Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery

I borrowed this book from a friend, who is famous for her delicious cupcakes. I made the vanilla cupcakes, with vanilla icing (dyed pink, just for fun) and they really are divine! Very moist and dense, yet light sponge, and the icing went down very well with Emm, as you can see from her plate. I found it a little too sweet myself, the icing calls for milk, which I think might mean it needs more sugar. I usually do a buttercream icing with just butter, the flavour ingredient, and sugar, and I stop adding sugar when the consistency seems right. I'll have to experiment with the icing a little more, but the cake recipe went straight into my cookbook. (I have a handwritten one, where I add only recipes that really work for me, and that we like. Whenever I give a cookbook to charity or pass it on to a friend, I check it first for favourites, and copy them into my book).
The amounts of batter and icing didn't quite work for me, I had too much cake batter for 12 cupcakes, maybe my bun cases are smaller than standard cupcake cases. I only made half the icing, and it was more than enough! The leftovers were lovely spread on toast the next day...

How cool are these?

I know, this blog is all over the place, on one hand there's all the scary stuff about the children's health, on the other there's us trying to have a life that's not defined by that. So, we're getting on with trying to speed up appointments, filling in forms, reading up on the next possible complications, but also going to the beach, flying kites, playing hide and seek with Emm, cooing at Ti, P going swimming, me signing up for the mini marathon in June and starting to go out for run-walks (a minute of running and then walking until I have my breath back!). I'd love to find a yoga class that fits into our schedule.

One of the many things on today's to do list was to buy stamps, and I discovered these!

http://www.irishstamps.ie/shop/p-968-stamp-set.aspx

Orla Kiely stamps!! How cool are these! Definitely cheering me up.

more health worries

Ti and I spent a week in the childrens' hospital, our GP sent us straight to A&E when I brought him in because of strange flickering eye movements. A&E was hell, it really is a flawed system, where a baby with suspected seizures is sent to A&E instead of straight to the neurology department, to spend 6 hours on a ward with puking and coughing children. A&E was so full that some parents had to stand, balancing their children on their hip while a doctor would examine them! In the evening we were admitted to a ward, where we had a cubicle, as Ti hasn't had his immunisations yet. Having a room was quite lucky, as the ward turned out to have two children with Rota virus (stomach bug that can lead to serious dehydration in babies) and was closed to new admissions the next day, and worse still, was turned into 'the Rota ward' another few days later, having all the other sick babies from throughout the hospital transferred there.

A week of tests revealed that the doctors don't have a clue what's causing his eye movements, but thankfully some of the really scary possibilities like tumors and epilepsy, have been ruled out. On the downside, another eye exam during the investigations showed changes on his eyes, so he has been diagnosed with the same eye disease Emm has. It's been called quite early though, and he was lasered one week later, this monday, which hopefully will improve his chances of keeping his sight. There hasn't been any damage yet, but exudation, which means the disease is active, in one eye. We're lucky it was caught now, i don't know how much damage could have been done to his eye(s) by mid May, which was when they would have otherwise looked at him again.

After the laser operation (Emm had another EUA and FA on the same day) we talked to the neurologist again, and he still couldn't tell us anything about Ti's condition, only that the symptoms don't match anything, really, and they don't know what to look for next. They did mention that it's similar to Opsoclonus, which is often associated with Neuroblastoma, but his tests for that came back negative. Although as different tests were ordered by different doctors, I'm not sure any more whether they said the Neuroblastoma test came back negative, or the tests ordered by the Neurologist came back negative.

We're now to get another appointment for in two months time, unless there is any change to the worse in him. They think he might just outgrow it. He seems to not be bothered by the eye flickering, so I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

We got out of hospital just in time for his christening, we were home a mere 3 hours before the guests from Germany arrived on the Friday evening, but P had done great work during the week and with a bit of help on Saturday morning we had a great feast prepared for the guests at lunchtime. Here a little picture of the buffet:

my mum baked bread and brought it over, as well as some cured westphalian ham, there's a greek and a green salad the godmother brought, eggs from P's mum's hens, pasta salads and a fritatta from P, and lots more. We also had delicious cakes my neighbour made but I didn't get to take a picture of those. 

The tulips in the top right corner of the table didn't quite open up on the day, but half a week later they looked like this!