Half term. It’s amazing that even when your child isn’t actually at school yet the school holidays still seem to have a big impact on our normal schedule. The main change being that most of the parent/baby groups don’t run so you have to find other ways to entertain little people and as it’s half term the big soft play centres etc etc are an absolute last resort as they’ll be full of families with the bigger kids trying to do the same thing. This usually means a week of playdates and trips to the park thinking about how in a few short years you wont get a choice on the manic, hyper-children filled soft play centres in school holidays, as that will be the only time to take them and you’ll be counting on that time to let them burn off some holiday steam. Until then we’ll stick with a muddy puddle walk to the park.

The library has provided us with 2 mornings worth of entertainment this week. On Thursday they ran their normal singing session- minus the singing sadly as the usual lady was on holiday, so instead we listened to a nursery rhyme CD and chatted about our weeks while the little people pulled out books and instruments. The day before they ran a storytime session that I thought we’d pop along to just to see how long Polly lasted. She surprised everyone by staying put on my lap for over half an hour while the nice man recited various stories. Even more impressive as it was packed (the rain had bought half of Sidmouth out to the only dry family friendly activity in the town that morning!) and the lure to run around with the other kids, most of whom were bigger than her, was very evident in her look of wonder as the other children roamed free and mean Mummy kept her sat still as she is very aware that given half a chance she would cause more mayhem and destruction than the rest of them put together. A photographer then came in and re-jigged us about so we were relegated to the floor for the remainder of the session but luckily this was near the story props so Polly’s attention was still held for the last 10 minutes with help from a bag of vegetables from the story of the hungry caterpillar (going through the ‘won’t eat unusual veg stage’ at home… tries to eat a whole turnip at the library- that’s just toddlers for you).

This morning we are planning on making the most of the nicer weather so it’ll be a walk along the river and a trip to the park, once I’ve done the hoovering that I’ve been putting off for the last 3 days. The trouble is I’m also now very aware that I’ve hit the delightful third trimester. Basically I feel like I’ve been hit by a train. It’s great. The combination of backache, needing to pee 382 times a night, surprise Braxton Hicks, falling asleep at any opportunity and the distinct start of a waddle would be ok to handle if it weren’t for the constant question of “How much longer do you have left?” It would even be fine if you didn’t get the raised eyebrow response when I sigh that I still  have just over 10 bloody weeks left! This does not make me feel any better about my now almost complete resemblance of a whale but thanks for your thoughts on how I look ready to drop at any moment Mr Stranger. Mind you I did get the little reminder last night when I came home from work as to what all this fun is for. Henry’s cousin had her little girl yesterday afternoon. The picture of this new family of 4 smiling from the hospital did come at the perfect time to make the discomfort and interrogations slip to the back of my mind- that’ll be us soon!

Oh and Valentine’s Day was this week too. Obviously Henry surprised me with a romantic boat trip and a dozen red roses. Nah! He did way better than that. First off he bought me back a sausage and egg McMuffin after his early morning gym session. Then during an unexpected nap I took while Polly had hers I woke up in a blurred state of pain at the beloved backache and he fixed me up with a hot water bottle in rapid speed so I then fell asleep again for almost an entire hour! He then cooked me up a steak for tea before I headed to work. Boy definitely did well this year.

Right, now I really do need to drag that hoover out or it’ll be too late in the day so it’ll get bumped onto tomorrow’s to do list, plus Polly has just upturned her entire box of brio so I need to get a move on before the floor becomes completely inaccessible with said hoover.