Buddhism and Desire

Years ago I was given a book as a gift, 1000 Quotes of Buddhist Wisdom. It was one of those things that was nice to receive but never really appreciated, sitting on my bookshelf unread amongst travel guides and books on the art of illustration.

Recently I cleaned out my bookshelves and had a HUGE purge, sick of books I've read once and am never going to read again collecting dust when they could be appreciated by others. So I came across this book and, given that I'd had a stressful morning, decided to flick through in the hope of finding something inspiring, which I did. A few things actually.

And so it happened that I now go to this book every now and then, generally when I'm on the verge of a breakdown because it's 11am and I'm still in my pyjamas and I've had no personal space for 48 hours, to find something to calm me. Perspective, I believe it's called.

Something that other more spiritual folk than I may know is that a huge element of Buddhism is the elimination of desire, which is essentially viewed as the root of all unhappiness. Which makes sense, of course - if we want for nothing, we are truly at peace and happy. Which got me thinking about how materialistic I am, and how much I desire. The current list includes:

- Three separate pairs of black boots
- A new lounge and dining table
- To shop the 30% sale on an amazing Swedish kids website
- Some Country Road picture frames
- Anything that pops up in my inbox on sale, which is a lot at this time of year

The dining table in particular has been an item of obsession. I saw it months ago and gradually convinced J that we needed it, even plotting what I could sell to afford it and almost daily going online to fawn over it. I've actually laid in bed visualising our dining area with it and a large artwork I'm having framed, just feeling excited. Which is really sad and depressing now that I write it down.

Because will the acquisition of said dining table actually make me happy? No. It will be really satisfying and make life easier. But it won't make me happy. I will just want something else, because that is who I am and the world I live in.

SO, I am taking time off from desire! Every time I covet something, I am going to remind myself of what I have. Every time I envy another person, I am going to remind myself that having what they have will not increase my own happiness. And only appreciating and savouring what I do have will.

NAMASTE!

p.s. I'm still buying the dining table.

Z x

Walter

Well, it has been ages, but I've been busy with this little guy!

Baby Walter at 3 days old

Today, at nine weeks old

Little Walter, or W as he shall be known here, came into our lives on 19th March and has brought us nothing but joy. We feel very lucky.

Life with two kids has its moments but is generally amazing! Hopefully as life continues to get less hectic, blogging will become more regular.

Z xx

Two And A Half Years

My big girl hit the two-and-a-half milestone this week, and she is just the best.

This is my favourite age so far, by far. Having a little person around to tell me all about how the world works, in her extremely educated opinion, and kiss my ouchies better and laugh at my lamest gags is pretty special. And I am trying to savour every moment as both she and I eagerly await the arrival of a new little person who is expected any minute and who will no doubt turn our lives upside down.

Looking back to even six months ago, it is hard to believe how much she has grown, changed and developed. And yet remained the same funny, headstrong, bold little person she will probably always be. I'm acutely and somewhat sadly aware that in another six months I will look back to now and be equally shocked at how much has changed. H will be a fully fledged three year old, and there will be another tiny person with whom I'm as intimately acquainted and deeply in love as her. Hard to believe.

So, here is my reminder of now - of how lovely it was to know my girl at 2.5, to spend every day with her, to enjoy so much time with just the two of us. To laugh and giggle every day, to spend at least half our time pretending to be mermaids or princesses. To high five after a successful trip to the toilet. To clean up innumerable accidents. Even to fight every single morning about getting dressed.

Times are about to change and we are going to love it. But here's to now.

Z x

Sugar Free Lactation Cookies from Sugar Free Kids

Ah, I am so exhausted today! I didn't have to work so decided to take a me day and do pretty much nothing, aside from a few errands. I was having a lie down and *almost* asleep earlier when my phone rang - my physio checking if I was coming to Pilates. Nope, not coming. Not sleeping either.

