A little bit of help is going a long way!

Well, i did something relatively radical last week and i'm reaping the rewards! (there are a lot of r words in that sentence!)  After a lot of umming and ahhing about it I called in a cleaner. Someone to come and clean my house. It is awesome.

It took me a long time to be able to do it because I was scared of feeling like a failure.
I don't get Woz to help me with cleaning because he helps with the kids and he's good at that: he isn't good at dishes, washing, scrubbing. He is good at entertaining the kids, bathing them and getting them to bed after tea. Lately I've been falling behind with the housework. My new year's resolution, that I haven't kept, was to be a grown up and keep working after tea time, but probably for this entire pregnancy, I have struggled to keep working after the kids are fed. If you have kids you might understand: That moment when tea is served, you sit down with your family, enjoy the meal. Then Woz takes the tornado kids away from the table to wash and get ready for bed and I don't even feel like getting up from the table because I've stopped and my body is relaxed and now it just wants to go and hop into bed and process the meal.

So then I catch up with last night's dishes and unfolded washing in the morning, while doing all the other stuff with the kids running around my feet. I saw a cool poster the other day: "Doing housework when the kids are at home is like shovelling snow when it's still snowing." So true!!! Work is getting undone as i do it and there are all sorts of interruptions: a pooey nappy, someone wants a drink or food, someone needs to be kissed better and a bandaid, someone's fighting, someone broke something and it smashed everywhere, someone's having a tantrum and adding 20 minutes on to the shop run, someone needs help with the colouring.

So back to my radical action: calling the cleaner! I got to the end of my tether. The bathroom needed scrubbing and the floors were terrible and I didn't have the time OR energy. I was focusing on getting tea on the table that day - and the mountain of dishes that needed doing before I could even think about making tea. I was battling a weeklong, severe headache that's gone unexplained - but it was awful. The cleaner's name is Zoe. She came and cleaned the bathroom and the floors and dusted the whole house! She sprayed her air freshener and left. I will pay her for two sweet, cheap, valuable hours per week.

And on top of that, Bonnie's here! well, Bonnie and Simon are here. I've known bonnie since year 8. They are going to live with us for a few months and get some work here before they go travel the americas. We did a food shop today and Bon came and pushed the trolley and helped round up the kids. Just having another grown up around is so helpful. But the best thing has been halving the school dropoff/pickup time by not having to take the two little ones as well - it's gone from taking almost an hour each time, to about twenty minutes! It won't always be like that when Bon and Sim start their jobs, but I have relished both the days that it's occured for sure.

I have redeemed a whole day out of my week by hiring a cleaner for two short hours. This week food has made it to the table and clean dishes have made it back to their homes in the cupboards. I haven't felt guilty about not being able to keep up so the kids have a saner mum. There's nothing in the washing basket. The fridge is clean. It was a right decision. I can't remember making such a good one!

Cookie Blues

i have to share this because i found it absolutely hilarious.

Pixar Animations - Cookie Blues

Tuna mornay in the thermomix

Well, i've tried it a few times but tonight was the best turn out so here is an old favourite translated into thermomix style.

Ingredients;

almost a litre of long life soy milk
50g plain flour
50g butter
sprinkle nutmeg
salt to taste
60g parmesan, pulverised
425g tin of tuna, drained
400g tin of chick peas, drained
half a 440g tin of pineapple pieces, drained
about two handfuls of frozen diced vegies - use up the rest of the space left in the bowl
a good squeeze of lemon juice

Method

Add 500g milk, flour, butter, nutmeg and salt to bowl and set to 90deg, speed 4 for 7 minutes.
Add the rest of the ingredients and set to 90deg, reverse and speed 3 for 30 minutes or until everything's heated through (I always get distracted and not sure how long that bit actually takes cos i reset the timer every now and then!).

Serve with pasta, rice, toast, freeze for later use, This is a good recipe to sneak some goodness into the kids via cheese.