This weekend we hired a car and trundled off to the Ligurian Coast. In case your Italian geography is a little shaky, it’s here:

It’s the Italian Riviera, where all the fancy-shmancy celebrities go for their Sanremo Music Festival fix every year. It’s also stunningly beautiful, with steep, olive grove-clad mountains plunging straight into the sea. The perfect antidote to the industrialised plains around Milan, even for those who are not so fancy-shmancy.

So as well as sticking our toes in some sand, this weekend we learned that:

1. Agriturismo is the way to go with a toddler in tow
The “agri” stands for agriculture, so what you get is this: working farm + cheap accommodation. The sum is so much more than its constituents though, because it actually means that you get locally grown and home-cooked food without having to cart your toddler to a separate restaurant, stunning countryside views and, best of all, farm animals to entertain said toddler, all at very reasonable prices.
We’ve done this kind of thing three times now and the most we’ve ever paid was €50 per adult (about £40) for:

en-suite room
4-course evening meal
breakfast

I can’t recommend it enough. And in case you’re interested, the three we’ve been to are:

La Virginia near Turin in Piedmonte
Scuderia Della Valle at the foot of the Alps near Bergamo
Le Giare by the Ligurian Coast

2. Toddlers are perfectly capable of falling asleep while chewing
In fact, ours seems to sleep best with a half-eaten piece of bread in his hand.

3. Long drives are excellent for reclaiming couple-time
Mr P&P and I are pretty good at living past each other, most of the time. It’s an inevitable result of juggling two jobs with childcare and little outside help. We realised that a couple of hours in the car, where neither of us is able to blog/write code/do chores is an excellent opportunity for a bit of a catch-up. That is, when the toddler in the back is sleeping, of course.

4. Long drives are excellent for testing your nap time management skills
When it goes right, see above. When it goes wrong, however, it goes something like this:

Driver attempts to drive with ears shut.
Toddler alternates between screaming, flinging food and attempting to escape mid-motorway. Or does them all at the same time if he's feeling particularly frisky.
Passenger becomes Contortionist and Multi-tasker Extraordinaire, map reading, retrieving toys, offering raisin-shaped bribes, and singing nursery rhymes while desperately trying to control the urge to hurl on the windy mountain roads.

5. When driving in Genova, expect the unexpected
You will find a motorway at the end of the narrowest harbour-side alleyway, realise that going backwards will get you going forwards eventually, and come to see tackling 20 cm slip roads in a decidedly non-grunty Fiat Panda as entirely normal. Welcome to Italy, people.

6. There is very little an end-of-road-trip trip to IKEA can’t solve
Carsick, tired, grumpy? No matter. Stop off at one of Milan’s three IKEAs and get dinner and toddler-tainment rolled into one. It’s like being at someone else’s house without having to worry about their furniture getting a little trashed. I mean, aren’t you meant to test the sofas for bounciness?? Isn’t chucking your child into a vat full of fluffy pandas a great idea??

That's it for pearls of wisdom on travelling round Italy with a toddler in the back seat. And now for the obligatory post-weekend photo bomb:

Come say hello: 

What's that? It's Monday again already? Oh crap I'd better get my Meal Plan on again.

It's funny - once it's drawn up and published I really like having a meal plan. It takes the head-scratching over what the heck to have for dinner out of the rest of the week, but I do always sit and stare for a while every Monday. If you're the same, I'd definitely recommend going through the other meal plans that link up over at the Meal Planning Monday host. I usually manage to nick at least one idea every week...

After my comfort food binge last week, this week a few more summery dishes are creeping in. There's not actually that much veg to be had at the market right now, just an abundance of amazing fruit (poor us eh). We do still have fresh peas though, so I'll be trying to make a lighter version of our winter staple, pea & ham soup. I'm thinking mint, lemon juice and yoghurt as additions.

A final word on the "indoor picnic": I don't know what else to call it. It's utterly lazy, completely unadventurous, and very yummy. It involves rooting around the fridge for whatever salad vegetables, cheeses and cold meats I can find. Then chopping them, and serving with some home-made humus. And fries, because I am Belgian after all.

Looks like an indoor picnic, right??

My favourite month.

