Walking is Full Of Rubbish

I've started walking. Well, I could walk before, so it's not like I've risen from a wheelchair all "praise cheesus" and the like, but I've started walking just for walking's sake.

Normally any time I mention "for sake" it's for fuck's sake, so this is quite a leap.

I joined Operation Move in the hopes that my mates Kate and Zoey and the people who have joined the newbie move group would motivate me to keep going with pom poms and cheers and Facebook likes on my "I walked to the shops" posts. That and I spent money, and I'm such a tight ass that I have to do it now.

So I've been walking. And then my stupid muscle fibres decided that it was time to just tear whenever they felt like it again, bringing on a massive pain flare and I had to stop for a couple of weeks while it all healed and my old person medication kicked in. All the woe.

I started again today. I walked to the shops with Tricky by my side and Bobbin in her pram/my walking frame. I always notice the rubbish when I walk my neighbourhood and today was no different. Discarded TAB stubs, cigarette butts, wrappers emblazoned with the golden arches and a shit heap of beer bottles and UDL cans. If the litter is anything to go by, people in my neighbourhood are struggling with addiction (says the binge eater who drinks too much).

There we were, walking along, and I just got a bit pissed off seeing so much crap everywhere. I like my street. I don't live in a fancy area but I like it. I believe that things are only as a good as the effort you put in, so it was time to do something about it. We grabbed some trash bags and gloves and cleared as much of the rubbish as we could on one side of the road between our house and the shops.

Tricks loved it. Who can spot the most bottles? How many pieces can you pick up in a minute? The first person to find a Maccas wrapper and so on became our games.

People stopped to comment.

"Oh, you're doing such a great job" and "You should be careful of syringes" were the two most common. One man even took our photo and wanted to put it on Facebook which was strangely embarrassing despite plastering my own photos all over the 'book every day.

850 metres gave a yield of five bags so full of rubbish that two burst open (thankfully when we were in our driveway already).

Most of it is now in my recycling and the few bits that can't be recycled (baby wipes and even a nappy - ew!) is in the bin and no longer on the side of the road. And I feel fan-bloody-tastic for it.

Tricks is learning the importance of recycling, caring for the environment, taking an active role in the neighbourhood and what not, but all he cares about is that he gets to wear cool little gloves and pick up things covered in muck. We're gonna keep doing it.

Go grab some gloves, some bags, go for a walk and pick up some rubbish. I promise you'll feel awesome.

I ate Bobbin's placenta!

You may want to click away if you're the squeamish type. Cos this is all about placentophagy - which, if the title didn't give it away - is the eating of placenta!

I had a bit of a love hate relationship with Bobbin's placenta because it was in the wrong spot. I was diagnosed with Grade I placenta previa (the least severe) at our 19 week scan and was monitored throughout the pregnancy in the hope that as my uterus grew, the placenta would not be so close to the cervix. To birth at the Family Birth Centre it had to be 5cm clear - at 34 weeks I had a scan and it was only 4.5cm clear. What followed was a week of waiting as the doctors decided whether or not I was still allowed to go there. Thankfully they believed that by the time Bobbin was fully cooked it would be 5cm clear so they signed off on me - obviously since that is where Bobbin's amazing waterbirth was.

But despite the low lying shenanigans, I think placentas are freakin' awesome. They provide your baby with all the oxygen and nutrients she needs to grow and removes waste products from her blood.

Now I hear some of you say "Hey, I think cats are freakin' awesome, but I don't go around eating those, you freak" and that's cool. You can think that way. I think cats are just little furry devils, so we can just agree to disagree on these two points. 

So back to placentas. Eating placenta is believed to:

• balance hormones
• increase milk levels
• reduce post-natal bleeding
• replenish iron levels
• assist the uterus in reducing to pre-pregnancy state
• reduce the baby blues and even PND
• freak out some people

Embracing my slightly crunchy ways, I looked in to placenta consumption when I was pregnant with Tricky but never got around to doing anything about it and I really regret it. His placenta was whisked away and incinerated. All that goodness gone to waste. This time I didn't want to miss out. We're pretty much the only animal who doesn't eat it, which tells me something.

