Alex finally had his promised birthday trip to London Zoo on Friday.  Having had it cancelled on his birthday because Sophie was sick, Matt and I managed to take another day off to take him out on a trip by himself.  I’m not sure he grasped that it was a big deal to have the undivided attention of mummy and daddy as he asked where Sophie was quite a bit!  But it’s a nice tradition to start I think!

We had a bit of a disastrous journey up to Regents Park, missing the train and the bus and then selecting the slowest bus route in the capital.  But Alex was very good and we finally arrived at lunchtime.  We almost didn’t get Alex through the front door as there was an excellent playground right outside – but thankfully he remembered his love of penguins and so we headed in!

It was lovely and quiet in the zoo and so we got a great view of everything.  Alex adored the penguins – and they seemed to really like him and his scooter, much to Alex’s amusement!

After some lunch in the fabulous new Terrace Restaurant in the zoo, we explored the rest of the park – particularly enjoying the butterfly house, lions, tiger, monkeys, gorillas and komodo dragon. And, of course, the merry-go-round – Alex riding on a horse on his own for the first time!

Alex LOVED the bug house – making me look at locusts, cockroaches, maggots and tarantula (lovely!) – I was pleased to see the tarantula again, having met her before at the zoo’s “Fear of Spiders” course a few years ago (and yes, I am no longer afraid of spiders!).

We had a peaceful Saturday, with a trip to “baby booters” football in the morning for Alex and a nice walk to the park for Sophie.  After lunch, with the weather really bright and mild, we decided to get the train up to London for a spot of shopping and sightseeing in the city.

We headed to St Paul’s where we found some people celebrating World Peace Day with bubbles! Alex was in heaven as the sky filled with hundreds of bubbles and he joined in with lots of other children running around trying to catch and pop them.  He particularly loved the massive bubbles and the nearby water fountains.

Sophie was a little less impressed, and fell fast asleep in her buggy (in the garden where Matt and I had our wedding photos taken five years ago!)

Today has been all about birthday parties.  This morning we had a fabulous time at Jake’s 3rd and Emily’s 1st birthday party.  Held at “Diddy Dinos” in Crystal Palace Park, we had the entire nursery and garden to ourselves.  The children had a brilliant time running/crawling around – and we enjoyed huge amounts of food 🙂

Here’s Sophie and the birthday girl, exploring the pirate ship together:

Sophie was very brave – taking on a dinosaur:

And having a go at driving for the first time – helped by the Agar boys:

The highlight of the party for Alex and Sophie was the trampoline – they had a brilliant time bouncing together (so much so that for a few minutes I contemplated forking out for a trampoline for our garden, before Matt reminded me that it’s (a) nearly winter and (b) our garden is tiny!).  Here they are giggling away:

After much Fireman Sam birthday cake (yum), we headed back home for an hour of chill out time, before venturing out to our second party of the day – Alex’s friend Sam’s 3rd birthday party in Sunray Gardens.

Cue more running around for Alex – this time playing football and hide and seek in the bushes.  And of course a lot more cake and chocolate!

Alex enjoyed more bubbles (bit of a theme of the weekend):

And Sophie enjoyed cruising along the railings smiling at every passer-by (she is such a flirt!)

Here she is with her new friend Una:

It’s been a lovely – if slightly exhausting – weekend!  Roll on the next one, but first we have to survive a full week at work!

In hindsight, I think I was probably crazy to think that having Alex’s third birthday party at home was a good idea!  I did a very half-hearted search of local halls contemplating hiring one, but never really got round to it.  And then suddenly I found myself with 17 children aged from 0-11 years old (and their parents) descending on us on a damp and chilly Sunday lunchtime!  Yikes!

Thankfully, it actually turned out brilliantly. Phew.  The rain held off and so we were able to use the garden giving us plenty of playing space!  We’d hired some garden toys from the brilliant Tippee Toes which Alex found so exciting when he spotted it – I might have to buy a slide for the garden now!

Here are Alex and Sophie testing out the rockers before our guests arrived:

We managed to squeeze everyone into the house, and the children had a brilliant time running around playing with every toy they could get their hands on. We had a relatively calm contingent in control of the playroom and garden:

And then as the sugar levels increased, a slightly wilder grouping running riot upstairs.  We managed to squeeze seven children into Alex’s tiny playtent:

The girls had fun trying to cram into Sophie’s cot and everyone enjoyed playing hide and seek:

After a super simple lunch (thank goodness for M&S), the moment arrived that Alex had been waiting for all weekend – his cake!  We’d had a number of tantrums over his wanting to eat his cake before his friends arrived, and when it finally was time to dig in, he was super excited.  So much so, that I think he forgot that birthday cake is traditionally accompanied by singing – so the look on his face when all his assembled guests sang him “Happy Birthday” was priceless.  I very nearly cried he looked so overjoyed!

