Lately there have been a lot of bad nights. 

She’s been waking up almost every 2 hours and screaming at the top of her lungs for me to come and sit with her. Which is exhausting. 

Now, she definitely has slept through the night in the past, at least until 5am or so, so I know that she can do it. And there are about a million reasons why she might be waking so often. 

It could be the changes and transitions from lockdown to nursery to potty training. It could be that because she is learning bladder control she is waking herself up when she wees in her sleep (she’s too little for night training so still in a nappy at night). It could be night terrors or nightmares waking her up. It could be just that her natural sleep cycle from deep sleep to light sleep wakes her every two hours and she isn’t self-soothing. It could be because she’s been growing lately and maybe has growing pains or just finds it’s hard work making more bones and muscles and stuff. It could be because she’s too hot, too cold, hungry, thirsty, frankly, god only knows. Continue reading →

Another new recipe, this one courtesy of the Co-op free recipe magazine.

It was nice, though next time I would cook the spinach a little longer as it was a tad bitter, and I would be less liberal with the lemon juice, and it rather swamped the other flavours. Also I misread it and only used one punnet of mushrooms instead of two (which seems excessive!), but may have affected the flavour overall.

Ingredients:

• 1 packet of fresh gnocchi (400g)
• 400g Chestnut mushrooms, sliced
• 1 tbsp Olive Oil
• 1 bag of baby spinach (approx 125g–200g)
• 2 garlic cloves
• 40g Walnuts, chopped
• Lemon juice and zest
• 60g Stilton
• 50g half fat creme fraiche

Steps:

1. Heat the olive oil and cook the mushrooms and garlic for 3-4 mins (the first time I cooked this I just used 1 packet of mushrooms and hadn’t realised the recipe required 2 packets of mushrooms!)
2. Add in the spinach, cover and turn down the heat for a bit (I didn’t cook the spinach long enough so make sure it’s nice and wilted)
3. Cook the gnocchi as per packet instructions
4. Stir gnocchi into the spinach and mushroom mixture with the lemon juice, (not too much lemon juice – just a little then flavour to taste later) blue cheese, creme fraiche – add in a little water if it looks too dry.
5. Sprinkle with parsley and walnuts and salt and pepper.

It’s yummy…..