One week ago, the House of Fraser launched a wonderful Christmas competition for children, to celebrate the launch of a toys’ section on their website. Emma was invited, alongside other lucky mummy bloggers’ children, to come up with an ending to Fraser Bear’s dilemma: explaining to Baby Bear, in very simple terms, what snow is. We chatted a lot about snow this week, Emma and I, and since the competition gave us the option to either draw the ending or use no more that 200 words for our explanation, we came up with an idea that might solve successfully Fraser Bear’s dilemma. After much consideration, Emma decided that the best way for Fraser Bear to explain the concept of snow to Baby Bear would be to find as many images of white sugar used in winter culinary creations. Emma thought that for someone who had never seen snow before, comparing it to powder sugar, “only cold”, would be the easiest way to make Baby Bear understand the concept. Here is our collage “picture”: In words, …

Your world has just come undone… You are numb and shocked and drained and running on adrenaline, all at the same time. This is not a “judge from afar, express an opinion, pray into it, believe over it” sort of situation anymore. This is THE real thing. This is your son heading down a path you’d rather take yourselves, a million times over, than allow him to walk it. If only you had the choice, that is… You are standing by his side, feeling helpless and useless and small. I know how it feels. I so do… And I do feel sorry for you both as on top of your personal anguish you will have to face the public opinion. There are thousands of pairs of eyes fixed on you now. I wish I could say to you that what is behind them is all compassion and love and support. But I would lie to you. Some of them will but some of them won’t. Some of them will judge you by the outcome of …

Bidvest 3663, “the leading food service wholesale distributor”, as their website introduces them, has launches last week a very interesting challenge for a food lover and blogger like me: the best bacon butty! I eagerly and enthusiastically subscribed to the challenge as, I must confess, I am a sucker for bacon, must have a lot to do with being raised in Romania and all those cold winter months and hearty food my mum used to cook for us! But I decided to take the humble(yet yum!) bacon butty and lift it to the professional and dignified level of a healthy light lunch! Here is what I used as ingredients: lean bacon medallions crispy lettuce basil infused olive oil (two tablespoons, for flavour, mainly) two organic eggs cranberry sauce Honey and slept skinny(100 calories only per portion) Assembling my healthy bacon butty was easy and fun: I scrambled the egg, fried two bacon medallions and slightly toasted my skinny. I spread a thin layer of cranberry sauce on the top part of my skinny and used …

The weekend that has been. We spent Sunday in Newcastle, going for a walk and taking in the autumnal beauty. The crisp air. The togetherness. The colours. The rawness. Emma loves being outside. She loves seeing us together, although she would act disgusted if we try to be too close to each other with Alex :-). She loves the sense of normality that we had lost during the months of Georgie’s hospitalisation. We love Newcastle because that is where we went the weekend after we put Georgie to rest. It is a special place to us, bitter sweet, like most memories we have now. We are sort of getting back into a family routine. But he is missing, of course he is. He will always be missing and all we can do is keep him with us in our conversations and in our hearts.

I get this question ten times a day at least and I answer politely with: “I’m ok.” Because I can’t pour my heart out time and time and time again and say to you: 1. I am frustrated My frustration overspills into my conversations and my interactions. To the point of ranting in Primark over toddler pants and leaving people perplexed at how vexed I can be over a pair of  pants missing from the pack. I am frustrated with our loss, in practical terms, not only emotionally. God knows how much energy, drive and determination it took to convince Alex to have another baby. And then He goes and takes this baby away. Just like that. As if to say, your efforts meant nothing. Go ahead, have another go. Start all over again. Bang your head against the wall of fear and insecurity and financial pressure, of marital discord. Put your body through another nine months of prenatal depression, puffed up everythings, weight gain, moods, tiredness. Just go ahead. I may or may not …