Happiness

Seem to have a bit of a Charley-fest today - he's the only one not moving too fast for me to capture!

A wonderful thing happened this morning. I was all set to grumble my way downstairs with the boys, climbed back into bed for a quick snuggle with Steve, fell asleep, and was given an extra hour to myself! I can't tell you just how much of a difference that little bit extra made. Mind you it did mean that breakfast timings were all out of sync with injecting and whatnot but gosh it was lovely to have a lie-in.

Haircut for Ben today, followed by lunch in the garden - Charley got himself and the picnic rug covered in chocolate spread in the time it took for me to go back in the house to get my own sandwich. Chocolate everywhere, including his feet, the path, and his head.

He'd already had a bath.

But we all loved being outdoors! I have finally reached the point where as long as I know where the savlon and plasters are, and possibly have a bath run and ready, I can let both boys play outdoors if they want to without much bother. What's the worst that can happen? I've cleared the area of poo, tidied up the brambles, fished out a few pieces of glass from their digging area (need to sieve that bit of dirt really, far too many bits of rubbish in it), moved the rake out of the playzone. I will never make the garden totally hazard free. So the boys get to play, I get to sit in the sun and "supervise" (loosely), and there is only a limited amount of sand to eat. Win all round!

We came back inside for cuddles, and then Ben remembered Casper and begged to go round to ask if he could come round to play so Casper came round to play. They played upstairs for a bit, then Ben took him into the garden. I left the two of them to it for a bit then Charley wanted to join in and made a break for freedom again. He sat and dug in the boys' digging patch. The three boys played together in the garden for another good couple of hours. Cas was very good natured about it all, I'm not sure how a 10 year old would normally feel about coming round to play with a bossy nearly-4 year old and a 9 month old... Ben didn't want him to go home of course. When we did take Cas home, Ben hid in my skirt and then ran back to our house while I chatted to Steph - he really doesn't like goodbyes!

But he should sleep well tonight.

So should Charley, with all that fresh air and playtime outdoors!

Bolognese for dinner (may as well get Charley properly mucky hey) and I caught Charley just as his eyes were about to close. (As funny as it is watching them fall asleep in their food it doesn't half create problems later on in the evening!) Quick clean-up, pronto getting the boys into pyjamas, and Charley was asleep in seconds, Ben not long after!

Steve's out at the final prayer evening of the week (I got the venue right tonight), and I'm trying to resist the temptation to fall asleep myself....