A Day In The Life – Budapest, Hungary

I posted a version of this over at And Sew We Craft (where I blog weekly), where I focus on crafting, but this version will explore all the aspects of our day, and go into depth about how they differ from day to day.

The day I’ve documented in Tuesday 14th May 2013.

All our days looks fairly similar except for weekends. Luke doesn’t work on the weekends so we go and explore and see things. Sometimes during the week we go off places too, but only if Luke can afford the time not to work. Usually these are bigger trips also, like our trip to Milan when we were in Italy, or our trips to the Dead Sea when we were in Israel.

Here goes nothing…

sleep pancakes for breakfast

7:01am // Wake up. Lior has usually been awake for a little while, and therefore I find myself waking up in a pile of books, bottles, cups, and toys each morning. It’s quite exciting. Once we get out of bed I try to find something for breakfast. This definitely involves getting my creative hat on as things are a bit… different here. We have been having lots of pancakes because they’re filling and easy and relatively healthy. I make them with coconut milk or just with water. Sometimes we have toast with peanut butter or avocado. I can not find any peanut butter in Budapest (I’m sure it is there somewhere…) and I have used the last of the stuff we brought over from Italy.

playing with toys

8:12am // Luke has gone off to a cafe to work by now, so Lior and I play with some toys. This also involves using my thinking hat as we ran out of exciting alternate uses for his toys about two countries ago. I wish these toys would fall out the window and get run over by a truck so that I could buy some new ones. We have no room in our luggage for more.

We have added a few new toys as we’ve travelled, usually things that aren’t made as toys. Here you can see a spare belt of mine, a necklace, and a plastic egg carton. Sometimes I wish Lior was just a LITTLE bit bigger and could play sorting games etc. One of Lior’s favourite non-toys is my old wallet filled with coins from different countries. We also put old metro and tram tickets into the card slots. He enjoys just pulling the coins out and putting them into your hand, then putting them back again.

lemonade

9:47am // Today we go for a walk in the morning to visit Luke and get a lemonade. They make good lemonades here which, as far as I can tell are just lemon juice, cut up citrus, and mineral water.

We don’t usually visit Luke is the day as it is usually too much effort to try and pacify Lior in this particular hotel bar/cafe area. Sometimes we do walk with Luke to the hotel and then walk back, or if we are going out for dinner we might meet him after work. This particular place has an all you can eat dessert buffet with unlimited champagne and a one free coffee, all for a very reasonable price, so Luke is in heaven.

10:37am // Lior is asleep (he falls asleep between 10:30 and 11 – I try to stretch it till 11 if I can) and I have 1 1/2 to 2 hours of “me” time. This is usually the time I use to do some creative things.

tulips painting

10:44am // Today I use the tulips I got for Mother’s Day as my inspiration colour for my paints. All I have with me is a visual journal and some cheap watercolour paints from Big Dub, and I get frustrated pretty quickly with how the paper crinkles and peels from the water. I give up easily and do some blogging and work in my Scrapbooking store – Cinnamon Scrapbooking. In this time I usually blog, journal, paint, or read the bible.

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12:41pm // Lior is awake and we are both hungry. I should have done some grocery shopping the other day so that we had food. I suck at food shopping over here. We buy some chips and crackers which is meant to be a snack, but we basically eat it as lunch. We go for another little walk, as there is not much else to do, and like I said above, we are sick of our toys.

Ah yes, food. While we’re travelling it’s a little hard to decide what to eat. I have realised that we eat a lot of food with lots of herbs and spices, so the food I am cooking seems quite… bland. It’s not really worth buying a whole pantry worth of herbs and spices, as you can imagine. Though, if I had of known we would be away for so long, and that it would be so easy to take food from country to country I could have bought some the first week in Jerusalem and it would certainly have been justified for 3 months! But where to put them in the luggage…

Some things we usually have for lunch include:

Leftover savoury piklets from last nights dinner (we do corn, beans, zucchini variations), toast, fruit plate, toasted sandwich (sometimes just toast with warmed up corn kernals on it), carrot, pasta etc.