Oh well, at least I have managed to achieve a few things, one of them being trying out a recipe from Sugar Free Kids. Sugar Free Kids is the brain child of Sha, a Melbourne Mum and insulin dependent diabetic who has long seen the benefits of leading a sugar free lifestyle. If only I were as motivated and talented in the kitchen as her, perhaps I would adopt the same approach! Nevertheless, her recipes are AMAZING and great for those weeks when I'm organised enough to prepare snacks instead of pre-buying.

This recipe for lactation cookies is a little fiddly but well worth it. They taste amazing and make a HUGE batch, which I've frozen in preparation for upcoming breastfeeding. Sha recommends eating at least three cookies per day to assist breast milk production, and quite a few of the comments on her blog suggest the cookies work. I'll be sure to let you know my own experience - although my lactation consultant has already stocked me up on Fenugreek tablets and Motilium, the lactation cookies will be packed in my hospital bag and the first thing I try to get the milk flowing naturally.

Here is a copy of the recipe if you don't have time to visit the site:

Ingredients:

Sunflower seeds - 1/2 cup or nuts if you prefer (not Walnuts, they do not help milk supply)

Oats - 2 cups (Organic is best, you can also buy GF oats if required)

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Butter - 1/4 cup or use 1/2 cup coconut oil in total

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Coconut Oil - 1/4 cup or use 1/2 cup butter in total

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Natvia - 1/2 cup or sweetener of choice

Blackstrap Molasses - Optional 2 Tablespoons - Spiral Foods brand is only 10% natural sugar, avoid most other brands - the taste is strong, don't overdo it

Rice Syrup - 3 heaped Tablespoons or sweetener of choice

Eggs - 2 XL eggs or 2 heaped Tablespoons of Chia seed left in 4 Tablespoons of water for 10 minutes to form a gel substitute for eggs

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Vanilla Extract - 1 - 2 Tablespoon

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Tahini - 1/4 cup - Unhulled or black tahini are most nutrient or use nut butter

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Cinnamon - 2 teaspoons

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Salt - 1/4 teaspoon - Himalayian has most minerals

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Baking Soda - 1 heaped teaspoon - must be Sifted

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Brewer's Yeast - 2 - 3 Tablespoons - do not replace with other yeast, very different, you can replace with more flax meal. Available at health food stores - it has a very strong taste so you can reduce the amount but this ingredient is important to help increase the supply

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Flax seed meal (Ground Linseeds) - 1 cup - available at health food stores or health section of supermarket

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Cooked Quinoa - 1 and 1/4 cups - use a heaped 1/3 cup dry quinoa and 1/2 cup boling water with lid on for 15 minutes then rest for 10 minutes with lid still on then fluff with fork and leave to cool

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Dried Figs - 3/4 cup (you can use apricot too) chopped small - the soft juicy ones are best, avoid preservative 220

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Almond Flakes - 3/4 cup to decorate or coconut or sesame seeds if nut free

Instructions:

• 1) Precook your quinoa

• 2) Soak your chopped dried fruit

• 3) Preheat oven to 180C

• 4) Line 3 baking trays with grease proof paper (if you only have 1 or 2, no problem to do batches)

• 5) Put the Sunflower seeds (or nuts) in processor and blitz on high until desired consistency (I like a flour like texture, but you can have more chunky)

• 6) Add the rolled oats and process further til desired texture for both. Set the sunflower and oat meal aside

• 7) Add butter and / or coconut oil (1/2 cup in total), molasses, natvia and rice syrup to processor and process on medium until the sweeteners have dissolved into the butters, you will need to scrape the sides back down a few times

• 8) Add eggs (or chia gel) one at a time process to incorporate

• 9) Add vanilla, tahini (or nut butter), cinnamon, salt, baking soda, brewer's yeast, flax meal, cooked quinoa and process on medium high to combine well, scraping down sides if needed

• 10) Add chopped fig or apricot and combine

• 11) Leave the processor running on a slow speed and very slowly pour in the oat and sunflower meal until you have a doughy dense batter

• 12) Have a bowl of water ready to keep your hands wet when making the balls, the dough is too sticky and you'll need wet hands

• 13) Make small balls, about 2cm diameter and flatten them onto your trays. Press on some Almond flakes or sesame seeds or coconut

• 14) Place in oven for 15 - 20 minutes until golden brown

• The cookies will rise slightly and come out chewy, for crunchier make them smaller and bake longer

• Repeat if you only have one tray (it takes about 10 minutes to prepare a tray of balls so you can bake while making the next batch)

• Leave to cool on a wire rack. Store in air tight container

• Being such a big batch, it is perfect to share with your mother's group or freeze some for later

Mine turned out a little weird looking due to my lack of patience rolling into balls, so I haven't bothered with pictures! They still taste great and all the ingredients are there. Hopefully yours will look more like Sha's...

