Beach Boys

I thought of writing something today but I would imagine it would just make you jealous, especially if you were stuck inside today. What do you do when it's the nicest day of the year? You go to the beach. For the first time since I can remember the North East coastline was transformed into something like the Maldives...well maybe not the Maldives probably more like Cyprus but still it was bloody gorgeous today. The wee man and his little friend thoroughly enjoyed themselves in the sand. So instead of describing it in prose I will let the pictures tell you all you need to know. If you're not jealous you should be.   jpr

Where The Wild Things Are

Seeing as the weather was so spankingly good today it was only right and proper to go somewhere. Not even I can moan about going out on a day like today. The Chancellor suggested that we go to a bit of woodland she knew because no one would be there today.

Her logic was slightly flawed because as we arrived we realised that everyone in a ten mile radius had decided to come to this bit of woodland. Loud people, scary looking dogs but we still managed to find a few moments of peace and quiet. In these moments all the wee man wanted to do was to sit in the meadow bit and pick the heads off dandelions.

This his is new favourite past time and we find them hidden all over the house. The chiminea in our garden is full of bloody flowers heads.There are an array of things in the chiminea apart from flower heads including stones, bits of plastic and twigs. He enjoys to lift the lid off and drop them in. Why? I have no idea.
Our garden is now the wee man's new stomping ground and he can be entertained for hours by the the rocks and soil, generally by eating them or shoving them into holes in the wall.

Toddler logic is strange, the wee man's logic even more so.


jpr

Stig Of The Dump

As a bit of a follow on from yesterday, we have had a morning of negative attention. Well I haven't as I've been off doing the fortnightly shop but The Chancellor has. Tiredness and boredom are like two weather fronts charging into one another creating a massive storm. The Chancellor letting the wee man play with his things while she washed up wasn't according to him showing our dear son enough attention. So to get more attention the wee man started touching the bin. Now the kitchen bin is something we don't want him to touch and getting him to stop touching it is one of the battles we have chosen. Because it's usually The Chancellor who warns him off it he now knows that if he touches it he will instantly get attention from his mum. So what does he do? He doesn't quite touch touch it but hovers his hand over it wriggling his fingers grinning as he does so. Naughty little bugger.

When you are doing something like the washing up there generally isn't time to distract him instead of saying no so you tell him get away, making him grin even more. This morning after he was told no he backed himself into the door and stood there shaking his head at his mum.

I have always been amazed that all children are hardwired in the the same way and it doesn't matter if they're a nice a child or not they will do things like this. It's only a matter of time. How to stop it? Well that's another story altogether and if any of you have the answer then please contact me. Until then we'll juts have to have a son who wants to be a bin man.

jpr

Good Cop, Bad Cop

If you were to look at the picture to the left you would think the wee man is the cutest and nicest child ever. Generally this is true bringing us nothing but laughs and a need to drink heavily. The wee man though has started to respond differently to each of our forms of discipline. This is probably an inevitability of him spending all his time with me. He has started pushing it more with his mum, not moving when he is asked to and touching things he knows he's not meant to touch when he's told not to. Every now and again when she is telling him off he will look up at me with a face that says "Dad, should I be taking this seriously? Really?"  

The Chancellor freely admits that she's a soft touch and she spoils him rotten giving him lots of kisses while she's telling me off. The down side of this is that I'm the disciplinarian who no one ever likes. The Chancellor in the future will have the sweets in her pocket while I'm trying my best to keep him away from them.

The idea of either of us being the fun one and miserable one was something we were both worried about before the little critter arrived. I'll just have to make do with being the miserable one. Never-the-less I can see why The Chancellor just wants to have fun with the wee man, I would feel the same if I was working all the time and I wouldn't want to spend the time I did have with him shouting and disciplining. You can just leave that to me. Why wouldn't you want to just spend your evening playing with your son who likes being put into boxes?

jpr
    

Bank Holiday Weekend (Finally)

Back before I began as a stay-at-home-parent I worked for a company who were pretty miserable. I can't name the company as they would probably do me slander but I'm quite happy to say they were a miserable lot and I spent every bank holiday and any day that was meant to be for the people working very long hours. They also expected you to be happy about working while everyone else in the country was off drinking beer and having a good time. I hated the place and their style of management infuriated myself and The Chancellor  (who was always off) and it was one of the main reasons why I left. This year was the first time in five years that I had Easter off, what does that say?

Anyway now that I'm footloose and fancy free bank holidays have become better days and ones where I'm not cursing all the people I'm working for. Instead there is an extra day of family fun to contend with. Which is worse I here you ask? I'm just joking of course. Of course. Having The Chancellor around for some extra days is an extra special treat even if she does make me do rubbish jobs and go to ludicrously busy family friendly places. I don't know what she has in store for us this weekend but I intend to run off before she tells me.

On top of a bank holiday it's The Chancellor's birthday next week, she's canny old if you're wondering and by canny old I mean only two years older than me but still to me that's canny old. She'll get to 40 before me and I intend to spend two years telling her that she's 40. She has decided to take two days off next week meaning she will be expecting me to organise something fun. Lat year I threw her a surprise party but seeing as I have no money or energy this won't be happening again. But the wee man has more money than the pair of us put together so maybe he could throw her a party. No, I will be a man I will step up and sort out something fun to do even if it involves me telling her she's old. Do you think this will go down well?

jpr  

A Return To Soft Play

First off today I need to plug my Baby Centre blog as yesterday I forgot. Here is the link http://www.baby.co.uk/mum_stories/a-parents-best-friend-a-hobby/. It's about wanting to get away from your kids however Baby Centre added a slideshow to it of things that I don't do for instance cake baking and knitting. Not the first things I had in mind when I was writing about hobbies but I suppose each to their own.

Moving on from middle aged pursuits today I finally broke my soft play embargo. It had to be done at some point and seeing as the wee man hasn't had much in the way of childish interaction this week it seemed like the right time. I tried to go early to beat the hoards of sticky fingered children but a quiet soft play was not to be even at half nine in the morning. Children I have found don't need much time to warm up in the morning.  Usually the wee man is bouncing and ready to go as soon as we go into his room first thing. Even in the soft play at such an early time the kids are full of energy ready to bother me. We lasted a solid hour before I got bored and I even managed to smile to a few children though when I did this to one girl she glared at me and ran off. One child was just screaming at the top of his voice around the whole place and his mother wasn't even bothered, I was close to throwing an air ball at him to shut him up. If only that wouldn't be frowned upon.

Away from other people's children the wee man has found new ingenious ways to get into trouble. Yesterday I bought him a step to get up to the sink because he is very good at brushing his own teeth now. However the step didn't stay under the sink long as the wee man began moving it around the house to get extra leverage to get onto stuff like the toilet, which he did very easily. The step has now been hidden away until the wee man can be trusted to use it for the intention for which it was bought, not just to get himself places he wants to get to. He'll be up ladders next.


jpr

Groundhog Day (Again)

For today look at yesterday's post and make the following adjustments:

1. One less load of washing.
2. Less sun.
3. A trip to Ikea.
4. We're wearing different outfits from yesterday. Oh wait no, actually only the wee man is.

That's it. Today has been an almost carbon copy of yesterday which makes me wonder what tomorrow will be like seeing as we've got nothing booked in. A triptych of similar days could lead one to insanity. I've done all the clothes washing now so I suppose that will change but that leaves me with a window of a couple of hours. Maybe I could polish something or iron a shirt...

Expect maybe the same tomorrow and let's hope I can tell you something of note and let's also hope I'm wearing something different...



jpr