Next installment in my attempt to catch up – I’m now going back two weeks to jot down what we got up to just before our holiday week.  And it involved even more cousins!

I love that the children have so many cousins (8 between Matt and my brothers, plus another 4 if you include “step-cousins”!).  I grew up having two cousins on another continent (hello Ian and Joanna) who I sadly didn’t get to see very often.   All of Alex and Sophie’s cousins live pretty close, so we manage to see them relatively regularly – although probably not as often as we should.

We had a good excuse to get together a couple of weeks ago, as Matt’s Auntie Joan was visiting the UK from her home in San Francisco – so the Agar clan gathered in the Surrey Hills for a bit of a family get together.  As an aside, Joan’s visit caused an incidental milestone in our parenting experience – she invited Matt and I, together with his brothers, to a wonderful grown up dinner in Primrose Hill.  So for the very first time since having Sophie, we left the children for bathtime and bedtime with their grandparents.  And it went brilliantly (cue Matt and I booking lots of date evenings and maybe even a trip away… my parents will probably wish it was a disaster!).  Here’s grandma encouraging a good game of peekaboo:

Anyway, back to the cousin reunion.  We headed down to the Surrey Hills nice and early so we could have an explore of Newlands Corner.  It was a bit gloomy and threatening rain, but we headed out to look at the view.  Sophie, wearing a skirt for the first time in months, loved having a run around – although the cold wind made her nose go red!

As the sun came out, I managed to get a lovely shot of my cute little family

After a quick cup of tea and some chips to warm us up, we headed over to Matt’s brother’s house to meet the rest of the family.  Matt enjoyed reading a story to his newest nephew, William, while Alex disappeared upstairs for ages with his cousins Thomas, Edward and Max.

Sophie took a liking to her only other female cousin, Jessica, and spent ages running around the garden with her and the resident dog, Monty!

On Sunday, we began our drive up North – with the first stage to reach my parent’s house in Northamptonshire.  We stopped in at the Bekenscot Miniature Village again as it’s a perfect half way point in the drive.  Learning from the last trip, I took minimal stuff and left the buggy in the car, so we could let the children lead the way around the narrow paths.  And, like last time, they loved it.

Alex even tried his hand at some photography – he looks quite the pro here!

We had a sunny picnic and then whiled away some time in the brilliant playground.  Alex is getting really good at climbing and has announced that when he is four years old he will start climbing lessons!  His favourite thing was soaking the pirates again with the waterguns.

We arrived in Blakesley mid afternoon and wandered over to the playground – only to find a football/cricket club open day.  Its such a friendly village, no-one minded when Sophie and Alex got stuck into the activities!  Alex was so excited to take part in a real tug-of-war.  I’m pleased to say that the village girls beat the boys – despite Alex’s attempts to pull as hard as he could!

I was a bit concerned to see my dad attempting to put Alex in the stocks –

but highly amused to see the position swapped, and Alex pelting his grandpa with wet sponges!

It was a beautiful afternoon – I just love getting out of the city (for short trips!).  Very pleased my parents have chosen to settle in such a nice part of the country.

Alex clearly hasn’t seen the sunshine for a while as he was quite confused by the shorts I dug out for him on the first day of the current mini heatwave in London – “Mummy, I think my trousers are a bit small….”

What a glorious few days.  The weather looks like it’s turning now, but we’ve all thoroughly enjoyed spending loads of time outside soaking up the rays.  It’s so much easier getting out of the house when there aren’t coats, jumpers and shoes to contend with.  Keeping everything crossed this cooler spell passes quickly and we can properly get on with Summer!

So what have we been doing to make the most of the sun…?  Matt had a fun few hours with the children on Saturday morning while I was off doing my first performance with my new chamber choir, Chantage (finally, getting some hobbies back post children!).  Feeling brave, he took them up to the Southbank for a play in the fountains at City Hall and a walk along the river to Rotherhithe.

Clearly, the children got promptly drenched, but had a brilliant time!

When he finally dragged them away from the water, Sophie and Alex explored the space, loving the chance to climb all over the architecture and run wild!

Even Sophie’s bunny, Macy, got to see the sights – until she was abandoned in favour of some complicated steps to navigate (don’t worry Tracy, we brought Macy home!)

After a picnic by the river, and a swift half in a Rotherhithe pub, Matt handed the children over to me for the afternoon!  We promptly headed to Dulwich Village for a big ice cream and then into East Dulwich for a spot of summer sandal shopping.  Alex was desparate to by a brilliant pair of bright orange sparkly shoes, but sadly they were only in larger sizes (phew!) so he settled for some navy with an orange trim!  He has style!

Sunday was so sunny, we decided on a more ambitious (and probably foolish) day trip – heading off to London Zoo.  I was a bit worried that most of London would decide to do the same thing, so we left early and enjoyed a super quiet stroll along the canal in Camden. Alex was fascinated by the locks, but I’m not sure he quite understood my description of how they work.  Taking him to Falkirk Wheel in Scotland next week is going to blow his mind!

At the zoo, we headed to see Alex’s favourite area – Penguin Beach.  Sophie – who seems to adore animals – was so excited about seeing so many penguins swimming past her and Alex did lots of penguin waddling impressions!

The zoo wasn’t as busy as I’d feared and we managed to see a lot, including the butterflies, tiger, gorillas, komodo dragons, flamingoes and loads more.  Both the children adored seeing the monkeys – and Sophie in particular loved the assault course proving she really can climb like a monkey (how lovely is her outfit?!)!