It’s pretty boring. Usually I pick at stuff, and maybe have some toast or a toasted sandwich or nothing. Not very healthy, I know. I have ZERO motivation to do anything. I am not a very good traveller.

slide

1:53pm // We are back at the same park again, which is right outside the door to our apartment. Lior plays in here for a while, but there is no one else in the playground so it’s a bit boring for him. He likes slides, and this time he slid down quite fast and landed sitting up in the sand! He wasn’t at all bothered. Lol. Usually around this time we are in the apartment playing with toys, or doing some chores like laundry. We usually visit the park from 4 till 6 (after 5 is best) as this is when it is FULL of kids. Lior has really grown a lot during these times when he can interact with other children. He is the only one who doesn’t wear shoes, and the other kids his age just seem to sit by their parents, so he is usually one of the youngest there.

lucky to be alive in budapest

5:46pm // We bought dinner earlier tonight, and I quickly put the rest of the clothes on the clothes line before Shavuot starts at sun down. The electrician comes today as well to fix our power and oven and tells us we are lucky to be alive and not burnt in a house fire because of the wires that short circuited. Anyway, we eat our Thai for dinner, and then pop in the bath for a play/wash. We do the bedtime thing and by 7:30pm Lior is in bed and asleep.

Usually dinner looks very similar to lunch!! Sometimes we make taco salad, or pasta with meatballs (also good as lunch leftovers), or some sort of hearty salad. I feel like when we were in Israel I prepared pretty good food, but the first trimester really made me hate food and I haven’t really got my groove back…

happy shavuot

painting

8:15pm // More free time! Usually Luke works in the evenings, but as it is Shavuot he isn’t working. We do some separate things for a while and I work on fixing the painting I started earlier. I am not terribly happy with it, but Luke likes it. After this we read a bit of the bible, as is customary on Shavuot.


2 days in new york, plus collaborative art project planning

9:17pm // We settle down to watch a movie – 2 Days in New York. We have seen the prequel – 2 Days in Paris, and this one doesn’t disappoint. While we watch the movie I write out a few ideas for an collaborative art project I thought of while I was lying on the bed waiting for Lior to go to sleep. When the movie’s over we go to bed and start it all again the next day!

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So that it what it is like for us (mostly me, I did write it after all…) in Budapest, Hungary. Not very exciting, and to be quite frank, rather boring and lonely! It is nice on the weekends when we get out and do stuff, and also when Lior and I go for our daily walks. As you can see, I have quite a lot of spare time, which I can only credit to forcing Lior into a once a day nap. I say “force” but it was more like just setting him up for what he really needed and wanted. I knew he was ready as he wasn’t going to sleep for his early nap easily, and his afternoon nap was getting terribly late (and both were short – about 40 minutes each), which meant that he wasn’t going to bed until our bedtime, 9:30/10pm and that was driving me a little bit batty. Now he sleeps for LONGER over all, just because I changed his naps to one a day. I had tried to change them a few weeks ago when he showed signs of perhaps being ready, but it failed, so we just waited, and now it’s working! In the two weeks that he’s been having one nap a day he has had two days where he’s had two naps. Usually our fault if we’ve had him out late the evening before, or he has been difficult in the night for some reason.

As a side note, isn’t it interesting how quickly you can get accustomed to sleep again! I mean, when we were in Israel Lior’s sleep was so bad I nearly made Luke book tickets home for the VERY NEXT DAY. He was waking up a crazy amount, and we were so tired and confused, and basically took shifts to get through the nights. Not cool. Then we decided to really start co-sleeping with him, and it took a few weeks, but we all got use to it, and he started sleeping through the whole night again, as we were accustomed to back home! If he wakes up in the night now I am like “What is happening?! Go to sleep! It’s night time.”, and usually if he does wake up he just wriggles around or cries out (bad dreams I assume), and I just cuddle him in close and he goes back to sleep. So nice! Sorry this is completed unrelated to the post, I am just babbling and will stop now…!

