Art, ballet, and not very small shoes.

Went over to our arty friends again today. She had made salt dough, which went down OK with dd, and even better when it was baked to bring home. Then there was drawing and painting, which was fun too (even tried a bit myself, and was quite pleasantly surprised at the results). Unfortunately, once the art work was over and she’d eaten her picnic lunch, Big decided to run riot (apologies to the comment thread below) in a way that wasn’t appropriate in someone else’s house. Well, it wouldn’t have been appropriate in this house either, although I have no problems with her belting round like a mad thing in the garden.

(Aside, I’m bending over backwards here to apologise for the standards of behaviour that I attempt to impose on my offspring. My intention is not to make anyone feel that I am criticising their upbringing of their offspring. I’m just trying to blog my day 😉 )

So anyway, I dragged her out of the house and loaded up to go to find Small some shoes. Now that he is really walking, seems like he needs proper footwear so that he can walk places that I haven’t put him down previously. However, he had other plans, and fell asleep in the car, and stayed asleep even when I loaded him into the buggy. I didn’t mind this too much, figured it gave me and Big time to spend in the playground. Which was, of course, full of kids, what with the holiday and all. And she wanted to play only on these individual roundabout things, which were very busy. So she waited, and stropped, and frowned, and generally didn’t enjoy herself, so in the end I gave up and dragged her off to the shops.

Nothing took my fancy in the toy shop – I hate this budgeting thing! And the only thing I fancied in the book shop were loads of children’s novels (I had no idea there were so many Mary Poppins books!) and Urban Eden which was on sale at £2. But let’s face it, I need to get rid of books, not buy books, so I didn’t buy it. Which probably contributed to my stinky mood.

Next stop a snack, found Julian Graves, which was selling snack pack raisins 10 for £1. Result. Big likes raisins, although Small does not. Shame really. Turns out he doesn’t like flapjack either, although my smoothie was quite popular, and he was very cross with me when I finished it. Oops. And on to Clarks, where they were operating a disorganised chaos system. One member of staff, 4 families milling about, as soon as another member of staff appeared, so did three more families, who ignored those queueing…sigh. Anyway, managed to get Small some shoes – rather lovely they are. Two whole sizes bigger than Big’s first shoes, and given that he’s only 4 months older than she was that seems like quite a big difference. Big decided to really test my patience throughout the whole shoe shopping thing – I won’t go into details, but I wasn’t impressed.

Quick dash up the motorway to ballet, and back for the tea, bath and bed routine. Big off into bed by 8, Small asleep on the floor about 10 minutes ago. Got a big of work to do now, and also want to prepare some activities for tomorrow. I’ve got loads to get organised tomorrow, and the only way I’m going to manage it is if I control the situation from the minute we all wake up, so I’m going to plan a bag load of activities for Big to do, and basically organise her to the minute. That way we might both survive the day and I might get done the stuff I need to get done.