She found it exhausting, and in the middle of the komodo dragon house lay on the floor and started looking very sleepy indeed!  I just love her little chubby fingers!

So we packed up and headed back home for the rest of the day!

A nice long nap gave Sophie her energy back, so we decided to make the most of the last heat of the day and unpacked the paddling pool!

A fun, if very wet for all of us, end to a brilliant weekend!  Alex and Sophie are really starting to play well together – it’s such a pleasure to see their relationship developing.

We’ve got a busy week coming up with a trip to Scotland and lots of family visits planned – expect lots more photographs next week!

I shall leave you with some lovely snaps of my duo last week – I love the pair of them in the swing together.

And perhaps my proudest photo of the week – having shown no interest in drawing/writing, Alex is suddenly developing much better pen skills and for the first time in his life drew a family portrait.  Here is Family Agar by Alex at 3 years old (I’m the one on the right!)

What a tiring weekend! As those of you who follow me on Facebook or Twitter will certainly be aware, this weekend marked the Imperial Festival – a two day public science Festival organised by my Division at Imperial College London.  For me, it’s meant some crazy long days on Thursday and Friday and a full day at work on Saturday as I volunteered at the event – exhausting, but a real pleasure!  Given I work in a university, I actually don’t work very closely with the academics – so it was fabulous to see some of the incredible things coming out of Imperial.  I certainly learned a lot!

I can’t claim any responsibility for the brilliant programme of events and activities, but my superb team did a stunning job designing all the materials for the Festival and associated Alumni Reunion, everything from the printed programme, to signage, decoration and even tshirts (here’s Alex, my little Imp, proudly modelling the pair of children’s tshirts available!)

After being at work for hours yesterday, I was really proud when Matt arrived with Alex and Sophie for the closing couple of hours of the Festival.  Their arrival coincided with the end of my shift, so I had a wonderful time showing them all around.  We saw robots, play doh virus models, a giant nose and bowls of bogeys (!) and some spectacular bugs:

Armed with balloons we slowly headed home just in time for bedtime.  Looking forward to #impfest 2015!

Today was much quieter and local – the Dulwich Festival is on at the moment, so we headed over to East Dulwich to the Goose Green Fair.  Alex was convinced it was a proper funfair, and shouted “FUNFAIR AHOY” when we spotted the stalls from a distance!  Thankfully, he wasn’t disappointed with the pair of bouncy castles and the single slide!  After a bounce, slide and a visit to the donkeys, we enjoyed lunch and ice cream over live music.

I took the children out this afternoon so Matt could catch up on some work, so we had a fun trip to the fab local bookshop, Tales on Moon Lane, where we stocked up on some new bedtime reading books, the Herne Hill farmers market and the Brockwell Park Adventure Playground.

I think I’ve ended the weekend more tired than I started it – but it’s been a fun one!

Night all

x

Just time to post a quick update on what we’ve been up to recently – according to our smartphone cameras!!   It’s been a lovely fortnight – pretty quiet for us, but involving lots of snuggly family moments and chilling out at home.  We’ve particularly enjoyed spending lots of time outside now that there’s a hint of Summer.

We’ve had lots of fun with friends – visiting an NCT friend for lunch and a playdate.  Amazingly, we managed to have a relatively calm lunch together – quite an achievement with five children under four present!  I think the boys had exhausted themselves sword fighting upstairs…

We had a lovely visit from my parents – which included quite a watershed moment for us.  For the first time since she was born, someone other than Matt or I put Sophie to bed.  My mum did bedtime one evening and it went brilliantly!  Suddenly a new world has reopened for Matt and I – the chance to go out to the theatre or for an evening or event, perhaps, for a night away…!

I just love this photo – just an ordinary moment captured in a second.  Both children look so engrossed in their grandparents – gorgeous!

We hosted some friends one afternoon which saw much of our garden dug up by the little ones (look how proud Sophie looks below!) and pretty much all of Alex’s belongings removed from their shelves/drawers.  Took a while to tidy up after that one – but don’t really mind when the children had so much fun!

Over the May Bank Holiday weekend, we did one big excursion up to Little Italy in North London for the 2014 Canal Cavalcade.  We’d wanted to take the children up to see the canals for ages, and I’m so glad we picked last weekend as it was so colourful and vibrant.  Alex  was delighted with all the kid’s activities, including some brilliant powered boats that he could easily steer on his own and the little zorbs that splashed in a shallow pool (although with the zorbs, he insisted on trying them but decided immediately he didn’t like it – so that was £4 rather wasted!)

Kamikaze Sophie prefered the steep inflatable slide and got very upset when she’d used up all her goes on it. Poor Matt was quite sore after accompanying her repeatedly up and down – but she clearly loved it!

It was a beautiful day – the canal boats looked beautiful, and the market and fair alongside were really lovely. We’ll definitely be back next year.

We whiled away the rest of the afternoon in Hyde Park at the Diana Memorial Playground – both children were completely exhausted from their busy day!

Sunday was very quiet, with Alex, Sophie and I meeting some friends in a local park for the morning and us attempting a family bike ride in the afternoon. Matt had picked up a bike attachment for Alex and was determined to have a go. It’s way to big for Alex, but he loved it nevertheless!

With Bank Holiday Monday dawning sunny, we headed up to Dulwich Woods for our first ramble of the year. We spent a good two hours exploring a new corner of the woods we’d never visited seeking out good trees to climb and bluebells to admire. We found a stunning fallen tree which gave Alex plenty of opportunity to hone his climbing skills. Both children enjoyed a bit of a bug hunt and found countless woodlice and worms!