Animals eat it raw but I'd like to think I'm a little more civilized or maybe it is just because I don't even like my steak cooked anything below medium-well, but I personally couldn't handle the idea of blending a chunk of raw placenta in to a smoothie. In fact even cooking it up in a lasagne would leave me gagging. I needed the benefits without the ick factor. Placenta encapsulation is the least stomach churning way to rock your inner crunchy mama ways.

After I'd had a chance to have a good look and a feel of it, Tania from Birth Inspired steamed Bobbin's placenta, dehydrated it, ground it up and inserted in to over 60 capsules. It cost me $200 which included pick up and delivery, and a gorgeous placenta print which we are going to hang in Bobbin's new room.

L to R: Raw placenta, lemon & herb steaming pot, steamed placenta with cord (light colour because of delayed
cord clamping, the cord showing three vessels, the dehydrated placenta slices, finished product

I started taking them on day 3 and they made me feel a-maaaa-zing. I felt so strong and stable. I did still have one or two bouts of tears due to frustration, but didn't get the baby blues at all. And milk? Wow. My milk level was insane - so much so that I cut down my dose of tablets and then stopped for a while until my milk regulated. After stopping, I found I was quicker to cry over anything even remotely emotional than I had been - and now that I've started again that has ceased. Which is fabulous because crying over commercials is a bit embarrassing.

The only thing I was a little worried about is how they would smell. Would it be meaty? Because that might have been too much of a reminder that I was actually doing a Zombie impersonation and eating human flesh. But the best way to describe it would be ever a bit like a multivitamin smell - and they don't have a taste at all. PHEW!

I had the choice to freeze them and use them as an occasional natural pick me up or during menopause but to be honest, I think I'd forget about them if I stashed them away in a freezer, so best I just take them all now and revel in the effects of this natural feel good medicine.

A huge thank you to the lovely Tania from Birth Inspired who took photos of the process so I could blog about it. If you're in Perth and want to embrace your inner crunchy mama, I can definitely recommend her services.

Would you eat placenta?

So it turns out even a second pregnancy freaks me out

I may attempt to come across as all earth-mothery what with the hippy lah lah bullshit I spout from time to time, but I am anything but a serene and sacred vessel.

In short, I think pregnancy is the absolute weirdest thing ever. Some cells come together and then GROW A HUMAN? What the actual fuck?! No way?! It's insides somehow know to end up where they belong? Get outta town!

You would think that having done it before I'd be quite used to it, but no. When I was pregnant with Tricks I felt this way too. I feel it whenever I see a growing baby bump... after thinking "hehe someone got lucky" and waggling my eyebrows because on the inside I'm actually a 13 year old boy. Related: this is why I always feel weird telling someone I'm pregnant, it feels like I'm saying "heyyyy, guess who had sex?".

Over the past few weeks I've been able to feel this tiny human move and it is both exciting and disconcerting at the same time. There is a reason I refer to pregnancy as being in the John Hurt Way after all.

I barely felt Tricky move because I had an anterior placenta but I have felt this as yet still blog-nameless baby doing a highland jig on my bladder since around 14 weeks. This is only adding to my complete surety it is going burst out of my stomach at any moment and crawl along the bench to attack Sigourney Weaver or anyone else who happens to be near by.

Don't get me started on how bizarre the birth process is. I'm a full believer that our bodies know what to do and I'm planning on trusting those instincts again since it served me quite well last time around. It's a bit of a marvel and blah blah blah... but I can't help but think IT COMES OUT WHERE?! HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?!?!?! And it's quite obvious that Tricky feels the same:

Does anyone else get the same mental image as a snake dislocating it's jaw to eat a wallaby? No? Just me? Right. As you were.

