I can’t quite believe another weekend is over – they fly by so quickly.  I find myself dreading Sunday evening as we’re having such fun at the moment together.

The lovely weather this weekend has kept all our spirits high – it’s been chilly, but so sunny and clear. We contemplated doing a museum or a music class on Saturday, but decided it would be just wrong not to get outside and enjoy the sunshine after so much rain recently.  So after a very lazy morning playing at home, we drove over to Deen City Farm, a great little place down in Wimbledon.

With the children wrapped up warm, we set out in the mud to visit all the animals.  We quickly regretted leaving Sophie’s waterproof suit at her childminder’s and the fact she only has one pair of shoes and no wellies!  But she had a blast, so we didn’t really mind (although wellies are now on the top of my shopping list!).  We saw cows, sheep, pigs, horses and even an alpaca.  Sophie, the animal lover she is, adored them all – especially the chickens and turkeys!  Alex liked the ducks, laughing how they kicked their legs underwater like he does in the pool.

After lunch in their little cafe, we set off for home – although not until we’d had a game of hopscotch in the farm gardens.

Once back home, we continued with our outdoors theme, and Alex and I did a spot of gardening – well, actually, we planted the Rocket seeds he got in his stocking.  Given our terrible record of growing things, I don’t hold out much hope for them, but Alex is inspecting the pots several times a day.  Fingers crossed!

Then it was back outdoors for a walk to Herne Hill to enjoy the sunset.  Alex has become a little obsessed with stargazing, following the BBC CBeebies series this week.  So we took his binoculars out and spent some time inspecting the moon so Alex could check out the craters (he likes to talk to us about how they were made by asteroids and meteors!).  It’s brilliant and I hope his interest remains.  It’s so infectious, Matt and I were hanging out of our attic skylights last night looking at Jupiter!

Today we did our usual swimming trip to Brixton before having our friends Katie, Jake and Emily over for a playdate and dinner.  We had a lovely afternoon watching the children playing – even managing to find time to properly talk to each other.  And, against all odds, we enjoyed a big roast dinner together with all the children eating nicely and being very good indeed.  Having said that, the conversation did get a little repetitive – here are the boys enjoying telling each other that they are “stinky”.  Hmmm – toilet humour starts young!

To close, here are a few pics that I should have shared last week but just spotted on Matt’s phone.  It’s Sophie and Alex having a blast putting the tree away last week.   Sophie does love those lights!

We kicked off 2014 with a slightly crazy New Year’s Day plan – we aimed to have lunch in Berkshire with Matt’s dad and Michele and then have dinner in Southampton at Katharine’s house, before driving back to London in time for bed – with all travel timed to coincide with naps and children’s bedtime!

Quite a lot of miles to cover in one day, particularly given the torrential rain, but we managed it – and really rather enjoyed ourselves in the process!  It was made significantly easier by having new Thomas movies available for Alex on the iPad!

Sadly the rain meant that Alex couldn’t enjoy his Grandad and Nanny Michele’s garden and pond, but he still had lots of somewhat hyperactive fun.  He clearly enjoys visiting them!  Sophie, as usual, focused her visit on trying to climb their stairs and cuddling the dogs.  After eating as much lasagne and chocolate caramel tart as possible, we packed up the car and continued South.

The few hours we spent with Katharine were a complete treat as it involved lots of cuddles with her beautiful newborn daughter, Emilia.  Sophie and Alex were fascinated – and Matt and I were surprised about how little I can remember Sophie being that small!  I came straight home to read the early blog posts about her.  And I already can’t wait for the day when Emilia and Sophie are running around after each other – I’m sure it’ll be upon me in a flash.

So cute!  And such a pleasure to see our friend so very happy 🙂  An amazing start to Katharine’s year.  And a fun start to ours – Alex clearly loves playing with his Auntie Katharine:

For the final days of our Christmas break, we eased back into London life and had four quiet days as a family.  I had to pop into work for a few hours to help with the announcement of Imperial’s new President, so Matt braved the Science Museum with two toddling children.  We wrote our phone numbers on Alex just in case – but as far as I’m aware, Matt managed not to lose either child!  Sophie absolutely loved it, refusing to be carried or restrained in her buggy, and enjoying exploring on her own for the first time.

We also spent some time at the London Transport Museum – Alex’s current favourite spot.

Once he’d exhausted climbing on everything, playing with ticket stamping machines and looking at all the trains and buses, we had a lovely family lunch at Wagamamas.  I mention this because this was pretty much the first time I can remember where all four of us have had a meal in a public restaurant where we all stayed in our seats for the entire duration, ate a good portion of food, didn’t demolish the place settings and no-one cried!  It was such fun – and hopefully a sign of things to come.  Noodles are clearly a success!