With much of the woods still very muddy, and Sophie determined to explore the messiest areas, we popped her in the backback and picked up the pace. I enjoyed some lovely snuggles with her on my back!

We rewarded ourselves with a massive pub lunch at the Dulwich Woodhouse and a quiet afternoon at home with a visit from Alex’s “girlfriend” Rosita and her family. All in all another great weekend.

I’ve just spotted the time, so I must go to bed! More soon to mark Sophie turning 18 months…

I am sitting at my kitchen table trying to ignore the call of the last few Cadbury’s cream eggs that make up the children’s Easter stash, and can’t quite believe the weekend is already over.  It’s disappeared in the blink of an eye, but judging by the ridiculous number of photographs I’ve just sorted through, we’ve managed to pack quite a lot in.  No wonder Alex actually asked to go to bed this evening!

We started with a Good Friday doing some of our favourite things in London.  We spent the morning at the National Army Museum in the brilliant kids zone letting the children run wild!  It’s such a great little soft play, with number restrictions and really accessible kit, so even little ones like Sophie can navigate their way around on their own.  I was too busy chasing her to take pictures, but here’s a quick one as she proudly crosses a bridge by herself.  I’m gutted to learn that the museum will close for two years next week for a major refurbishment 😦

After a pub lunch in The Florence in Herne Hill, we wandered over to the velodrome for the Good Friday open day.  Normally, Herne Hill hosts a major cycling meet on Good Friday, but sadly for us locals, that was moved to the Olympic velodrome this year 😦   We still enjoyed a few races and watching people try out penny farthings (!), before heading home to play with our new garden toy – a water and sand table.

The children were so excited when we set it up and carefully put sand and water into the two main compartments.  As soon as they got their hands on it, they transformed it into a murky, muddy swamp by mixing everything up!  What a mess – but they had so much fun!

On Saturday, our carefully made family plans were slighty scuppered by a major chip in our windscreen, so instead of driving together to my parents’s place, I ended up leaving Matt at home waiting for a repair man and taking the children out on my own. Determined not to miss out on the trip we planned, I took Alex and Sophie by bus, tube and train all the way to Beaconsfield to visit Bekenscot Model Village and Miniature Railway!

It was so busy with families, I doubted my sanity for attempting it alone, but Alex and Sophie were completely enthralled with it all.  Alex was beside himself because of all the little trains chugging around the place and shouted “train!” to the nearest person whenever one passed.  Sophie was intrigued by it all, taking ages to walk around as she kept stopping to point and look (and also to pull the petals off lots of the beautiful flower there – whoops!)

We enjoyed a relaxing picnic and then a long time playing in their fabulous adventure playground – Sophie repeatedly climbing up the tallest slide she could find and Alex loving the pirate water canon game.  After ice creams and a bit of a magic show (!), we ended our visit with a ride on the little steam train which chuffs around the village.

It really is a great place – and rather conveniently at the midway point between home and my parents’ house – so I suspect we’ll be visiting pretty often!  Matt picked us up with a gleaming new windscreen and we headed up the M40 to Northamptonshire for the weekend.  It was a beautiful evening, so we headed straight out to the village playground and playing fields, Sophie insisting on pushing her buggy the whole way:

Once we’d finally made it to the fields, we whiled away an hour playing football and enjoying the lovely little playground area:

Once we’d tucked our two exhausted children into bed, we enjoyed the peace and quiet of beautiful Blakesley and an early night to prepare for the inevitable sugar rush that Easter Sunday would bring!

Sure enough, Alex woke excited about the prospect of chocolate eggs! But we made him work for them, setting up a little Easter Egg hunt in the back garden! They had a great time, and were surprisingly thrilled with the little cuddly chicks and lambs they found in some of their eggs in our attempt at limiting the sugar consumption!

They did, of course, enjoy some chocolate before we were heading back out to the playing fields again, this time for the village egg hung and duck race!! Amazingly, 300 cream eggs had been distributed around the massive field for a mass of local children to seek out. And find them they did. Warned they were allowed no more than 5 eggs to ensure everyone got something, Alex decided that meant he HAD to find five. He easily found one, but then couldn’t find any more. Poor Matt then got dragged around the field by Alex in a desperate bid to reach his quota! And find them he did! Alex is nothing if not determined!

Once we’d hoovered up the remaining cream eggs, we joined the villagers at the local stream fot the annual duck race! With over 200 little plastic ducks purchased and flung in the stream, what followed was a hilarious “race” where most of them got stuck in weeds and by the bank. The water wasn’t particularly fast flowing, so it was a fairly lengthy race, but Alex loved it. Sadly his duck didn’t win, but it was quite an experience for a city boy!

After exploring the stream a bit more, and trudging back to the village through the fields, we stopped in at the pub for a refreshing drink 🙂

For the rest of the day, we attempted to ration chocolate consumption and intersperse it with lots of outdoor play to work it off! We managed to leave enough room for a lovely family roast to end the day – all in all, a very happy Easter!

This morning, we had to head back into town, but we broke the journey at the RAF museum for a bit of a run around and some lunch. Alex and Sophie made us spend most of the time in the children’s play area of course! But we did manage to see some of the exhibits too…

We ended the weekend in our local park, feeding the ducklings and enjoying the playground.  Alex managed to climb right to the very top of the “spider’s web” by himself so was very proud for the rest of the day!

Time to sign off – that cream egg won’t eat itself…

I don’t remember Easter being such a big deal when I was growing up – but it seems the Alex and Sophie are enjoying an amazing range of Spring and Easter activities in the run up to the holiday!  My shelves are filling up with homemade Easter rabbits, baskets and egg pictures (almost all of which I should add are not due to some sudden artistic inspiration on my part, but rather the fabulous variety of activities they get up to with their childminder, Jacqui!).

