Well, I thought it was about time I started a Blog. I’ve always kept a diary, ever since I was a small child, but in recent years it’s become a bit rubbish, just listing where I went and with whom. Over the past couple of weeks though I’ve found it becoming filled with observations about the kids – Alfie’s fascination with stalactites forming at Ironbridge and explaining all about it to Nanny a few days later, little things that have happened and I feel a strong need to record somewhere. I’ve also found myself needing to keep discussing parenting decisions, observations and thoughts with Rich every night. It’s so hard swimming against the tide, even when you know you’re right and see evidence of it every day. I wanted to be able to record these thoughts for myself and my kids – these musings, these reasons for doing what we have done and plan to do. I also thought it would be a good place to begin chronicling our home education journey. I don’t really know what I want it to be, I guess, but wanted the chance to experiment and to ramble! We’ll see……..

So, great weekend. Attingham park was fantastic on Saturday. The sun shone, we had a lovely picnic, the kids were able to run round and play in the play area and the deer park. They had a modern art exhibition in the parkland. Alfie proclaimed that one, entitled something like “How to survive in the bad years”, looked like a giant ants’ house, which raised a smile (and I could see exactly what he meant!). As usual, he asked constant questions and was so interested in everything that he seemed much older than nearly 3. The only downside was Holly getting inconsolable at one point – a combination of being very tired and teething (her first teeth are through finally at 15 months!). She settled to sleep in the sling on Daddy after a while of walking the deer park with her screaming, and was much more cheerful when she woke up. I fed her in the NT tearooms – a bizarre experience because, after a year of feeding her anywhere and everywhere, I’d got out of the habit of public breastfeeding. She feeds first thing then not until 3pm so am normally back home for that feed. No comments or noticeable dirty looks anyway!

On Sunday we got the paint for the new ceiling in the kitchen. I so hope we bring these evil people, Sutton Coldfield Roofcare, to justice. They have cost us so much money, heartache and hassle and I can’t bear the thought of them doing it to others. Mr Brett Clarke – we’re on your case, along with Trading Standards. We also did some gardening with the kids, and Alfie planted a raspberry bush. We have lots of vegetable seeds to plant in a couple of weeks.

Today I took them to Cadbury World along with Tracey and Becky and their kids. We all ate far too much chocolate but had a great day. I’m just so tired as have had several nights of Holly being permanently feeding, teething related I think. I feel so much more grumpy when I get this tired, and I hate being grumpy with the kids.

Anyway, there’s so much I wanted to mull over on here about parenting stuff, but I’ve run out of energy and need to help Rich wash up! Another day. And I picked my now repaired phone up today so can hopefully get some photos on here too from now on.