The day got even better with a late afternoon playdate with Alex’s friend Arlo – and some quality catching up time with my NCT friend, Jess.  The boys had a blast playing trains and giggling upstairs in Alex’s room – I’ve loving getting to the point where Alex wants to take his friends to play in his room!   He’s very proud to show it off!

On Saturday, with the weather rubbish again, we piled in the car and headed to Stratford in East London for some playtime in the fabulous Discover Story Centre.  Sophie is getting so independent, it was such a pleasure to just follow her around as she explored.  She even sat down with colouring pencils and paper and did a spot of doodling.

The trip East went so well, we even found some time for a spot of sale shopping in Westfield and another lovely family lunch.  Alex’s steller behaviour was rewarded with the highlight of his day – a chocolate ice cream served to him on a vespa!

We raced back home in time for another playdate, this time with Matt’s brother Jonathan and two of the children’s cousins – Jessica and Max.  The cousins immediately gathered around the play table and set to work getting all the toys out:

And once they’d finished that, they tucked in to a pizza together – Alex clearly ruling the roost!

We had a very quiet Sunday – my birthday – with a special breakfast at the Cafe on Peckham Rye

We spent the rest of the day swimming in Brixton, wandering around East Dulwich and enjoying the Goose Green playground.  Matt and I were really sad to reach the end of our two weeks off – the children were so well behaved, so interesting and such a pleasure to be around.  And we both enjoyed some proper downtime, catching up on movies and avoiding our work emails as much as possible.  Roll on our next family break!

Just time for a final post of 2013 before I tuck in to my New Year’s Eve lamb noisettes and dauphinoise potatoes…

We’ve ended 2013 with two lovely days filled with old and new friends.  Yesterday, we did another road trip over to Southend-on-Sea to visit my uni friend Kate and her family in their new house by the seaside.  It was a long and dreary drive, but the clouds cleared when the children saw Kate’s amazing playroom.  Cue hours of fun playing with little Tom’s brilliant toys:

Following a delicious lunch of homemade pizza, we braved the wind and cold for a quick trip to the seaside (well, we couldn’t travel all that way and not step on the sand!). We lasted about five minutes, but we got to see the sea, write our names in the sand and run around a lot!

And best of all, Kate managed to get a rare family photo of all four of us. We, of course, didn’t manage to get the children to look at the camera – who knows what’s so interesting on the floor! But there we all are:

We then headed back to Herne Hill for a playdate with some of our newest friends – Caroline and Dave and their children Sam and Una. Sam is Alex’s “best friend” from his childminder, and Una is Sophie’s age. We spent a lovely hour watching the children play with pretty much every toy in Sam’s collection – and then a long half an hour packing it all up!!

I have no photographic evidence of how lovely the last day of 2013 was – we were having too much fun! We spent the morning over in Brixton having a very splashy family swim and trip to the market where the children consumed vast quantities of Colombian food (they are so much more cosmopolitan than I was at their age!).

After some chill out time at home, our friends Catherine and Charlie arrived from Zurich with Phoebe and Henry. Having not seen them for 6 months we had a lot to catch up on! And the children slotted back into their old friendships and were soon running riot around the house! They were soon joined by their friends Charlie and Danny for even more raucous play. All six children were scarlet with excitement and exhaustion by the end of the day – but it was the perfect end to the year.

My champagne beckons – hope you all have wonderful New Year’s.  See you in 2014!

x

Friday heralded the arrival in London of my lovely friend Jo who, as she’s based in Newcastle, we sadly don’t get to see very often.  So with just 24 hours of her, I wanted to pack in plenty of catching up time!

We met at the wonderful Museum of London – somewhere I’ve intended going for years, but never quite made it (partly because I’ve never managed to find the way in given it’s unusual location in the middle of a roundabout!).  Matt thought he’d heard that it had an excellent toddler area, so we were excited about letting Alex and Sophie run wild – but on arrival it seemed he’d got that wrong (that’s at the Museum of London Docklands branch).  I panicked a little that it would be impossible for the little ones – but I needn’t have worried.  Within minutes of arriving, Alex was engrossed in an excellent children’s story and singing session and Sophie was toddling along the glass balcony spying on the visitors below and trying to pull baubles of their massive Christmas tree!

We all explored a couple of galleries before stopping for a leisurely picnic lunch where the children loved spinning on the swivel chairs and climbing on anything they could reach.  We then spent ages wandering the excellent exhibitions, all of which were fascinating for our entire group.  Sophie was hilarious trying to comprehend the floor displays highlighting Roman archeological finds – these were displayed in lit glass cabinets embedded in the floor. She kept trying to descend into them backwards as if she was on stairs going down and didn’t seem to understand why she was just sliding along glass.

Alex particularly loved the Victorian Walk of old shops and of course the transport display showing all London modes of travel – with working underground trains and trams you could push along yourself.  It took some persuading to get him to leave!

Jo, Matt and I all found interesting displays – from the 19th century Booth poverty map of London to the spectacular Lord Mayor’s cermonial carriage.  It really was an excellent museum – and one we’ll be visiting again.

