(no subject)
I'm just back from a week's holiday visiting Helpful Relations. Mostly, it was a total wash-out. The weather, of course, since it rained every day, which cuts out huge swathes of toddler-friendly activities. But mainly that we were all still suffering / recovering from Probably Swine Flu, with side orders of persistent conjunctivitis (LB - took 2 weeks, 2 trips to GPs (hooray for the national aspect of the NHS), and 2 sets of antibiotic eye drops to clear up) and bonus cough/cold bleagh (everyone but PB). Also LB's sleep took a turn for the worse with the change of scene at the beginning of the week, and once he was settling down at then end, he and I kept waking each other up with coughing all night long. Most of the time we were too ill to do anything fun. I'm deeply grateful to Helpful Relatives for doing the childcare to enable us to sleep and recover, but I don't exactly feel as if I've had a holiday. But there were a few good bits:
So there were some good bits. And there's another visit to a different set of Helpful Relatives soon, for which we will hopefully be in better health. But definitely confirms our decision that it is not worth paying money for proper holidays while the children are small.
- Kicking a football around with PB in the garden. The one good thing about D having been so ill for so long is that PB has had to relate to me as his main carer, and as we've noticed before, he remembers that he really likes me too when that happens. Given a choice, he usually wants Daddy, but when Daddy isn't available, Mummy is actually a pretty good substitute. I loved doing very physical play with him - playing football, but also giving him very vigorous piggyback rides, honing his wheelbarrowing skills, doing our special 'tick tock' game (I pick him up by his ankles and swing him from side to side like a pendulum, while singing 'the clock says tick tock' etc.) We were both having so much fun and I was genuinely amused, rather than humouring him. I'm sure he can tell the difference.
- An afternoon's photography workshop at Mottisfont Abbey Gardens. Helpful Relative had decided that what they most wanted for their recent birthday was to go on this workshop with me, so I left LB to go to bed without me for the first time ever (he was fine), and went. It was really good. I feel as if I've got my photography fu back. Photography used to be a really important creative outlet for me, but I've not had that much pleasure from it for years. I'm not quite sure what happened that stopped me doing photography properly. I think it was mainly getting a compact digital, which meant I was seduced by the convenience of digital but not able to get the quality and ability to play around of my old film SLR. Also possibly the birth of the children, which meant I mainly took loads and loads of photos of them and photographing people is not my forte. The workshop focused mainly on composition, which I've always been quite good at, so that was good and confidence boosting, but also a bit on technical stuff, which I've never been good at, and that was pitched at exactly the right level for me. I've finally found a way of remembering the business about aperture size (big number = big depth of field) and I've almost got my head around dealing with over and under exposure. I definitely want a digital SLR though (I do have some savings put aside for this, but there's always some feature that you can't get in my price range that I think 'if I wait another year I'll be able to get it'. I should just buy something now for the joy it will give me anyway.)
- One child and illness free afternoon which included a fabulous Black Forest Gateau from these people and some very pleasant stadt-bummelning.
- Being amused at LB being cheered up on a long car journey by Emma Bunton's Choice of Cheezy Pop on the radio.
- Oh, and LB properly learning to crawl this week. He's gone from going forwards 25% of the time and backwards or revving up the rest of the time, to going forwards whenever he wants to. And, apart from getting to toys, he mostly uses it to follow me out of the room, like a little dog. It's spectacularly cute and endearing, as well as slightly annoying.
So there were some good bits. And there's another visit to a different set of Helpful Relatives soon, for which we will hopefully be in better health. But definitely confirms our decision that it is not worth paying money for proper holidays while the children are small.