The day The Queen visited town.

The first we knew of the impending visit was all of the barricades arriving in our town.

The night before

On the morning we decided to go shopping for a pumpkin and the town was empty other than the barricades. Just as The Queen was due to arrive I snuck out to take a couple of pictures.

Minutes before The Queen's arrival.

We then had a nice lunch before waiting for The Queen to pass metres from our home. 

Nate looking on at The Queen's car

It was a rather exciting day for Nate, he quite enjoyed saying hello to all of the policemen and the police motorbikes.

Speedo's Underwater World Event

Nate's dad has complained saying he doesn't get mentioned in my blog very often, if at all, so with this post I'll be mentioning him.

We were invited to the Speedo's underwater world event on Tuesday, there was a swimming lesson to begin with and then a free swim. The swimming lesson was very different to the swimming lessons we are used to and contained a few new ideas for us to try while swimming with Nate on our own. However, there were huge floats in the pool so Nate wasn't that interested in swimming he wanted to sit on an Orca. So when it was time for the free swim, I had to find one of the inflatables for him to play with.

Nate meeting the Sea Squad (he was terrified of them really)

In the pool as well as there being inflatables there were also other toys which were being used in the course of the lesson, the Sea Squad squirty toys were being used in Nate's lessons to get the children reaching for the toys as well as the Sea Squad Water Balls which they were encouraging the children to throw and swim for them, we really liked the Water Balls as balls to play with in the pool, so will be getting some of those for Nate's swimming sessions.

Enjoying the inflatables.

It was great to see how the bigger children were being taught in some instances it was 1 on 1 tuition and the children were doing really well with the instructors from what I could see. 

Have a look at Nate's dad's drawing that was inspired by this event. 

MomenTums Cookbook

Last week I attended an event launching a new website, my blog post on the event is here.

I have since had the chance to try a couple of the recipes myself at home.

The first one I had to try was the pancakes. We couldn't pick up the Doves Gluten Free flour used at the demonstration as they didn't stock it in the Asda we visited but it is stocked in our local health food shops. Below is a picture of all of the ingredients needed.

Not many ingredients.

I remember it being mentioned that the batter is quite thick, but my batter was very thin, so I had to add some more flour. In fact I found that I needed to measure the coconut milk and orange juice mixed to the 240ml asked for in the recipe. However, the pancakes were lovely an fruity, when paired with Sweet Freedom they didn't last long at all. 

Cooking the pancakes.

These pancakes aren't thin crepes, they are more like scotch pancakes however, I'm sure you could make them bigger than I was but they shouldn't be thin or they will crumble due to the lack of gluten. 

Silent Sunday 27/10/13

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2

This week we had the chance to watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 and it was Nate's first time at the cinema watching a feature film. It has to be said that Nate kept the 3D glasses on for all of about 5 minutes but other than that he sat still and was quiet other than a couple of questions about things on the screen.

I don't want to ruin the film for anybody as it's out this Friday. So I will say that it was very enjoyable. There was one part in the film that Nate found slightly scary and had to cuddle up to me but he has asked several times in the days after watching the film to see it again so it wasn't too scary.

We have asked Nate what his favourite part of the film was and it was the foodimals. Which you can see on trailer here.

Waiting for the film to start

The film comes out today (25th October) and is a lovely thing to see during half term, there are some resources to create your own foodimals as well to make a day of it. 

Make your own foodimal

Cows Milk Allergy Resources

Yesterday I attended the launch of online resources for cows milk allergy. These resources are aimed at parents with infants at present, the website is split into three sections: baby (0-12 months) Toddler (1-3 years) and school aged children (4-10 years). The website is MomenTums.

There are a few resources up there that are relevant for all age groups, one of the most important if you haven't got a diagnosis yet is the food diary. Keeping a food diary is very important and is normally one of the first things you're advised to do but no one suggested to me to also keep a note of moods and other symptoms exhibited. Another one of the resources explains the differences between Allergies and Intolerances.

My favourite resource is the cookbook, at the minute it is slightly hidden on the website but if you click on the read more button on the main page there is a link to a book for children with allergies. This book is worth downloading, the recipes it contains are whole family recipes. A previous book I had found contained recipes that were mainly weaning recipes or recipes for one child, I cook one meal for all of us so cook something we can all eat. There was a demonstration by Andrew Kojima (Masterchef Finalist) of some of the recipes from this book and I really enjoyed all of the recipes I tasted, I don't normally like sausages so was surprised to really enjoy the sausage casserole. The Mango Lassi requires a special mention, made with four ingredients (Oatley milk, Mango, honey (Sweet Freedom) and Cardamom seeds) it was unlike a 'normal' lassi but lovely and refreshing.

All in all, hopefully with resources like these it will make getting a diagnosis and understanding allergies slightly easier.

Raspberry Pi

A computer for under £30. That's a raspberry pi, a basic computer built to run Linux and open source Operating System (OS).

The beautiful case it's in cost £10 and the SD card containing the OS costs £5 so a computer for under £50. However all of the above are optional. You can download the OS for free and go without a case (I wouldn't) 

Next to an iPad so you can see the size

I've had this sitting on our table for over a year thinking about what I should do with it. I still haven't decided what to do with it, I'm thinking I should build a laptop/computer for Nate.