'What? The surprise is an EXPERIMENT?'

Very busy day today. At midday I picked up the twins from their nursery. They have to take turns using a single buggy, and this was not going well. I made the mistake of saying they we were going to go home, have lunch and then a surprise. One of them then demanded that we have the surprise FIRST, and flatly refused to walk any further. I had to stand on the pavement telling the story of the Wolf and the Seven Kids until he became sufficiently interested to get over his strop and walk. At the end of the road we changed over so that the other child was in the buggy. We got nearly all the way back when the walking twin got grumpy and stopped dead in the middle of a road we were crossing. I picked him up. There were other carrying bits too, mercifully relieved by the 'I'm slipping' complaint.

We got home and I got a scratch lunch together, heavy on carbs and sugar. They'd forgotten about the surprise by then. One of the twins leaned back on his chair, it collapsed and he fell and banged his head on the cupboard door (fortunately not on the marble floor). I went and fetched Mum from her Zoom. She said it was boring, anyway.

Fortunately the boy didn't need to be taken to A&E. The chair was reprimanded and removed. We carried on with lunch, and after I'd got the boys settled, I got out the brightly coloured Skittles sweets and some water for the rainbow experiment. That was when they made their scathing remark, but a few minutes after adding water to the sweet-plate, we were rewarded with a rainbow. Left alone, the sweets eventually dissolved almost completely into a brown soup. We made another set for their elder brother to see when he got home.

That was just part of my day. The other parts involved loading the car, going to the tip, unloading. Going home, loading my market stall stuff, unloading and setting up the stall.Selling three books for a grand total of £1.50. Walking home. The usual Thursday childcare. Steps walked: 13,974.