pregnancy diary 26 weeks and giveaway

I'm not sure that this diary, my pregnancy diary is like all the other pregnancy diaries around the blogosphere. I seem to complain a lot and write about bad things...:(
I am going try and concentrate on the goods things as much as I can tough.
This is how my baby - for which we don't know the gender just yet - is suppose to look like this week. Today I'm 26 weeks pregnant exactly:

Apparently the baby is now almost 35.6 cm long from crown to heel, and weighs about 760 grams. Isn't this amazing? Looking at my daughter I remember that when she was born she was about 53 cm long so the baby is now almost there. Hopefully by the time the baby will be born it will not get to my daughters weight 4.430 kg as I'm really hoping that this time I will be able to give birth naturally.

I can really feel the fact the baby is bigger right now though...as it put strain on my back and my pelvic area. Yesterday even, Friday I had to stay home as I could barely walk or sit up. I have a long time to go though so I'm quite scared that my pain will get even worse, I guess will have to wait and see and I need to make sure I rest as much as possible.
This following week I have quite a few appointments. Yesterday I finally received via post the letter that confirm my appointment with the perinatal services team. It's great and I'm looking forward to it but they didn't give me a lot of notice....I received the letter yesterday and my appointment is Tuesday next week bang in the middle of the day at 12.30. I will have to go as I know that I need to but my work will not be very happy about it I think.
Then on Friday I have my appointment for glucose. Do you know that it takes 2 hours? I never had it done so I really don't know how I'm suppose to prepare for it.
After on the 3rd of September my scan to identify if i have a fibroid or something in my kidneys....quite scared for that one....
Other news about the pregnancy....
Sleep is a must. Most days I fall asleep by 9.30-10.00. Oh...that happens when the baby doesn't move to much though....and believe me baby moves a lot....and the kicks in the bladder make me go toilet countless times.
My sleep is disturbed by not being able to sleep as I wish too...I feel comfortable sleeping on my belly and now I HAVE to sleep on my side...left side to be more precise.
My nose is oh so very stuffy and my varicose veins make my knees and legs hurt badly. I'm happy my hubby loves me enough to give me a foot massage every night though.
My hair needs to be washed more often as it gets greasy really fast...damn...need to go for a cut...wonder when I will manage to do that...
I'm running out of things to wear...I seem to live in my black skirt with elastic and tops from Mamas and Papas.
I already started to find it hard to put my shoes on.....

Anyway...that's all for now about my pregnancy...

To reward to readers of my blog and their kids I decided to run a giveaway for Usborne books. I used to be a distributor for Usborne...but about that and why I am not one anymore I will maybe tell you another time.
The books are new and they are worth about 20£.

For a chance to win these fantastic books enter the Rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway


                                        Good luck and wish you a wonderful week!

Saturday is caption day - 25/8

Saturday...a very rainy one this weekend! Pretty annoying actually!
But because is Saturday it means it's caption day!
Today I have the below picture for you:

So what do you say? Do you have a caption for my picture?
For more pictures why not go over Mammasaurus blog My first photo blog.

A song for love...

Every time I listen to this song it makes me think how lucky I am to be married with a man that I love lots and that loves me back.
The song is by Boyzone and although it might sound a bit sad to you it makes my heart melt:

Do you have a song or which you feel the same?
Or maybe is the same one?!?

Funny talk

As we don't know what we are expecting we decided to find names for both:boy and girl. We already have some but as it happens my cousin called him boy the name we like.
My daughter was a witness at this discussion tonight:
Mummy: Boogie what do you think? How should we call you brother?
Boogie: I want a sister.(And she turneu smilling)

That's all! We just found what she said really funny. 

This week we are linking up again to Actually Mummy Wot So Funee.

Cooking liver

Since I moved to England I haven't eaten a great deal of liver.
At the moment I can't really eat because I am pregnant. Even though in Romania women eat liver and pâté during pregnancy. I am craving some at the moment only....until now only the thought of it use to make me cringe, I guess it has to do more with my sense of smell and so on.
But before I was pregnant I only bought liver occasionally as hubby doesn't like.
Today looking through the pictures I took with food over the time I discovered the ones below and I remembered that I never actually posted the recipe.

To cook them you will need:
- liver of course - I think I used pork one this time;in Romania though we usually cook chicken liver as it doesn't have a very strong taste;
- sunflower or vegetable oil for frying;
- a bulb of garlic if you cook like 500g of liver - for the English taste this might be a bit too much so you can just use a couple cloves;
- salt and pepper;

Wash the liver very well and then dry them with a bit kitchen paper.
Put the liver in a frying pan or pan that has a lid and pour over oil so that it get up to the half of the liver.
Add some garlic cloves between the liver. Cover with a lid and put on a medium heat to fry for 5-7 minutes.

