Summer holidays

Well, here we are, about half way through the Summer holidays and already I'm counting down the days until the the little man returns to nursery!

Now I look back fondly upon my summer holidays, playing with my mates up the woods or around the estate where they lived, was better than mine as it had lots of back alleys and garage blocks which were for water fights and the like. We generally didn't get up to much mischief, except the summer after the school trip to France. Well, school kids + France = banggers!

We blew up quite a few milk bottles that summer, along with a few other items no doubt. I can remember further back to when my sister and I use to attend "action holidays", at least I think that's what it used to be called, where we would spend the week participating in various activities while our parents were at work. I've fond memories of these days as well, from several years, from my first solo motorbike ride, which told me I don't like motorbikes, through to realizing I was actually pretty good at target sports, with shooting air rifles and artery.

I have a few years to wait until my kids are teenagers and capable of looking after themselves for more than a few minutes at a time and while I don't wish the time away, right now it sounds good! I can't complain to much as there are plenty of things to do, from the various kids clubs and activities on at the leisure centre to bambinos and all the various museums and the soft play, and when I say soft play I mean it as there is only one and its not very big! But that's another moan. I'm also lucky as one of the toddler groups runs through the summer, so that's 2 mornings a week taken care of! Having a park opposite the house is also useful, even though it means I'm getting no house work done!

But even with all these activities and such, there are still timed when there is nothing to do and with the unpredictable weather up here, no where to go. Its days like those that I find really hard, after all there is only so much Youtube you can watch and only so many times the DVD of "Little Red Tractor" can be repeated! The bairns are energetic to say the least, and I seem to spend half my time breaking up fights or dealing with the consequences of said fights! Why is it that they always want to play with the same toy when they have enough toys between them to cover the floor, quite literally as the other day I couldn't actually get from one side of the room to the other!

Little Red Tractor

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, school holidays, why do they seem like they were just designed for teachers?

Having friends to stay

OK, so back to the parenting stuff, this is supposed to be a parenting blog after all.

Recently we had some friends stay over a few nights and I think it was a great time all round. Our friends travelled up from our old stomping grounds in the NE of England, via the train and ferry, which by all accounts they enjoyed, something out of the ordinary.

It was good to see them after so long and the kids, a boy almost exactly the same age as the little man (less than 2 weeks difference) and a girl a little older than the young lady (about 12 months I think) got on like a house on fire.

Apart from all the fun and games that were had, especially by the boys, there were a couple of things that struck me and its not the first time I've seen it with the two boys either.

Now the little man is not what you would call quiet, not in any sense of the word, but the other boy is or at least, is when his not got a friend to follow! But anyway, the things that struck me most were about how children follow each other. The little man hates fish fingers, won't touch them, but our guest loves them, and got super excited about having fish fingers and chips, which in turn, got the little man going. So now we've had fish fingers and chips half a dozen times in last few weeks. The same can be said for beetroot, although I'm less keen on beetroot as he's discovered you can paint you face pink with it!

Its great that he's trying new foods, foods we've failed to get him to eat in the past, even though we've been eating them ourselves.

This also went the other way when we went swimming. Now the little man is a bit of a water baby, from the first time he went swimming at 8 weeks old to today when he's usually the first one in the pool at his lesson. The young lady is not far behind, you've got to keep a close eye on her at the pool, otherwise she'll be in before you know it. Our guests on the other hand aren't so water friendly, they live near the beach so paddling isn't an issue but swimming is a different matter. It took a while to get in to the changing rooms, but after that I think the enthusiasm of the little man rubbed off and all 4 bairns were soon in the water and enjoying themselves, even if at one point one of them said "I'm not going to swim because I don't want to get wet" while sitting chest deep in the toddler pool, not sure how much wetter swimming can make you! It came to a bit at the end where only the bribery of a trip to the café would get the boys out of the pool!

This is very reminiscent of the last time we all went swimming, that time we had screaming in the changing room as he didn't want to swim and screaming on the pool side as he didn't want to get out!

Its funny what effect children have on each other, both positive and negative, its just a shame that you can't limit it to just the positive!

Hopefully we'll get some more little visitors up soon!