Healthy Dairy Free Toddler Snacks

So we all know I'm kinda a bit of a food nazi when it comes to Tricky, right?

I figure that I have a really limited amount of time to set him up with good eating habits so I'm doing everything I can. He doesn't get junk food, he gets very little processed food, instead, I make most of his meals from scratch.

For a snack, I sometimes make pikelets - they're quick, easy, have very little sugar and best of all they don't drop crumbs bloody everywhere! One of the munchkins in my mothers' group has an allergy to dairy, so, in order to make some food that all the kids could enjoy I started experimenting and came up with these babies.

Dairy Free Fruit Pikelets

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour 
• 1 egg 
• 1/2 cup poached and pureed fruit - or, cheat a little bit and put in a pouch of baby food!
• 1/2 cup water

Method:

• Sift flour in to a medium sized mixing bowl
• Add egg, fruit puree and water
• Whisk until well combined
• Place a spoonfulls of mixture in to a hot pan (greased lightly if you wish)
• Flip over when small bubbles form or the top loses it's shine
• Cook on the other side until golden brown

I serve these without any toppings because the mild fruit flavour is enough. We've experiemented with a lot of the baby food pouches because I got tired cooking up all the fruit. My favourite would have to be apple, pear and cinnamon!

They store really well in an airtight container for a few days, but I tend to make a huge batch and freeze some for the days I'm not in a cooking mood.

Homemade Nut Free Muesli Bars

I've jumped on the nut free wagon since Tricky's anaphylaxis reaction. Whilst he can handle peanuts I wanted to try my hand at some nut free muesli bars for two reasons:

Firstly to see if they tasted as awful and bland as they looked... they did.

And secondly so I could give them to him to take to his little nut allergy parties where all the anaphylaxis kids get together and compare EpiPen carriers or some shit.

So, as always, I threw out the different recipes I'd seen and decided to take what I'd learned to create my own... and they're pretty damn tasty if I do say so myself. The Wonder Couple have declared them "better than the shop bought muesli bars". High praise indeed!

Nut Free Muesli Bars

Ingredients

• 120g of margarine
• 1/2 cup of honey
• 1/4 cup of firmly packed brown sugar
• 3 cups of oats
• 1 cup of crushed cornflakes 
• 1 1/2 cups of mixed dried fruit* - this is the important bit so make sure you have a variety, I use a combination of currants, sultanas, cranberries, blueberries, cherries, apricots and even a little peel. This is where the total nom factor comes from! If you just use sultanas it is BOR-ING!
• 1/4 cup sesame seeds

Method

• In a big bowl combine all your dry ingredients and the super awesome selection of dried fruit
• Combine margarine, honey and sugar in a saucepan and melt together, bring to the boil for 3-4 minutes stirring continuously - it will froth and thicken slightly
• Pour the contents of the saucepan in to the bowl and stir until the whole mix is wet and sticky
• Dump the mix in to a lined slice tray, push down as firmly as you can and bake at 180C for 15-20 minutes
• Remove from the oven and allow to cool (whack it in the fridge to speed it up) then cut to size - bars or squares, I ain't fussy

It is slightly crumbly so make sure you wait until it's completely firmed in the fridge before cutting - if you get impatient because it looks so amazing then you'll end up with crumbs everywhere. If it happens though, scrape them all together form little balls - the honey means they'll still stick together. Muesli balls FTW!

Happy baking!

*I go to the local bulk food store and get a little scoop of all the dried fruits I want so I don't have to pay for giant packets of dried fruit that will take forever to get eaten

The other 1% - Fullterm breastfeeding

On Friday, a good friend in my mothers' group asked if I'd see the cover of Time Magazine with the woman breastfeeding on the cover.

I hadn't, so she described it to me. A woman, standing up, with her almost four year old child at her breast while he stood on a stool in front of her.