The days are warm, sunny, we haven’t had rain for weeks but it doesn’t yet matter. Jeans, t-shirt, cute little checked shirt for the Bean.

The odd sticky, humid, Why am I sweating like a horse? kind of day. Oh. THAT was brewing. Just when I’m supposed to do the nursery run. Both spectacular and spectacularly bad timing.

Relief. The shade still offering shelter from both the heat and the sun, the nights still cool. Doesn’t matter that I got soaked, it’s warm. Let the Bean run around butt-naked.

Smile, knowingly. If this were the UK, there would be a frenzy of barbecues and strappy sandals and red shoulders. If this were the UK, we would wonder Is this it? Is this all the summer we’re getting?

But in Milan? No, just you wait, look the clues are there. The dog days of summer are not so far away. The mosquitoes are amassing, the night time temperatures are climbing. Green will turn into brown. May will be a memory soon.

But for now: The smell of jasmine, thick and sweet, dominates.

and that is: I’m going to be keeping M-Little at home with me one day a week from now on. Because I can do these things. As a freelancer I wear many hats at once: linguistic “expert”, accountant, marketing guru, human resources manager, Chief Maker-of-the-Tea. And Executive who determines the work schedules.

Perhaps also Psychologist-in-Residence, who has noticed that motivation is flagging, enthusiasm sorely lacking. It surprises me, this. I have always been very ambitious. I have never just ‘worked’. I don’t just go to conferences, I speak at them and to hell with the fact I don’t look old and wise enough to do so. I network and shmooze and brainstorm and love it all.

Until now. I just don’t have the time or energy to do anything other than simply work, to do the bare minimum to keep my clients happy. It is so unsatisfying, says the perfectionist in me. I could solve this by going into full career-girl mode again, and leaving the Bean at nursery from 8 AM until 6PM every day. The parent in me really, really doesn’t want to do that though. In fact, I’m going the other way.

Quitting work completely is not even close to being an option, but maybe it’s okay to christen this as a Period of Ticking Along rather than always going full pelt. Maybe it’s better to be happy to have some clients and some money coming in, instead of always wanting to be the best, the most well-know, the most successful. Maybe I’d be an utter idiot for not making the most these precious early years of M-Little’s life, given that I answer to no-one apart from my own overactive sense of Guilt and Duty.

So that’s my first, selfish reason for wanting an extra day a week with him.

The second reason is about the Bean himself. He currently goes to nursery Monday to Friday, from 9 AM to 4:30 PM. That’s 37.5 hours a week. I think that’s rather a lot for a 16-month-old. Too much: by Thursday afternoon he is TOAST. He is stroppy and tired and incapable of playing or even enjoy rooting around in the park.

I can’t help but wonder whether some down-time with his Mama would do him good. A day a week to potter about at home, go to the park or the pool on a nice day, curl up in bed with a cuddle and a video when it’s raining. Do what we loved most during my maternity leave last year: walk over to Daddy’s lab for an outdoor lunch and loads of attention from the colleagues. Then back to nursery on Friday for one more day, perhaps already feeling a little calmer before the weekend.

Of course, when it comes to the Bean I’m not the sole Executive, rather it’s very much a Joint Management sort of project. Unusually for us though, M-Big and I don’t see eye to eye on this. He says that M-Little loves his nursery, that we can’t provide the same amount of stimulation at home. I agree with him completely. The fact that he runs to get him shoes at the mere mention of his teacher’s name says as much. I know that we can’t give him the toys, the friends, the fun, the big garden here in our tiny flat. I’m just not sure he needs all that five days a week.

So we’ve agreed to disagree, in the sense that we’re both happy for me to give it a go. If it doesn’t work out, if the Bean really is bored to tears or if I end up completely stressed and losing clients due to my reduced hours, we can just go back to the five days a week.

So the Executive Decision is made. I shall report back in due course…

March 2015 update:

It's been almost a year since I made my Executive Decision, so I thought it was about time to report back... and I'm pleased to say it was the right decision. We talked to the nursery and settled on Wednesday as the Bean's day off.  We also kept things flexible: if I'm swamped with work or full of cold, or if there are already a lot of holidays in the month, I send him in. 