Z x

Toddler Nap Time

One of the downfalls of having a consistently amazing night sleeper is that H has always been a reluctant daytime napper. Not terrible, as she usually always goes to sleep and sleeps well, but it can often be a fight, and she always dropped naps too early (the third nap at four months and the second nap at eleven months) which means we've had our fair share of difficult dinner and bath times.

Recently, H has started refusing to go down for her daytime nap, but only on certain days - namely, the days she is home with me! Luckily she does get around 12 hours of sleep at night so she isn't too difficult on these days, but there are a number of reasons I feel she still really needs her nap:

- She is clearly tired, rubbing her eyes and yawning some days as early as 11am.
- She will fall asleep if we get in the car after 3pm and she hasn't napped.
- On the occasions she does sleep, she can sleep for up to three hours if unwoken, and;
- She is not yet (quite) 2.5, which according to all research I've done is still much too young to give up a nap completely.

I've been going out of my mind a little trying to get her to nap. On Friday I was certain she would drift off in the car after a big morning at the zoo, but no, she was wide awake and asking for a movie the second we got home!

Today, I decided vigilance was the only answer. H woke up today with a runny nose and has been yawning all morning so I was confident tiredness wasn't an issue. She dirtied her nappy right before bed and had eaten a big lunch so everything was as it should be. We read stories and I used a trick they taught me at daycare - telling her if she wasn't asleep when I came back I would take her bunny away! Mean I know!

Anyway, twenty minutes later she was still calling out to me and I decided I'd had enough. I went into her room and took bunny, but then when she lay down I stroked her forehead and "shushed" for a minute just as I used to do when she was a baby. Immediately her eyelids started drooping. Aha! She was tired! So I went with it and within five minutes she was sound asleep.

So, clearly, I have forgotten in the space of a couple of years that sometimes all it takes is a little bit of comforting for a child to fall asleep. Maybe, just maybe, that is all she needed to get back in the rhythm of napping at home. More likely she will expect me to stroke and shush her every DAY but hey, I would rather that than no napping - at least until baby arrives in four weeks. Then we could have problems...

Interestingly, when I was madly researching toddler napping most sources maintained children need to nap until they are at least FOUR, at which point they can transition to quiet time in their rooms. Both J and I can remember having quiet time until into our tweens, which I think is a great idea for children and parents!

I also stumbled upon a good sleep site, The Sleep Lady - she essentially tries to sign you up to her website to access her "sleep solutions" which I guess isn't much different to purchasing a book (as I've mentioned before, I followed Tizzie Hall's routines and intend on doing so again) but her blog has some really useful tips! For example I read that for newborns the morning nap doesn't properly establish until 12 weeks and the afternoon nap and early waking are the last things to fall into place, which is information that could have saved me tens of hours unsuccessfully resettling an 8-week-old H.

Now, I'm off to do absolutely nothing while my child SLEEPS!

Z x

Managing Pregnancy Pelvic Pain

When I was pregnant with H I suffered from debilitating pelvic pain from about 18 or 19 weeks. It was more painful than you'd imagine if you hadn't experienced it, but the help of a good physio and great pilates got me through to the end.

This time around, I really wanted to avoid what happened the first time and enrolled in pilates with a physio fairly early in the pregnancy. I've had the odd niggle in my pelvis but most of my pain has been in my upper back this time around, until this week.