Associated Press / May 11, 2012

She found it a bit icky. And that's OK. I'm in the glorious position of being a supportive and diverse mothers' group where just because we have different stories and different ideals doesn't mean we one-up and think our way is best. We have breastfeeders, bottle feeders, caesarian births, vaginal births, epidural births and drug free birthss. Between us we have eight beautiful kids; day care kids, grandparent care kids, dairy free kids, nut free kids, shy kids and outgoing kids. It's a mish mash microcosm of society in one little group. It's perfect. Bit I digress.

Back to the photo. It's a rather provocative cover. I expect it rubs a few people the wrong way because in our rather sheltered culture it's not common to see women breastfeeding their older children. I wonder how much of that is because the child doesn't take much milk any more and it's less likely to happen outside the home, and how much of it is because those who do feed their older child feel the stares of passersby and hide away for fear of comments?

The photo doesn't bother me. But I'm slightly crunchy and have been around full term feeders at the ABA, so I understand I'm biased.
 
Some of the very vocal backlash to the photo (including it being taken of stands in some supermarkets) has been because the woman is wearing tight, sexy clothes (yes, jeans, a singlet and ballet flats are totes sexy)... because obviously anyone breastfeeding should automatically become asexual. Surely she should be wearing frumpy maternity clothing with bows on it? Newsflash: breastfeeding doesn't stop you being a sexual person - see those people with two children breastfeeding? Or pregnant and breastfeeding? OMG THEY HAD SEX! 

Other comments have been centred around the look to camera... because shouldn't they be looking adoringly in to each others eyes if it's genuine bonding and not some debauched sexual act? Newsflash: I've not seen a child stare in to it's mother's eyes while feeding much past the six month mark where the world suddenly gets really interesting. Tricky looks anywhere but at me unless he's really tired.

In Australia (according to the ABS), by age two, only 1% of children are receiving breastmilk. In less than a month, all things remaining equal, Tricky will fall in to that 1%.

I think I deserve to get some sort of prize for breastfeeding this long. Like a boob shaped trophy or something. Or at least a nice, new bra.

When the majority of people find out I'm still feeding the Trickster they looked surprised. Then, inevitably, the very first question is "when are you going to wean him?". I don't see how it's anyone else's business, really, but depending on my mood I'll either answer "when he's ready" or "when he's 17, because feeding an 18 year old would be TOTALLY GROSS!".

When I was pregnant, my goal was to feed for twelve months. That was quickly reassessed to "please let me feed til three months" when nipple thrush and a staph infection (yes, in MY NIPPLE!) had me in tears every hourly feed (yes, HOURLY!).

But through perseverance, education and a lot of fear of failure stubbornness, I got there. And then some.

So here I am feeding a (not quite) two year old. It is very different to feeding a newborn, and it's very different to feeding a twelve month old.

He feeds every morning when he wakes up which guarantees me an extra half hour to an hour of sleep as he lays there, dozing on and off at my breast. An hour is a long time at 4:00am when you're sleep deprived.

Sometimes he'll feed after a nap, and he gets free reign if he's sick, both for the comfort and to keep his fluids up. Recently when he was unwell and he was refusing food and water, he would breastfeed and I knew he was at least getting something.

He will pull away from one side and ask for "More milk?" before latching on to the other side. I wonder if it tastes different?

I understand that some people think it's weird, and that if a child can ask for milk then they're too old to have it... Tricky, thanks to baby sign language, has been able to ask for milk since he was six months old. Should I have weaned him then?

I don't know when we'll wean. There's been a few times when I thought it was the end of our journey, like when I was going away to conferences, and savoured the closeness of our "last feed", only to have him eagerly return to the breast as if nothing had happened.

For now, I'll relish the fleeting moments we have together... and quietly revel in my ability to provoke awkward looks from others.

Did the Time cover make you squirm? Why? Why not?
All opinions are welcome here, but please be respectful.

Cold Power Wash Smarter Competition

I don't do the weekly laundry in this house... the dashing Map Guy does the bulk of it on a Saturday morning between toddler wrangling and grocery shopping, while I'm having a sleep in. I do nappies and toddler clothes throughout the week, but the rest is all done for me.