Otherwise, Wednesday is Bean Day. Pyjamas until noon day, pizza for lunch day, park in the afternoon with the bestie day. Sometimes we go to see Daddy, sometimes we're too lazy to get off the sofa. Sometimes there's playdough or painting or threading, and quite often the house looks like a bomb's hit it by the end of the day. 

Sure, there are days when things don't go smoothly - I shall never forget the Wednesday of Doom, on which a teething Bean, steaming with pain and rage, got off his bike and ran into the road... The rest of my week is also more hectic as a result of these Bean Days, and any pretense of meal planning has gone out of the window. 

But most of the time I love these days. When he's awake I concentrate on nothing but him and his odd little games. Taking things at his pace means I never fail to learn something new about him. A word I didn't realise he was able to say, a skill I'd been too busy to notice he's mastered. When he's asleep, I don't feel the slightest urge to be "useful". Rather I doze with him, my arm curled around his chest and his fingers in my hair. Or I sit on the sofa and crochet in the middle of the day, without any guilt at all. 

They're good, Bean Days.

Come say hello: 

We survived another no-pasta week! Although I did sneak this in one lunchtime:

Otherwise I only veered off-plan once, so pretty good going all round.

This week I'm leaning towards comfort food - we're all a bit snotty & grotty, plus soon it'll be too hot for a lot of these dishes and we'll start subsisting on gazpacho and salad (I know, I know. Woe is me).

To me, the ultimate comfort food is beans and rice. I didn't grow up with it, but I've very happily adopted the habit from M-Big, who's originally Brazilian. I'm also very excited about trying a new green curry spice blend powder I found at our local market. I've only ever tried the pastes so far, but this blend smelled wonderful so I had to get it. Not a clue how spicy it is though...

tomato-baked beans & rice
veg & salmon parcels, oven-baked with soy sauce & mirin
Thai green eggplant curry & rice
roasted red pepper soup with parmesan toast
pasta with spicy green bean & tomato sauce

Have a good week and do take a look at the linky below for more meal plan ideas!

We tell M-Little it’s time for bed - he’s rubbing his eyes, pulling his ear, doing his Round of Things He Mustn’t Touch. The bin, M-Big's computer, the loo, the tubes of the washing machine. Please don't touch my sweet. It’s time for nappy and pyjamas.

So begins the last Nappy Battle of the day. Daddy reads a book, M-Little has half an eye on that, half an eye on the blur of cloth and velcro threatening between his legs. He hops, he wriggles, he squirms, he tugs. I grit my teeth, try not to lose my patience. Push his tiny hands away for the hundredth time. Finally get the nappy on, the wrap on, the t-shirt over the head. Ok fine we’ll put your bottoms later, you infuriating wriggle-bean.

It’s really time for bed now, say night night to Daddy. Cuddle, kiss. Would you like a bit more milk? Yes, yes, always yes. Close in my arms, dummy never out of reach, hang on where’s the other dummy? Oh yes, it’s here, he wants that one too, gulp gulp gulps down the milk. Then hands me the bottle with a flourish, though not before giving it a good shake to check whether there’s any more.

And so begins the Marathon of the Fidgets. Into bed, out of bed, into bed, pull the cord of the musical toy, out of bed, pull open a drawer, smack it shut, check where Mama is, Oh No! dropped a dummy, back into bed, out of bed, sing a ditty, pull the cord again. I lie on the mattress on the floor and wait.

It’s really time to sleep now my sweet, come and lie down. Here’s your dummy, here’s the other, here’s your blanket. He climbs into bed, pats his pillow, I squeeze in next to him.

As so begins the Most Lovely Moment. He plays with his dummy, twirls my hair, sits up and considers a final lap around the room. Then thinks oh, I’m quite tired actually. Comes in for a headbutt-kiss, squishes up close to me. Breathing slows, deepens. Plays with a dummy, sucks on another, strokes and pats my hand. Drifts off, starts, are you still there Mama? I’m here, my sweet.

The dishes, the toys scattered everywhere, the sentences in my head, they can all wait. Come lie close, never mind if someone thinks I spoil you. One day you will no longer be there to soothe and cuddle to sleep. But I’ll always be here, my sweet. 

