A Birthday Cake to Nourish Body and Soul

My edit deadline is tomorrow, so I'm taking an easy route today and giving you a recipe.

Here's the cake I baked for Curly-Locks's birthday. Apologies for the blurry quality of the pic. No apologies for how the cake looks. Curly-Locks was thrilled. Small children are not critical, remember? Plus, they pick up the effort and love you put in.

It's all good, folks. And please note the beeswax candles. This is the third time we've used this particular lot. I made the wheels by taking an organic granny smith apple, cutting thin slices, then rubbing with a cut lemon so they didn't go brown. For a train rather than a car, use more wheels. I used pitless prunes for the headlights.

Here's the recipe. My ingredients were all organic, except for the icing sugar.

PENNY'S LEMON LOAF (Penny is my sister-in-law. She always has good and easy recipes.)

1/2 cup soft butter
1 1/2 cups flour (organic wholewheat works fine)
3/4 cup sugar (the cake is not very sweet, so don't use less)
2 rounded teaspoons baking soda
3 eggs
1/2 cup milk
2- 3 teaspoons grated lemon rind.

Combine all ingredients and mix to a smooth batter.

Bake in a loaf tin (I used 2, a smaller from Ikea and a larger), 350 degrees for 55-60 minutes. (adjust if you're making the 2)

Icing:
1 cup icing sugar
2-3 tablespoons lemon juice (I used a butter icing, as this is simply a glaze).

An Answer to a Question re Nightmares

In the comments, Inge-Barbara asked if any of my suggestions had helped my grandson with his nightmares. As his dad said, 'Magic!'. So, I'm happy and grateful to report that they did.

The Magic of Silver

Gifts are still on my mind because I went to a baby shower last Saturday. Actually, it was more of a 'welcome little stranger' party, because the baby was there and no shower had previously happened. Recently I've observed that more and more mothers-to-be are saying 'no' to knowing the baby's sex before it's born. Maeve lay there, so sweetly still, so heavenly, so very precious. I know it's almost a cliche, but truly, little children come 'trailing clouds of glory', as Wordsworth so aptly said.

I happened to be sitting next to an elderly German woman, and mentioned to her how one of the best gifts Miranda had received after she was born was a silver spoon. I used this to feed her her first solids, and gave it to her when she established her own home.
"We used to put our water in a silver jug," my neighbour told me, "because we believed that was healthy."

This made total sense to me. After all silver (argentum) is used as a remedy in homeopathic medicine. Silver is connected with the moon forces, and we know that we're affected by the moon in its waxing and waning, approaching and retreating. As we are to all planets, in fact.

Matthew was given a small silver cup. When I find it I'll take a photo because the shape is ideal for giving baby those first sips out of a cup, and manageable for a toddler to hold on his or her own.

How much more wonderful than plastic. And still unbreakable!

On another note, one of my blog readers remarked that I have a lot to say. Indeed! Almost every post leads me in at least two more directions! So I'll pick up some threads as I go along. In the meantime, I'm still on deadline and have to delay a longer post that's on my mind. Also, the family's move to a new home is completed. I want to share with you the wonderful thing Cheryl did to help the boys with the transition. So I'll ask her to tell me again, make some notes and then put them up.

Till next time, love and light to you all.

Birthday gifts that nourish the soul.

Tomorrow is the Blue-eyed boy's birthday, so I'm a little pressed for time. i.e. this'll be short. Really. And I guess this post applies more to older children rather than the under threes.

In any case, I'll be baking him a train cake. That will be a lemon loaf (yes, I have some organic lemons), made out of wholewheat flour and other healthy ingredients. Icing will have to be a given. But to cut down on the sugar overload, I'll make wheels out of orange slices, and use blueberries for other necessary knobs and such. Any suggestions for the chimney?

What to get him for a present was a problem, but I found something good in the floral department of our local store. It's a kind of gardening purse with outside pockets containing a small trowel, a fork and a hoe. Inside is a packet of pumpkin seeds, but I don't think that will work. So I'll replace that with sunflower seeds. One of our New Zealand grandsons received a packet as a party gift, and he was thrilled to watch the sunflowers grow and get taller than he.

For boys, in the past, I've bought such items as a small flashlight, and a measuring tape. Girls often love stationery. In general, my advice to you is to think outside the toy store.

Asta la vista!

