Brownies

Brownie recipe

Makes 16-20
140g butter
200g good-quality dark chocolate
225g sugar
60g good-quality unsweetened cocoa
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
60g plain flour

Preheat oven to 160C/gas mark 3 and line a baking tray (about 15 x 25cm). Melt the butter, chocolate and sugar together on a medium heat, being careful not to burn the chocolate, and mix well. Sieve in the cocoa and remove from the heat. Cool slightly and add the vanilla, then the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each one. Add the flour and beat until well combined and glossy. Pour into the lined tin, spread evenly and bake until a wooden skewer comes out almost clean but not quite, about 20 minutes. Cool and cut into slices.

Holiday day 3

Last night the Pat Pat policy came unstuck, as Bernard cried and cried, totally unable to get to sleep. My book on sleep warns against this policy as it is vEry difficult to be consistent in the middle of the night, and th is was true for me as I was at my wits' end after spending twenty minutes sooThing Bernard, hoping to get more sleep if he weren't screaming,Managing to get him to sleep, creeping out of the room, climbing under my warm duvet, only to have him wake up again five minutes later as i was dropping into a blissful slumber. That was the point at which I had run out of soothing resources, and i phoned Nicholas while he was at his mum's birthday dinner. "I can't go in to him," I said. We just talked for twenty minutes, and it calmed me down. However, Bernard continued to scream, making it a total of 1. Hour and 20 minutes th at time, and that was after a previous hour of screaming. He did not settle at all. I went in to him, finally summoning the energy, and he was asleep within a minute or two. I stayed, slipping into Nicholas' sleeping bag and lying on our wondrous checked carpet. A short while later Bernard was sleeping with me on the floor, and we got maybe 3 or 4 hours like that, till we woke at 7.30
So today Bernard was sleep deprived and behaved terribly badly all day. He managed lunch in two sittings beca use his attention span was affected, but for dinner he could only choke down a few olives, some pieces of cheese and a handful of raisins, throwing his pasta on the floor.
We went to Joma in the morning and met Preston, 3, who very kindly let Bernard play with his Tonka Trucks, but he really wanted them back so we had to leave in a hurry. We got a short nap and then I made a delicious minestrone soup. After that we went to the park, but Bernard mainly sat on my lap when we were there so I didn't see much point in staying long. He practically put himself to bed at 7, he was so exhausted.
Tonight I have no policy. lets just get as much sleep as possible. If I End up on his floor again, it doesn't matter. He must be teething, I guess.

holiday day 2

 i am  sitting on the floor with a bundle of sleeping baby on my lap.  last night was an ugly sleepless night again as i try to retrain b in his sleep routine.   i am trying a new policy i call the Pat Pat Policy.  Meaning,  I go in and cuddle him and settle him down,  pat him a few times and then leave.  i think it may be disastrously misguided.  Last night he woke at midnight, 2, 3, 4 and 4.40.  At midnight it took him 46 minutes to get back to sleep.  At 2, 3 and 4 he only took 1 minute or so - but he could not settle untill I went in for the cuddle.  After his cuddle at 4.40 he cried solidly for an hour till 5.50.  That is understandable for him as he cannot eat enough to last himself through the night, so always screams till rescued early in the morning. 
I am not sure what to do.  The wake times are more or less regular to the minute every night - he has what is known as a night waking habit.  So much so that I often wake before him.   That's very familiar from the days before I started weaning him at night.  What has changed is that he is finding it much more difficult to get back to sleep, and he is crying for hugely long periods without self-settling - in fact the crying seems to make him so hysterical that he cannot calm down without help.  On the other hand, if I try to stay with him until he sleeps, he often misbehaves and refuses even to lie down in my arms, let alone in the cot.  He used to have this problem but soothing him to sleep if he woke in the night did not cause problems, provided he could cry himself to sleep when going down for the night:  it was as if he had to learn how to self soothe but could apply the skill during the night.  Now this has come unstuck. 
Should I leave him and not go in for a cuddle - let him cry it out?  Or camp on  his bedroom floor and soothe him every time he wakes until morning?  Or keep on with the Pat Pat Policy?

