Since spring has most definitely sprung our crafting efforts are geared towards all things seasonal. Hence this rather over zealous scary merino sheep. Anyone seen that film Black Sheep?
Thoughtfully painting a picture for Nonna for Mama's Day. Complete with assistant. A bit of acrobatics thrown in for good measure. And taking a short break to decide what else the masterpiece requires.
Our little men are being particularly cute at the moment. Tantrums and squealing aside, and the fact that they are going through such different phases, they manage to bring big belly laughs into our days very frequently.
Oliver loves hiding. He is a monumentally bad hider. I mean really, really bad. But he loves it. He hides when Dada comes home, he hides when he sees Dada, squealing "we must hide Mama, Dada is home", he hides in towels, under duvets, behind curtains, anywhere that will take him. He sings all the time now too, we got through the entirety of Puff the Magic Dragon today with no errors on his part. It's a little weird listening to a two year old singing about "noble Kings and Princes bow whene'er they came"; I'm a little frightened at how he remembers all the words to Thomas the Tank Engine and the new favourite Chuggington; and the perfect pitch of the singing is in serious doubt, but I love it when he's singing. His gorgeous, beautiful, and utterly serious face, concentrating on the important matter in hand.
Pip is coming on leaps and bounds with his language. He's always telling us "that's a [insert appropriate noun]" and asking "where's Dada/ball/other object of his affection?". He is beyond obsessed by balls, dogs and cats, chasing all of the aforementioned whenever he gets the chance. He had to be restrained heavily at Oliver's football lessons and they have kindly allowed him to join in the pre-lesson warm up, mainly due to heavy petitioning by a doe-eyed Pip. Suckers. He has a tendency to stand on the sideline of the lesson with one ball under each arm, pointing out all the other balls in the room (this is a football lesson and there are many, many balls in attendance). Then he spends the rest of the lesson trying to pick up a third ball and being flummoxed by how he can do this.
When not chasing balls, he is mainly trying to put his hand down his pants, saying "willy" which sounds remarkably like wee-wee and then informing me he's done a poo. "Poo poo" in a loud voice wherever is the most embarrassing. I thought we'd reached a truce in the potty department after Oliver stopped his potty training, but sadly no.
So there you go: a tiny snapshot of two boys growing up fast. I'm smiling as I type.
The Friday after our legendary trip to Ikea, Mama decided that the boys weren't knackered enough and a trip to the Science Musuem in South Kensington was just what we needed.
Friday is usually music day in our house and to make the day go smoothly Oliver and I decided to walk into music with the single buggy, buying train tickets on the way there and then head directly to the station. Our efficiency and Japanese-influenced-catching-the-train schedule turned to bite us on the arse when even before we'd got on the train, Oliver was buckling at the knees after walking a mile into town and Pip had stuck his hand down his pants, got out his willy, pissed all over himself and used up the one lot of spare clothes I'd had.
Having no time to go back to get more clothes, we pressed on hoping that Oliver would manage to keep his willy in his pants and managed to catch the right train. All was going well - we all had bagels at Waterloo, Mama had a well earned coffee, got on the Jubliee (or silver) line, managed to explain to a wonderous Oliver that we were indeed on an underground train, and finally got onto the platform at Westminster District and Circle (or green) line. There we ground to a halt. The trains had stopped running and nobody was prepared to inform us when and where the next train would be coming from. I was perilously close to running out of food to keep the boys happy and didn't want to upset the gathering crowd on the platform with countless renditions of 'gallump went the little green frog', so we decided to catch the Piccadilly (or purple) line.
This presented us with the problem of how unprepared the London underground is for prams or disabled access. The route we had mapped out had taken full advantage of the lifts system in the few more modern stations. Now we had to rely on the kindness of strangers to get us up big sets of stairs - mostly young women or mid 30s suited men with kids of their own - and for me to get cross at how people can literally stop and stare at you struggling to hold on to a toddler whilst trying to haul a crying baby up steps in a pram. Anyhow, deep breath Em and carry on.....
Finally, two hours after leaving, we arrived in the foyer to meet our friends Mohan, Gargy and Alison. Phew. A large wee stop later, we checked out The Garden. A misnomer as I could see no grass or crazy paving, but lots of water and sensory type educational stuff for them to go nuts on. Pip loved anything and everything, but particularly anything with any form of amplication. The ping pong balls in a wind machine were a big hit with both boys and Oliver kept going back and back to the water and boats. Pippy and the yellow spaghetti No way was Pip wearing the daggy wet gear so he had to show off his enormous tummy to the world.
After dragging everyone away from The Garden, we lunched, lost Pip momentarily - but we don't talk about that - and then headed up to the Launchpad where the older kids were hanging out. The place was heaving with primary and secondary school kids and we navigated our way in and out of flirting tweenies to find a place were the kids could take a look at the hands on physics bit. Where was Jeff when I needed him???
This is where Oliver decided to not quite make it the toilet. The physics of a full bladder obviously passed him by and the carbon dioxide swirls were way too interesting to even give Mama the usual signs of jigging up and down to predict the need for a toilet stop. So Oliver was changed back into his spare clothes after having to walk through swarms of tweenies with no pants on (he didn't seem to mind and neither did they) and Pip drew the short straw and ended up in Gargy's white jumpsuit and his socks pulled up as far as they would go. Nice. Ca va! Ca ne va pas!
At this point, I figured we should probably cut our losses and go. The journey home was very uneventful and despite Oliver at one point lying on the tube station floor saying his legs hurt, we made it home in one piece and Oliver only had to go on my shoulders for the last bit of the walk from the station. I have no idea how far he walked but I was so proud that he didn't moan and just got on with it. A trouper indeed.
It was a long and tiring day, but good fun for the most part. Oliver still talks about it and he really enjoys Mohan's company.
Mental note: take more spare clothes and never, ever assume that Oliver doesn't need to go to the loo.
