This weekend:

- I wrote letters in the sun
- We drank Supreme coffee (!)
- We took many (many) walks
- I cooked baby-friendly, delicious vegan pancakes (twice!)
- We hosted a family lunch in our courtyard
- We attempted to take group photos of cousins (see above)
- We did an insane workout
- I made oat milk and applesauce
- We read lots of books and played many games of peekaboo with Mika
- We didn’t go to the lagoon (for like the first weekend ever!)
- We went on a nice date to the fancy movie place

And last night we attempted to get rid of the 2am feed. I’m assuming it’s a chicken and an egg thing – If she eats all night, she doesn’t eat as much during the day and so if I don’t feed her all night she’ll hopefully be hungrier during the day. This resulted in 75 minutes of trips into her room, lying her back down, staying with her til she was calm, leaving the room, and repeat. After 75 minutes (3:15am) I decided to give her some boob. She fell asleep and stayed in her bed until 6:40am. I fed her again and she fell asleep in our bed til 8:30am.

She woke up really hungry and so I’ve been trying to give her as much food as possible during the day, because tonight we’re trying it again. If we can get her to sleep from 10pm through til 5am then I’ll be a very happy person. And then we can look at addressing the 10pm feed and then maybe try stretching out the mornings to 6am. One can only hope.

Anyway, if you are a) interested in eating less dairy/egg or b) have a baby/child who is intolerant to dairy/egg then here is a very well tested and delicious recipe for weekend pancakes.

There’s a few variations you can do here – if I was cooking for just Ivan and I, I would probably use nut milk and maybe use ground walnuts instead of the wholewheat flour to make them gluten free. But since I was cooking for baby, I used the following.

Weekend Pancakes (Dairy, egg, sugar and potentially gluten free. OK so they’re Vegan – I said it.)
Adapted from My New Roots

• 2/3 cup rolled oats
• 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• pinch of salt

• ripe banana
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp olive oil (or oil of your choice)
• 2/3 cup oat milk (or nut milk, or soy milk)

1. Put rolled oats in a processor or blender and pulse until they turn into a shaggy oat flour
2. Tip into a bowl and add wholewheat flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon
3. Put banana, vanilla extract, olive oil and milk of your choice in to blender/food processor. Blend.
4. Mix the wet ingredients with the dry and stir until just combined.
5. Cook as you would normal pancakes, on a hot pan with a little oil.

These pancakes are delicious and you don’t even need to cook them all the way through because the batter tastes amazing too. We served ours with some finely chopped walnuts, homemade applesauce and slices of banana. Mika just ate hers plain and she loved them!

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What was meant to be ‘photos from our weekend’ turned out to be really just ‘photos of Mika from the weekend.’ Ah well.

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3 days without a computer. 3 days with nowhere to be. 3 days taking our time, eating 2 meals a day and savouring every bite. 3 days walking and hiking and swimming and strolling and shopping and cooking and relaxing. I use the term relaxing quite loosely because most people probably wouldn’t consider a sleepless baby very relaxing – BUT when you have nowhere to be, sleepless nights aren’t entirely bad. And she always smiles for us in the morning and our hearts melt and our eyes twinkle and we gush over how gorgeous she is and we continue with our day in a marvelous manner.

We were embarrassingly bad at taking pictures. One camera ran out of battery, the other didn’t have a compatible memory card and the iphone was often left behind. So here’s a few of what we did take. But perhaps the wonderfulness of the whole trip is evident in the lack of images.

If you’re ever in Mt Maunganui, I suggest Slowfish Cafe for a very satisfying brunch and coffee. They were very accommodating to a few dish tweaks, had a very sweet chef who said hello & goodbye to me and by far had the nicest grilled tomatoes we tried on our trip.

On Thursday we are off to Wellington! So much to do, so little time. If you or anyone you know is after a travel cot or a baby carrier, we are selling one of each on Trade Me. The cot is a Phil & Teds red traveller cot and the carrier is a Baby Bjorn Active Carrier.

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Despite having a little girl who won’t sleep, leaving us as two zombie-like-barely-functioning-when-will-this-madness-end adults, we totally enjoyed the sun this weekend. It was seriously sunny. And the lack of sleep/2 glasses of wine on Saturday night left me feeling completely hungover and awful as we lay like two basking (hungover) cats in the sun on Bethell’s Beach on Sunday.

We enjoyed a celebration dinner with friends & family on Saturday night for Ivan’s birthday (not til Tuesday). We hung out with 1-year-old Quinn in the park on Saturday morning (more birthday celebrations) and we spent the afternoon as I mentioned, almost-dead on the gorgeous Bethell’s beach.

I don’t want to complain, but then I also don’t want to trick you into thinking things are all happy dances around here right now when if I’m completely honest – they’re not. If there were to be any dances around here right now, they would be danced to the tune of ‘please go the fuck to sleep child‘ and they would probably involve less movement than the dances you’re used to.

Her tummy bug is just slowly coming to an end. We hope like crazy that her inability to sleep right now is somehow linked to this bug and once it has passed then sleeping will resume. We are starting to dread night time. This can’t be healthy.

Anyway – my friend Pete has curated a seriously delightful mixed tape today. It is the perfect weather for listening to it right now as I dream of our future train travel, our flights over oceans, our little cottage that we have booked by the sea, and our hopes for a peaceful night’s sleep.

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I’m moving to a place called Scotland, London has pushed me away for a few months, so I’m going to explore a new place on my own for a wee while. I’m actually packing my bag right now, my train out of the capital leaves in a couple of hours, so I thought I’d share the playlist I made myself this morning. It’s full of songs that make me smile, and some that follow the theme of leaving somewhere. There is a lot more vocal stuff in here compared to last time, that’s because I like singing along when I’m occupied by something instead of just sitting down and listening ‘properly’. whatever.

The highlight of this mix is Maria Callas,WHAT A VOICE. Even though in French, there’s a line in the aria that translates “Far from a morose winter, let me slumber and breath in the rose before it dies”. My winter will be cold, but there’s room to chase Spring within the dark months and keep all faith in all things. I like that, yes I do. Her character wants to live in a dream that is eternal Spring, and I do too, yes I do.

any day now – elbow
our prayer/gee – brian wilson
heroes and villains – brian wilson
hit the road jack – ray charles
diferente – gotan project
la vie en rose – louis armstrong
je veux vivre dans ce reve – maria callas
creeque alley – the mamas and papas
look for the silver lining – chet baker
welcome – balam acab

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There’s not much sleep going on in these parts. The little one has decided that day sleeps are a thing of the past as is night-time sleeping. If you read that correctly you will be wondering when our baby sleeps?! Dear reader, she doesn’t. Ever. She has some peculiar condition that allows her to stay awake 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No, I kid. But that is how it feels.

We still managed to do some fun stuff this weekend despite severe sleep deprivation. I had a photo shoot on Sunday which I’ll post soon. On Saturday we had some family walk fun (photos below) and in the evenings there was rugby watching in bars and then at friend’s homes with delicious meals. Oh I also had a if-we-owned-a-home-we’d-have-to-remortgage-it-but-instead-we’ll-just-go-hungry-for-months expensive hair cut and colour. Totally worth it and much deserved considering that breastfeeding robs me of luscious locks for some reason that is extremely under-researched. I’d donate money to a charity that tried to figure that one out. I’d almost get pregnant again just to have great hair. Almost.

And just quickly cause it’s raining, here’s a cute video about stopping distractions, some flour, oil and butter free muffins I plan to make this week, a useful guide to creativity, my finds from last week, beautiful mother/child portraits for the Department Store and a very addictive website.

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