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day here in Italy. We didn’t celebrate in any way. Not because we don’t think that mothers shouldn’t be celebrated, but because we both have a dislike of commercialised, tacky pseudo-celebrations dreamed up by card companies. I would personally also much rather see a “Parents’ Day” instead. And it may also be a little bit because I forgot Father’s Day, which is on some impossible-to-remember date in February here.

But aaaanyway. Despite not being bought flowers (Mr P&P bought me a plant on the day that really mattered: our anniversary) or brought breakfast in bed (crumbs?! in bed!! NO), I will indulge in this: A post all about, well, me. So here goes...

1. I wake up at around 6am, to the slightest whimper or most enthusiastic “lalala” from the Bean, then haul him into bed with us. I never fail to marvel at (read: get annoyed by) Mr P&P’s complete obliviousness to the bouncing and poking, but at least I do get the first slobbery kisses of the day.

2. Cooking is my forte, but cleaning up the aftermath is not. Fortunately, the rules on the Division of Chores at P&P Towers stipulate that this is not my problem.

3. I love all the bright colours in the world, but because there are so many I can never decide on a colour scheme for our flat. My extremely colourful sofa is testament to this. Perhaps when I’m all growned up and own a big house, I shall do every room in a different, very bright colour.

4. Breakfast is my favourite meal. The berries, the yoghurt, the pancakes, the muesli, the muffins - I love them all.

5. I’m not the mother I thought I’d be. I thought I would convince my child to sleep, that schedules would be fixed, that tantrums would be nipped in the bud. The teacher in me could imagine no other way, but then a real, beautiful, willful human being arrived and I realised that it really is so very different when it’s your own (no knowing snorting at the back there).

6. The first hour of the working day is mine. Well, once the fallout from breakfast has been cleared up, discarded clothes picked up off the floor, and my stone-cold cup of tea has been reheated. Then I give myself an hour to read, to write, to tweet, to otherwise faff and procrastinate.

7. I have moments where I just want to get on a plane and go somewhere, anywhere, because I’m sick of the sleepless nights and the endless laundry and the whingeing for a 7th consecutive rendition of “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” and the never being able to get anything finished properly. Then someone offers to take the Bean off my hands for a while so I can do something fun, and, erm, well, no. I can’t. I’d rather do the fun thing with him.

8. My favourite thing about living abroad is the visitors from home. Sharing our life, showing them the favourite café, the Bean’s park, the market we go to every Saturday. Seeing their light bulb moment - your life here is okay. I can go home now and rest assured. I can Skype with you and know rather than just imagine.

9. I’m all for food cooked from scratch at home, but I can’t quite imagine life without Knorr stockpots or frozen mashed potato.

10. My second-favourite thing about living abroad is the care packages. In case anyone’s wondering, I’ll have Yorkshire tea, milk chocolate digestives, Dorset cereal, marmalade, and a copy of Red magazine. And marmite for Mr P&P (ew).

11. I wish I was less temperamental, more patient, less controlling. But then I wouldn’t be me, I guess.

12. 14 flats/houses, 9 cities, 4 countries, 2 continents. In 15 years. I’m kinda tired of moving.

13. I don’t really do inspirational quotes or motos or slogans. Thought I shall leave you with this, a gem from my former life as a teacher:

Me: Look at this picture. What is it?
Kid 1: It's a dinosaur!
Me: Very good. What's this?
Kid 2: It's dinosaur claws!
Me: Great! What's this?
Kid 3: It's the dinosaur's tail.
Me: That's right. Dinosaurs have tails, but people don't.
Kid 4: My daddy has a tail. 

o_O

15. Or actually no, I'll finish with a couple of my favourite photos.

I like making things. This much is true. I am F*ING AWFUL at finishing them. This much is also true.

Sure, I have the Bean to look after, a business to run, a flat to keep presentable, a husband to remember once in a while. 

But really it's me: I start something, have an idea for something else, get excited about that, get the parcel tape and try it out too, oh and wouldn't it be cool if?? 

Ad in-fi-nitum. 

I can always see the finished product, I draft the show-and-tell blog post of awesomeness in my head as I go along. Then never quite get there.

Well, I think I'll just have a mini show-and-tell now. Maybe it will actually make me finish them and finally get to show them off properly.

