Sufficiently challenged!

It's official! I can now tick off one momentous achievement in my life (and my little cooking challenge!). I made macarons! Yep macarons! Ok so maybe I cheated... A little... They might have been the packet variety produced for Adriano Zumbo. But they were still macarons! And I made them! Jumping for joy!! And for the negative side... They were a bit of a flop. Nothing like the delightful airy soft crispy shell macarons like I've tasted before, but not a complete disaster either. They didn't rise enough, so they didn't have what's called 'feet', (that's macaron speak for those not in the know!). They were also a bit grainy looking, so either over mixed... Or under mixed... I'm not sure which! And some were a bit wonky, not the perfect circles I'd hoped for. But they still tasted pretty darn good. My hubby went back for seconds... And thirds... And fourths!  They were the salted caramel flavour ones and I sure did enjoy them, although I'm not a fan of piping bags. I somehow manage to end up with more ingredients on my hands than in the bag. I guess practise makes perfect.

I wish I could lay a claim to these ones but no.... Maybe one day!

Yesterday evening I was giving my beautiful wee boy a bath before bedtime and I happened to peer down into his mouth at the right angle. Lo and behold there was a tiny tooth sprouting up from his gums! I was dumbfounded! My weeny boy is growing up! He's been very dribbly for some time now, and certainly has his moments of irritability, but we didn't quite expect a tooth this soon. Not having had any experience with teething before, we weren't quite sure what to expect of the whole process. I do feel sad and somewhat guilty now; the times when Dylan was upset and nothing seemed to console him, we thought he was just being cranky and might not have given him an extra cuddle or tried hard enough to soothe his worries. My poor bubba!

In other developments a few days ago we decided that the time had come to remove the carrycot attachment from our pram and put the stroller seat on instead. Dylan had grown to within a couple of inches of the length of the carrycot and I could tell he wanted to be upright and looking out at the world around him. My hubby ventured up into our roof storage space and found the bits we needed. The stroller was attached quite easily and that was that! It wasn't until a day later that I got a fine afternoon with some sunshine that I could test it out and take Dylan for a walk in the stroller. He quite liked it and seemed very pleased with himself!

Bel