After so much excitement, we headed home for a quieter afternoon of train track building (Jo and Matt seemed to be competing to build the most complex route for Alex), book reading and general gossiping!  Alex does love his Auntie Jo!

On Saturday, after a quiet morning at home and brief wander around Herne Hill, we packed up the car and headed out of town to my parents’ village in Northamptonshire – Blakesley.

We arrived in time for a lovely Christmas supper with my brother and sister-in-law who we hadn’t seen yet – cue even more present exchanges!  My children are totally spoiled!  Alex in particular loved the balloon animals set that Matt got (!) – and Matt can now proudly fashion a balloon dog 🙂

After an early night, we were delighted to wake to a beautiful, clear, frosty morning in the village – the view from our room was so peaceful.  Heaven.

Alex enjoyed helping his Grandpa feed the many birds that visit the garden:

and Sophie had a great time at the village park where she even got to meet some horses!  She was quite scary on the climbing frame, speeding down the slide headfirst before any of us could reach her (and totally loving the experience!)

It’s a great village – and the children love visiting.  But this was a flying visit, and we were soon heading South back to London again, taking a scenic route through the city so Alex could drive over Tower Bridge.

It was nice to stop moving and snuggle up at home for the evening – but we’re not stopping for long.  Next stop, Southend-on-Sea for lunch…

Merry Christmas!

Boxing Day dawned crisp, sunny and clear – much to our delight as we were heading down to the Surrey Hills for the day to visit Matt’s brother, Richard, and his family – beginning the more transient part of our Christmas holiday where we attempt to visit as many friends and family as possible in just a few days!

As soon as we arrived, Alex disappeared up to his cousins’ bedroom to play with Thomas and Edward – and we tucked in to some chocolate log and mince pies!  Sophie immediately spotted Monty the dog, and spent much of the rest of the day smiling, kissing and pointing at him. She really does love animals!

Sufficiently energised by chocolate, we all wrapped up warm and headed out into the glorious Surrey Hills right behind their house – Alex in his wellies and Sophie in our hiking backpack.  Turned out she’s not a big fan, so she looked like this a lot of the time:

Poor lamb!  Thankfully we let her out for a wander around at the midway point, and she was a bit perkier afterwards!!

The boys on the other hand had a blast, running around through the trees, playing hide and seek and getting nice and muddy.

We attempted to get a group shot of the boys but completely failed to manage one without a silly pose or pulled face – here’s the best one we managed:

They were funny!  It’s so nice to see Alex having a great time with his older cousins – and exciting that another baby cousin will be arriving in the next few weeks! A buddy for Sophie!

We had a thoroughly lovely day and a delicious lunch – not that Sophie partook of it.  She has four teeth cutting through at the moment so is on a bit of a hunger strike.  But she did enjoy some chocolate ice cream along with the boys.

Here are all the photos from our lovely day trip if you fancy seeing the full set:

x

So Christmas is over for another year – but we’ve had a great one!  I was quite apprehensive the closer we got to the holidays as we’d yet to have an illness free Christmas with Alex – so I was expecting chicken pox to set in on Christmas Eve or something.  But thankfully, the worst we faced this year was a bit of post MMR grumpiness from Sophie and runny noses all round!

This was the first Christmas where Alex really understood what was going on, so we’ve had a fun few weeks building up his anticipation and excitement.  He decided early on that we wanted a “Diesel 10” engine from Thomas the Tank Engine for Christmas – and “wrote” to Santa promising to be good.  We almost had a disaster when Amazon failed to deliver the toy in time – so poor Matt had to make a dash to Hamleys to make sure Santa delivered!

Alex and Sophie were almost done with Christmas after their last week with Jacqui this year – they were at parties every day with their friends, singing and dancing, meeting Santa and his elves and generally having a brilliant time.   They were exhausted by the time the weekend arrived!

We had a quiet weekend finishing up Christmas shopping and enjoying a bit of winter sunshine in the park:

On Sunday afternoon, we popped over to our friends Katie and Tim for some Christmas drinks.  Alex loved playing with his friend Jake’s Octonauts toys and Sophie liked eating all the grapes at the buffet. A very chilled start to the Christmas break.

Things got a bit stressful on Monday when the weather got so bad we were stuck in the house all day – the kids got a bit stir crazy and we ran out of creative ways to keep them busy.  Thankfully Grandma and Grandpa arrived to save the day.  A spot of indoor rugby and some cheesecake making – and we made it to bedtime!

Christmas Eve started badly when we discovered all the museums in London were closed and the local parks were shut with the high winds – but we filled the day with collecting vast quantities of Christmas food and exploring the Brixton softplay.  We had a lovely family supper of ham slow-cooked in coca-cola and chocolate orange cheesecake (yum) before leaving out food for Santa and Rudolph and tucking the children up in bed.

