The off switch

A ten-minute car journey has now become an opportunity for little man to make all manner of preposterous requests and to question the very fabric of reality until my brain goes 'pop'.

On the way to and back from Speke Hall near Liverpool it was 'Where are we going mum?', 'It's on that bridge?', 'What are those cones doing?', 'Where have the cones gone?', 'Why?'. And 'You sing, mummy,' when I put the radio on. I don't know the words. 'You sing mummy.' I'm just a teenage dirtbag baby. That's the only bit I know. 'Why?' And 'A toadstool, mum, you eat the toadstool,' proffering an imaginary toadstool.

Then his plastic box, now emptied of strawberries but speckled with strawberry juice, became his little friend, who had to be hugged because he was covered in spots and obviously wasn't well. 'Mummy, you hug him.' I can't while I'm driving, little man.

Both journeys ended with his neurons overheating and initiating emergency shutdown. In other words, asleep.

Incidentally, the gardens at Speke Hall were pleasant enough, he actually admired the house (from the outside, I didn't fancy chasing him around the antique-furnished interior), the odd stone or hedge archway was fun, but the playground was by far the biggest hit.

Bed hopping

Before I get on to the subject of sleep, and the lack thereof, I just have to tell you that today in the park, little man rubbed two sticks together and declared that he had made fire. No idea where that has come from. I think he's been secretly watching Ray Mears.

Anyway, sleep. I like it. A lot of it. Pre-child I would happily go to bed at 9pm and get up around 7am. Then there was all the usual baby shenanigans. At ten months, he 'slept through' for the first time and gradually started to do so quite reliably. For months - maybe seven or eight. I allowed myself to be lulled into a false sense of security, congratulate myself for never having considered any sleep training methods when he was a baby and came to believe that he would continue to sleep twelve hours straight for ever.

Yeah, right. He's a toddler. He still has one tooth to come. He's learning to talk. He's trying to work out what it's all about. It being the meaning of life and other momentous issues such as why mummy's bracelets always fall off his arm. Sometimes he wakes up thirsty. Usually he just wants a cuddle, and who can blame him? That's why I'm all for co-sleeping, in theory.

Unfortunately, he's fidgety and I'm a light sleeper, which is not a good combination. And I find that a tired mummy is one less able to remain patient in the face of toddler upsets and pestering. So after a few months of putting up with his arrival in my bed in the middle of the night, I've started returning him to his own bed. A couple of times he has bounced straight back up again, but he hasn't yet persisted enough to turn it into an issue. In general, I try to avoid anything becoming an 'issue' because you only start worrying about it and questioning what you're doing wrong. So we'll see how the current approach goes. And I'll try to go to bed early too, just in case.

Right now....

• I am absolutely bloody knackered from not being able to sleep properly then getting woken by the boy's arrival in the middle of the night.
• I need a recipe for cornflake cakes that just uses cocoa powder instead of actual melted chocolate, because who could actually keep chocolate in stock in their cupboards?
• I do not know where the baby fish is.
• I cannot make the car fit inside the egg shell.
• I am being cuddled up to by a boy who has a plastic slice of watermelon that he insists is a boat.
• Tea, tea and more tea is required.
• I have just remembered that the roadworks from hell on the M6 at Haydock are OVER at last and that I promised myself a bottle of something fizzy when this happened. And I don't mean diet Coke.
• I am hoping the boy has forgotten the toy guitar I bought him yesterday and which has already been left behind at the other grandparents' house.
• I am being given a slice of plastic bacon for breakfast. Yum.
• I am looking out of my north-facing window and trying to decide if a picnic with friends in Lancashire is going to become an indoor picnic.
• I am considering burning the grubby net curtains that hide the electric and gas meters inside a cupboard and which I intended to replace months ago with something prettier but have still not got around to.
• I am also considering whether to ask the boy's father to have him on Saturday night even though it's not his weekend for that because I am just so effing tired I am struggling to function.