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Linking up with IBOT

Dairy Free, Sugar Free, Banana Pancakes #IQS

dairy free, sugar free, banana pancakes

Dairy free AND sugar free. But technically not FRUCTOSE FREE, because of the banana. Personally, I am happy to have one banana between this batch of pancakes. But there is actually no sugar, or any sweetener added, which, lets be honest, is the same for most pancakes. At least the recipes are generally all sugar free, but I think people always add sugar anyway. Really the banana and coconut milk in this recipe make it sweet enough.

I first made these dairy free pancakes when Lior last June I think, and we haven’t looked back. Meaning, we have never made them with dairy again, they are just so yum this way! I have made them a few times in the last few countries we’ve visited, and let me tell you, this recipe is VERY forgiving. I have not had measuring cups in any country, so I either just use a mug, or my eyes.

Ingredients:

  • 1 banana, mashed
  • 2 cups plain flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tin of coconut milk (if you can’t find coconut milk then you could use any milk substitute. Or honest, you could just use water. I did that the other day before we found the Asian grocer with coconut milk, and they tasted fine. :) )
  • 1-2 cap fulls of vanilla (this is not necessary, but is good to neutralise the coconut flavour if you are not a big fan but need to make it dairy free. We did this while we were getting use to the coconut milk flavour in EVERYTHING!!)
  • Coconut oil for frying

Process:

Put your frying pan onto a high-ish heat while you’re preparing the batter.

In a bowl, mash your banana. Add all the other ingredients and mix. If your batter is too thick, just add some water.

Turn your frying pan down to low, and spoon in your batter. I really like doing small pikelet size pancakes, as it is a bit special to have THREE pancakes stacked on your plate instead of one. They take their sweet time cooking, but really, this is the best way. I am a very impatient person myself, and quite honestly have ruined more pancakes than I have been successful with and it all comes down to putting the heat on too high.

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This recipe will make about 15-18 pikelet sized pancakes, depending how how big you make them.

In stead of banana, we sometimes grate* in apple, which is lovely. I have also made them with berries, which is also yum. Also, for a little bit of a different texture, instead of mashing your banana just slice it reasonably thin and mix it into the batter. If you do want to slice your fruit in, it is important that you don’t add too much. This can also lead to a messy, crumbled pancake, if there is honestly too much other stuff in it. I mean, if you want it loaded with fruit, then add it on top at the end! Mango is also tops in this recipe!

*We don’t have a grater here in Budapest, so we have shaved apple with a veggie peeler and this was also nice.

Linking up with Stacey for Meatless Monday

Bean Bump Watch :: 13 Weeks Pregnant

13weeks
13 weeks pregnant! Some days I think things are so similar to last time, and other days I think they couldn’t be more different! I guess in reality the main difference is that I have a toddler to chase this time. I should have appreciated being unemployed last time…

Anyway, this week I feel HUGE, and not in a good way. Not in a PREGNANT way, just in a fat way. Actually I looked at these photos and wondered why on earth I would put them on the internet. But this is my reality, and I put them on the internet because not everyone looks uber cute with their size 4 waist and teeny tiny bump poking out. If you, like me, have started your pregnant with a belly that already looked pregnant, then take heart, we too can take bump shots!

13 weeks pregnant

13 weeks pregnant 13 weeks pregnant

13 weeks pregnant

Awkward

// This week I had a bit of a bleed, which isn’t fun. So we’re praying/hoping that this baby is still okay inside of me.

// Being overseas while pregnant. Everything about this is awkward / sh*t-tastic.

// Lior having a poo-splosion causing me to vomit more than I ever have in my entire life. Thank the Lord Luke was home and could bundle us both into the bath to rinse off!

Awesome

// Not feeling sick anymore. Always awesome.

// Having a little bit more energy. Not TONS of energy, but a bit more.

// Not hating food as much. I actually did grocery shopping this week and didn’t dry reach the entire time.

Anticipating

// Getting home in FOUR weeks. Always anticipating this, for many reasons.

// First midwife appointment when we get home. I will be 17-18 weeks by then, and it will be good to have a check. I am meeting with two different midwife teams when I get home to decide who I would like to go with for my anti-natal care this time round.

// Feeling the baby move. I remember this last time I was pregnant also – this space between not feeling ill and tired, but not feeling the baby move. It’s like no man’s land where you just trust that everything is okay in there.