Sadly, Alex had multiple night terrors – I think caused by too much excitement – and Sophie was a bit restless following her recent innoculations.  So it was a very long night with some pretty interrupted sleep for Matt and I.

But that was quickly forgotten when Alex bounded in on Christmas morning at 7.30am concerned that Santa hadn’t come!  Thankfully Diesel 10 and a bulging stocking were quickly found and Alex was in heaven.

We had a thoroughly lovely day with some brilliant presents, delicious food and lots of giggles:

They particularly liked their new toy kitchen:

And the best gift of all for Matt and I was a solid 8 hours of sleep – the children were clearly exhausted from ther Christmas Day!

Thanks to everyone for their wonderful presents and Christmas wishes – hope you’ve had a fun time too!

I’d been looking forward to Saturday for ages – with Christmas fast approaching, I’d booked a trip to the amazing Unicorn Theatre for Alex and I to see “The Night Before Christmas“.  A special date for me and my boy.

So the two of us headed up into London, leaving Sophie and Matt to have a local morning together at a music class.  With the weather crisp and clear, I was pleased to have some time spare so Alex could play in the fountains along the Southbank before the show started.  A chance for him to burn off some energy before having to sit still!  As usual, he loved them, and thankfully managed to stay relatively dry!

It was soon time to take our seats, and we loved creeping into the snow filled theatre and snuggling in amongst the cushions and blankets that had been left for the yound audience!  Alex was super excited – but I must admit I was nervous as his attention span is pretty short at the moment, so i worried about how he’d cope with a 50 minute show.  But he was brilliant – as was the show.    It had all the little ones giggling throughout and even included little presents from santa for all the children!  We’re booked to see something else at the Unicorn in February, and I already can’t wait.

Once we’d said thank you to the performer, Alex and I wandered along the Southbank, checking out the boats along the way, before stopping at Strada for a lunch date!  I think Alex is going through a growth spurt as he ate masses of breadsticks, pizza and licked his ice cream bowl dry (classy).  And he was very excited about the packet of apple sweets given to him by Santa at the theatre (so much so that he insisted I took a photo of him and them!)

After a quick meander around Borough Market (and obligatory visit to Konditor and Cook for brownies and curly whirly cake) we headed home.  Once Sophie was up from her nap, I took the children down to Herne Hill for the end of the local Christmas fair.  The children were excited to find a selection of farm animals outside the station – Sophie in particular was thrilled:

Sunday was much quieter, with a fun trip to Brixton for family swimming and softplay in the morning and a relaxing lunch at home.  Alex and Matt stayed home for the afternoon, while Sophie and I headed back to Brixton to pick up some more Christmas presents.  We stumbled across a Nelson Mandela concert with some fabulous local gospel choirs and performers – it was incredibly moving and uplifting.  Sophie and I had a good bop to the music and took in the atmosphere before moving on.  Love living near Brixton.

To close – here’s some sibling love.  If you tell Sophie to give someone a cuddle, she leans into them for a snuggle. Gorgeous.

And another weekend draws to a close!  They rush past so quickly – can’t quite believe it’s work again tomorrow!

It’s been a fun, festive weekend.  I’m loving the build up to Christmas this year – such fun with Alex.  We started our Saturday morning with a trip to our local garden centre to choose a Christmas tree.  We’d been mulling being sensible, and getting a small tree to sit on a table, out of Sophie’s reach!  But when it came to it,  I couldn’t resist a massive one.

The children were both very excited when it arrive in our sitting room – and got stuck into helping me decorate it (or rather, I attempted to decorate it whilst the children demolished the tinsel and baubles!).  I’ll probably live to regret not going for the sensible option, but it looks so festive – and Alex and Sophie’s faces light up every time they see it and we switch on the bright lights.  It’s worth the mess!

Our second festive trip on Saturday was to the East Dulwich Christmas Cracker – an extension of the regular Saturday market there. We stocked up on brownies (it is, apparently, National Brownie Day this weekend) and bread, and Alex took part in the craft stalls – painting a shooting star and making a glittery reindeer.  He freaked out in terror at seeing a man in a yeti costume walking past (it was actually really rather big) – but perked up when the South London Samba band started playing!  An unusual choice for a Christmas fair, but absolutely brilliant.  Alex loved the drumming, and Matt and I reminisced about spending Christmas in Rio back in 2005!

We continued our festive theme with a quick trip up to London to Trafalgar Square to see the big Christmas tree there.  The square looked stunning in the dark, with Alex particularly loving the changing colours of the fountains!  And of course, he wanted to climb on the lions:

It was really moving to see the growing tributes on the square to Nelson Mandela, and hear the singing from outside the South African Embassy.