On Sunday I went for a long walk and could feel that things were sensitive when I got home. I bent to take off my sock and, ping, something went on me in the glute/pelvis area. I've suffered with it all week until last night, true disaster struck. All it took was sitting on the lounge the wrong way, and it felt like something collapsed in my pelvis. It was so painful I cried out and then started sobbing when I couldn't move out of the one position, which had J running in thinking I was in labour! I had to see a physio, stat.

So, I saw a physio today (not my usual as I couldn't get in) and feel amazing and was inspired to write my top tips for managing pregnancy pelvic pain, just in case anyone else is struggling and wants some immediate advice.

Anyway, in my experience:

1) Physio, physio, physio. Not chiro. Physio! Find a great women's health physio and book in ASAP - they are amazing. Every physio I've ever met is really passionate about what they do and practices what they preach. Most physios will evaluate the problem and do some kind of work on the area (crazy painful but amazing massages) and put a treatment plan in place.

2) Start being really aware of putting weight on one particular leg. Sit down to put jeans on, sit down to shave your legs. Long walks and strokes like breaststroke can put unnecessary pressure on your pelvis. 

3) Pregnancy pilates. If possible, do this in a class run by a physio, or even one on one with a physio, who can tailor exercises specifically to your condition. As always, prevention is the best cure - I would recommend that any newly pregnant woman enroll in some kind of pregnancy specific exercise class, but am pretty biased towards pilates because it's really helped me both times.

4) Invest in a pelvic support belt. I found this provided me with so much added support and, in turn, comfort. If possible, borrow one from a friend and take it along to your physio. Physios do say not to use one prior to assessment as you may not need one, but I think if you try walking with and without the belt and can feel a noticeable difference, you probably should be wearing one and can get some instant relief.

5) Use this as an excuse to relax! It may be your last chance for some time. I am enjoying some guilt free time on the couch, right now.

Pretty simple advice but I'm sure it could be helpful to someone. Trust me, if you've got full on pelvic pain I completely understand what you are going through and it's not pleasant. I've given birth so I have an excellent reference for pain and hey, pelvic pain is up there!

Z x

Healthy-er Raspberry White Choc Muffins

I rarely share recipes because I am so uber-critical of my own cooking but I am always on the lookout for anything remotely healthy that tastes good and my two year old will eat. Such recipes are incredibly rare (seriously, help me out - ideally with hidden veg!).

Despite it being 28+ degrees today and about 100 degrees in my west-facing kitchen, I was craving muffins. What can I say, I'm 34 weeks pregnant. I also had oodles of white chocolate in the cupboard after J bought me three kinds last time I made a cheesecake, terrified of getting the wrong sort. So I knew I wanted to make muffins that included white chocolate.

My mind immediately jumped to my favourite Donna Hay Raspberry and White Choc muffins, but I didn't want to make something quite so sweet. I'd like to be able to share them with H without feeling like a call from DOCS is imminent.

So, I fiddled around with the recipe a little and they turned out GREAT! They are seriously so delicious, I would never make them the traditional way again.

Healthier Raspberry & White Choc Muffins

2 cups wholemeal flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup coconut sugar*
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon lemon rind
1/3 cup oil
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup chopped white chocolate
1 1/2 cups frozen raspberries**

* Coconut sugar is available from most health food stores and contains mostly low GI sucrose as opposed to high GI fructose.
** I didn't have enough raspberries so used a raspberry/blueberry combo - you could use any berries.

Method:

1) Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
2) Mix dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder) into a large bowl. Whisk wet ingredients into a separate bowl.
3) Add wet ingredients to dry and mix until just combined.
4) Add white chocolate and berries and spoon mixture into prepared muffin tin lined with baking paper or muffin cases.
5) Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Icing sugar purely decorative and diminishes health benefits!

Yum

The lemon rind and sour cream give these muffins a nice tart flavour to counteract any sweetness while keeping them nice and moist. Funnily enough H picked the white chocolate out so they were even healthier for her! I am thinking of trying a non-dairy version of this where I use coconut flour instead of wholemeal, coconut milk instead of sour cream and dessicated coconut instead of chocolate. Can't wait to see how they turn out!

Z x