It means I've got it pretty good. It also means I can't complain when something goes wrong... like the time he washed my brand new multi coloured skirt with my gorgeous white beaded blouse. Or the time my bra came out of the wash missing an underwire, never to be seen again. I think it went where all the lost socks go.

So I shoved the Cold Power Wash Smarter app in his hands and told him that he should look at it "for blog research purposes". This is win win. I get my clothes washed without turning the whites grey and Map Guy... well, he um, gets knowledge. Knowledge is power. Or Cold Power. Or something. OK, so I come off much better in this scenario than he does.

The app has a heap of laundry tips, a stain guide and even a calculator to show you how much cold hard cash you can save and best of all it's free. Go get it now... I'll wait.

To win a six month supply of Cold Power and a $50 Coles voucher, download the Wash Smarter app and in a comment below tell me
a) What is your favourite Colgate Smart Laundry Tip from the free Cold Power Wash Smarter app, and
b) Describe In 100 words or less your biggest laundry disaster

Make sure you follow Where's My Glow on Facebook to keep up to date with all the latest posts and competitions!

Entry is open to Australian residents only. Make sure you sign in to the comment platform with a valid email address/twitter handle or leave your details as part of your comment so you can be contacted. Entries close at 5pm AEST on Friday 18th of May. Winners have one week to reply to notification, failing that, the prize will be redrawn. Enter glowless@wheresmyglow.com in to your contacts to make sure it doesn't go through to spam!! Full terms and conditions can be found here.

How to make a kid's kitchen out of cardboard boxes

I'm of the firm belief that kids do not need expensive toys in order to have fun or learn.

The vast majority of Tricky's toys are second hand - they've been passed down from friends, found for a bargain price at an op shop or baby market, or picked up from the side of the road at bulk rubbish collection. Yes, I find my child's toys on the side of the road, call child services.

We do it partly to reduce the amount of new plastic that comes in to our house (and therefore the tonnes of non recyclable plastic shrink wrap packaging and twistie ties that end up in landfill), to keep our costs low on our single income budget and to encourage Tricky's imagination.

So last week, with that in mind, I decided to get my craft on and channel the guys on Play School and get creative with some boxes, some tape and a Sharpie. Just call me Noni Hazelhurst.

 

Grab any boxes you have, stick them together and get drawing - it's that easy. I used some bowls to get the shape of the hotplates, a ruler for the straight lines and a sandwich to distract Tricky while I did it. There's no right or wrong and it doesn't have to be perfect - I've left 'bench space' for him to use but you could draw in a sink. If you do it indoors make sure it's in a well ventilated area or you'll end up with a massive Sharpie induced headache after colouring in the hot plates!

I must say, I'm kinda happy with how it turned out. Actually who am I kidding? I freakin' love it and when people come over now I drag them towards it singing "Come look at the kitchen I made for Tricky!!!"

Kids don't need the most expensive, realistic looking toys with sound effects... how are they ever meant to develop their imaginations if we do it all for them? Plus how many times have you given your child a toy and they've played with it for a few minutes then turned the box it came in into a car, an aeroplane, a cave or a house?

Tricky thinks it rocks and has been cooking for me ever since using some plastic fruit and veg, a chopping board, 'knife' and a little saucepan. Each time he runs to his cardboard kitchen and does the same, then holds up his 'dish' sniffs it and declares "Mmm yum!". I melt every time!

Go away, Mama, I'm cooking you a special dinner

Do you have second hand or home made toys for your kids?

Super Easy Creamy Chicken Riga-Tricky

This is the lucky last recipe of my week of scheduled Gourmet Glow posts (that were so rudely interrupted by my post on our horrid holiday home experience).