I don’t often write much about what the children get up to during the week, as I’m obviously not there to witness it, but I’ve received so many brilliant pictures recently, here’s a snapshot of what they’ve been doing whilst I’ve been slaving away at my desk (thanks to Jacqui and her daughter Alex for all the pics!)…

They’ve made Easter baskets and painted paper eggs:

They’ve been on an Easter egg hunt (and judging by Sophie’s chocolate smeared face and empty basket, were highly successful):

They’ve visited baby animals at the brilliant Surrey Docks Farm:

They’ve made and painted cardboard robots (Sophie perhaps helping her brother a little too keenly with the paints!):

And they’ve generally had a completely brilliant time!

I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to see so much of what my pair get up to when I’m at work – my poor work colleagues have to politely admire every photo as it arrives in my inbox!!

But back to my camera, just a few snaps to share from last weekend when we stayed very local and quiet after a series of busy trips and playdates.

Last Saturday, I took Sophie to a local music class in East Dulwich while the boys got the car serviced down in Wimbledon (and partook of a nice walk along the river there and some playground fun).  We spent the afternoon together enjoying the sunshine in the Brockwell Park adventure playground.  We were there at the right time as Alex immediately found his friend Isabella (who he plays with on most days with his childminder) and then we found our NCT friend Jonathan and his son Arlo.

We walked home with Jonathan and Arlo, and as they crossed the park, Alex and Arlo played a very surreal game where they repeatedly attempted to fall off their scooters.  Perhaps they will be stunt men.  They found it hilarious:

On Sunday, after a fun swim in Brixton and a Mexican lunch in the market, we travelled up to central London to watch a bit of the marathon.  We nearly didn’t make it, as we found a fun little glass sculpture which Alex completely loved – and he and Matt spent quite some time making shadows and silly shapes at each other.

But we did eventually reach the race and found a good spot to watch the runners for a while.  I always get quite choked up watching everyone run past, and since we were at mile 26, we were so close to the end that it was really emotional!  But Alex soon had us giggling by pointing out all the fancy dress costumes!  He laughed for ages at seeing a runner dressed as a banana!

We didn’t last very long and instead headed up to Green Park for an ice cream and run around.  We spent some time at the beautiful Canadian war memorial there.  A really accessible water feature, it was great watching the children splashing around and enjoying the space.

We ended the day back in brilliant Brockwell Park, making the most of the fine weather and the excellent sand pits!

I almost managed to get a lovely picture of the two siblings – I just need to sort out Alex’s camera smile…

Last weekend we found ourselves with no pre-arranged plans or playdates, so we did some inpromptu trips with the kids based on the weather forecast!

Saturday looked dry and sunny, so we took the children on an Easter trip to Godstone Farm in Surrey. A top favourite of Alex’s, and one of the nearest places for us to start feeling like we’re out in the country, we all enjoyed our day.  There were lots of animals to pet, including some tiny chicks and rabbits (any bunny fans, I assure you, Sophie wasn’t about to hit the rabbit pictured below!):

A new addition to the farm is a dinosaur trail which was clearly the highlight of Alex’s day!  He dragged us there first to seek out a T-rex.  The trail was really well done, with great sound effects, plenty of large dinosaurs and even an opportunity to dig for dino bones in some sand!
We hadn’t spotted the den building area before, but we had a fun game of hide and seek there for a while!

Eventually, after we’d exhausted the tractor rides, soft play, picnic lunch, den building, dinosaurs and animal handling area, we got to see some actual farm animals!  Everyone particularly liked the pigs and their huge broods of piglets!

Isn’t Sophie growing up?!

We made one final stop in the huge adventure playground before heading home – everyone enjoyed an ice cream and Matt encouraged Sophie to play on some entirely age inappropriate play equipment!  She did love the very long slide (until she bumped her forehead sliding off the bottom of it – whooops!)

Sunday was much gloomier, so I consulted my London for Kids guide and headed to the Barbican to explore the tropical conservatory!  It’s a real gem in the middle of all the concrete.  The children loved peering into the carp ponds and exploring the network of paths around the plants.  Alex even managed to find the elusive turtles basking in their little pool!

We even managed to get some pictures of us all looking at the camera together – here’s me and my babies!

Once we’d exhausted the conservatory, we stopped for lunch in the Barbican restaurant and had fun looking at the massive fountains and water features on their terrace (which alarmingly had no barrier – so I spent some time trying to persuade the children jumping/falling in!).

With the weather getting worse, we dashed into the brilliant Museum of London for a quick play.  Here are my cheeky pair investigating the fancy dress!

I feel like there’s a recurring theme with my blog – posts are becoming less frequent and I start each one with an apology for my absence.

So I will just say that it’s been another busy fortnight packed full of lots of long hours, a few gorgeous little baby cuddles, some excellent adventures with the children and a couple of frustrating bouts of illness for all of us.

Just after my last post, Sophie and I were struck down with a bug which got in the way of a short trip I had planned to visit some girlfriends up in Newcastle – a proper girly trip for the first time in years.  Needless to say, I was gutted to miss out on wine and gossiping!  But things soon improved with the arrival of Katharine and her gorgeous daughter, Emilia, for their first trip up to London.