On Sunday morning, after the excitment of Alex completing his teeth-cleaning sticker chart and receiving “Annie & Clarabel” carriages for his Thomas the Tank Engine, we loaded up the car and headed to Crowthorne to visit Dick and Michele.  It was a gorgeous, sunny day and we spent most of the time either exploring the garden and checking out the fish in the pond, or sitting in the bright conservatory enjoying the garden view! Heavenly.

Alex was presented with a brilliant meccano tractor set, and immediately made Daddy and Nanny Michele make it for him.  He had lots of fun with Nanny Michele playing with his trains and the meccano wheels!

Sophie was in seventh heaven with two dogs there to dote on – I didn’t manage to get a photo of her doing it, but she kept resting her head on them as if giving them little cuddles.  So cute. She looks a bit of a scruff in these pics, but she really did love them both!

After a family lunch and multiple desserts, we drove back into London for a quiet evening at home to get ready for another week of work.

Before I close, I must share these snaps of my tomboy daughter, normally seen in jeans and not much pink at all, wearing a beautiful dress given to her by Michele for her birthday!  She looked so lovely, but after about 5 minutes, she discovered it was a bit tough to climb in it and she kept pulling at the skirts – so we had to take it off!  Oh well.

I am quite clearly mental for starting a blog post at midnight – but I hate getting behind and I’m feeling quite awake (which is stupid as Sophie will be up in 6 hours!).

We’ve had another few days of extremes – Alex is definitely in a challenging phase at the moment, either super happy and fun or monumentally grumpy and cross. There isn’t much in between, so life is pretty tiring!  But in between the tantrums about teeth cleaning, iPad use, bedtime, chocolate and coats, we’ve had some fun times.

On Saturday, we revisited an old haunt – the National Army Museum in Chelsea – which has an amazing kids’ zone.  You have to be really organised and book slots a few days in advance as it always sells out, but there’s good reason for that.  It’s a really fun softplay and activity room with restricted slots which means it’s never too busy and is nice and relaxed.  The children had a brilliant time – Sophie quickly bored of the baby corner, and went wild trying to navigate around the proper soft play, loving the helter skelter and tunnels.  She has no fear.  Alex enjoyed the slides, climbing, play kitchen and train/tank table (and the massive piles of leaves on the pavements outside)!  It’s a great place to spend a chilly Saturday morning.

On Saturday afternoon, Sophie and I did a spot of Christmas shopping in East Dulwich before meeting the boys at the Horniman Museum where we visited the fish (again).  Thank goodness we have membership there!  There was a rock band setting up in the open space in the middle of the museum ready for an evening performance – Alex hated the loud electric guitar noise.  Maybe he won’t be the next Dave Grohl after all!

Sunday started as normal, with a trip to the Brixton rec for a family swim and a tour of the Herne Hill farmers market for suppliers for lunch (had some amazing winter vegetable soup, rye bread and chocolate guiness cake this week).  With the weather clear, and Sophie’s nap out of the way, we decided to head up to the Southbank for a wander along the river to see the Christmas market.  We weren’t sure we’d made the right choice when both children fidgeted and cried most of the way there on the bus, but it was worth it for the gorgeous views and lovely festive lights.  London was looking glorious.

The big news of the weekend was that Sophie really seemed to master walking – going from doing a few paces to confidently being able to walk 10-20 paces (still doing the zombie walk with her arms up in the air and slightly out in front!).  Now nothing can stop my kamikaze daughter!

Other news from Family Agar was that Matt and I had a date day to celebrate his birthday!  After celebrating his big day with some cupcakes (and some wonderful singing and candle blowing from Alex), we took the day off work together and had a fabulous day together in London – visiting the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, having a long lunch with no high chairs in sight, and then seeing Gravity in 3D at the IMAX!  What a treat of a day 🙂

Right – I must go to sleep, so let me close with a couple of photographs… Firstly, the latest train track arrangement which Matt is extremely proud of!  This uses our entire track collection and was intricately planned.  I’m not allowed to clean it up and Sophie is barely permitted to go near it for fear she’ll demolish it.

And the comedy pic of the week – Alex found some glasses at his childminder’s place:

After having to cancel Sophie’s first birthday tea in October when we were all sick, we finally held a little party for her this afternoon!  Inviting all the babies and toddlers from her childminder’s, plus a couple of others of a similar age to her, we had a great afternoon together.  I’d been nervous as Sophie had a horrible cold all last week, and was quite cranky all morning, but the distraction of having her friends over seemed to cheer her up!

Sadly, we took no nice photographs at all, but I’ll remember Alex excitedly opening Sophie’s presents and playing with them before she got a look in, all the children happily cuddling Jacqui (their childminder) throughout the afternoon, Alex and his best friend Sam sneaking off to play in his room away from all the babies, everyone being very well behaved over our pizza tea and Sophie standing proudly in her highchair as everyone sang Happy Birthday to her.  And because Alex had been a good boy all day, he was allowed to blow out the candle on her butterfly cake!