See, I was offered the chance to win sponsorship to BlogHer by whipping up some recipes using the new Kellogg's All Bran Fibre Toppers, so I've jumped at the chance. The opportunity to win a trip to New York to attend BlogHer by writing about some recipes I've created using a product that adds fibre plus vitamins and minerals to your diet? I CAN DO THAT! I'm a crunchy mama, this stuff is right up my alley and since I'm loving experimenting with cooking lately, it seems like this competition was made for me. You can check out all the recipes submitted by searching the #AllBran hashtag on twitter.

So back to my recipe - what do you serve for dinner when you want a home cooked meal but are too tired to put in much effort beyond a bit of grabbing things out the pantry and stirring? Chicken Riga-Tricky!

This is one of those great dishes that is so simple because it's based on pantry staples and whatever veggies you happen to have on hand. It's also great to make at the end of the week to get clear out all the veggies that are almost passed their prime in the fridge so that you don't throw it all out and waste it.

Tricky loves this stuff and it's on pretty high rotation at our place! Because it freezes so well, I always make a large batch and divide it up for Map Guy's lunches and last week made up a batch for my friend who has just had a new baby. Plus it only uses one pot and and one pan so it's definitely a winner!

Creamy Chicken Riga-Tricky

Can't really see the Fibre Toppers - they are in there though!

Ingredients (serves 6)

• 500g chicken, diced
• 500g rigatoni 
• 1 onion, chopped
• 150g spinach
• 5 mushrooms, sliced
• 1/2 zucchini, sliced
• 1 jar of pasta sauce
• 1/2 tub of reduced fat cream cheese
• 1/2 cup of Kellogg's All Bran Fibre Toppers (which contains 33% of your daily fibre requirement!)
• 1 teaspoon of chilli (optional) 

 

Method

• Prepare pasta according to directions and set aside - don't overcook it or it will be Chicken Riga-Flatty
• Cook onion and chicken in a large fry pan until well browned
• Add mushrooms and zucchini, fry gently for two minutes
• Pour the entire jar of pasta sauce and stir until well coated
• Add handfuls of spinach allowing it to wilt - if you put it all in at once it will go every or *ahem* so I've heard
• Stir in the cream cheese allowing it to melt and turn the sauce from a bright red to a creamy orange
• If you're going to add chilli, do it now! I like mine to have a nice kick  
• Add in your Fibre Toppers now so they retain some of their crunch, if you do it too early they'll dissolve a bit and won't be visible in your photo (d'oh!) but you'll still get the nutritional value from them so don't panic
• Combine the sauce and the rigatoni, stir through and serve as is or with shaved Parmesan on top

**For a lower fat version you can just leave out the cream cheese and throw in a few olives**

Click here to see a nutritional panel I created for this meal - I should get points for the effort of making one of these panels, right??
This is NOT a sponsored post, but it is a competition entry for Kellogg's to win sponsorship to BlogHer

Pistachio Dukkah Chicken Schnitzel

You will not find me on any of the reality cooking shows going around at the moment - I cannot cook like that yet. The meals I cook, while delicious (if I do say so myself) are never extravagant towering masterpieces that have been "plated up".

Rather, they're simple home cooked meals placed on a plate and put in front of a hungry family after a long day of toddler wrangling and working from home, right on arsenic hour. It has to be easy, healthy(ish), something the three of us will all enjoy and preferably not use 18 different pans that I then have to wash up.

I like being a 'Crunchy Mama' and cooking from scratch because I know exactly what is going in to our bodies, but now... well after this recipe I come with added crunch!

Pistachio Dukkah Chicken Schnitzel 

Ingredients (serves 2)

• 2 skinless chicken breasts
• 1 piece of bread (I used a country grain mix but it doesn't matter)
• 1/2 cup of Kellogg's All Bran Fibre Toppers (which contains 33% of your daily fibre needs plus 25% of your daily iron, folate and vitamins B1 and B2!)
  
