Outdoors

Short night, early morning, no children poorly or even remotely out of sorts, coffee required. Coffee worked wonders and brought my brain speed up to Ben's level of consciousness and enabled me to deal with Charley and Ben simultaneously. Charley declared last night's beer bread was still good (very tough crusts, so he got them to gnaw on) and that my porridge was EXCELLENT.

Little Fishes after breakfast, Ben played with his friends Joshua and Rosie, and to some extent with Astrid and Alice and Rebecca, and pretty much left me be. Joshua's mummy was doing storytime, and Ben and Joshua did all the actions together! Then it was crafts and as the story had been about the wall of Jericho and how it came down (no bashing, just lots of walking, trumpets, and shouting) there were various related crafts, and Joshua and Ben decided to build the tallest tall tower ever and were very proud of it.

After Little Fishes we got ready to head into town and as we walked out of the door Joshua's mum called to us: their car had been blocked in by the Library bus so they had 20 minutes to wait, and they thought they'd see if we were in to play for a bit! So Ben and Joshua played in the garden for a bit until Ben declared it was cold and we should go in now. So Joshua and his mum went off to see if their car was unblocked yet (it wasn't!) and we headed off into town.

The bus nearly couldn't get into town, as there had been an accident between two buses just at the main bus stop. Lots of ambulances, lots of police, lots of passengers waiting around. Have to wait for tomorrow's Herald to find out what happened. No fatalities thankfully. But the driver managed to squeeze past all the kerfuffle, and dropped us all off.

Shop for envelopes and stuff for the craft kits, shop to look at shoes (Ben's request), shop to look at "stuff" (Ben's request), and then I felt hypo starting. At which point Ben had a meltdown because he wanted to go to the beach and I couldn't because I needed sugar. Eventually he agreed that we could go to the beach after the cafe so we went to the cafe (the other one, the one with cakes) and had hot chocolate and mini muffins and a raspberry ripple cake, and Charley by this point was awake and so he had a (naughty but nice) chomp on a piece of stem ginger cookie and is still many hours later covered in hardened stemgingercookieconcrete.

Then as promised we went to the beach and watched a tractor and a beach buggy trundle off down the pebbles towards the pier. It was chilly so then we headed home. Ben chose a couple of rocks to bring home. Thanks Ben.

Once home we put the rocks in the garden (I think we are going to start a collection: every time we go to the beach we'll choose a rock or two and bring it home and they can sit on the garden bench and be warmed by the sun) and Ben dug and I sat on the swing with a sleeping Charley.

Bathtime after that. Ben was filthy! He loved his bath. Getting clean is really an optional extra, it's a bonus for me if he's clean by the end. Bathtime was cut short (thankfully for me after I'd got his hair washed and face wiped) after he tipped a whole beaker of water out of the bath onto the floor, quite deliberately, as I was telling him not to. (Splashing is ok, that's fun; deliberately tipping water out is not on and he knows that.) Hey ho. So he is still not dressed, he's wrapped in a blanket, he's just spoken to his Gran to ask for the Gup A, and is STILL having a meltdown because we can't go to Gran's house today. Soon it will be teatime and bedtime and I can relax again!