I enjoyed a couple of glasses of bubbly – it seemed only right to celebrate a whole year of Sophie’s life!  Its hard to believe she was a newborn this time last year.

Here are the only moderately acceptable pics we took – check out the return of Alex’s crazy grin!

The party tea was a good close to a great weekend.  We spent yesterday up in London at the dinosaur museum and rocket museum (A.K.A The Natural History Museum and Science Museum).  We go all the time, but this was the first time I remember Sophie really getting into it.  She particularly adored the basement of the Science Museum, a wonderful place for little ones full of things to touch and do.  I could barely drag her away from the water play and the psychedelic textured fun:

Alex had fun building towers on the earthquake trays and then shaking them down:

And they both enjoyed chasing a Dalek around, marking the 50th anniversary of the show!

Clearly they were exhausted after going wild in the museums – here they are on the drive home:

Cute!

Once we were back home and refreshed, we wrapped up warm and wandered down to Herne Hill to give Alex a try on his new scooter (after his old one was stolen last week, much to his total distress).  Sophie was modelling a gorgeous hat made by a friend of mine, Saskia (who I know reads this blog – so THANK YOU!)

We picked up lots of yummy goodies for today’s party, and spent some time in the brilliant “Tales on Half Moon Lane”, the most wonderful children’s bookshop that has just reopened after the awful flood back in August.  I finally made a bit of a start on Christmas shopping whilst Matt was distracting Alex with books!

Can’t quite believe the weekend is over again – they fly by so quickly now I’m back working full time.  But we’ve got lots of lovely things to look forward to in the run up to Christmas, not least the excitement building in Alex!  It’s such fun now that he’s aware of Christmas.  He even “wrote” to Santa on Saturday promising to be a good boy and asking him to bring him a particular train from Thomas the Tank Engine (it’s already in my Amazon basket in the hope that he’ll behave!!).  Next weekend, the advent calendar comes out – yay!

This past couple of weeks has marked a bit of a watershed for me – for the first time in over three years, I went on an international trip – on my own!  I used to travel all the time, both with my job to conferences and with Matt on wonderful holidays.  But since having the children, we’ve prefered to holiday in the UK – favouring cottage holidays to long haul flights.  Many people manage it, but I can’t quite face the thought of a lengthy flight and jetlag with the kids until they are both old enough to watch movies/play games for the entire flight!

So last weekend, I jetted off to Atlanta for four nights for a work conference – leaving the children in the care of daddy (and their grandparents who dropped by for part of my absence to lend a hand!).  I got myself quite worked up at the thought of leaving them for so long, having never really been away from them – and contemplated not going.  But, though my departure was a bit teary, it all went swimmingly.

I did laugh at the first message I received when I landed back at Heathrow – Matt telling me that “he’d done it – the children had survived, the house was still standing and his in-laws were still talking to him”!! But they didn’t just survive – they seemed to have an excellent time.  Matt started his weekend of solo parenting with a very brave trip into London to the Natural History Museum and Science Museum – and the kids LOVED it of course.

Here’s Sophie fascinated by the geological structures of rock (!):

Sophie and Alex were excited to see their grandparents – here they are snuggled up with Grandpa on Saturday evening:

On Sunday. they made the most of a lovely Autumnal day by making a trip to Godstone Farm.  They managed to spend over an hour in the softplay, Sophie now old enough to properly explore the excellent toddler area.  I understand they did also manage to see some animals too.  Here’s Alex looking a tad bemused by a bunny rabbit:

And getting very excited showing Grandpa some geese:

Safely back home, Sophie discovered the little chair that was mine when I was a little girl – she loves to climb, and has now figured out how to get in and out of the seat.  Love this blurry but very happy pic:

So I needn’t have worried – they clearly were absolutely fine without me!  And I must admit, I slightly surprised myself by how much fun I had in the USA.  It was such a treat to get some true “me” time that I made the most of every second.  In my one day off before the conference got underway, we managed to cram in vast quantities of Southern cooking (including a proper breakfast of grits, eggs, turkey sausage and biscuits!), the amazing Georgia Aquarium which has FOUR whale sharks in it, my spiritual home – “The World of Coca-Cola” and a very speedy shopping spree 🙂

You can see my pic here if you are really interested…. but read on below for more tales of Family Agar

Back home in London, and over the jetlag and annoying autumn colds we’ve all been suffering, we’ve had a fun weekend.  Yesterday, we headed over to East Dulwich to stock up on popcorn and brownies from the Saturday market. And more importantly, purchased Sophie’s very first pair of shoes!  She has tiny feet – size 3F!  She was very well behaved in the shop – although wouldn’t pose for the “first shoes” card Clarks make for toddlers!  Here is her pic anyway – she’s looking so grown up (and really needs a proper haircut!)

After lunch, Matt and Alex headed off to Surrey Quays to the cinema to see “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2” – which seemed to go very well.  Alex watched the entire film, although I understand decided to change seats a number of times!