Getting away from it all

The little man and I have survived two nights' camping in Silverdale in north Lancashire. The rose-tinted, blogsville, let's look on the bright side version goes something like this:

• The weather was stunningly warm and sunny, which meant we got a fantastic view over the Lake District from the top of Arnside Knott.
• We did lots of little ambles, pottering through the woods, sauntering along the beach, finding empty snail shells, checking holly leaves for prickliness, tripping over tree roots and marvelling at butterflies.
• Little man particularly enjoyed the muddy beach at Arnside. Not only did he get to scoop up handfuls of mud and throw it into the incoming tide, but he also got to watch trains go over the long bridge over the Kent estuary. Boy bliss. I drew him pictures in the mud with a rock.
• We ate yummy proper ice cream, prompting his first ever demand to go to a 'shop'. I eventually realised he meant the cafe where we bought ice cream and played with their ride-on car.
• We had a hideously nutritionally deficient picnic mostly consisting of sausage rolls (from a craft bakery, of course!), crisps (the organic sort aimed at babies and toddlers for no reason I can actually fathom) and a satsuma. We sat on the picnic blanket in the dappled shade of some oak trees and watched squirrels scampering about. Little man is charmingly fond of going for a 'picpic'.
• There was plenty of space on the campsite for little man to run around, mostly without the usual worries about traffic or vicious dogs. He was very excited about the tent and kept going in it to play, despite the fact it must have been about 40C in there in the daytime.
• I feel like I've had a break just from being somewhere so beautiful and peaceful. I saw a little stone place called Woodwell Cottage where I could happily retire, right now, and spend my time knitting bobble hats and making wonky pottery jugs.

Obviously, there were some fairly significant negative aspects, mostly concerning sleep, or the extreme lack thereof. Also tantrums, the first proper kicking and screaming type ones (something tells me this is not unrelated to the previous point). And running away, not due to the innate desire to explore but due to the desire to disrupt whatever boring but essential task mummy's trying to get done, such as cooking dinner, washing up or packing the car. And cooking on little gas burners with a toddler about wasn't much fun either. I don't think I can adequately describe just how much harder and more exhausting it is being alone with a two-year-old in such circumstances.

But hey, I'd do it again. In fact my memory of the bad things is already fading, as it helpfully tends to. I quite fancy Rhosneigr on Anglesey and Eskdale in Cumbria. I just wouldn't recommend it to anyone else unless you, like me, have a ridiculous need to 'get away from it all' into the middle of nowhere every now and again, and you have the ability to sink into ever lower depths of knackeredness and frazzledness and somehow manage to carry on regardless.

Snoozing

Well, it's taken a couple of weeks in the big boy's bed but he has finally realised he can get up by himself in the morning. And come and find mummy, which is fine. And run her over with the Fat Controller's car or a tractor or whatever other mode of motorised transport he took to bed the previous night, which is not so good. With this realisation have come some earlier mornings. Previously, he was sleeping past seven most mornings. This week it's been mostly half six, culminating in a cheery 'Mummy!' at 5am this morning. Followed by much fidgeting and digging of tiny toes into my ribs.

I realise I'm very lucky compared with some folks that my little man does now usually sleep a good twelve hours solid. And, just to rub it in, this morning I got so fed up of his constant fidgeting I carried him back to his own bed at half five, tucked him in, said night night and he actually stayed there and went back to sleep until quarter past seven. I was rather surprised.

Daytime naps still usually require a trip in the car though. Yesterday, I took him out for an hour's walk to get some fresh air and sunshine, thinking he would doze off in the buggy. (I couldn't be bothered carrying him, ok; I'm not supermum!) Anyway, he whinged and whined and was still wide awake when we got home. I stuck him in the car and two minutes down the Daresbury Expressway he was fast asleep.

That was the day I had the funny dream about barbecuing. Apologies to facebook people who read it on my status. I carried the little man inside and thought, bugger the housework I'm having a snooze too. I duly dozed off only to be startled awake when I dreamed I was having a barbecue and that I burned my hand on the tongs. Yes, I'm that clumsy. Clumsy enough to burn myself in my sleep with an imaginary kitchen utensil.

Strange days

This has been one of them. Little man slept until 9am. Yes, you read that right. 9am. Of course, he had a little cry at around half five to make sure I got woken up, then he went back to sleep. I got up at 8am and had a cup of tea. I took in the veg delivery. I thought, bugger it, I'm going to risk him waking up in the middle of my shower. He didn't. I got dressed. I went and made another cuppa. He finally woke up.

