Ginger cake

After the birthday and halloween shenanigans Emm came down with a temperature last night, which got up to 39.3 today, she's not herself at all! I've been up since five, as I drove my sister and her husband to the airport this morning. I thought I'd have a nap while Emm has hers but because she's been poorly she had a sleep this morning, which was too early for a lie down for myself. I did make a ginger cake though, which turned out more like a gingery treacle cake, but very nice none the less.

I also made two lasagne, and froze two one-pound-bags of bolognese (We cooked a big batch yesterday, I'd say we had a little more than 4 portions of it last night, gave 4 to P's mum to bring home (they couldn't stay for dinner), have now 4 in the freezer and the two lasagne probably count as 2 portions each, too. 16 generous portions, I like when the work that goes into cooking yields a substantial amount!)

I must get my hands on some rye flour and try this http://mydutchbakingblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/ontbijtkoek-dutch-spice-bread.html, I'm suspecting it might be as close as I'll get to the kandiskuchen i've been craving lately.

In a week and a half we have the next eye appointment, hopefully they'll have good news for us then, as in, they might have found a cause that is not linked to any further degeneration of her eyesight! We couldn't find any further information on babies being born with 2 identical looking retinal folds through the makula (of course not having any official medical terms to search for doesn't help) but I got a reply from the parent I contacted in Germany. He was surprised to hear about another case, they got their daughter's eyes tested about a year ago, and their specialist said he didn't know of another case like it in all of Germany (population of over 80 million!) but then their specialist mightn't have access to all the data... They were never given a cause for the findings, just that it most likely happened before birth.

I'm officially in the 3rd trimester now and feel very big, I have another appointment on the 5th I should get my iron results then. I do feel quite tired, but I think it's probably down to not sleeping. I'm just lying awake all night, either worrying about Emm or the baby, or having nightmares or other strange dreams with convoluted plots and no conclusions...

By the way, do you ever feel like you should be able to function on four hours of sleep a night, like some highly efficient people seem to do? I was very happy and sad to read that there's a gene mutation responsible for the ability to survive on so little sleep, nothing to do with the rest of us being lazy bast*&%s! In fact, I also read this article suggesting it might be bad for us to sleep less than 7 and a half hours per night! Now, there goes my hope that once I get over my lazy sleeping habits of at least 6 hours per night I will finally have that clean tidy house with lots of home cooked healthy food on the table, while also having time to play with my daughter, keep up with current affairs, read literature, knit, sew, help others or charities more, and keep up with fashion and some kind of beauty regime, in addition to earning extra money to afford said beauty regime and fashionable clothes... did i mention regular exercise? and socialising? and blogging? and yoga and writing and photography? ...or that there's a baby on the way....

I had 5 hours of sleep last night and can't you tell, rambling... I better get the little one to bed now, she's done with her puzzles and looking for some attention! I wonder will I stay up until P comes home from swimming (he goes straight after work) or should I give in and go to sleep as soon as Emm does...