The last four days in our house have been a little manic and crazy and not that exciting in the scheme of things. Whilst the majority of the south of the UK seemed to go Jubilee crazy anyone who lived north of Watford Gap was seemingly forgotten and there was a distinct lack of activities within a 10 mile radius of our house to do over the extended Bank Holiday weekend. That coupled with bad weather, a rather unwell Roo for 24 hours meant that by Tuesday all 3 of us were climbing the walls and desperate to get out.
In total I think we managed an hour rain free in the park to burn off some energy. I certainly felt more cooped up than a chicken and was desperate to get out for my run this morning as part of my Slimpod Blogging Challenge. Being cooped up has an effect on Roo’s behaviour. Like me and Daddy E she gets bored really quickly and is only occupied happily for so long with her toys, craft and games. She enjoys spending the time with us but equally as parents we have things to do in the house from time to time so we can’t “play” with her 24/7 – plus I think it’s healthy that she learns to amuse herself with imagination play.
That said we’ve done lots of craft activities this weekend from making our toucan family in our fantastic Toucan Craft Box, to creating rainbows in a jar with the wonderful Magic Belles and also printing off our own Magic Belle paper dolls to join Roo in her new room, we even managed to do a hand print canvas with funky acrylic neon paints of all our family hands! So all in all we did manage to do a lot of activities for not a lot of money at home – and not a single Jubilee activity in site! So with the trip to the US next week this was a good thing in reality.
Being inside so much does become taxing for us all. For Roo her behaviour can become petulant and moody and simple tasks can turn into a battle of wills. Take this morning for example, I was quite relieved that pre-school was back open and that she could go and see her friends. She got washed and dressed lovely and had 10 minutes on the iPad as a reward for doing so. Seemed to be going really well.
That was until Daddy E took her to pre-school. Now she knew where she was going, she knew she was going to see her friends, but for some reason on arrival at the nursery she went into total emotional meltdown. The grippy koala hands were unleashed and she locked onto Daddy E with full force, refusing to relinquish her grip on him and let him drive to work. There were tears, lots of them, lots of sobbing and Daddy E had to leave her with four members of staff who were attempting to calm her down enough to tackle the breakfast trolley!
She hasn’t done this for a while, and it is always horrible to hear from Daddy E when she’s been like this. I can only put it down to the fact that she’s spent four solid days at home with us and had got used to the idea that this was how it was going to be until our holiday begins.
This does lead to the more worrying scenario…..how the hell am I going to convince her to go to school in September after she’s spent the summer holidays with me!
I hope all my readers had a good Bank Holiday Jubilee Weekend with your families and that you’ve not had too much trouble getting any little one’s back off to day care today.