I would normally think, oh well, he obviously had some catching up to do. But I'm supposed to be looking out for symptoms of Lyme disease after finding a tick chomping on his leg on Tuesday. Flu-like symptoms and 'bull's eye' shaped rashes. I decided not to panic when he seemed like his usual crazy self. I asked him who I should vote for at the polling station, but he didn't seem to have an opinion on the matter. He was too busy showing everyone his daisies, which he then tried to put in my hair.

At lunchtime, I made myself a big salad with a carefully measured portion of posh feta containing precisely 14 grammes of fat. Little man decided he liked feta. For the first time ever. So I ate some of the ham I'd bought for him as a change from cheddar cheese or houmous. Still, I'm steadily losing weight. The goal now is to be 10 stone something. I don't care if it's 10 stone 13 and a half pounds as long as it's 10 stone something. Unfortunately I'd have to lose over another stone for my BMI to be supposedly normal. My conversation with the doctor about this is another story. No doc, losing weight has not changed my bra size.

After his lie-in, little man wasn't sleepy at his usual time, but not long after lunch he was flagging so we had a drive up the expressway and back. Then I carried him inside and we both went to bed. For another of those two-hour afternoon naps. It sounds blissful, but actually it just made me feel grotty afterwards. I had to go into the backyard for some fresh air in an attempt to wake up again. I swapped bulbs for French marigolds and pelargoniums in some of my containers and potted up some herb seedlings. Little man, meanwhile, threw sand off the decking onto the concrete area below. I've asked him not to, it seems such a waste and makes a mess. I've tried taking him back inside when he does it but he still goes back to it again next time. I figure it's not important enough to make an issue of.

At tea-time, he ate cabbage, having shunned anything remotely resembling a leaf ever since weaning. A strange day indeed. At least tonight he's only taken a small toy car to bed. Not like the tambourine I had to remove last night.

The up side

I'm a bit picky when it comes to fluffy, self-help, affirmation chanting, personal development techniques. I'm happy to hug trees and obviously The Force is with me and if I were ever to be invited to dance round a bonfire at Beltane I'd probably say yes. But I like to think I'm not entirely away with the faeries. Anyway, some people think you should write down three things to be grateful for at the end of the day in order to stay positive. So here goes with my things to be grateful for today before I slip into an irreversible cycle of cynicism in the face of traffic jams, legal threats, sinus madness and a house full of sand:

• Little man slept til half seven on what was only the third night in his new big boy's bed, having woken up a couple of times on each of the previous nights. He doesn't even seem to want to get out when he wakes up, just chatters and eventually whines to himself til I go and get him.
• He sat still for his first ever full haircut. The knots at the back were getting a bit much and he wouldn't let me near him with a hairbrush. So I was glad that although he gave me a thunderous look that said 'you know I'm not happy about this, don't you?' he actually co-operated remarkably well.
• While we were at the park, the maintenance guys arrived to mow the grass. Seeing the sit-on mower was definitely the highlight of the little fella's day.
• We both had a TWO-HOUR nap at lunchtime. Yay. I don't normally manage to drop off before little man wakes up, but I know I must have because I had those crazy dreams you get when you sleep in the middle of the day.
• I've remembered the existence of cottage cheese. Low fat and I actually like it.
• My back yard gets more sun than I expected. I thought it was facing due north, but it must be slightly more to the west, so one corner is a little suntrap in the afternoon.
• My yoga class has ironed out all the mummy aches again.

Zzzzzzzoo

After a crappy night's sleep due to some weird twingy sinus thing, there was only one thing for it: a trip to the zoo. Well, I figured (after my third cup of tea) that there was going to be no Getting Stuff Done today. And if we stayed at home I'd just end up getting grumpy and snappy. So we packed a picnic and headed off, just in time for little man to have a nap on the way there.

Of course, due to the universal laws of toddlerdom little man was most impressed by the ducks. Especially when they waddled under our picnic bench looking for oatcake crumbs (it was a very cobbled-together picnic). Never mind the 14ft giraffe munching twigs just yards away. No, let's do duck signs and start quacking (go on, you know you want to). Fortunately, it's very easy to stick to a diet when you're at Chester Zoo because the catering is so dire you're unlikely to want to buy food there. Little man enjoyed the plastic replicas of rainforest crops though.

