My 2 year old Tilly doesn't wear many dresses. She's a big old tomboy, however you cut it. 

She likes jeans and Henry's old trousers (that don't get in her way when she's climbing walls) and plain long sleeved t-shirts, her favourite being covered in paint. Permanent paint.

But Gran was coming to visit today so I convinced Tilly to put on a dress that Gran bought for her months ago to see if it fitted yet. It did. And, miraculously, the dress was still on at 6pm tonight; and paint, dirt and texta-free. Largely.

The sunshine in Henry's day was in the form of several jigsaws.

If you know Henry, you know he's a bit of a freaky wiz at jigsaws. He can turn them over and do them upside down. 

Anyway, we had a hiatus that worried me – he used to do jigsaws for  over an hour a day then just stopped one day. He has some odd behaviours so we kind of assumed he'd get back into them when he was ready. The babysitter dragged out some of his "easy" ones this week when I was at work and now he's totally back into them. All's right with the world.

Speaking of all right, check out this FAB soup recipe!!

Lets call it Ham Hock and Vegetable Soup

Adapted from a minestrone recipe I found in this month's Real Living magazine, here's what was in it and I KNOW I always say this but this was YUMMY. And the kids ate it, no arguments. Well maybe a small one. But that involved the debate about "dessert" (which we never have) and the lemon and poppyseed cupcakes they spied on the bench. You'll see those tomorrow!

Back to the soup.

Ingredients:

Stock: Put 1 x ham hock (about 500g) into a big saucepan with a couple of roughly chopped carrots, fresh herbs, chopped celery and an onion. Cover with water and boil for about 2 hours. It'll make your house smell amazing. Sieve off the stock and put aside, chop the meat off the hock.

Soup: 

Stock per above – I made about a litre I think

1 onion

2 zucchini

2 carrots

2 sticks celery

3 potatos, peeled and cubed

1 400g tin diced tomatos

1 400g tin cannelloni beans

2 cups pasta

Chopped ham hock

Cook the chopped onion in a little olive oil. Add zucchini, carrots, celery, potatos and cook for a couple of minutes. Pour over the stock, add tomatos and bring to boil. Simmer for about 15 mins. Then add beans, pasta and ham. Simmer for another 10 mins or until the pasta is cooked. 

You could just taste the nutrition rushing into you with this soup. 

Try it on your kids!

xxx