• 25g of pistachio dukkah
• 1 egg, beaten

 Method

• In a food processor (or chop by hand if you don't have one) blitz the bread and Fibre Toppers until they combine in to look like big, crunchy bread crumbs - don't over do it, you want most of the Fibre Toppers to remain whole otherwise you'll loose the crunch!
• Stir the dukkah evenly through the mix and place it all on a large plate (place a bowl of fruit in the background for the extra health benefits)

Added crunch

• Dip your chicken breasts in to the egg and then in to the mix, pressing the crumbs on firmly to coat the entire surface
• Cook for 15 minutes over medium heat in a little extra virgin olive oil, turning once, or until golden brown and crunchy (alternatively you can bake them for 30 minutes, or until golden brown, in a 200C oven).
• Serve with a side salad of mixed lettuce, red onion and beetroot strips, and sprinkle a few extra Fibre Toppers over it for some extra crunch
• Freeze any leftover crumb mixture and use within 3 months

Putting one piece of chicken on an angle is plating up, yes?

So, who's coming to dinner at my place?

Click here to see a nutritional panel I created for this

This is NOT a sponsored post, but it is a competition entry for Kellogg's to win sponsorship to BlogHer!

Natural Transition - Plus FREE Hugalugs!

I have said before that I'm a daisy chain away from being a full blown hippy what with my drug free birthing, breastfeeding, home cookin' shenanigans. I embrace my inner Crunchy Mama and for the purposes of wearing that crown, ignore all the meat and processed food I eat.

So when Julie from Natural Transition kindly offered to help me get to Blogopolis I thought it was a really good fit since her site is a resource for all things natural pregnancy and birth related. I actually offered to get a Natural Transition tattoo on my forehead for the conference yet strangely enough Julie declined. Can you believe it? Weird.

Julie is a Sydney based naturopath, breastfeeding counsellor and natural fertility consultant and her Natural Transition website is an amazing resource full of information on everything baby related; from fertility, pregnancy, birth to breastfeeding and more... and it's all FREE! And we know how much I like free things.

Julie is obviously doing something right because she's a finalist in the Bio-Oil Ausmumpreneur awards in the Eco Friendly Business category for her Natural Transition shop and in the People's Choice Best Blog category. The first one is judged by a panel interview (aargh!!) but the second one is a vote, so if you've got a tick, you can go here and click the pink like button down the bottom.

I checked out the shop and here are a few things that I wanna get my hands on:

I used reusable nursing pads when Tricky was feeding round the clock and I was on Dairy Duties, but they were plain and boring pastel colours. I wish I had these! Hooters for your hooters! Huzzah!

Cheeky Bits Boutique Nursing Pads $8.00

I'm a massive babywearing advocate and I own three different types of carriers. The one that I used the most was my Hug-A-Bub. But I want a black one so I can wear it clubbing I can mix and match with my outfits because I'm terribly vain!

Black Hug-A-Bub $125.00

Now this I have just ordered. Nappy bucket deodorizers! We've been cloth nappying for 14 months now, you'd think I would have learned to hold my breath when I open the bucket. Even washing daily as I do, the ammonia smacks you in the face when you open the bucket. These babies are bamboo charcoal and absorb odours!

Pure Bamboo Nappy Bucket Deodorizer $7.95

I was a skeptic of baby legwarmers until I was given a pair recently and now I love them. They're really funky and a great way of showing off Tricky's awesome cloth nappies too! These are so freakin cool but I can't choose between skull and cross bones and stripey. Hrm bad ass or rainbow child?.

Hugalugs Leg Huggers $10.00 or FREE with a GlowJob!

If you need anything fertility, pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding or mamahood related, be it advice, information or a product, then head over and check out Natural Transition. Right now she's offering a FREE pair of Hugalugs legwarmers with any purchase if you mention GLOWJOB at the checkout. You even get to choose what design you want, how cool is that?

So head over now and grab something for yourself or for a friend.

Frilly Food - Review

I'm rather obsessed with Tricky's diet. I've spoken before about how I cook (almost) all of Tricky's food myself because I'm a little bit of a control freak Crunchy Mama. The food I cook must taste alright because I bang on all the time about him eating adult sized portions.