I only took the hip seat, expecting little man to do some walking. Of course, due to said universal laws, the day you have no sling with you is the day they want to be carried everywhere. So I can confirm that the hip seat digs in after a few hours. The only time he wanted to walk was when he saw a puddle. A word he can now say passably well, but no wellies means no puddles, in my opinion.

Despite not walking much, the whole experience apparently tired little man out. Not even the gentle tones of Green Day at full volume could keep him awake on the way home. Now we're just watching the end of Waybuloo and he's showing no signs of being ready for bed.

Practical matters

I realise now that taking pictures of curtains during daylight hours is probably not a fantastic idea. However, here they are. The living room curtains. And, below, a nice contrast with the old ones. And I'd appreciate it if no-one mentions the fact that the pattern is upside down.

You see, this is the sort of thing that happens when I so much as think of getting the sewing machine out. Things end up upside down. Or back to front. Or inside out. I also prick my fingers on pins and say ouch, which results in little man coming to rub it better. And I have sewn in three pins behind the header tape, which are going to have to stay there forever more. I really shouldn't be expected to do practical things like this - I am a pisces after all! I should daydream about beautiful curtains while someone else makes them. But I am still proud of the end result. I now have to do an identical pair for the other end of the room.

I'm waiting in for a delivery today. This means we couldn't go out for a walk or drive when little man started looking tired. But we've had a breakthrough. After lots of fidgeting, fetching of books, wailing for milk and general shenanigans, he has fallen asleep in my bed. It took a lot of perserverance from me in pretending to be asleep. And I did consider staying there and snoozing with him. But then I thought, no, I have curtains to make. And so I'm off to do some measuring.

Days 'off'

I sometimes think I should flag up at the top of each post whether it's about a day with little man or on my own. Most of the time I'm a mum. But quite often, more often than I'd like, I'm just me. That was the case today, after the handover cup of tea. It's important for little man to spend time with his dad. And his dad seems to be more capable of looking after him than many fathers! When the little guy was born I took the view that I knew no more about what to do than STBE husband did. So the pair of them have always spent lots of boy time together. I think the first place daddy took him out to on his own was B&Q.

Time off has its perks. Like sleeping for a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon. Of course I wouldn't need to catch up on so much sleep if I hadn't had little man fidgeting around in my bed from 11pm last night. Or if I hadn't had the plumbing problems, which are now all better thanks to antibiotics. But the timing of my afternoon nap was perfect. I woke up just in time to get to the cinema and avoid having to watch all the adverts. (I saw Green Zone; I don't like 'girly' films.)

I had my own trip to B&Q earlier today. What I want is lilac masonry paint for the back wall of my 'patio'/back yard. Apparently this is not what I am supposed to want. I'm supposed to want white, cream, off white, magnolia, Cornish white, cloud white, brilliant white, buttercream, buttermilk, Cornish butter... Not lilac. They can stretch to something called silver blue, which is too cold. Looks like I'll have to Google it and trust to the colour on screen being something like the end result.

My library

Too many books? Never! I just need to get round to sorting them all out... but at least my new house comes with a healthy amount of shelving.

Christmas Day went well. Little man loves the kitchen daddy made for him and he ate his own weight in chipolatas. Little man, not daddy. We all had a sunny, icy walk down by the river.

Now I'm having that post-Christmas feeling of wanting to get back to normal. I think New Year's Eve will find me tucked up in bed for an early night. Especially as little man has woken up in the early hours the last couple of nights and then fidgeted his way through the rest of the night.
But now he's off with daddy again while I work for a couple of days.

Yet another sleep post

The boy has stopped sleeping through. Since we went on holiday at the end of September I can count the number of times he has stayed in his own bed all night on one hand. When he's with me anyway, because daddy keeps telling me he sleeps fine when he's there. So perhaps that discounts the usual culprits, although he is teething (constantly) and he does have a very snotty nose (constantly).

