so much better

We still had a bit of whining, stamping, shouting and general unpleasantness, but we also had a great deal of helpfulness, with the occasional nice hug and kiss sprinkled in too! So obviously all I need to do is recarpet the living room in six inch foam, chuck some play balls about and provide amenable playmates, and we’ll be sorted!

Hm, maybe not.

To recap from the top – dreadful night. Didn’t go up til after midnight as Small didn’t go up til after 11 (and I really do need that little bit of adult space), then dd woke up at 1am to tell me she couldn’t get to sleep (?!) and again at 1.30 to ask me to be quiet. Sigh. Small needed three feeds during the night and then I was hauled out of bed before 8. Well, ok, woken up before 8, think it took me a while to haul myself out of the pit. Not helped by the fact I had a stiff back, so started the day doing a pile of stretches before I even hit the floor.

Being up at that time should have meant I had plenty of time to get organised to meet Kirsty at 11 as we’d planned. So how come I didn’t leave the house til 10.50? Hm?

Oh well, at least I managed the packed lunch, and found all of Kirsty’s stuff that I’d brought back from Hesfes. I did find it all didn’t I? At the petrol station got a text from Kirsty saying to call her, so did that from the next layby, and apparently, despite the website stating categorically that play was free, Magna were attempting to charge her to enter the adventure playground! Not impressed. Quick change of plans, and we headed off to a shopping outlet that we knew had both an outdoor playground and a softplay. Quick shower of rain later and rather windy too, so we didn’t last long outdoors. But that turned out to be pretty good as the softplay area, despite being quite small, was great for them.

Highlight of the visit for me (apart from lots of time to catch up with Kirsty, which was really good) was when I went to start to build the softplay car, and suddenly I had lots of children helping. Kirsty’s Alex was particularly amusing as well – I helped her out of the ball pool and as she tootled off back into the main part, I got a “thank you Jax” which cracked us both up.

After about two hours (seriously) letting the children run off steam, with remarkably few fall outs (was very impressed at how well dd and Marcus did together as they really didn’t get on at Hesfes) we went a shopping. Bad news for the credit cards…toyworld outlet had a number of John Adams “educational kits” – so I came away with Optical Science, Sounds, and Colour and Light. Chucked in a Hula Hoop (pink and sparkly of course!) and the whole lot just came to £20, which I thought was pretty good.

Trip to the bookshop next, fatal. I got a couple of history books, a winnie the pooh flap book, a Noel Streatfield, a vegetarian pasta recipe book and a couple of drawing books for just over £10. Ah well.

After this, back to Kirsty’s for a cuppa, and wonder of wonders, dd did share her stilts. Small’s acheivement of the afternoon was when he picked up a pencil, found himself a piece of paper and started to try to draw. I was impressed, and so was Kirsty, she found him a chair and sat him at the table – how cute? Why was my camera in the car at this point?

Reasonable journey home, with Kirsty’s excess playballs and bead thingy on the back seat as well – I really need to sort this house out!

And a lovely evening as well, so pretty good day all round.