Sophie and I headed up to the King’s Road for a spot of shopping – I have so many birthdays to buy for this month that we got a bit of a headstart without the boys around.  And I actually started my Christmas shopping. Scary.

Today, Matt had some work to do, so I took Alex and Sophie to the Horniman Museum for a few hours.  It was a brilliant surprise to bump into an NCT friend and her two children in the aquarium – so Alex had a blast playing with his friend Max, and I had a great lunch companion!  Here are the boys demonstrating that it is never too cold for ice cream:

And Sophie very chilled out on the second trip around the aquarium showing off her lovely, purple new shoes:

Once we’d exhausted the museum and gardens, we headed back to Herne Hill to meet daddy for a trip to the Herne Hill market (and more chocolate brownies!) and a wander around Brockwell Park.  Matt and Alex made the most of the fact the miniature railway there is now closed for the winter:

Dangerous stuff!

You may remember that back in May, I posted about a family that had really touched my heart.  Jennie’s heart-breaking story of her beautiful daughter, Matilda Mae, has stayed with me and I continue to read – and be inspired by – her Edspire blog.

I’ve wanted to do something to support her work for the Lullaby Trust for a long time now – so when I read about the Matilda Mae Welly Walk at Berkshire’s Beale Park, I knew I wanted to take part.

So on Saturday morning, in the glorious sunshine, we packed a picnic and grabbed our wellies – and hit the M4 bound for Reading.  With traffic a nightmare, we were very nearly late, but we pulled into beautiful Beale Park just in time for the start of the walk. Before I go on, I just want to say that Beale Park is a fabulous place – having spent most of my youth in Berkshire, I cannot believe I have never been before.  It was just perfect for young children, and I’d highly recommend it.

But back to the walk, we joined a huge group of families on the little welly walk around the water gardens.  Alex spent the entire route excitedly pointing out all the bright pink and purple balloons he could see along the way – I felt a bit sorry for the groups close by to us!  It wasn’t long before we arrived at the Boat Museum (which Alex loved) where we were all given little pots of bubbles to blow kisses to Matilda Mae.  Sophie adored all the bubbles – especially the special big ones –  and was fascinated by the wonderful string quartet music accompanying them.

It really was moving seeing so many people and so many bubbles – and such a pleasure seeing the huge number of very excited children loving it.

For the next couple of hours, we enjoyed the great range of activities organised for the day, from a snug story telling tent (where I randomly bumped into an old school friend from 20 years ago!), to a craft room (Alex is the proud owner of a glittery star wand we made together!) and even a lovely music class.  But the highlight for Alex, apart from a chocolate crepe, was a ride around the park in a little train – a great way to view a lot of the animals there.

After lunch, we discovered the brilliant playground and indoor soft play area – and that took care of most of the rest of the afternoon!

The children also adored climbing all over the many animal statues around the place.  Here they are – enjoying a moment of calm together (just before Alex tried to push Sophie off…)

We mustered a little bit more energy (fuelled by crepes) to have a go at welly wanging.  Here’s Alex having a go – and winning a little pirate toy which made his afternoon:

By 4pm, both children were struggling so we bundled them into the car to drive to Uncle David’s – they fell asleep in seconds covered in mud and chocolate – the sign of an excellent day I think!  We spent a fab couple of hours with my brother before heading back into London.  Alex and his uncle made us some delicious pizza for tea and Sophie had a blast climbing up and down the stairs!

It was a wonderful family day – Alex and Sophie seemed to enjoy every minute.  You could tell the Welly Walk was organised by people who really understand toddlers, as everything was just the right pace for them and the setting was perfect.  We spent most of the day giggling and enjoying each others company, but every so often I’d spot more pink and purple balloons or star decorations, and I’d choke up a bit remembering why we were there.  I’m so glad we could show our support in our small way – my only regret is I didn’t seek Jennie out personally to share my support in person.  She should feel so proud of the legacy she is building for her daughter.

This is a real time of change for little Sophie – she’s suddenly transitioning from being a baby to being a toddler.  In the past few weeks she’s been ticking off the milestones like a pro.  Her cruising around furniture has been getting faster and more confident for a while, but she’s suddenly started taking a few steps on her own (although usually I would describe what she does as a controlled fall!).

She also is beginning to stand unsupported more and more – as well as get into a standing position herself without holding on to anything to help her up.  I don’t think it’s going to be long before she really is on the move.  Her crawling is super fast now and she can confidently crawl up a flight of stairs (and just loves doing so – we have to be very careful to keep doors/stairgates shut because if we forget, she can be half way up in seconds!)

Even more exciting is the beginnings of language!  She’s perfecting “mama” and “dada” – but I think her first, and most convincing, word was “cat” – an unusual word for a dog-loving, cat free house, but a cute one nevertheless.  She’s getting better at showing us what she wants with impressive pointing and gesturing, and gets feistier by the day by very vocally showing frustration and anger when Alex pinches a toy or won’t let her play with his trains!