Being the sensitive soul (read: cries lots) that he is, it's probably something to do with moving house and mummy being stressed. And due to crazy vendor it's going to be at least another three weeks before that can start to change. So I'm just about ready to join little man in a tantrum. Latest ones have been about: mummy refusing to get out from under the duvet to draw in the condensation on the window at 6.30am, mummy offering him an oatcake instead of a breadstick, mummy trying to write this instead of watching him put Postman Pat in his van. And take him out again. And put him in again....

Anyway, it's not all doom and gloom: it was highly amusing when my Bravissimo catalogue arrived and little man pressed the belly buttons of all the models, saying 'beep beep'.

How to get lost in one's hometown

1. Have a very long list of things to do.
2. Send little man out to the shop with grandma.
3. Find your way to the van hire place to hand in the accident form.
4. Proceed to the old town and get slightly worried when the road you were going to take has been turned into a busway and the road you actually have to take used to be a busway last time you drove past it.
5. Safely negotiate sea of no-entry signs to get into car park.
6. Post the cloth nappies you've just sold on t'interweb.
7. Do a spot of shopping and withdraw lots of cash to pay the estate agent.
8. Leave for dad's allotment to check the chickens, taking the route that once again goes up a road that used to be a busway.
9. Take the wrong turn off the expressway, drive past some architecturally interesting estates, eventually turn around and go back to take the correct exit.
10. Check chickens, who are all sat on their perch complaining about their move, and try to tempt them out with some seeds and grain.
11. Leave allotment, take wrong entry onto expressway and drive for a couple of miles before you can turn around and go back.

Interesting fact time: Runcorn had the first ever busway in the world or 'Buses as Rapid Transit' system when the new town was built in the 1960s. For anyone who doesn't know what a busway is, it's not a bus lane but an entire road system set aside only for buses.

I'm still assuming I will soon be a permanent resident here, despite the fact that some mortgage cock-up has delayed completion on our sale.

And now, it's off to bed to await the middle-of-the-night awakening that is accompanying the slow arrival of canines.

Cot death news

The latest news today is apparently that sleeping with your baby increases the risk of cot death. Now, I'm not going to tell anyone that they should or should not co-sleep. It's up to you, and anyone who reads this blog regularly will already know what I do.

My point is this: I don't think anyone should make a decision about their child's wellbeing based on what they have read or seen in the media.

And guess what? I'm a newspaper journalist.

The sad fact is that most media organisations do not invest enough in staffing to allow journalists to properly research stories and make sure they give an accurate, balanced view.

The BBC's online article about this story is actually rather contradictory. In one paragraph it says sharing a bed is a factor in 50% of cot death cases. In the next it says many of the deaths occurred when parent and child slept together on a sofa. Er? How can many of the 50% of deaths that occurred through sharing a bed have happened through sharing a sofa? A sofa and a bed are quite clearly very different things. Then there's the smoking, alcohol and sedating drugs angle....

Vaccinations, cot death, hygiene, nutrition, car seats... parents are bombarded with scare stories. My advice would be to take it all with a very large pinch of salt. And, for the important decisions, to do your research yourself by going to the source of the scare stories. At least the BBC makes it easy for you; there's a link to the British Medical Journal report of the study on the web page.

Night duty

I'm starting to get quite good at this co-sleeping malarkey. He hasn't really 'slept through' since before our holiday a couple of weeks ago. He has been snuffly, probably teething though it's hard to know, fidgety and generally unsettled. And I am sticking to the tried-and-tested three-step plan of grab child, stick him in my bed, go back to sleep. I'm starting to crack step three even when he is a bit fidgety, though I'm quite glad I get some nights when little man is staying with daddy and I know for sure I will not get woken up.


I'm generally managing to get to something past seven before he is gesturing very clearly that he wants out of his sleeping bag and making his 'dow' noise which means 'I want to go downstairs and have some cornflakes right now'.

I have told him we are going to live at grandma and grandad's for a while then going to live in a new house. I know he doesn't fully understand, but maybe when we have been at grandma and grandad's for a few days and I tell him again that we are staying it will ring a bell somewhere in his mind that tells him he already knew this.

Kicking leaves

Fun in the park today: kicking piles of leaves, chasing squirrels, making piles of sawdust whilst sitting on a perfect toddler's-bum-height log, watching diggers and dumper trucks.