Cue the first set of wonderful little baby cuddles. Emilia was an angel, sleeping beautifully and seemingly fascinated in watching Alex and Sophie career around the house.  So cute!  We had a lovely visit from our university friend, Kate, on the first day of Katharine’s visit.  While us ladies were enjoying  a leisurely lunch and catch up, Alex went to his first proper fancy dress party, finally having an excuse to don the NASA outfit my parents brought him from the USA – how cool does he look!?  Sophie loved wearing the cap afterwards!

On Sunday, we headed over to Ealing for a 2nd birthday party.  A friend had taken over a rugby club hall and brought in some fabulous entertainers for the little ones, so Alex and Sophie had a wonderful time.  Now that Sophie is confidently walking, I took the opportunity of trying her out in a proper party dress – and she loved it! She was enthralled by the skirt and looked unbelievably cute running around the party

Here are our wonderful houseguests – Katharine and Emilia!

Last weekend saw a return of Spring sunshine, so we spent as much time as possble outside.  Having read about a mini steam fairground in Battersea Park, we headed off with a picnic after a quick morning swim in Brixton.  We slowly meandered at Sophie’s walking pace along the river, stopping to inspect leaves, sticks, rubbish (!) and stones, before settling on a bench for lunch.

We explored the peace pagoda up close for the first time, and with all the beautiful blossoms on the trees, it felt like we could be in Japan!

Finally, we made it around to the steam fair, much to Alex’s excitement.  He immediately began negotiating with us about how many rides he could go on!  Thankfully there were only a handful of beautiful, traditional rides so he had a crack at most of then.  He’s getting braver, and went on the tall helter skelter on hsi own and some faster solo rides.

Sophie was getting too sleepy to enjoy much, but we did do one attempt at the Merry-Go-Round before it was time for her to nap in her buggy.  Matt and Alex went off to explore the brilliant children’s adventure playground while I wandered around the lovely, quiet lakes and gardens with a sleeping toddler.

Mother’s Day brought an opportunity for more baby cuddles – this time with a very tiny pair!  We headed out to Berkshire to meet my beautiful new nieces, Rose and Lucy!  Aren’t they gorgeous!?  Quite a handful for my brother and sister-in-law, but so very sweet!

On the way, we stopped in for a play at The Lookout where we met my parents for an hour.  I love this picture of my dad with Alex and Sophie wandering off to explore the woods.  They seem huge compared to their new cousins!  The children had a brilliant time as usual in the playground, even playing together a little bit (despite her expression in the picture below, Sophie did enjoy the slide with her brother!)

The final highlight of Mothers’ Day was a wonderful lunch with Matt’s family in Crowthorne.  The weather was mild enough for the children to spend most of the time in the garden, and Sophie was clearly quite taken with her older cousin, Honor, who was also visiting!

To close of this post, here are my lovely boys – having great fun on Grandad’s garden swing!
 

Doing some serious work avoidance this evening, and catching up on the blog as another glorious weekend draws to a close.  Turns out this is my 150th post on this blog – wonder how many more I’ll do before Alex and Sophie rebel and refuse to allow me to share their lives online!

Right now they have no choice – so let me tell you want we did this weekend!  After the sensation that Spring had sprung last weekend, the past few days have felt like Summer!  Sophie bared her arms for the first time in months – I think she was quite confused!

Matt’s had a horrible few days of work, so I took the children out for a few hours on Saturday so he had some time to carry on with his work projects.  The weather was stunning, so we started at our local park for some duck feeding and fun in the playground.  Sophie got pecked by a goose while trying to feed it some bread which shocked her a bit, but a go on Alex’s scooter made her forget the trauma pretty quickly!

After a stop in East Dulwich for the beginnings of a Summer wardrobe for the children (yay for Sainsburys) and some picnic supplies, we hopped on the bus up to our favourite museum – the Horniman.  It was too nice to go inside, so we enjoyed a couple of hours exploring the beautiful grounds, farmers market and walled gardens.  Mostly the children tried to find things to climb on

We stopped briefly for a picnic lunch in the gardens, before checking out the animal walk (Sophie loved the goats and alpacas, Alex was more interested in the guinea pigs!) and sampling some chocolate button crepes (scrummy).

Matt joined us for a quick trip into the museum for our usual trek around the aquarium and the excellent interactive Extremes exhibition – here are my crazy family on the summit of Everest!

After a leisurely walk home through Dulwich Park, stopping for ice cream while Sophie napped, we stopped off at our local kids shoe shop to check out Alex and Sophie’s shoe sizes.  Sophie’s feet are still tiny, but Alex’s have grown again so it was time for new shoes.  For the first time we let him pick his own new shoes – and have ended up with very cool, bright green trainers!  Oh dear!

Today we headed out of town to visit my brother and sister-in-law in Reading – just three weeks before they are due to become parents to twins!  With the sun shining, the children stripped down to their tshirts and took of their shoes and spent the entire time either in the fabulous playground near their aunt and uncle’s house or in their enormous garden.  The only time we dragged them inside was to make and eat homemade pizza!

Here are some rare shots of the siblings together – they almost never stop for long enough to capture them together!

Here’s our failed attempt at a family photo!

And a slightly better one of Sophie and her uncle!

Comedy moment of our trip was Sophie stealing my pudding – she commandeered my mini magnum ice cream and very quickly looked like this:

One very happy girly!  The sugar rush didn’t last and she passed out asleep as soon as we started heading back to London:

We made the most of the last of the sunshine today by catching up on some gardening – Alex got completely filthy helping with some digging.  Check out the green shoes!

Another long overdue post I’m afraid.  We’ve had another completely manic couple of weeks with work for both Matt and I a little out of control.  Plus, our weekends have been packed – and so my poor blog is suffering!