Alex had a wonderful party – and enjoyed some incredibly generous gifts from his friends.  Huge thanks to Ralph, Jake, Emily, Tom, Lucy, Rufus, Liezl, Sasha, Hattie, Tom, Connie, Thomas, Edward, Rosita, Sam, Matthew and Hedley (and all their brilliant parents!).

One person I shouldn’t forget is Sophie – who loved her first experience of a birthday party!  She soaked up as much attention as she could – monopolising the attention of her next door neighbour, Hattie, who kept her smiling amid all the chaotic toddler action!  She had a fabulous time – only 6 weeks until her first birthday!

Today we celebrated Alex’s third birthday – I am amazed I am actually the mother of a three year old! It feels like yesterday we were in hospital meeting him, although it’s hard to imagine him not being part of our lives!  I intend write about properly what Alex is like at three so we remember some of the funny things he does and comes out with – but for now, I just want to remember today.

It wasn’t quite the birthday we’d been planning. Now Alex is three, he’s able to anticipate and get excited about things – so we’ve been counting down the sleeps until the big day. He was so excited last night when it was bedtime that he practically giggled himself to sleep! And this morning he bounded in to our room to find balloons and presents in our bedroom. Such a lovely start to the day to see his beaming smile.  He was delighted to receive some new books, a pirate costume (!), a gorgeous clock for his bedroom (thanks Granddad and Nanny Michele) and some toys and skittles.  Sophie loved the wrapping paper of course!

Sadly, Matt and I had had a pretty bad night with a feverish Sophie 😦 We’d both booked today off so that we could have a special day just with Alex at London Zoo, but instead we ended up taking Sophie to the doctor and sending Alex off to his childminder for the day. Thankfully he absolutely loves it with Jacqui and I think had a wonderful birthday with all his friends!!

From what I understand of his day, he ate a lot of cake and chocolate  – so Alex’s perfect birthday I think! We sent him off with a “Jake and the Neverland Pirates” birthday cake which I hear he had almost as soon as he arrived at Jacqui’s:

And to match his cake, Jacqui gave him some Jake figures which he completely adores and won’t let near his baby sister!

With Sophie on much happier form (phew), we picked up Alex a little early and headed home for a fun evening of more presents which had arrived today.  He had great fun trying out his new binoculars in the garden (although most of the time he tried to use them the wrong way round!).  I think his favourite present was an old fashioned zig zag racer – I couldn’t get him into bed tonight without him managing a few successful descents!  And the closest he came to a meltdown tonight was when Sophie attempted to play with it!

She and Matt focused their attention on the massive jigsaw that arrived from the USA (thanks Auntie Elaine!) – and Alex adored the monster book that arrived in the same parcel (had to read that three times this evening).

He went to bed one very happy and exhausted boy.  Thanks to everyone for their generous gifts – he loves them all.  And thanks to Jacqui, Mark and “big” Alex for making Alex’s day full of fun and love.  We’re rescheduling our zoo trip for next week so his birthday will go on a bit longer!

But next, it’s his birthday party…  more on that soon.

To close, here is Alex on 12 September (or thereabouts) since he was born.  He’s growing up fast!

Whilst writing this blog, Alex managed to fall out of bed – cue a big bang above my head!  Too much sugar today I think!

As I sit here in my kitchen hearing the rain on the window and wearing a woolly jumper and slippers, I fear the lovely Summer may be over.  But we packed in lots of fun whilst we had sunshine over the weekend.  Someone commented to me the other day that we seem to manage to do lot of exciting stuff with the children – but I just think it’s because we live in London, there’s just so much to do! Many people choose to move to the country when they have families – but I think this is just the best place to be with little ones!

We started our weekend up the road in West Dulwich at Ruggerbeez with Alex.  I try not to be a pushy mum, but it’s no secret that I’d love Alex to enjoy rugby! We tried the highly recommended rugby class when Alex had just turned two, but he was a bit young for it and wasn’t much of a fan of following instructions in the rain!  But it went much better now he’s nearly three.  He still had trouble paying attention to follow the instructions (but I think that was his current penchant for ignoring authority!) – but when he did take part, he loved it!

He loved kicking the ball (future Jonny Wilkinson?!), enjoyed the obstacle course and liked playing “What’s the time Mr Rugby Wolf?!”  I think we’ll take him next week and see if he still likes it then.

Sophie and I enjoyed a nice walk around Dulwich Village while the boys were at rugby, and then we all headed up to the Southbank to check out the Woodland Garden on the Queen Elizabeth Hall rooftop!  The sun came out on cue and we enjoyed wandering around the surreal but beautiful space – it was great scooting territory for Alex.  I love the views of the river you get from up there.

