what I could see

while I was trying to take a self-portrait for today's blip challenge.

Ben, exhausted, slumped on the sofa watching Igam Ogam.

Exhausted from a happily exhausting day!

I dropped him off at E's house while I went off to the hospital for my regular diabetic antenatal appointment (I was star of the week, and the diabetes nurse was ecstatic that my sugars are now under control and I was therefore proof that the IMAGE course (the insulin management course) I went on was worth carrying on for pregnant diabetics!) and he trotted off and barely said goodbye to me! He spent a good portion of the morning bouncing on the trampoline.

I got a bit of housework done before going back to pick him up, suspecting that I'd probably end up staying a fair bit anyway. I was right - we ended up staying all afternoon and going swimming with them as well!!

So Ben has bounced from about 10.30am to 4.30pm stopping only when the bigger boys who were there bounced too enthusiastically. He has bossed everybody bigger than him around, C (E's mum) couldn't believe it was the same Ben!! Certainly a side of him she'd not really experienced before :D (It wasn't a nasty bossing around btw!) And then we went swimming. Arrived at the Aquarena and I found these for sale!! They are the same backpack float things as Ben sometimes uses in his swimming lessons. He was pretty excited about it, was very keen for it to go on, and spent a whole hour swimming around, splashing, giggling and laughing. The first thing I did was pull him into the pool and he was off! Came back for the occasional cuddle when he'd got a mouthful of water (from laughing too much) but it was brilliant to see him enjoying himself so much. I think now I know it's possible to take him swimming by myself, I might do it more often! Especially now we have his backpack thing, that makes it SO much easier on my part. He has his freedom and I get to swim as well :)

We got home very late, and thankfully I'd prepared all the food ready to cook so Steve was able to just get stuff out of the fridge and cook it. Ben was so tired he only managed about 5 pieces of pasta before looking like he was going to fall asleep on the sofa. Steve got him ready for bed, took him into the bedroom, read him a story and he was out like a light! Incredible, given that he knew I was in the room next door - must have been absolutely worn out!

Happy day.



(First proper wash of our own cloth nappies today - the big nappy bin went back to the laundry service this morning! Start of a new season of laundering our own cloth nappies.... Thankfully so far Ben is only using maybe 2 a day and spending the rest of the time naked from the waist down!)