I had a particularly busy weekend a couple of weeks ago as Matt was away for most of it enjoying our friend Tim’s stag do!  So it was solo parenting for me – and I think I went a bit overboard ensuring we didn’t get bored! I arranged two playdates for the Saturday, with Nici and her boys Harry and Joe joining us for lunch and Caroline with Sam and Una our guests for dinner!  I had a lot of washing up to do!

We met Sam and Una in our local Sunray Gardens for some sunny playtime before dinner.  Alex and Sam are such firm friends, it’s hilarious watching them together.  Sam had brought Alex a lolly which made his entire day I think!  Sophie and Una are still a bit small to play together, and to be honest, Sophie looked horrified when we put the two girls on a rocker together!

The afternoon threatened to go terribly wrong when Sophie fell over on the pavement and split her lip horribly – so much blood!  But thankfully she perked up at dinner time!

On Sunday morning, since Matt had only arrived home at 4am, I let him sleep while I took the children down to Brockwell Park for some playtime.  Sophie is getting so confident on the climbing frames, and I regularly had my heart in my mouth as she ran around raised bridges getting terrifyingly close to the edgy.  Thankfully we didn’t have any more accidents!

After a quick stop at the Herne Hill Farmers Market for bread and cakes, we headed home to wake up daddy and prepare for more guests – this time some work friends of mine who were joining us for lunch.  We had a lovely lunch, and even managed some decent grown up conversation as Sophie napped and Alex watched a movie – but we enjoyed some comedy interruptions as Alex joined us to show everyone his brilliant dinosaur pants (!).

Soon after they headed home, my parents arrived – our final visitors of the weekend!  I gave up cooking and washing up, so we ordered takeaway and had a lovely evening catching up.  Alex again decided trousers aren’t his thing!

Last weekend saw the first proper sunny, warm weather of 2014 – and a very happy and busy Agar family.  With brilliant timing, we had arranged to head out to the Surrey Hills to visit Matt’s brother and his family, and to meet their new addition – baby William.  It was a stunning day to get out of town – and we spent almost our entire visit enjoying the garden with Alex’s cousins Thomas and Edward (and Monty the dog!).

Matt attempted to lead a game of football with all the children – but Thomas, the football expert, took control and tried to show Alex what to do.  Best moment of the day was seeing Alex spitting on the football when Thomas told him to dribble the ball!  Oh dear!

Even Sophie got involved – although we need to talk to her about the rules of football!

I’m shocked to discover we didn’t actually take any pictures of our newest nephew – very bad form.  But both Matt and enjoyed lovely cuddles with him!

On Sunday, with the weather forecast to be even better, we decided we wouldn’t waste the day with our usual local swimming/playground trips.  So we grabbed our “family walks in London” Christmas present book, and got the train to London Bridge.  From there, we enjoyed a glorious couple of hours slowly meandering our way to the Columbia Road Flower Market near Bethnell Green.

There’s nothing like the city at the weekend – super quiet streets and time to stop and admire the brilliant architecture.  Alex loved getting close up to the Gherkin.

Along the way, we found fun spots to stop and play.  At the foot of the Gherkin were some funky dinosaur sculptures which, of course, the children thought were brilliant!

We could barely drag them away from running around, chasing each other.

But, luckily for them, it wasn’t long before we found more excellent sculptures to explore, walls to climb and architecture to investigate…

We made our way through the city, had a wander around the renovated Spitalfields Market (I am now detemined to return on my own to do some proper shopping!) and braved the chaotic crowds of Brick Lane.  A tiny bit overwhelmed by the bustle and noise, and getting increasingly hungry, we picked up the pace and reached our final destination – the Columbia Road Flower Market.

Of course, half of London had had the same idea, so the market was completely packed and impossbile to pass through with a buggy!  So we had a good look at all the flowers from one end of the road, and then dived down a side street to grab some delicious lunch in a little bakery.

Then we settled into a great little playground near by, grabbed some ice creams and enjoyed the sunshine!  Thoroughly exhausted after our expedition, we took the easy route home – jumping on the overground train at Hoxton and heading straight back to Denmark Hill.  Brilliant!

We wandered home from there slowly, via the Ruskin Park playground, arriving home just before 4pm.  We were just settling down to put our feet up, when Alex remembered that he’d missed his weekly swimming trip.  So we piled in the car, popped into Brixton and had a quick evening splash and swim!  The children were thoroughly exhausted by bedtime – but what a brilliant day.  Looking forward to more weekend trips exploring bits of London we’re less familiar with.

It’s now Friday night, so I’m busy planning this weekend’s adventure!  Tell you about it soon.

A busy couple of weeks has meant I’ve neglected the blog – sorry folks!  Just time before I tackle my inbox to do a quick photo blog of some of the things we’ve been up to over the past fortnight.

I seemed to completely fail to take any photographs of the lovely visit last weekened we had from our friends Kate, Mike and their toddler Tom.  Their trip coincided with some beautiful weather, so we enjoyed a very civilised lunch in Dulwich Village followed by a lovely explore of Dulwich Park.  It was so nice to be back outside again – and we bumped into several local friends during our wander, all of whom were getting their children out in the sunshine too!  A big gutted I don’t have any snaps at all – it was a lovely visit.

Last weekend, we also enjoyed another great trip to the Horniman Museum where we enjoyed having a look at their brilliant new “Extremes” exhibition.  It was the end of the day and the gallery was almost empty – and as a result, Sophie and Alex had plenty of space to run around safely and explore the extremely family friendly displays.  They loved how “hands-on” it was – and particularly enjoyed pumping water for camels, expermimenting with different temperatures in front of a heat sensitive camera and using their sense of touch in the pitch dark tunnels.  Would highly recommend it -we’ll certainly be back!