Holiday day one

Tet in Hanoi this year. I went to the market as usual this morning but it is not a usual Saturday. Our nearest market backs onto the flower market, which is normally finishing business by 9 am but this morning it was ten times the normal size and spilling over into the roads, and humming with people. Lorries were parked up along the road to the market and there were piles of ice on the street. Long bundles of vegetation were being unloaded from carts. The fruit stalls were abnormal, too: selling Tet fruit for offerings and gifts. Pink pineapples. Pale papayas wh ich looked as if they had been grown in darkness, they were so delicate. Red apples polished to a shine. Inside the market, The stalls bore produce which had been carefully prepared for the day. Ginger had been scraped and scrubbed clean, onions had almost no skins and were half the normal size (the stallholders told me the farmers could not wait for them to grow and had knocked off early for Tet), everything clean, beautiful and twice the price. The old lady who sold me tomatoes for 25,000 a kilo said 'Vua ret, vua Tet.' Meaning, it's cold so nothing is growing, plus it's Tet, the season of price hikes, so expect me to double rip you off. The other veg lady didn't charge nearly so much.
Bernard has a cough and neither of us slept well last night. he also refused his nap today. So it is a good sleepless start to what was meant to be a week of concentrating on the sleep routine. However, I am optimistic. Also we have a number of friends here this year.
The sun came out this afternoon, and I honestly had forgotten what it felt like! We went to the baby parade and saw a lot of UNIS kids with their parents and grandparents, and very few Vietnamese kids. It is a very busy time of year in Vietnamese hiuseholds right now.

Bed rest

This week has certainly been more interesting than last week. Up until yesterday, I was popping in and out of SOS clinic feeling pretty sorry for myself. The frequent sessions of lying on a clinic bed with an IV in my arm were, however, not without benefit as I was able to relax and enjoy playing with my new iPad in a way I hadn't had time to so far. But things were quite bad at home as moving was painful and I didn't feel like doing any cooking. Then yesterday they lanced the abscess and I immediately felt relief. It wasn't just the painkillers : I called Mum in quite a chattery state of shock. The relief turned into a genuine euphoria which is still with me the following day. I must have been in some level of pain, without really noticing it, for some time.
Bernard has been dubbed Hoa. Sy Bo Nat because he is such a mad artist at the moment. He is crazy about drawing and will happily draw for most of the day. He enumerates each colour as he draws and enjoys putting on and taking off the pen lids as much as the scribbling itself. This weekend I will certainly go out and buy him some more art supplies. He also like my iPad, especially the Baby Hippo program, which is a real baby hippo which imitates what you say. It can be tickled, fed carrots etc.

How do I make this sound in any way interesting? The week has not gone well with a combination of jet lag, chest colds, teething (teeth 11 and 12 came through today I think), weaning and its consequent mastitis, which by the way Hurts A Lot, change of routine and the surprisingly unpleasant cold weather in Hanoi. Add to that the fact that the power company has decided to brown out our area which means power cuts lasting up to three hours every night just as I am about to try and put b to bed. It is not really surprising, given the above, that this week has been below average. In fact it has seemed at least twice as long as it ought to. I am breathing a sigh of relief that the Tet holiday is in 2 weeks and we are not going anywhere at all. It will be a lovely return to routines after a very exciting time with very little sleep. Last night I slept through Bernard's screaming and feel much better for it. Most likely he will sleep even better tonight as a result of not being pandered to. It seems to work like that with him. good night; sleep well!

glamorgan sausages

It is totally freezing at home.   I've decided to sleep in Bernard's room so we can run two heaters simultaneously and keep warm at night.
I made Glamorgan sausages with baked potatoes, peas and beans for our 'tea'.   After preparing the dinner I took Bernard to the park for football.  He loved it and didn't want to go home even when it got dark.  He said, "More!"  Then we returned home to eat our feast.  Bernard didn't like the sausages but I thought they were awesome.
150g breadcrumbs, 75g cheddar cheese (grated), 1tbsp chopped fresh parsley, white portion of one small leek finely chopped, salt, pepper and 2 eggs plus one yolk, beaten and added to the mixture.  Brush with egg white and coat with further breadcrumbs, then fry.   Makes 12 sausages.