A Picture and a Poem

We have the family staying with us. One more night and they'll be in their new home. I thought I'd share this picture with you. It was given to the boys' dad by his godfather, who carved the beautiful frame, and it normally sits in the Blue-eyed boy's room. The original painting of this angel can be found in the National Gallery in London. Go see it if you get the chance.                                       

                                                               

When Curly-Locks was a little more than two years old, Miranda send me a notebook from Florence, Italy, with a cover that showed the 'Birth of Venus' by Botticelli. That's the one where the woman rises from the ocean, standing on a shell. Curly-Locks would pick it up, hold it between his dimpled fingers, and gaze intensely at the image. He still loves to do this.

In the last post I mentioned energies. Objects and images can give off energies, vibrations, call them what you will. Whether you believe this or not, wouldn't you say this is a gentler, more beautiful image for a child to absorb than the bright cartoons so ubiquitous in childrens' surroundings today?

This poem I wrote is called 'A Baby's Plea'

Spread wide your Madonna veil
Enfold me.
Protect me from the unnatural,
the piercing, startling sounds of
electronics and machines;
the cold, unfriendly feel
of polyesters and nylons.

 Provide me rather with the truth
of cotton, silk or wool.
Let me hear real, gentle voices
And see shimmering, rainbow colours

To remind me of that
heavenly bridge so I don't
too soon fall
and forget
my heavenly heritage,
the gifts bestowed and brought
by me to earth.

For my eyes and ears are unaccustomed,
my senses open wide to you
and the world.
So I have no defences
only my trust
in you
to defend me.

What forms and influences us?

Our environment, surely. So that means, the physical environment, the soul and the spiritual.

Today it's the physical environment that's on my mind, because it's moving day for the Blue-eyed Boy and Curly-Locks. Not many people are fortunate enough to grow up surrounded by one set of familiar four walls. As a side note, I was once told by a wonderfully insightful woman who works in personal development that she'd noticed a difference in the soul configurations of people who had grown up in larger versus smaller homes. Nothing positive or negative, simply different.

Transition times are always difficult. Small children generally do not do well with change. You don't want them to see or experience their home being dismantled because they might feel as if they're being pulled apart. What, I wondered, would be the best way to handle a house move for the little ones?

Soon after I began school, my parents bought a house fairly nearby so I could be in walking/biking distance. This meant, of course, that I was older and so could cope quite well with the breaking up of our old home and settling into the new. But my mom did a good thing, I think. She took me to school that morning (two bus rides were involved! In Johannesburg at that time there were no such things as school busses), and after school I went straight back to the new house. My room was already set up, with all my dolls, books and other treasures around me.

This made me feel fine. She was a wise and good woman, my mother.

Of course, a period of adjustment was still necessary. Every place has its own particular geophysical conditions which affect us in various ways. For the first seven years in particular, the energies in our environment form and influence us. Even today, when I pay a brief visit to Johannesburg, I feel as if I breathe in a different way. I feel strengthened and affirmed.

Overnight gleanings and a link for you.

The Blue-eyed boy and Curly-Locks spent the night last night. A couple of things came up for me. Both of them have to do with making children's experience of growing up a good one. This is another of the greater aims for this blog, as it is in my book 'Magical Motherhood'.

The boys arrived in their pjs, and I didn't have any clothes to dress them in. With this in mind, I wanted Curly-Locks to put on a bib when he ate his oatmeal so that he didn't drip on his top. He had the bib on for about ten seconds, then he reached back and pulled it off. He's done this before, but I never thought much about why he disliked wearing a bib. This a.m. the penny dropped. The velcro fastening was irritating the back of his neck. You know how itchy a stiff label can make you feel? That's what it was.

Cheryl arrived early for a chat and to take them home. She mentioned how Curly-Locks always sleeps sideways in his bed. Now, I'd checked on him a couple of times, but he was in the normal position. However, when he woke early and came to join me in mine, he scooted around to lie sideways. Again I wondered why. Then I realized the beds in our guest room are oriented north to south, whilst mine is east-west. And I remembered my dad saying north south was the way to go. Now, my father was anything but a flake. Not only that, he'd learned to sleep well in the roughest of conditions because he was 'up north' in the Second World War. That meant, a lot of the time, he was camped in the desert.

So here's the link I found when I googled. Scroll down and ignore most of the stuff about cows and sheep until you get to an anonymous post that begins 'The Hindu sages...' Interesting too is the earlier comment that REM sleep is increased with a n/s orientation.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread385292/pg1

Maybe I'll move our bed. The good thing is, my computer sits east/west.