But back when I was first introducing solids to Tricky what I would have really liked was a guide to go by... not from one of the health companies, I had heaps of those flyers thrust in my hand every time I was forced to visit the child health nurse. I mean a selection of tips and recipes from a fellow Mama who has done it all before me and figured out what works and what doesn't.

The divine Liss from Frills in the Hills has just released her own eBook 'First Foods I Fed My Frills'! So I finally can get some Mama food wisdom! But she hasn't just tried her recipes out on one guinea pig bubba, she's had three that came "thick and fast" within two years thanks to twins.

It comes with great tips on everything from highchairs and which spoons she found the best to use, and she even shares her secret of the single best piece of Tupperware to store the food in. Oh and recipes. It can't be a food book without recipes and boy, can this woman cook!

The recipes are, as usual, fantastic; I struggled knowing what foods to combine for Tricky and just shoved everything in and hoped for the best, so actually having a guide is great. Plus there is a recipe for homemade rusks! Commercial rusks are so expensive when you've got a teething baby gnawing through them at lightening speed.

If you'd like to get your own copy it's only $5! What a bargain. You can click on the picture below* and you'll get taken to the sales page on her blog.





I've been a silent lurker on Frills in the Hills for a while now, never leaving comments, because I was too busy cleaning the drool off my keyboard. Until it came down to the best ever pot roast that I made for Map Guy on our anniversary; it was so good I uploaded pictures of it to Twitter and Facebook.


Now I'm turning in to a complete foodie and it's really spurring me on to cook more meals from scratch!

So go grab yourself a $5 eBook and get cookin'!

*Affiliate link

Losing My Crunch

This time tomorrow I will be on a plane to Sydney and whilst Tricky is a seasoned car-traveler, with multiple trips to Albany under his size 0 belt (yeah, he's such a Hollywood starlet, obsessing about being a size 0), this will be his first time on an aircraft. To keep the suitcases to a number that doesn't require porters I've made some sacrifices - I'm leaving my Crunch at home.

I'm taking the cheats way out by using disposable nappies for the weekend. My inner 'Crunchy Mama' is getting twitchy that I will be contributing so much non-biodegradable waste to the planet just so that I don't have to spend my nights washing nappies and hoping they'll dry in the cool air of a climate controlled hotel room.The fact that I could spend that time doing something else, like having a cocktail with some Bloggy Galpals may also have influenced this decision.

And if that’s not bad enough I’m also having a major mother-guilt moment in regards to the Trickster’s meals. I normally cook all of Tricky’s meals and I can count the number of times he’s had commercial baby food on two hands.

Drug-free birth, breastfeeding, baby wearing, co-sleeping, home cooked baby food and cloth nappies. I’m a homebirth and a daisy chain away from being declared a freakin’ hippy like the gorgeous Sarah at Dear Baby G!*

I don’t know why I have such a problem with it (can somebody say 'Control Issues'?). It’s not gonna kill him to eat commercial baby food (he actually eats adult food now just cut up small but that’s beside the point). Babies all over the world thrive on the stuff!

He’ll need three massive meals a day and because I’d like to delay his introduction to Maccas a little longer I’m worried the only thing I’ll be able to get him is a sandwich which will no doubt cost me $16.50 because it has fancy organic lettuce. My teeny budget won’t stretch that far so I’m seriously contemplating ferreting away extra food from the breakfast buffet Kath & Kim style.

Don’t judge me, people, but most of all, if you see me at breakfast… don’t dob on me. K?

*Sarah calls herself a 'Freakin' Hippy' so if you're thinking "Hrm, Glowless, you don't normally say nasty things" then relax, it's not nasty and she was fine with me saying it - I checked first!

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Meet Glowless at the Aussie Bloggers Conference thanks to

HealthyChart and Baby Goes Retro and Simply Colors