Of course, probably the biggest milestone of the lot is turning one year old!  We’d planned a few little treats for her birthday – with her Grandma and Grandpa down for her birthday day and then a little party tea the following day for some of her friends.  Sadly things didn’t quite work out, with Alex and Sophie a little bit under the weather in the build up to her big day, me struck down with a massive headache on the day itself and then Matt so sick the day after that we had to cancel her party!

Oh dear!

But we still manage to have a few small celebrations.  On her actual birthday, we had lots of fun opening presents together (or rather, Alex very much enjoyed opening them for her!):

Sophie got some lovely gifts (thanks everyone) – she particularly loves her new xylophone and the gorgeous bird mobile we got for her bedroom:

We had birthday pancakes for breakfast and then enjoyed a lovely trip over to the Horniman Museum.  After lunch and a nap, I took Alex to one of his friend’s birthday parties – and Matt took Sophie for a play in Brockwell Park.  He took the camera with him and got some gorgeous shots of the birthday girl.

Can’t get enough of her smile!

And captured a particularly funny series of some dazzling facial expressions:

I can’t believe a whole year has passed since we first met Sophie.  She is such a joy and I can’t imagine our little family without her.

Very sorry for the blog silence over the past fortnight – with a series of family illnesses, a crazy time with work and a certain little lady’s first birthday, we’ve been a bit swamped.

So before I get onto Sophie turning one, here is a quick update on what else we’ve been up to, according to our photostream…

With our friends Dan and Bryony in town, we spent a lovely Saturday up in London doing some sightseeing with them.  On the way to meet them, we took a new London routemaster bus to Trafalgar Square.  Alex loved the fountains, so we took quite a detour looking at them and, of course, climbing on the lions.  Here is my little family (Matt firmly holding Alex to prevent him jumping in – he does love to swim!):

Once we’d dragged Alex away, we met our friends at the brilliant London Transport Museum.  It’s a while since we’ve been, and I’d forgotton how brilliant it is for toddlers.  Alex and Freddie ran around like wild things, exploring the carriages, buses and watching the little red train run back and forth on its tracks.  Such fun watching them properly playing together:

Once we’d exhausted them out, we popped to the Covent Garden Wahaca for a Mexican lunch.  By the time we’d ordered and got settled, Sophie was just too tired to eat – and had a comedic nap sprawled out in the booth:

It amazes me that babies have the ability to sleep anywhere if they really need to.  Once she’d slept enough, she loved eating quesadillas and sweet potato.  Happy children all round.

After parting company, we had a quick wander around of the National Gallery (brave wth a noisy toddler and scooter!).  It was a high speed tour, but we did manage to see some Van Gogh, Constable and Monet.  Alex quite liked the sunflowers and stars in Van Gogh’s paintings!!

Mum and Dad popped over for the day last Sunday – we enjoyed a nice walk in Brockwell Party, stopping to enjoy the minature railway before they pack it away for the winter:

We managed to have a quick peek of the gorgeous house featured in a recent Channel 4 Grand Designs programme before the heavens opened and we had to shelter under a tree in a torrent!

Once we were back tucked up in our snug house, we all enjoyed a proper Sunday roast together – lovely end to a fun weekend.

To close, here’s Sophie trying to pick a book for bedtime. She’s quite indecisive:

We’ve had another quiet week, and a mostly indoors weekend with the weather so damp – but so as not to get behind with the blog, here are a few highlights from our phone cameras!

Saturday was very organised, with winter coat purchasing for the children (not a moment too soon) and haircuts all round!  The afternoon’s highlight was another third birthday party – this time Ralph’s.  Alex is getting quite a pro at singing Happy Birthday!  It was a great party, with all the children on fine, chilled out form – leaving us adults time to quaff some wine and catch up!

Alex enjoyed scooting around outside the party on his new scooter with his Thomas party bag:

Today, after our weekly splashy swim in Brixton, we avoided the rain with some time in the softplay.  Sophie’s getting brave and starting to venture into the main area, shunning the baby corner.  Alex knows every corner of the complex:

With the rain torrential, and me struck down with a, thankfully short-lived, migraine, we snuggled up at home for most of the day with movies and some painting (this time painting with cars and potato stamps!)

Thankfully, just as Alex was going completely stir crazy in the house, the sun came out and we dashed to the park.

We loved the see-saw:

We did lots of spinning:

And we climbed, rocked and scooted:

Thank goodness for some fresh air!  Meant for a more peaceful bedtime I think as they were exhausted – which was good as Alex is in a proper big single bed for the first time tonight!  My baby is growing up!

Just to close, we got some fabulous phone pics from Jacqui this week.  Looks like Alex and Sophie had fun whilst Matt and I were at work!)

Alex even went on a bug hunt!

Night all