Alex and Sophie clearly had a good time with Jacqui this week – Sophie starting to assert herself over her big brother more and more.  She knows who is boss!

This weekend has been crazy busy – we’ve packed something into nearly every minute (hence matt and I are completely exhausted right now!).  We started Saturday morning with early morning appointments for the children at the hairdresser.  Sophie could barely see through her long fringe, so she had a very professional cut.  I’m still amazed she sat still so long as the very young (and clearly inexperienced at cutting toddler hair) hairdresser carefully clipped sections up and did a very thorough cut!

Alex was keen to get his hair coloured green rather than cut, but thankfully settled for a bright green smock instead!

After the hairdressers, we headed over to our NCT friends Jess and Jonathan’s house for a playdate with Alex’s friend Arlo.  They had a blast running riot around their house – and we all enjoyed meeting gorgeous baby Ivan who arrived a few weeks ago!

After a couple of hours at home for lunch and some quiet time, we were back out again, this time at Alex’s friend Rosita’s third birthday party.  The weather was mild and springlike, so we all enjoyed spending time in their garden.  The children loved the little treasure hunt laid on for them with treats like bubbles after every clue!

And of course, the absolutely highlight for Alex was the cake!  Here he is holding his “girlfriend’s” hand as her cake came out – she even let him help her blow out the candles. So cute together!

This morning was another early start for our weekly trip over to Brixton for a swim.  Alex was in for a treat when we walked past the Brixton fire station – unusually, the doors were open and when a fireman spotted Alex gawping at a fire engine, they invited him in to have a look around.  He was thrilled, and even got to sit in the driving set of the engine.  So nice of them!

After our swim, Alex and I headed up to London on our own to one of my favourite places – the Unicorn Theatre – to see a play for toddlers, “Not now, Bernard“.  We met his friend Jake there – and I was amazed at how brilliantly the two 3-year olds behaved.  They sat beautifully still for the 45 minute production and thought it was absolutely hysterical.  Alex gave the rest of the audience a running commentary of all the action, he was so engrossed!

A nice walk along the Southbank afterwards, and a family trip to our local Sunray Gardens finished off the afternoon.  Sophie, unlike her big brother, seems already super keen to learn to scoot and cycle.  It took us months to persuade Alex to scoot and we still haven’t really succeeded in getting him to love his balance bike – but Sophie is desperate to figure it out:

A spot of chocolate cake making and a bunch of bedtime stories concluded the hugely busy, fun weekend.  Slightly dreading work tomorrow – but lots more fun stuff planned next weekend.  Only five days to go!

It’s cold, windy and wet outside – so I’m warming my soul with giggling children.  How gorgeous is Sophie (randomly amused by a paper bag):

and here’s a video I cound from the beautiful warm days of last Summer – more Sophie giggles.  For some reason, she seems to find a Scottish rugby ball completely hilarious.  Can’t think why.

Just love

As another week draws to a close, I’m just remembered I was part way through a blog about it which I clearly never published.  So here it is…

Last Saturday, I had to pop into the office for a couple of hours to help out with some student training – so Matt bravely headed into the Science Museum in sole command of the children.  As usual, they loved it, Sophie getting completely drenched in the basement waterplay area.  I joined them for a picnic lunch before taking Sophie off for a buggy nap and a spot of shopping on the King’s Road (and a cheeky cake at the little Farmers’ Market there!).

Matt and Alex stayed on at the Science Museum for the rest of the day – the highlight of which resulted in my favourite photo of 2014 so far – Alex in the IMAX!

Matt thought it was time to introduce Alex to a 3D IMAX film.  I wasn’t sure that Alex would sit still for that long, but since the topic was the solar system – his current obsession – he did very well.  He shouted out the names of the planets, adn apparently kept trying to get up to touch the 3D objects in front of him!  Brilliant!

On Sunday, after our usual morning swimming excursion to Brixton, we headed over to our friends Katie and Tim’s house for a playdate and family dinner.  Sophie had a fabulous time taking on a dinosaur, beating it to the ground repeatedly (should I be alarmed?)

Katie, being super creative, had prepared a little treasure hunt for the children – so we enjoyed the opportunity to get outside in the clear weather and find some golden coins.  Alex and Jake loved it – so much so that Alex’s treasure map now has pride of place on his bedroom wall!

After all that excursion, we just about managed a proper sit down dinner together – the children incentivised to eat their delicious roast with the promise of jelly!

It’s been a busy week for all of us.  Alex and Sophie have clearly had a wonderful time at Jacqui’s, judging by some of the photographs she’s sent me!

I had a day off on Tuesday and headed down to the New Forest to visit Katharine and Emilia.  Despite the storms lashing the country, it was a beautiful (if a little windy) day – so we spent most of it down at Lepe Beach enjoying the sunshine and the opportuntiy to catch up on all our news in the little cafe there over fish and chips and cakes!  It was a bit of a flying visit, but a very lovely one!

It really was a stunning day!

After a quiet few weekends, we’ve just got home after a very busy one!  We’d decided to visit my parents up in Northamptonshire for the weekend, but decided to break the journey up there on Saturday morning at the RAF Museum in Hendon.

I’ve wanted to go for ages, but we never quite got round to it.  Am kicking myself for passing the junction so many times without stopping – it’s incredible!   Three enormous hangers packed full of historic and contemporary aircraft, brilliantly accessible for two enthusiastic toddlers.

