As the first grandchild on both sides of our families, Ioan was always going to receive more than his fair share of attention from his grandparents. My mum lives in London so gets to see him regularly, but just for a few hours at a time, and Andrew’s parents live in Wales so see him infrequently but stay over when they visit so see him for longer periods.
Both sets of grandparents have an open invitation to visit, and last week Andrew’s parents made the trip down from Wales to spend a few days with Ioan (I won’t even pretend they were here to see us – we were definitely second-best for this trip!). It was lovely to see them (and get on with things while they played with Ioan), but it did muck up my menu plans. However, the trusty freezer full of food meant that we were able to eat well without too much effort from my side.
Ioan needed cheering up after his baby massage session, which as you can see he loved!
The Welsh grandparents quickly got started on keeping him entertained while I cooked a quick dinner of chicken with new potatoes (no photo, completely forgot!).
The next day we went for a trip to Neasden Hindu temple where I was waylaid by the Indian grocery store:
I could have been lost in here for ages:
I didn’t buy any sweets, although was sorely tempted:
And then we had a rather less spiritual experience in Ikea across the road:
Followed by fish and chips for dinner from our favourite Toffs – as you can see the boys are all telly addicts:
On Saturday night I raided the trusty maternity stash in the freezer for a homemade corned beef pie, which I served with potatoes, cauliflower cheese and veggies (I started tucking in before remembering to take a picture):
And yesterday it was an easy beef stew and dumplings:
Followed by red wine poached apples with marscapone cream (a tweaked version of this recipe from Gino D’Acampo).
This week my mum will be visiting to get her Ioan fix, and food-wise the following is planned:
- Monday – cod with potatoes and tomatoes (a delicious tray bake which I hope to blog about very soon)
- Tuesday – chicken katsu curry
- Wednesday – lamb meatballs (with Mum) – either with pasta or as a tagine
- Thursday – chicken cordon bleu with jacket potatoes and mushy peas
- Friday – fishfingers
- Saturday – chicken and chorizo stew
- Sunday – shepherd’s pie jackets
And here, simply because he’s so gorgeous that I cannot resist spamming you, is a picture of our gorgeous boy:
