Something a little less serious

A catch-up post in dot points:

• Lily is completely obsessed with the Faraway Tree series. She has had it read to her (and listened to it) so many times now that she is talking in Faraway Tree language: "It was simply marvelous." "No, that's just horrid." etc... She is also making up "Saucepan's silly songs." They are quite funny.

• Lil's also been sick for over a week now. She's been up and down in that time and seems to be properly on the mend now, but it's been a long week. Poor kid.

• I am heading up to Sydney on Thursday to do a faculty presentation on my thesis and meet with my supervisors. It will be very useful, but I am sort of dreading it. I know that the list of things that I still need to do will be long and daunting...

• A lovely friend of mine gave us a pressure cooker as a present for leaving her our house to sit while we were in Mexico (they were moving to NZ and needed somewhere to be after their stuff had gone on ahead). It was ridiculously generous since it was just as beneficial to us to have people staying in our place and taking care of the garden etc. But, it has also been a revelation. I LOVE IT. I really like cooking, but it can be quite stressful to try making dinner when Lil is already hungry and is getting impatient and demanding. The pressure cooker means that everything is so quick to make and I can do other things while dinner is cooking. Win, win, win. It also makes cooking dried beans so very much easier, which means that I am resorting to far less cans.

• Lily and I finally planted our bulbs last week. I am hoping that it wasn't too late, as I love seeing the daffodils and tulips popping up in the Spring. I helped Lily to make little labels for the pots, but we didn't make them water-proof enough and they are fading already. Fortunately it will be fairly obvious what they are (if they survive).

• Winter has really arrived here in Canberra. It is cold. It has also been raining quite a lot, which is very un-Canberran. The absence of blue skies is starting to get me down a little - though, of course, the garden is very happy.

• My pregnancy is progressing well. We had a 20 week scan a little while ago and found out that we are having a boy. A new adventure! We are planning to call him Charlie. He is a very active little munchkin - especially in the early hours of the morning and whenever he can hear his big sister's voice.

• I made this banana bread with choc-chips on Saturday morning. It was truly delicious. I can highly recommend the recipe. (But, of course, you can rarely go wrong with anything from Molly).

• That's all for now, I think. I hope that you are well. I plan to get back on tops of things when Lil is back on her feet. Expect some Wintery photos and maybe even a few lunchboxes.