Once we’d exhausted the garden, we ambled along the South Bank – Sophie having a nap in her buggy whilst Alex played in the big temporary sandpit.  He loved watching the skateboarders doing their tricks in the skate park there and was particularly impressed at the person doing jumps on a scooter!  We walked right along the river to London Bridge to pick up ice cream in Borough Market (it’s worth the walk for panacotta flavoured ice cream!) and cakes from Konditor – I’m sure we burned off enough calories to justify them…

On Sunday, we started our day with a fab family swim in Battersea – Alex is obsessed with the elephant slide at the Latchmere pool!  Sophie just loves being in the water – she goes a bit mad spashing and laughing.  Once we’d coaxed them away from the waves, we headed into Kensington for a spot of lunch and a trip to the Princess Diana Memorial Playground (thanks David Poteet for the recommendation!) – I’d not been there before, but it was really worth the trek over the park.  Based on a pirate ship, the playground was enormous.  Alex was in heaven with lots of sand, water, climbing frames and the huge ship.  He rather terrified us by immediately climbing right to the crow’s nest on his own – but he did a great job and managed to get down again – phew!

Sophie enjoyed it too, managing not to eat too much sand and loving cruising around the rocks and wooden boats

I made a pretty poor attempt at photographing them together – they are not very cooperative!  I have much respect for professional child photographers!

I’ll get one of them both together one day – even if I have to pay someone else to do it! Any volunteers!?

We walked back to the car via the Serpentine Gallery to see what this year’s Pavilion was like – and we weren’t disappointed.  Sou Fujimoto’s installation was stunning and made the perfect climbing frame!

We’d parked at my office, and Alex had a fun time climbing all over the Imperial College Lions – here he is having a good roar (one for next years prospectus maybe?)

Got an exciting week ahead as my baby boy turns three years old – how is that possible?  More on the birthday celebrations soon…

The reality of full-time working and parenting is hitting home as I find it’s already Sunday night and I have masses of admin and work to get done – and little time to do it!  So, in order to not get too far behind with the blog, i’m going to update you on our last week in photographs….

We enjoyed a gloriously sunny bank holiday Monday doing something fairly unusual for within the M25 – we went fruit-picking!  I must admit, we were a little nervous about taking Alex as he’s rather partial to strawberries and we were concerned he’d eat everything before we paid for it – but we thought it was worth a try!  And I’m glad we did – Crockford Bridge Farm was absolutely brilliant.  Really pretty and peaceful, with a wide range of fruit and vegetables to pick, it was such a pleasure seeing my very urban son picking strawberries and raspberries as well as some delicious looking corn-on-the-cob.

Sophie particularly enjoyed chewing the corn husks!

There was a good restaurant in the garden centre next door which also had a huge aquatic centre selling tropical fish which both Alex and Sophie loved looking at.  And best of all, there was a great adventure playground and ice cream parlour on the farm.  We easily filled the day there and it was wonderful to be outside in the warm sunshine all day – made me remember why I live in London and not Edinburgh!  It was slightly unfortunate that after dinner that evening, Alex decided that the fruit was yucky and opted for a yoghurt for pudding – but Matt and I enjoyed a delicious crumble (thanks Bry for the recipe!)

After such a busy few weeks, we chose to spend this weekend a bit closer to home.  Yesterday Alex had a fun morning playing with his friend, Arlo, in the Brockwell Park Adventure Playground:

And we spent the afternoon at Myatt’s Fields, enjoying the water play and fabulous playground.  We did attempt to get Alex on his balance bike, but he couldn’t be persuaded off his scooter!

Today we took our friend David, and his son Josh, to one of our favourite places in London – Greenwich, where we explored the Cutty Sark.

After lunch and some Meantime Ale, we then let Alex partake of one of his very favourite pastimes – playing in the water features at the National Maritime Museum (and getting very wet in the process!).  This time, Sophie could also join in, finding the waterfall ideal for some cruising practice.

We took the river boat back up to London Bridge, which is always fun – such a great way to head back into the city and a treat for Alex who was excited about being on a “real boat”, although he kept announcing the anyone that would listen that we were about to crash!  He’s still working on his quiet voice!

It’s been a lovely weekend – I fear one of the last of the Summer – so I’m glad we spent as much of it as possible outside.  Here are my family just chilling out in the garden – heaven.

Before I go, just some major personal news, I had my very first night away from both children this week!  I spent a night up in Manchester with work where I was speaking at a conference and collecting some awards on behalf of my team.  I had a wonderful time – and even stayed out dancing until 2am.  How unlike me – but what fun!