Unfortunately, he is full of snot. I mean a really impressive amount when he sneezes. I have found a plug-in vaporiser refill in his drawer and hope it might help him breath tonight and avoid too much waking up. He slept for about an hour and a half at lunchtime, which is highly unusual, then slept again for half an hour in the car on the way home from grandma and grandad's just before teatime. And he was still tired at bedtime, although he needed a lot of cuddles before going to sleep tonight.

My current stress levels: around 80%. I'm expecting 99% by the weekend, when I'm moving most of my stuff out of the house and moving in with my parents. That will probably then drop to around 70% until it's time to move into my new house, when there will be another brief spike before everything settles down and I will embark upon an idyllic stress-free life of relaxing country strolls, knitting and baking.

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...

One of those days?...

Well it could have been. It started some time in the middle of the night when little man was gently crying and I decided to instigate my sophisticated three-step night-waking plan: grab child, stick him in bed with me, go back to sleep. Unfortunately my strategy is not 100% proven to overcome child's minor discomforts. I think he was constipated. He hadn't filled his nappy all day despite usually being a two-a-day guy. He had eaten two bananas the previous day... Sorry if this is TMI but another blog I read recently had a photo of one child's achievements in the potty!

Anyway, little man fidgeted, whimpered, turned over, turned back again, flung his arms out, turned sideways in bed, climbed on me and generally stopped either of us getting any sleep. At 4.30am I'd had enough and turned to Calpol and a bottle of milk. Little man had some too, ha ha. Once the sedative effect kicked in he went to sleep and we were good til 7am. I must point out that I also have some kind of sniffly, sneezy thing going on that had stopped me getting to sleep when I went to bed at a sensible 10pm.

So here we are, it's something past seven, I can only open one eye at a time, I'm sneezing violently and I'm struggling to make a cup of tea with little man in one arm. He then proceeds to do a series of minor things that all test my patience. I finally stick the telly on so I can have a third cup of tea. When Timmy Time finishes I realise it is gone 9am, we are both still in our pyjamas and little man is probably nearly ready for his first nap of the day.

My first plan failed: We got dressed and went out for a drive long enough to get him to sleep, then I planned to lift him oh-so-gently out of the car with the aim of us both going for a nap in bed. Oh no, he woke up as soon as I undid his car seat harness.

Plan B: Go to the zoo (Chester).

He had a nice sleep on the way there, the weather was better than expected, it was exciting enough for us both to overcome the groggy feeling and I have a membership card so it didn't cost anything extra. We roared at the lion and lioness, we giggled at the bright little fish, we played spot the butterfly and we measured little man up against a model rhino. He walked or sat on my hip seat, which gave him a much better view of everything than if he had been semi-reclined in a buggy the whole time...

Coincidentally, we had popped in at grandma and grandad's for lunch on the way there. They weren't in. Guess where they were? At the zoo. No, we didn't bump into each other!

Nightfall: Part II

I had to put my lights on driving home from work! At 8.30ish! It seems to have crept up from nowhere and now, wham, the evening light is disappearing. I guess it happens like this every year, and yet every year it takes me by surprise. It's like the way that every summer I cannot imagine it ever being cold enough for hats and boots and jumpers. And every winter I cannot imagine it ever being warm enough for a t-shirt, linen trousers and sandals.

I'm so glad I live in temperate climes where there is a real difference between the seasons. And please don't anyone moan that we haven't had a summer; we've had loads of warm, sunny weather as well as lots of rain showers. Well we have here in Lancashire. A typical British summer in other words. (I'm not trying to deny climate change is happening, by the way. It is. And that's not my opinion, it's the conclusion of the vast majority of scientists.)

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Little man once again woke up happy this morning. As in he played with his cuddly toys and babbled instead of immediately crying. I think it happens when he wakes up refreshed from a decent night's sleep instead of waking up a bit too early but not being able to get back to sleep. He was crying a bit at 3am but a tummy rub did the job then!

Daddy picked him up this morning and little man gave us both a succession of sloppy kisses before giving me his very cute wave goodbye. I told him to have fun and that I had to go to work. Who knows how much of this he understands?