A long day

Stressful day today. Roarke left at 7am for a network marketing conference that I didn't really want him to go to (long story, won't bore you!).

This left me with all the Christmas decorations to take down (including the outside lights), dinner to cook, bread to make, rooms to tidy, computer jobs to do, yadda yadda, when I really wasn't feeling up to it.

I'm sleeping very badly - never more than 2 hrs in one go, and around 4-5 hours in total a night - and I still don't have my appetite back. Food just doesn't interest me enough to make me want to eat it! Consequently I am feeling horrendously tired all the time. And therefore quite snappy.

I've also started getting odema in my ankles and knees which is making my feet ache all day.

The good thing is, baby is very active and I have been able to feel Junior for just over a week now - even being able to feel some of the kicks from the outside, not just the inside. This baby has one hell of a kick to be that clear this early (I'm now 18 1/2 weeks).

Another success with the slow cooker today. Yesterday I'd bought a 1.5kg pork leg joint (very cheap) and today I cut the excess fat off. I then sliced a large onion and covered the bottom of the slow cooker's crock pot. Then cut the pork into large pieces to make one layer across the bottom.

Then I mixed up:

1 1/2 cups of tomato sauce,
1/2 cup brown sugar,
1/4 cup red wine vinegar,
2 tbsp gf mustard,
2 tbs gf worcestershire sauce,
1/2 tsp salt,
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 1/2 cups of coke (full sugar).

This got poured over the meat, and the whole thing cooked on Low for 6 hours. The pork then just shredded with a fork, and I then stirred it back into the sauce to serve. Huge hit with the boys and even Joshua (who hates chewing meat) loved it!

I've had a move around with our "educational" posters, putting up the times table one downstairs. I've decided to revert to rote learning for them. Love it, or hate it, it seems to work. I never learned mine that way and even to this day I can't do them in my head, I actually have to work the sum out. Roarke and my Mum both learned their tables by rote and can come back with any answer quick as a flash!

My Mum used to use her times table as a way to help her get to sleep. I remember her telling me when I was younger that she ended up doing it in French, because it had become too easy for her!

Yesterday Joshua watched through the Weatherbytes DVD from the Met Office, and then he went onto their Secondary learning section - Samuel even had a go on the primary site.