On top of all the amazing aircraft on display, there was a vast children’s indoor picnic and play area – a great place for Alex and Sophie to use up their post lunch energy in advance of the afternoon drive North. Alex got to have a go on a glider and bounce on helicopter blades, and Sophie enjoyed climbing over the wooden planes and helicopters.

It really was a stunning museum – heaven for me.  I particularly loved the crumbling old Lancaster which looks like it’s in the early stages of restoration.  It looked so old and distinguished – particularly when compared to the faithfully restored Lancaster in the hanger next door.

I’m already looking forward to going back and checking out the rest of the exhibits.  I can see we will become regulars!

We were soon back on the road heading to Northamptonshire, Alex very excited about seeing his grandparents.  And I can see why he was excited, as the second he arrived he was presented with freshly made cupcakes and a new toy!  He is spoiled!

Once the sugar high had passed, we had a lovely afternoon braving the cold to walk around the village and watching movies in the warm house.

Today dawned surprisingly sunny and mild, so we headed out for a walk in Towcester. We played pooh sticks and Sophie attempted to scoot – I don’t think it’ll be very long until she wants her own scooter!

Sophie also discovered the joy of being swung high – so Grandma and I spent ages swinging her in the air.  She squealed and giggled for ages, struggling to be swung higher – it was gorgeous!

The morning flew by, and after lunch we were back on the road, this time Oxford bound to drop in on our NCT friends, Dan and Bryony.  Alex and his friend Fred were so excited to see each other – it’s brilliant that they remember each other properly now!  They were soon running around and playing – and getting so wild, that we sent Matt and Dan out with the children to the nearby park to burn off some energy!  That left Bryony and I nearly an hour to properly catch up – what a luxury!

As night fell, we enjoyed a Mexican dinner together before the boys got to decorate their own ice cream cones with sprinkles and sweets – the highlight of their afternoon!

We drove home at the childrens’ bedtime, expecting them to sleep the whole way.  But a combination of the ice cream affect and the amazing stars and new moon to look at, meant that Alex stayed awake the whole way home!  Wonder how grumpy he’s going to be in the morning when we have to wake him up!

We stayed within two miles of our house all weekend – and it reminded me quite how much I love living here!  I’ve had a few horrendous commutes this year so far, and I’ve found myself occasionally investigating RightMove to see what we could afford up in Northumbria or Scotland, imagining a completely different life.  The idea of mortgage free living is tempting, and sometimes I question why Matt and I work quite so hard to afford a life in the capital.  But weekends like this confirm why.

I love London – and more specifically I love Herne Hill!  And I love bringing up my children here.

We started the weekend at our local little park, Sunray Gardens, where we fed the geese and ducks and had a general run aroud.  Sophie was modelling her rather garish new waterproof suit – a find in the January sales, and a great investment to both keep her really warm but also to save her clothes now she loves digging up mud etc!

We then headed to the brilliant Horniman Museum, just two miles from home.  Alex and Sophie loved exploring the aquarium – Alex particularly fascinated by the frogs and jelly fish, and Sophie just enjoying the space and freedom to walk and point!

Once Matt and I were bored of the 20th loop around the tanks, we dragged the children into the beautiful Horniman gardens up to the Saturday Farmers’ Market.  Soon we were all sitting on a bench, looking at the London city skyline, munching on savoury galettes, soup and chocolate and clementine muffins!  Perfect.

While Sophie headed home with Matt for a nap, Alex and I got a bus into East Dulwich for a wander around the shops and market – stocking up on popcorn, brownies and gifts for all the babies born this week (our friends have been busy!).  We cracked open the popcorn as soon as we got home as we settled down to watch “WALL*E”, Alex’s current favourite film.

We ended the day with a playdate at home with my NCT friend Shelly and her son Ralph.  A thoroughly lovely, chilled out day.

The pace stayed easy this morning, but with the addition of bright sunshine which encouraged us out of the house early for a swim in Brixton.  I wish I could get some video of the children in the water – I can’t describe quite how much they love it in the pool.  Sophie goes crazy, giggling, kicking and spashing.  She’s getting really strong and propelling herself forwards and has a great position in the water.  She did some swimming underwater today and was completely at ease.  And Alex is getting more and more confident – happy underwater, swimming through our legs, jumping off the side and starting to swim on his own.  So proud!

After the usual saunter around Brixton, and stop for Colombian snacks (empanadas and arepas), coffee and cookies, we headed home for lunch and another viewing of “WALL*E”!  Alex couldn’t be persuaded to watch anything else.  I couldn’t even drag him away from space to walk to the Herne Hill Farmers’ Market – so Sophie and I enjoyed a girly trip together and sampled some yummy red velvet cake!

We ended our weekend, where we started it, back in Sunray Gardens.  This time in the sunshine and with Alex and Sophie’s friends, Sam and Una.  The boys attempted to play tennis (!), chased each other and dug in the mud for treasure.  Sophie followed them around as fast as she could – I don’t think she realises she isn’t three as well.

When we got too cold, we headed home to continue playing there.  Sophie and Una pottered around together – hoping they’ll grow into firm friends like Sam and Alex.

To try and calm things down, we spent the last time before bed on more artistic tasks – making a glitter space scene.  We don’t do much art with Alex (he doesn’t tend to stop moving), but he loved doing this.  He was so keen with the glitter that I fear I will be finding glitter for months! Oh well, at least I have a new piece of art for my fridge!

It really was a lovely weekend.  Just five more days till the next one…