1. Yes this may be the ugliest thing you've ever seen, but in my head it's an Activity Station for the Miniature Gardener. Really. It's going to be great.

2. The threading-practice toy that needs holes for ALL the pens.

3. Ah, my quilt. My gorgeous, king-size, hand-stitched quilt. My gorgeous, king-size, hand-stitched quilt that I haven't touched for almost 16 months.

4. The colour-sorting toy that does not yet have any colour other than meh.

5. The pull-along car that has wheels and a driver but not much pizazz. 

6. The cardboard kitchen still in progess (though less so than last week, at least!).

Tell me I'm not the only one who leaves projects unfinished! I'd love to hear what you're working on right now (even if it's 'just' staying sane while looking after a small human being).

So, it's pasta week at the Bean's nursery again. As he now usually eats his evening meals with us, that means no pasta at home. For a whole week. 

I do get bored of pasta sometimes, but it is just so easy. Planning a whole week's worth of dinners without any pasta, on the other hand, is not easy. 

And then there's the monumental FAIL that is the Bean's lunch on Friday: first course of pasta with cheese. Second course of, erm, cheese. He will then get served some veggies too, but by that point he'll be so FULL OF CHEESE that there's no way he'll eat them. The nursery dietitian had clearly skipped her 5 espressos when she needed to approve that particular week.

I've done my best... I hold little hope I'll make it all the way through this, especially if this afternoon is anything to go by. 

I meant to get a head start and make Tuesday's soup. 
Instead I made banana bread. 
Look, I came home from the supermarket with three broken eggs (my fault). 
And I had some overripe bananas in the fridge. 

Priorities, priorities...

In January there was a news story in the Guardian, about how the cost of a child’s first year in the UK is now £11,025. This practically made me fall off my chair. Gave me heart palpitations. Made me snort my tea up my nose at the ridiculousness of it.  At some point we were actually working with negative money, I think, so in Thrifty Little Baby Part One, I listed some tips on how to keep your baby-related spending down.

Now the Guardian has obliged again by featuring this piece on useful vs useless new baby buys. Pretty interesting, as are the comments. Below is my own list of the really essential baby-essentials, based on what we’ve actually used over the last 15 months. (Note: I’ve put a little (S) next to all the things that we got second-hand.)

Sleepy baby 
a toddler bed (S)
a mattress 
bumpers (S)
sheets (S)
maybe a basic baby monitor (S)

The rationale:
We also bought a small cot (S) because we thought a newborn would feel lost in a bed. Turns out our newborn felt lost in the cot too! By the time he’d stopped sleeping cradled in our arms all night, every night, we could have just put him straight in the big bed with bumpers on. 

The big bed has been great and will last a long time, because one of the sides can come down once M is ready for a little more autonomy. 

We bought sleeping bags too, but they have been an epic failure because the Bean hates them. This makes me very sad - they’re so pretty... But he’s not having any of it, so now I just put him in really thick PJs (S).

As for the baby monitor... I grew to hate it and felt so relieved when we stopped using it. M has a serious pair of lungs on him, and we're always less than 10m away in our tiddly flat anyway. So if and when there's a next time, I'll only use a monitor if the baby is too far away for me to hear.

Stinky baby
a set of cloth nappies
washable wipes
a changing mat 
all-purpose balm

The rationale:
Cloth nappies and washable wipes are fantastic buys and, as regular readers know, something we feel passionately about (read this post and this one). In a nutshell though, cloth nappies and wipes mean less waste, less money spent overall, and healthier skin. And cute patterns. Very important, that. 

The changing mat we whacked on a chest of drawers we already had. 

Our nappy balm is a wonderous thing: it's completely natural and can be used to soothe all sorts of skin irritations, not just baby's bottom. 

Hungry baby (milk)
a set of washable breast pads
a nursing bra
(five baby bottles)
(an electric breast pump (S))
a gigantic stash of muslins

The rationale:
Washable breast pads = great purchase. I used some disposables once and I ended up with huge milk patches on my shirt. Oooh classy.

Bottles/breast pump = a necessary evil for us because of all the feeding issues we had. If you can avoid pumping, do!!! But if you can’t, a mama’s gotta do what she’s gotta do and this pump worked very well. We sterilised our bottles by boiling them in a pan, by the way, which worked fine. 

