Perfect play date!

Sometimes when you arrange a play date out of town the journeys are stressful, the timings don't work with your kids' naps, the children are grumpy, badly behaved or embarassing and you just wish you hadn't bothered.

But increasingly now that is not the case! Today's out of town play date was perfection!

The traffic was a bit heavy on the way but it turned out to be JUST bad enough for Duck to have a satisfactory nap and us to arrive bang on time. The journey home was like clockwork too, a sleeping baby and a chilled out chatty Bambi made the M4 almost a pleasure and I arrived home with two happy, rested little souls. 

Preschool Birthday Party

A few weeks ago we got a birthday party invitation tucked into our tray at preschool. It was the first party invitation Bambi had ever been given. I was much more excited about it than Bambi, especially as it would be a nice way to meet all the children he goes to preschool with and, more importantly, their mums!

I RSVP'd a few days later, not wanting to seem TOO keen and then forgot all about it. We usually talk about things that are happening soon quite a lot. It seems to help him be less of a deer in headlights during a new experience and gives him lots of opportunity to reassure himself, for example by having the chance to ask if I'm definitely going to stay with him! Well this time, we were busy worrying about house contracts, so we forgot to 'prep' him until the morning of the party. He didn't seem phased by the idea at all and didn't even question whether I would go with him or not, he just assumed (rightly) that I would!

So off we went, leaving Daddy and Duck at home napping (yes, both of them). I was quite looking forward to meeting the Mum of the birthday boy, partly because she doesn't do the preschool drop-off, so we'd only ever seen the boy's Grandma, but mostly because her middle son has the same (pretty rare) name as Bambi so I knew I'd like her. Great minds think alike.

I can swim with 2!

Since we moved "home", we are a bit shorter of things to do than we were in London. Fewer friends and far fewer toddler groups has led us to the natural conclusion of going swimming A LOT. We've been at least once a week since we arrived and while the hassle of changing two wriggly children is still a hassle, it's actually getting easier!

A couple of weeks ago I would've flat out refused to take 2 under 3's swimming without a ratio of 1:1. I just didn't see how it would end in anything other than certain drowning. But one of my new friends (who I made by saying "our kids are the same ages as each other and you seem nice, can I have your number?") invited us swimming in a new exciting pool with toys. She promised there was a large very shallow bit the babies could sit and splash in. It was a 2:4 ratio which made me a little bit terrified but the splashy sitting down bit swayed me and off we went.