I never did get to chill out like I wanted to. The joy of genuinely choosing when I went to bed, rather than feeling the need to keep someone company or wait for someone to fall asleep, was somewhat lost as on the Monday dd2 wanted to watch tv downstairs until later than I would have liked, and on the Tuesday she was ill and I was cleaning, tidying and packing until later than I would have been if she'd been fit to help me. Also discovering that my bedding was damp in the dryer when I was intending to go to bed didn't help. There was much more cleaning and tidying to be done than I had thought and it didn't all get done, not by a long shot.
We got away safely on the Wednesday morning to catch our train. We had plenty of time in the end so I wished I hadn't rushed quite so much at home, as I accidentally shut a cat in my bedroom, doh. They had all been seen outside shortly before, but I'd gone back in to sort out an order. Thankfully she was found the next day so we didn't come home to a disaster. Meanwhile, as my Facebook friends will know, our first train of two was late, and we missed our connection by a bare handful of minutes. This was doubly frustrating as the platforms were back-to-back, we could have simply stepped off one and more or less onto the other without having to cross any tracks. (By the way, if anyone needs to know for some reason which platform a train is arriving at or departing from, try the National Rail website, though not all stations give platform information.) We waited for the next direct train, which was two hours later, in the Costa coffee shop (I do like Costa...) which at York station is in the old waiting room, a brilliantly-situated space at the end of the bridge, with a good view across the station. Fantastic for people-watching!
By missing our connection we also lost our reserved seats, and the next train was quite busy. We got two seats together, though not at a table, and also we were between windows, and settled in. At Newcastle we had a delightful addition to the carriage, a woman who proceeded to announce loudly over the phone that she was on the train with a can of beer and then spend most of the journey swearing down her phone. Thankfully that was the limit of her obnoxiousness so I read, and dd2 occupied herself, and we occasionally looked out of the bits of window that we could see. The view of Alnmouth in full sun from the train is stunning.
We did a lot of the same stuff we did last year at the same place but some was different... In the couple of days before we joined them, dh had taken the kids to shiver on North Berwick beach, and to pick fruit at Belhaven Fruit Farm but they mostly seem to have enjoyed the Burns' wii and trampoline, and the unfamiliar toys in the house.
Posting this now before I go away again! Will come and post some more another time...
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Thursday, 6 August 2009
Sunday, 7 September 2008
Very very belated holiday blog...
So the last saved draft of this was at the end of July. I am such a slack blogger that I've only just got round to finishing this! Oh well. I'm trying to get more of a pattern to my life so hopefully I'll be able to slot in a regular bit of blogging...
So, picking up as of 20somethingth of July...
We've been away, and back a couple of weeks now, but due to complications which I will most likely go into later, I've only just got round to blogging. We went up to Scotland, house sitting for Lucy while they went to France. So here's a bit of travelogue and pics...
I'll start with a bit of a rant (rant? moi? never...) about online train ticket booking. I'd thought about dh and I travelling separately, like we've done before to Filey, one of us driving and the other on the train with the children. SO... I looked up ticket prices on a couple of sites and discovered that there was an 'advance' ticket available. But it wasn't showing me the advance price when I selected more than 1 traveller at a time. Being Yorkshire born and bred ;-) I didn't want to have to pay 4 booking fees, also I didn't want to have to faff around with getting the seat reservations and being the proud owner of the Family Railcard from the special offer in the Daily Mail (must get the follow-up offer sorted out actually) I looked up the conditions on Advance tickets and Family and Friends Railcard discounts are applied. So I think 'right, I'll ring up and see what I can do' and of course by the time I ring up the advance tickets are all gone.
All because the online systems don't work in accordance with the ticketing rules. Twonks.
Anyway... so we drove up together on the Saturday (because £90 was too much extra) and actually it was really nice, even though we were late setting off due to the usual faffery with laundry and packing. Stopped at the services outside Durham as we'd checked it out and there was a Costa, lol. Ooo'd at the Angel of the North, waved at Ikea, drove into Alnwick seeking somewhere reasonable and family-friendly-looking to have tea and drove out again. Wandered off the A1 into Belford where we found The Belford which despite being a golf club (sorry, dh's prejudice is seeping through) was family-friendly without being patronising and reasonably priced. We were forewarned that they were busy and we might be waiting a while, and we were, but when the food came it was top quality and very well cooked (as in they'd done a good job, not a euphemism for burnt, lol.) Definitely recommended.
Got to Lucy's to find out that her 3 bedroom house woud fit at least 1 and a half of my 3-bed house in it. It's just as full of stuff though, lol.
So on to the pics :-) They're all taken on dh's or my phone because I hadn't, and still haven't, got round to getting my camera sorted out.
Taken at some point by someone who had been given my phone to take pictures with to keep them occupied in the car. It worked, for the most part. That and playing Worms on it...
The Forth Bridges. Thanks so much to Jayne (mummybuttons) for hunting online for a postcode for a Pizza Hut so that we could find a relatively child-friendly and reliable place for a very late tea after our trip into Edinburgh. We didn't take many photos as really we were there shopping. And bizarre (and saddening really) as it is that there are so many mobile phone shops, and 3 branches of Boots, on the same road, we didn't really feel the need to record it.
Hermit crabs at North Berwick
North Berwick is a lovely place and would be fab for a seaside holiday, nice little town centre, nice sandy beach...
with fab rockpools...
Oh phooey I thought I'd taken more photos of the rockpools. Oh well, this one gives you an idea...
and this nifty man-made lagoon thingummy...
The rockpools were well populated with hermit crabs, fish and shrimps, which was cool. We picked a really nice day to go and the two ice-cream vans by the beach were doing well, the bigger, flasher 'whippy' van got more trade than the small, old, less ornate local icecream van (M Luca of Musselbrough) so I figured I'd give the local dairy some trade, it was really nice. Not quite a Dixon's Milk Ice but still good. The one thing I was surprised I didn't find was the kind of beach tat shop that Filey has several of, with flipflops and buckets and spades and hats and kites and cheap, naff sunglasses and bats and balls and all that, I ended up buying buckets and spades from the RNLI shop, which is fine of course, it's a very good cause and I'm happy to support them, but there wasn't much choice and it's not the same. But then we were there on a beautiful day in the middle of the first week of Scottish schools' Summer holidays and it was surprisingly not-busy so maybe there just isn't the trade to sustain it. But then where do people go? Were they all abroad? Or just not gone to the beach that day?
East Link Family Park was fun (and sunny, am glad all mine are old enough now to say 'you stay here' to one and 'you watch these' to another, lol, while I dash back to the car for hats and suncream...) Lots and lots of photos on flickr of this so I'll just post a couple here:
What else did we do while we were away? We mooched round the local shops in Dunbar, which apparently has the most sunshine hours in the UK. It lived up to it that week, we did get rained on but not as much as the rest of the country I think! There's a PYO strawberries place (with the strawbs in growbags on stilts, very odd but much easier on the back!) and a smokehouse just off the A1 outside Dunbar so we went there, oh and we had locally-caught langoustines bought in Dunbar for tea one day. When Lucy's cooker decided to cook them for us. On the Saturday, before coming home on Sunday, we drove to Bamburgh to look at the castle (and found a nice little deli, impressive range for such a tiny shop!) then to Lindisfarne for the fun of driving over the causeway and back, though it was too early to watch the tide rise over it. And then to Berwick-upon-Tweed where we got totally soaked and didn't find a replacement for dd2's worn-out-at-the-sleeve-cuffs zip-up hoodie but still felt like we'd had a good day.
Home the next day via Alnwick to look at the castle, where, in case there was anyone who wasn't aware, some scenes in the early Harry Potter films were filmed.
From there we went straight home apart from calling at Durham services again, for Costa and a 'win every time' £1 teddypicker machine that dd3 had been promised a go on if we didn't find another while we were away. Which we didn't.
Never did get round to sorting out that half price railcard offer.
So, picking up as of 20somethingth of July...
We've been away, and back a couple of weeks now, but due to complications which I will most likely go into later, I've only just got round to blogging. We went up to Scotland, house sitting for Lucy while they went to France. So here's a bit of travelogue and pics...
I'll start with a bit of a rant (rant? moi? never...) about online train ticket booking. I'd thought about dh and I travelling separately, like we've done before to Filey, one of us driving and the other on the train with the children. SO... I looked up ticket prices on a couple of sites and discovered that there was an 'advance' ticket available. But it wasn't showing me the advance price when I selected more than 1 traveller at a time. Being Yorkshire born and bred ;-) I didn't want to have to pay 4 booking fees, also I didn't want to have to faff around with getting the seat reservations and being the proud owner of the Family Railcard from the special offer in the Daily Mail (must get the follow-up offer sorted out actually) I looked up the conditions on Advance tickets and Family and Friends Railcard discounts are applied. So I think 'right, I'll ring up and see what I can do' and of course by the time I ring up the advance tickets are all gone.
All because the online systems don't work in accordance with the ticketing rules. Twonks.
Anyway... so we drove up together on the Saturday (because £90 was too much extra) and actually it was really nice, even though we were late setting off due to the usual faffery with laundry and packing. Stopped at the services outside Durham as we'd checked it out and there was a Costa, lol. Ooo'd at the Angel of the North, waved at Ikea, drove into Alnwick seeking somewhere reasonable and family-friendly-looking to have tea and drove out again. Wandered off the A1 into Belford where we found The Belford which despite being a golf club (sorry, dh's prejudice is seeping through) was family-friendly without being patronising and reasonably priced. We were forewarned that they were busy and we might be waiting a while, and we were, but when the food came it was top quality and very well cooked (as in they'd done a good job, not a euphemism for burnt, lol.) Definitely recommended.
Got to Lucy's to find out that her 3 bedroom house woud fit at least 1 and a half of my 3-bed house in it. It's just as full of stuff though, lol.
So on to the pics :-) They're all taken on dh's or my phone because I hadn't, and still haven't, got round to getting my camera sorted out.
Taken at some point by someone who had been given my phone to take pictures with to keep them occupied in the car. It worked, for the most part. That and playing Worms on it...
The Forth Bridges. Thanks so much to Jayne (mummybuttons) for hunting online for a postcode for a Pizza Hut so that we could find a relatively child-friendly and reliable place for a very late tea after our trip into Edinburgh. We didn't take many photos as really we were there shopping. And bizarre (and saddening really) as it is that there are so many mobile phone shops, and 3 branches of Boots, on the same road, we didn't really feel the need to record it.
Hermit crabs at North Berwick
North Berwick is a lovely place and would be fab for a seaside holiday, nice little town centre, nice sandy beach...
with fab rockpools...
Oh phooey I thought I'd taken more photos of the rockpools. Oh well, this one gives you an idea...
and this nifty man-made lagoon thingummy...
The rockpools were well populated with hermit crabs, fish and shrimps, which was cool. We picked a really nice day to go and the two ice-cream vans by the beach were doing well, the bigger, flasher 'whippy' van got more trade than the small, old, less ornate local icecream van (M Luca of Musselbrough) so I figured I'd give the local dairy some trade, it was really nice. Not quite a Dixon's Milk Ice but still good. The one thing I was surprised I didn't find was the kind of beach tat shop that Filey has several of, with flipflops and buckets and spades and hats and kites and cheap, naff sunglasses and bats and balls and all that, I ended up buying buckets and spades from the RNLI shop, which is fine of course, it's a very good cause and I'm happy to support them, but there wasn't much choice and it's not the same. But then we were there on a beautiful day in the middle of the first week of Scottish schools' Summer holidays and it was surprisingly not-busy so maybe there just isn't the trade to sustain it. But then where do people go? Were they all abroad? Or just not gone to the beach that day?
East Link Family Park was fun (and sunny, am glad all mine are old enough now to say 'you stay here' to one and 'you watch these' to another, lol, while I dash back to the car for hats and suncream...) Lots and lots of photos on flickr of this so I'll just post a couple here:
What else did we do while we were away? We mooched round the local shops in Dunbar, which apparently has the most sunshine hours in the UK. It lived up to it that week, we did get rained on but not as much as the rest of the country I think! There's a PYO strawberries place (with the strawbs in growbags on stilts, very odd but much easier on the back!) and a smokehouse just off the A1 outside Dunbar so we went there, oh and we had locally-caught langoustines bought in Dunbar for tea one day. When Lucy's cooker decided to cook them for us. On the Saturday, before coming home on Sunday, we drove to Bamburgh to look at the castle (and found a nice little deli, impressive range for such a tiny shop!) then to Lindisfarne for the fun of driving over the causeway and back, though it was too early to watch the tide rise over it. And then to Berwick-upon-Tweed where we got totally soaked and didn't find a replacement for dd2's worn-out-at-the-sleeve-cuffs zip-up hoodie but still felt like we'd had a good day.
Home the next day via Alnwick to look at the castle, where, in case there was anyone who wasn't aware, some scenes in the early Harry Potter films were filmed.
From there we went straight home apart from calling at Durham services again, for Costa and a 'win every time' £1 teddypicker machine that dd3 had been promised a go on if we didn't find another while we were away. Which we didn't.
Never did get round to sorting out that half price railcard offer.
Sunday, 15 June 2008
New blog link...
I just added a link to my blog-roll. It's absolutely vital information for anyone considering buying slings, and I'm going to add it here too: Baby Sling Safety Please spread the link as far and wide as you can.
Happy, and safe! babywearing...
Happy, and safe! babywearing...
Thursday, 17 May 2007
Monday, 30 April 2007
the only sane woman in the country
Am I really the only sane woman left in Great Britain? Or can someone tell me where I can find two-piece swimwear that doesn't mean that I have to make special dispensation for the fact that *shock horror* I have breasts?
Seriously, I have spent my afternoon trawling my local town with my two older daughters looking for swimwear for all of us. There's some lovely stuff out there, funky patterns, fun details, all that. But we couldn't find a single adult-sized two-piece that didn't have either triangle tops (oh there are plenty of those in the girls' sizes too, and really don't get me started on that little piece of social engineering) or formed cups or halter necks or those really annoying support shelf things, have you tried to take one of those off when it's wet, and you're dealing with a small child? Ridiculous.
A few years ago the shops were filled with tankinis, I had one from River Island that was perfect, plain black long-length top and shorts, little silvery sewn-on badges, no fuss, no stupid 'look at my tits!' malarky. Easy to pull up or down for feeding babies, enough coverage for my ample backside, perfect. But trends change, don't they? Even long-length tops were in short supply today.
All I want is something comfortable, maybe a fun fabric, that doesn't shout 'look, I have breasts!!' and covers my arse. That's all. Oh except that I want something similar for my daughters that doesn't scream soft porn when they're only 10 and 11! Surely it's not too much to ask? Surely I can't be the only mother of pre-teen girls who don't fit the children's sizes any more? Answers on a postcard...
Seriously, I have spent my afternoon trawling my local town with my two older daughters looking for swimwear for all of us. There's some lovely stuff out there, funky patterns, fun details, all that. But we couldn't find a single adult-sized two-piece that didn't have either triangle tops (oh there are plenty of those in the girls' sizes too, and really don't get me started on that little piece of social engineering) or formed cups or halter necks or those really annoying support shelf things, have you tried to take one of those off when it's wet, and you're dealing with a small child? Ridiculous.
A few years ago the shops were filled with tankinis, I had one from River Island that was perfect, plain black long-length top and shorts, little silvery sewn-on badges, no fuss, no stupid 'look at my tits!' malarky. Easy to pull up or down for feeding babies, enough coverage for my ample backside, perfect. But trends change, don't they? Even long-length tops were in short supply today.
All I want is something comfortable, maybe a fun fabric, that doesn't shout 'look, I have breasts!!' and covers my arse. That's all. Oh except that I want something similar for my daughters that doesn't scream soft porn when they're only 10 and 11! Surely it's not too much to ask? Surely I can't be the only mother of pre-teen girls who don't fit the children's sizes any more? Answers on a postcard...
Saturday, 28 April 2007
pop quiz - can you name this disease??
symptoms: general mardiness followed by high temp, which settles down to be followed about 36hrs later by vomming and rash. Rash is small spots that are red when child is hot or agitated, vanish when not and leave 'goosebump' type feeling on the skin??
And meanwhile if anyone would come and look after everyone else while I doggedly get k into doing the same thing at the same time each day for a fortnight, please form a queue here 4
And meanwhile if anyone would come and look after everyone else while I doggedly get k into doing the same thing at the same time each day for a fortnight, please form a queue here 4
Sunday, 8 April 2007
Happy Easter!
However and whatever you celebrate around now, I hope it brings Spring-like new beginnings :-) I've been really happy to hang out and be domestic this past week, but now I'll have to knuckle down and get a ton of shop work done. Tomorrow promises to be pleasantly warm and chocolate-laden for the children, and hopefully sleep-laden for me!
K took herself to bed at 7pm earlier. Which in other households might be fine, but seeing as she didn't wake up 'til around 11am, when I came back to bed (I'd booked myself in for a leg-waxing at 9am, I wanted to get it done with enough time for my legs to settle down in time for the show next Friday and Saturday and when the woman said '9am?' I thought it was alright because I'd be taking M to drama class at 9am, so I said 'well it will be a few minutes after nine,' which was fine, of course, but then dh said on Thursday evening 'but there isn't any drama class this weekend' and we were out at Cannon Hall and the farm park next door all day Friday so I didn't get chance to rearrange it. So I went to bed about 2.30, leaving dh watching baseball on the MLB website, set my alarm, and as is usual at the moment I don't seem to sleep well when I know I have to get up, though H said she woke up at the same time I did so perhaps there was something particularly noisy going on at 7am? Anyway, I got up, and had a bit of time, and decided to play Lego Star Wars II which is really good fun :-) until I had to go, but I didn't finish the bit of story I was playing and it doesn't save mid section, so naturally when I came back I had to carry on playing. Actually it was really nice to have a bit of daytime alone-time to just mong out and do my own thing, even if I did have to do it quietly! In the end it took me 'til just before 11am to finish the bit I was doing, so that was when I went back to bed. Are you still with me?? LOL) it's Not a Good Thing here. As the fact that she's still here at nearly 3am shows. *sigh* Goodness knows what time we'll be up tomorrow, but as long as she doesn't fall asleep on the way home from MIL's it'll be alright I guess.
Oh bother, what else was I going to blog? Hmmm. Must have been really important...
K took herself to bed at 7pm earlier. Which in other households might be fine, but seeing as she didn't wake up 'til around 11am, when I came back to bed (I'd booked myself in for a leg-waxing at 9am, I wanted to get it done with enough time for my legs to settle down in time for the show next Friday and Saturday and when the woman said '9am?' I thought it was alright because I'd be taking M to drama class at 9am, so I said 'well it will be a few minutes after nine,' which was fine, of course, but then dh said on Thursday evening 'but there isn't any drama class this weekend' and we were out at Cannon Hall and the farm park next door all day Friday so I didn't get chance to rearrange it. So I went to bed about 2.30, leaving dh watching baseball on the MLB website, set my alarm, and as is usual at the moment I don't seem to sleep well when I know I have to get up, though H said she woke up at the same time I did so perhaps there was something particularly noisy going on at 7am? Anyway, I got up, and had a bit of time, and decided to play Lego Star Wars II which is really good fun :-) until I had to go, but I didn't finish the bit of story I was playing and it doesn't save mid section, so naturally when I came back I had to carry on playing. Actually it was really nice to have a bit of daytime alone-time to just mong out and do my own thing, even if I did have to do it quietly! In the end it took me 'til just before 11am to finish the bit I was doing, so that was when I went back to bed. Are you still with me?? LOL) it's Not a Good Thing here. As the fact that she's still here at nearly 3am shows. *sigh* Goodness knows what time we'll be up tomorrow, but as long as she doesn't fall asleep on the way home from MIL's it'll be alright I guess.
Oh bother, what else was I going to blog? Hmmm. Must have been really important...
Monday, 19 February 2007
how babies are designed...
thanks for the challenge Gill :|
I suppose it's pretty simple though. Human babies are born a bit like kangaroo babies, in that they're not mature enough at birth to do stuff that most mammal babies can, like ape babies being able to hang on to mum's fur so she can get on with foraging and whatnot, or hooved herbivores being able to walk pdq so the herd can leg it away from the lions. In a cave-mum situation babies can't be left alone cos of the sabre toothed tiger and bears and shit, plus the hypothermia thing from lack of fur, so it's utterly counter-intuitive and counter-evolutionary to expect a baby to not call to mum in some way or other, and I'm big on psychic communication with mum/baby relationships, if cave-baby is on its own for any length of time. So that's the basic design thing with babies, they need human contact to feel safe and secure and they're programmed to communicate the need so that the bear doesn't get them. On a more esoteric level, there's aura-sharing and chakras over nipples and if you're into that kind of thing you'll kwim.
The bf stuff I can't separate here from my annoyance at the person on the forum I was talking about before, with her talk of mostly expressing and not being able to wait until she could unwrap the bottles in her cupboard and routines and dissing my suggestion of a co-sleeper (not actually sharing with her, but having an open-sided cot or crib thing next to her bed) because she doesn't believe babies should be in bed with Mum and Dad. Cos how is a baby going to be nurtured *energetically* with a bottle or while in a cot/pram/car-seat/bouncy-chair/moses basket and not in contact with anyone?
So to sum up: I reckon babies need human contact and regular doses of energetic nurturing, at whatever frequency they deem fit. Cave-mum didn't have a clock, or a baby monitor and we're not all that different now. Seems daft to expect babies to have caught up in evolution with society's changes in the last 200-300 years. And other such 'natural parenting' platitudes.
I suppose it's pretty simple though. Human babies are born a bit like kangaroo babies, in that they're not mature enough at birth to do stuff that most mammal babies can, like ape babies being able to hang on to mum's fur so she can get on with foraging and whatnot, or hooved herbivores being able to walk pdq so the herd can leg it away from the lions. In a cave-mum situation babies can't be left alone cos of the sabre toothed tiger and bears and shit, plus the hypothermia thing from lack of fur, so it's utterly counter-intuitive and counter-evolutionary to expect a baby to not call to mum in some way or other, and I'm big on psychic communication with mum/baby relationships, if cave-baby is on its own for any length of time. So that's the basic design thing with babies, they need human contact to feel safe and secure and they're programmed to communicate the need so that the bear doesn't get them. On a more esoteric level, there's aura-sharing and chakras over nipples and if you're into that kind of thing you'll kwim.
The bf stuff I can't separate here from my annoyance at the person on the forum I was talking about before, with her talk of mostly expressing and not being able to wait until she could unwrap the bottles in her cupboard and routines and dissing my suggestion of a co-sleeper (not actually sharing with her, but having an open-sided cot or crib thing next to her bed) because she doesn't believe babies should be in bed with Mum and Dad. Cos how is a baby going to be nurtured *energetically* with a bottle or while in a cot/pram/car-seat/bouncy-chair/moses basket and not in contact with anyone?
So to sum up: I reckon babies need human contact and regular doses of energetic nurturing, at whatever frequency they deem fit. Cave-mum didn't have a clock, or a baby monitor and we're not all that different now. Seems daft to expect babies to have caught up in evolution with society's changes in the last 200-300 years. And other such 'natural parenting' platitudes.
Saturday, 17 February 2007
meaning to blog...
I do keep meaning to blog. But then I wonder what I'm going to say. I might get round to posting about what the kids are up to, sometime! I can't do the stream of consciousness stuff like some people and tbh I don't like looking like I'm soapboxing (yes really!) that much. OK maybe that's not entirely true, lol. I'll have to remember to use this space when I get frustrated with attitudes in other places, like people who say they're going to try to breastfeed but really either don't understand how bf works, and therefore how babies are really designed, iykwim, or actually don't want to but can't say so, for some reason. Either way it's grim and I should stay away, damn my inner spammer for keeping me posting...
hey ho. Will get back to being ill...
hey ho. Will get back to being ill...
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