The muslins were absolutely, undeniably, life-savingly useful for us. Relflux baby. You get my drift, right?

Hungry baby (solids)
1 set of stainless steel kid’s cutlery (S)
a wooden, non-reclining high chair
a stack of bibs (S)
cheap cloths for wiping

The rationale:
We had some plastic baby spoons and fancy slanted Tommy Tippee plates, but they were useless. I lost the spoons on a plane somewhere and the plates are just weird. From about 10 months onward the Bean has wanted what we have, so the stainless steel cutlery has worked out much better. I serve him his food in bowls we already had.

We also inherited a Chicco hook-on chair which is great in theory as it is meant to save space, but a nightmare in practice. It’s made of fabric. It’s supposed to be hand-wash only. What?!

The high chair has been one of our best buys. It looks a bit like a Stokke Tripp Trapp but costs a fraction of the price. Takes up about as much space as an adult chair, doesn’t force baby to lean back (important for avoiding choking), looks good, is a doddle to clean and will last for years. Hurrah!

Splashy baby
a foldable baby bath
newborn bath support
all-family, additive-free soap for sensitive skin

The rationale:
The bath is of our favourite purchases as it stows away and lasted 12 months. He’s too big for it now so we just stick him under the shower, but I still use it as a laundry basket! 

We got about 4 months’ use out of the support, which isn’t a huge amount. However, if anyone can tell me how you bathe a slippery, wriggly worm of a newborn without it, I would love to know. 

Outdoor adventurer baby
a Mei Tai carrier
a car seat to last until M is 18 kg (S)
any large-ish handbag or rucksack for baby bits (S)
a 0-3 year old lightweight buggy (S). No detachable travel systems or space crafts.

The rationale:
We have tried loads of outdoorsy things, but only a few are actually useful.

Pram/pushchair travel system (S): unmitigated disaster. The Bean prefered to be carried so pram = screaming. Pushchair = screaming on a bad day and sulking on a good one. The car seat was met with less contempt, but he’d grown out of it by 9 months. And it feels like you're driving a tank.

Proper change bag (S): have only used it a handful of times. The rest of the time I prefer to use a normal handbag or a rucksack. These babies don’t have to monopolise everything, do they?!

Baby Bjorn Miracle Carrier (S): adored by the Bean, but once he hit 8 kilos it became excruciating for me. I just couldn’t get it to fit me properly.

Mei Tai carrier: Yes, yes and YES! Although I’m planning to write a more detailed review of this carrier, let me tell you know that it is the bizznazz. Adjusts to fit pretty much everyone. Front carry, back carry, hip carry, newborn, 3-year-old. Sorted. 

Car seat: Great quality and very comfy, though so pleased we didn’t fork out for a new one. The second-hand one we have is in fantastic condition. 

Lightweight buggy: We snaffled this one on ebay at a 50% discount, and I love it despite the hideously irritating trendy-speak on the website. And the Bean just about tolerates it.

Trendy baby
Anything 2nd, 3rd or even 10th-hand that will keep baby warm in winter and cool in summer! (S)
Grippy, flexible shoes once baby starts walking
Grandparents’ generosity and penchant for cuteness

The rationale:
Babies don’t care what they look like. New, expensive clothes will get weed/pood/sicked/muddied on. Hence, we take whatever we get and only buy new things if we have a gap to fill in what we got as hand-me-downs and gifts (and I realise we’ve been very lucky to have received a fair amount!). Dark, good quality cotton is best (white clothes = stain central). 

New shoes are non-negotiable, to ensure the correct development of baby’s feet.

Happy baby
Erm, pass. Whatever you are willing to spend your money on/listen to again and again/fall over?!

The rationale: 
I know there are babies out therfe who love their bouncer/baby gym/walker/whatever other contraptions are available. Mine wasn’t one of those. As a newborn he was happiest being carried around or goofing at himself in a mirror. Then all he ever wanted to do was move and destroy. 

Now he does have toys, most of which were gifts, some of which I bought, and some of which I made. And many of which are not toys at all. My pots and pans. Keys. The washing machine. 

One thing is clear to me though: if it breaks easily or is only going to provide entertainment value for a couple of months, it’s not worth it.