Holiday best and worst

Back to the holiday. The best bits:

• The 'giant jumping pillow' at Mabie Farm Park near Dumfries. Obviously the grown-ups had to go on it to make sure the little ones were safe....
• The ridiculous size of the farmhouse we stayed at, with a choice of four 'reception rooms', although we generally just camped in the kitchen-dining room with the Aga.
• Chocolate cake, chocolate fudge cake, chocolate brownies, sticky toffee pudding with ice cream, carrot cake, Victoria sponge.
• Proper darkness at night, bats, peace and quiet apart from the night when we could apparently hear army manoeuvres. Oh, and the night of the gale.
• Having someone to amuse little man while I went for a shower.
• Little man almost getting to the point where he was playing with his little friends instead of just being possessive over toys and mummies.
• The emergence of new words with the help of those little friends. He is now proficient at saying 'tea', makes a pretty good attempt at 'tractor' and says nor-nee nor-nee instead of nee-nor nee-nor for all emergency vehicles. Although mainly he just said his favourite phrase: 'mee-mummy'.

The worst bits:

• Little man waking up and crying lots, every night, which led to lots of co-sleeping, which led to him falling out of bed for the first time despite it being two singles pushed together. No harm done; He snuggled into the piled-up pillows and nearly went back to sleep.
• The 80-year-old toilet that wouldn't flush unless you lifted the lid of the cistern and delved in the water to jiggle the lever.
• The darkness when you don't know where the light switches are and you have to carry your little one downstairs on a hunt for paracetamol, which you obviously can't remember the location of.
• For little man, having to bathe with two other tots. He didn't actually have to, but we thought they might find it fun. He didn't. He tried to climb out.
• Running out of red wine one night.
• Having to come home.

We were staying at North Milton Farmhouse, three miles south of Kirkcudbright, in Dumfries and Galloway.

Our holiday: the overview

Our holiday at a massive farmhouse near Kirkcudbright, Dumfries and Galloway. In brief: beaches, woods, farms, tractors, diggers, nee-nor nee-nor or nor-nee nor-nee depending on which little one you listened to, sun, rain, gales, sand in everything, tea and cake, wine, Aga cooking, knitting, crafty places, castles, boats, whinging, scuffles over toys, scuffles over mummies, falling out of bed for the first time and very broken nights every single night due to the imminent arrival of canines.

More to come when I have caught up on some sleep...

Simple living

It's very straightforward: Spend less, work less, live more.

I don't see the point in working my butt off just so I can spend two weeks a year lying on a generic beach somewhere hot, buy a 4x4 that will never see any mud and live in a detached faux Georgian mansion that's two foot from the identical one next door.

I'd rather wear charity shop jeans, make my little man wear really badly sewn cut-down clothes, grow courgettes and live in a house that only has one toilet to clean.

The simple things in my life include:

Tickling sessions with little man in the middle of other activities such as clothes sorting.

Eating food I cooked from scratch.

Collecting eggs from my three bantams.

Going out for tea and cake or a stroll with friends or family.

Pottering in the garden.

Using just one long piece of cloth to carry my little fella instead of putting him in an expensive, unwieldy pushchair.

There are other things I'd like to get on to, like ordering an organic veg box now and then and finally having some success at making my own wine. Getting organised enough to make bread more often. Changing to a much smaller car. And there are some things I do spend money on unnecessarily: more wine than is good for me, books I could get out of the library, new toys I see for little man that he doesn't need...

My first inspiration for all this was a book called Timeless Simplicity by John Lane. I heartily recommend it. I have given my copy to STBE husband though in the hope it might give him an alternative perspective on life. I had already been trying to get him to read it for years.

And my best tip for spending less is to avoid going into shops in the first place. Then you won't be tempted. I'm not strong enough to look round lovely shops without convincing myself I deserve to buy something. And it's amazing how many days you can survive without your big supermarket shop if you're as disorganised as me.

Sea air

I'm hoping a dose of it might help little fella sleep longer. This morning he woke at 5.45am sounding immediately upset. Not the sort of sniffing and fidgeting that means you can ignore him for a few minutes. It was instant howling. So we had a snuggle in my bed and he went back to sleep. At 7am.

So that made us late, but we eventually went to Crosby for some breeze and drizzle. And beachcombing for holey bricks. And a walk that justified the cake (coffee and walnut, cafe in Little Crosby not very friendly to two mums and two tots but old tractor on lawn very exciting).

When I was a kid we would often go and stay at my grandmother's near Llandudno. The sea air there used to make me really tired. I remember fighting to stay awake on summer evenings but having to give in and go to bed far earlier than normal. So I'm hoping it might help little man make it past 6.30am. As for me, I don't need sea air to feel knackered these days.