Summer 2014: Days 3 & 4 – A weekend without Daddy

It’s been a bit of a funny old weekend in that most of it didn’t feel like a weekend at all. Mr C’s been away in the Netherlands at a wedding, and without him about it’s kind of made the days merge into last week a bit, and it certainly hasn’t given me the break that I so need by the end of a busy week, especially when we’re in the school holidays.

The first alarm went off at 2.50am on Saturday morning for Mr C to get up for a 6am flight to Amsterdam and combining that with a couple of wake-ups from Master C – who was struggling with the heat – it meant that Saturday started feeling pretty exhausted. I’d planned another road trip for us, but this time we headed north-ish to Cambridge to visit the lovely Liz from Cambridge Mummy and her boys.

I’ve got to know Liz online over the last couple of years and we’ve gradually got to know each other in person over the last year or so, mainly at blogging conferences but also making time for a child-free coffee a couple of months ago – a rare treat for both of us. I’m delighted to now be able to report that like all fine Northerners Liz can make a mighty fine cup of tea and it was lovely to just be able to sit and chat to her whilst all the children played together. I did realise on the way home that there were several conversations that we never got round to finishing, but I’m trying to just look on that as an excuse to have to meet again.

Saturday night wasn’t exactly my favourite part of the weekend. Master C has a bit of an obsession with taking his nappy off whenever he’s in bed at the moment, so I think I had to go and put it back on for him about once an hour Saturday night. Little Miss C also had a bit of an over-tired melt-down over the exact positioning of her duvet on her bed. Needless to say the heat (over 20 degrees at midnight!) really didn’t help matters. Nor did my grumpy mood caused my Mr C having a somewhat different expectation from me as to what “keeping in touch” means when he’s away having fun and I’m left at home with the kids.

Luckily Sunday started off a bit better and the morning was just spent mooching around at home, playing in the garden, catching up with laundry and watching TV. It was also when LMC decided that she needed to learn how to make her own loom band bracelets. Thanks to a bit of You Tube help, the loom I reviewed last year for Cuthberts and the loom bands that I’d been sent in my goodie box from Craft Merrily she actually did quite well. She’s only 4 so I wasn’t sure quite how much to expect from her, but she managed to put all the bands on the loom for a simple design and then I just did all the looping over for her. It still gave her a good sense of ownership of the whole thing though – and massively helped to develop her patience and manual dexterity. She’s got grand plans now for her next bracelet designs and I’ve got tips to go and look up how you make them without a loom too, so I don’t think this is going to be the end of her loom band experiments.

After an early lunch I packed the kids up in the car and headed round the M25 to Gatwick to pick up Mr C with the hope that we could squeeze in a quick trip somewhere to allow the kids some important “daddy time” before he went back to work on Monday morning. In that way that things so often go wrong it took us an absolute age to get to Gatwick thanks to there just being loads of traffic and then when we got to the airport we discovered his flight was late and then when it did finally land they couldn’t find a gate for it for ages. There’s not exactly much to do to amuse two young children in North Terminal arrivals – short of walking up and down outside and bus spotting! LMC has decided that she likes airports and flying though and spent a large part of the car journey and our time walking up and down telling me about the places around the world that she wants to travel to. Completely suits me – I just think we’d better start saving soon!

Once Daddy was back we quickly headed to Polesden Lacey, a nearby National Trust property, where we had a quick run around and an ice cream before they shut. It wasn’t quite a full day out, but the kids enjoyed themselves and reconnected with their Daddy which was important as I think they’d both really missed him. After that we did something that was actually quite daring for us. We went out for dinner. With the kids!

I should caveat all this by saying that it was only Pizza Express in nearby Dorking, but just being able to go out on a whim like this is something that I’ve been wanting to do for ages. Yes, it was touch with Master C, but it seems that we happened on somewhere where loads of local families go for tea and for once Master C wasn’t the loudest child in there. OK, so he didn’t eat much, but he did try dough balls for the first time ever, and even ate a bit of my pizza crust. He threw things, but luckily mainly the paper they’d given him to colour in, and we’d managed to find a table that was somewhat separate from everyone else, so hopefully we didn’t disturb them too much. For the first time he actually enjoyed doing some stickers (something that was always a life saver with LMC) and he also stayed in his highchair for a large part of the meal. In other words it was a resounding success and gives me so much more confidence about going on holiday next week. I don’t want to pin too many hopes on this, but fingers crossed that we’re (slowly) turning a corner. I’d certainly never realised that I’d be so excited by a pizza out.

So that was our weekend. Nothing hugely exciting, but some memories made and some definite milestones reached too. So, what did you get up to on the first weekend of the holidays?