WIAW - Liam's Last Day Before New Job

Evening everyone! Sorry I've been absent the last few days - Liam started his new job yesterday and so has out the house for about 12 hours each day. Toby has also decided to wake up at 4.30am the last two days...suffice to say that the last few days have consisted of lots of this...

Coffee + ice + almond milk + vanilla stevia drops. Despite Toby's wishes, I don't let him have any! You wouldn't think that would need stating, but on Saturday I went shopping at Waitrose (last shop with staff discount!) and Liam left the kids at his Mum's house to come and pick me up. When we went back to get them, Liam's Mum commented "Oh, Toby keeps looking at my mug of tea, I was just about to go and make him one." Shudder. I quickly said that he still only drinks water or milk and juice when he steals Izzy's drink at the moment!!

 Anyway, mini-rant over, today is, of course, Wednesday, so it's What I Ate Wednesday time! Thanks, as always, to Jenn for organising the party :)

These photos are actually from Monday as the last couple of days I've only managed to photograph about half of what I've eaten - I need to get back into some sort of routine rather than constantly snacking! Monday though - Liam had his last shift at Waitrose on Sunday, so had Monday off before starting his new job. Once we'd dropped Izzy at school, Liam, Toby and I headed into Exeter. First stop, breakfast at Starbucks.

I still haven't managed to try the mini "Magic Bar" (some kind of coconutty thing apparently?) but that didn't feel very breakfasty, so I went with the fruit loaf, and a caramel latte. The fruit loaf was amazing! It was thick and doughy in some places, and thin and caramelised in others, with sultanas and dried cherries (from what I can remember) in it, yum!

We then did some shopping. We first took Toby to get his feet measured, but as his feet haven't grown at all over the summer, I declined the shop assistant's offer to buy a pair of £32 shoes in half a size up "just in case"! I'll take him back to be measured in a few weeks instead! We did find him a nice rain jacket though - we looked in a few places first before eventually getting one in BHS. All the other stores seemed to just have navy or black coats for boys, which seemed to grown up for our little baby (!!), the bright red one we got in the end suits him much better :)

It wasn't long before my stomach started rumbling for lunch. I really wanted to go back to the vegetarian restaurant we went to before, but as it was "Liam's day" I gave him the choice and he wasn't feeling hungry enough to cope with their huge portion sizes! We went to Wagamama instead. We shared a vegetable summer roll from the specials menu to start...

This had raw veggies and noodles inside. I'd never had a rice paper roll before - I wasn't expecting it to be gummy!! The flavours were good though, apart from the coriander - I'm really not a fan of coriander :(

For my main, I went for my favourite - yasai yaki soba...

Delicious as always - you can't go wrong with noodles, egg and veggies in my opinion, especially when someone else is cooking it for you! I love stir fries but hardly ever cook them at home - partly due to all the veg chopping that's required, but also because they never seem to taste as nice coming out of my kitchen!

Toby was really good at lunchtime - we're always a bit nervous taking him out to restaurants, but he sat really well in a highchair eating bits of our food and drinking milk.

I think having a straw to himself was a bit of a novelty - normally he just tries to steal Izzy's!

Once we got home and had picked Izzy up, I had a snack of apple and peanut butter (which Liam randomly made into a "flower"!) as...wait for it...I was planning to do exercise that evening!

Yep, for the first time in 2.5 months - since the Monday before our wedding - I went to Circuits! I actually wasn't feeling great - my stomach started killing me in the afternoon - so I nearly didn't go, but one of my Mum's friends was staying with her for a couple of days and was also planning to go to circuits, so I felt I needed to go to show her the way, as Mum was meeting us there straight from a meeting. So I went. It was a much harder set-up than the last time we went, with a few killer ab exercises which I am still feeling today! It didn't make my tummy any worse at least, so I came home and ate my planned meal - leftovers. The original meal on Sunday night looked like this...

Paneer and pea curry, quinoa and naan bread. Monday's leftovers didn't look quite so appealing though, especially with the poor late night lighting - just a big bowl of curry with a couple of unpictured slices of bread to mop up the sauce...

Still delicious! I love homemade curries so much more than takeaway...I just sometimes struggle to find the energy to make it! Paneer makes for a much quicker curry than vegetables though, and everyone else loves it too - Izzy calls it "squeaky curry"!

After I'd eaten, it was time to relax - a couple of chocolates from the box I'd given Liam to say 'good luck' were consumed...

Liam and Izzy had been at them while I was exercising!

and my new hot water bottle was filled to try to soothe my tummy...

Haha, I love this. I'd had my old hot water bottle for 10 years, and it was actually recalled by the shop a year or so after I was given it! It still worked fine, but it was beginning to smell quite rubbery, so I decided it was time to treat myself to a new one :)

Oooh, not related to today's post but I've been meaning to ask you all:

Do you have any suggestions for packed lunches please?? With Izzy I have a little 'formula' that may be slightly boring, but is nice and easy - sandwiches/leftovers + fruit + veg + yoghurt + cheesestring. But with Liam, a) he needs more food than that as he takes breakfast and lunch, and b) he gets bored of having the same thing each day. I made a batch of cheese and chive muffins on Monday, so he has been taking two of those for his breakfast, then two rounds of sandwiches, banana, apple, juice carton, iced gems and biscuits for lunch - as I tweeted on Tuesday, he eats way more food, and especially sugar, than Izzy does!! I need more ideas though! I made a frittata earlier which Izzy is going to take cold for lunch tomorrow, but he's not keen on the idea of that. His work has a fridge and a kettle, but he's pretty sure no microwave or toaster. So what can he take each day that is filling but isn't just sandwiches? He struggles to think of food he wants to eat until he's actually hungry, which is obviously no good with packed lunches, so I'm on a mission to think of lots of ideas that he finds appetising!! :)