Take them off the heat and leave them for 30 seconds. After take the lid off and turn the liver on the other side,

Cover and put them back on the hob for another 7-10 min. Make sure they are all cooked before taking them off the hob. When done take them and put in a plate and add some salt and pepper as per your taste,
In Romania they are usually served with mash potatoes and pickled peppers or cucumbers. Believe me they are yummy.
I ate with cherry tomatoes though and they were nice too.

Meatballs in tomato sauce with spaghetti

If you remember when I participated at the Cooking with Morrisons event a couple of months ago I learnt  about the Morrisons new range MSavers and how to cook Meatballs in tomato sauce with spaghetti from Morrisons chef Richard. Last week I decided to give it another try even though the ingredients are a little bit different although all from MSavers range.

Ingredients:
MSavers 483g of beef and pork mince-1.50£
350g onions
100g breadcrumbs
5g dried mixed herbs
MSavers 1 tin tomatoes - 31p
MSavers 300g spaghetti 24p/pack(but use less)

We actually spent as little as 3£ for a dinner of four and we had some left for my daughter to take to nursery the next day.

You can find the recipe direction on Morrisons website if you wish to cook it too.
You can find lots of other recipes and more details about the M Savers range.
If you want to save money this summer M Savers is the answer!
Here are a few more pictures:

I hate my legs!

Yes I do! And there are many reasons I hate my legs for! Do you want to know?
If you don't want to know I guess I will just have to take it out of my system and tell you anyway! First of all they are big! From my toes and up to my tights! They even make my bum look bigger than it is even though my is not that small either!
I'm not going to show you any pictures but I will tell you why they are so wrong!
For some some reason every summer passing they are bothering more and more.
This summer probably even more than others because I'm pregnant too and they feel a lot more heavier than usual. During the winter my legs are a lot easier to cover!

Anyway I hate my legs because:

- I have big toes! I mean my big toes are really big!
- my ankles are so thick that îs dificultate to find sandals and boots to fit in normal shops;
- and what makes even more difficult to buy and wear boots;
- I have very bad varicose veins which are now even worse because I'm pregnant;
- thick knees that have signs from falling since I was a kid; they hurt badly when the weather is changing because I have rheumatism in them!
- at the back of my knees my varicose veins are even worse and I have a couple of stretch marks too!
- as I'm going up to my tights there are so many words I can describe how bad they are: flabby, full of cellulite and stretch marks, brown marks between them as they touch each other when I'm walking. Without anti-chaffing Lanacane I will die during the summer!

I think that's enough reasons don't you think?
Do you hate your legs or any other part of your body?

Silent Sunday 19/8

6 years in pictures

Today is our anniversary! 6 years of marriage in pictures!

Saturday is caption day 18/8

The picture below was taken by my hubby and not me last sunday while in the park.

What do you think can you give us a caption?

Morrisons Savers Summer

As you know i am pregnant and not up to a lot of things this summer. Last summer we went camping quite a lot and my daughter loved it. However this summer we had to restrict our outings and find ways to save money in any way possible. In about 3 months our new baby will arrive hopefully well and healthy. It's actually easier then i thought to have fun in London without spending lots of money. 

With the help of Morrisons and Sarah Willingham i learned and remembered how to cook and have fun without spending lots of money.

If you have want to learn why not check out Morrisons Savers Summer page for lots of recipes for picnics and tips for days in and days out from the money saving expert Sarah Willingham.

Sarah is a lovely lady and i met her not long ago at the Morrisons cooking event.

The direct link to her tips is this. 

Going to the park with boxes of food prepared at home it is a lot cheaper then eating out at the cafe. Get a blanket and a ball and a couple of books and your child will enjoy being in the middle of nature and playing with you. It's summer so why not just avoid the play centres for which you need to pay money and the food and drink is so expensive? Go back to nature! It's nicer , healthier and cheaper. 

Choose from the picnic recipes that Morrisons is sharing with you on their website. Believe me everything cooked by you it is a lot healthier and cleaner than anything you can buy your children from any restaurant or shop. I found that my daughter is a lot hungrier when we have a picnic. I think that maybe is the air?

We also shopped at Morrisons last weekend and for only £45 we managed to make our weekly shopping and not only. We bought meat, baked beans, eggs, chopped tomatoes, pastas and even non alcoholic sparkling wine. What it help keeping the cost down was buys a lot of the M Savers range and we were reminded once again that cheap can be tasty too.

I even tried some of the recipes that you can also find on Morrisons website. With my directions my hubby cooked burgers and chicken so watch this space for recipes and pictures.

My hubby took a couple of pictures and i am sharing them with you: