Catch Up
When we’re busy or I’m in a bad mood I don’t feel like blogging, so this will be a bit of a catch up on what we’ve been doing over the weekend.
On Friday A finished work early and we went caching to see if we could be first to find a new cache locally. It was based around a fairly local village so we had a walk and found places we haven’t discovered before and eventually we found the cache - but someone else had beat us to it. Never mind, we had fun anyway. Then we called for fish and chips for tea.
On Saturday we did some things around the house first thing and then went out to Bircham Windmill for lunch and to spend the afternoon. The weather was sunny but not too hot and we had a gorgeous afternoon. We had lunch in the tea rooms - ploughmans with lots of pickle and a huge chunk of cheese. Then we looked around the windmill grounds where they have an old stable building with a “horse” rigged up and an outdoor area with children’s toys. In the windmill itself there is a shop selling flour, breads and cakes as well as pottery and this weekend they were launching the windmill cookbook and had allsorts of tasty bread, jam and biscuits from the recipe book to try. We all went up to the top of the windmill which doesn’t look so high from the ground but you definitely feel it when you’re at the top. Walking around the mill on the level where they adjust the sails was scary - kept thinking I wonder how often they check the wooden walkway.
At 2 o’clock they do baking for children so we went for another coffee and M found a place to sit with his tray and joined in with a lesson on how bread is made. They didn’t actually make the bread (was wondering how they’d manage that) but each ingredient was passed around and explained and then they each got 3 pieces of dough to shape. M made 2 slugs and a pizza (!!). Then we sat in the garden area while we waited for his bread to be cooked.
On Sunday I got the boys ready for church and A just slept through it all, even when I fetched him up a mug of percolated coffee. So we went to church and were only a few mins late.
Lots of people were on holiday but one family came with their brand new baby who has only just come out of hospital, so it was nice to see he is doing so well. He has a cleft and was born about 5 weeks early. I find it really hard to say the right thing to new parents, it feels like anything you say can be taken badly or as criticism. I try hard to be supportive and encouraging. I felt like they were avoiding talking to me because I’d given them breastfeeding/expressing info before the birth. But I’m not the breastfeeding police - if they don’t want to BF/express or it’s all just too hard or whatever I can understand that. I didn’t like to ask how it was going because I don’t like to interfere and if they needed support or info they know where I am. I do find it hard to hear babies being stretched out to 3-4 hourly feeds when they wake hungry and crying and are so tiny, but then having some kind of “routine” is perhaps something to cling on to when your world is turning upside down. It’s not me who is having to live it. Anyway…
We got home just before 12 and A was still in bed!! We all had some lunch and eventually went out swimming to a fun pool with a wave machine and a slide. L was hell bent on wading into the waves and kept getting a face full of water. Then he tried to crawl straight over the edge into the main pool - he was fascinated by the steps. A and I took it in turns to watch L and to swim/slide with M. I took M round the rapids a few times which was hariy when he got out of his depth and I wasn’t sure if he was struggling to keep afloat or not. I think he was actually alright, but definitely needed someone close by just in case.
Yesterday M had drama for 2 hours in the morning and then in the afternoon we did supermarket shopping. Today he’s had dancing and at the moment he is playing next door and L is napping upstairs. I’ve been trying to catch up on the housework and washing - but it’s sunny again today so it can all hang out again instead of getting repeatedly rained on. We ordered a new tumble drier online yesterday to be delivered in a fortnight. Seems a funny thing to do in this heat but last winter it took forever to get things dry hanging them round the house. Now we just need to completely rearrange the shed to make room for it.
Edited to add photos and I also forgot to mention I finished knitting L some wool trousers. They are just long enough - should’ve bought an extra ball of wool I think! Now I just need to figure out how to lanolise (sp?) them so they are OK to use over pants.
