I was going to write a post this time last week at the start of half term but kept getting distracted by life so here it is during the last few hours of half term instead! It’s not that we’ve really done much but instead I keep getting lost in the moment and before I know it it’s been 3 hours. These moments also tend to be my little pony related or furniture rearranging- wouldn’t be lockdown without a little living room revamp.

We’ve been pretty bad at getting out the house for little walks as the weather seems to be rubbish any time we’re actually able to leave the house (everyone dressed, not eating their 15th snack of the day, willing to put wellies on and actually leave the house). We managed to avoid the snow the other week and instead just got a savage cold wind that lingered for days. The kids weren’t too fussed about the lack of snow anyway and instead did have a blast playing with the ice they found in a water filled box in the garden. It’s so often the simple things that give the most wonder.

We did have a good giggle the other evening. Just before we kicked off the bedtime routine we heard some pretty loud noises coming from out the front of the house so I stuck my head out the door and was greeted by some smiley workmen fixing the massive pothole outside the front door. They were very apologetic about the noise and I told them not to worry at all as I just wondered how long it would take them so we knew how long to delay bedtime as it’s just below the kids bedroom. They assured me it would be less than an hour so I waved them bye with a smile to match theirs and came back in the house. Then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realised why they had been so full of humour…

It seems Seb has come through some sort of developmental leap over the last week or so after a couple of weeks of disturbed sleep and grumpy behaviour he’s emerged with a few new skills under his belt. The best one is a new understanding of humour which means he’s doing cheeky little things like throwing a cushion onto daddy’s face as he lay on the floor daydreaming and cracking up at funny things he sees. He’s also finally (thank god!) figured out how the brio train track fits together so instead of shouting at pieces of track and throwing unsuspecting trains across the room when they uncouple, he is instead secretly building tacks that quickly span across the whole room and has worked out how the trains fix together only if the magnets are in the right order. It’s bought a new sense of calm to the house and a new trip hazard!

Clara bear has now officially reached the “I can’t crawl but I want to so I’m gonna scream at things I want to reach but can’t” stage- it’s a highlight they don’t mention in the parenting books. She has no trouble reaching her food though and will shove anything in!

Another week finished and I still can’t believe how quick the year seems to be going already. I know I sound like a broken record but I swear it was only Monday 2 days ago!

We finished January on a definite high as our charity walking challenge made the local paper as we smashed our mileage target as a team. Polly was proudly showing the paper off in her zoom class last Friday! As a team we’ve decided to carry on walking ‘together but not together’ as it’s been a great motivator to get us out into some fresh air and it’s also been quite nice having regular contact via WhatsApp with each other.

One of my walks last week has also had a very lasting impact on me. Firstly the walk was amazing, it was an area I hadn’t explored at all and it gave some of the most amazing views of our local area that means I will definitely be going back up there. I made it up the road part of the walk with Clara on my back and was just gathering my bearings at the edge of the wood, wondering which path to take, when a lady getting out of her car with her 2 dogs noticed me looking a bit lost. “First time up here?”

After I confessed it was, she gave me the low down on which walks I could try but then she offered to show me her favourite walk. We started chatting and boy did we chat (we obviously stayed socially distanced!). After a short while she confided something that had recently happened in her life, now her story is not mine to tell so I won’t go into details but I will just say if Covid restrictions weren’t in place I probably would have hugged this complete stranger. We shared a really lovely walk round the top of the hill and we shared all sorts of stories, but we didn’t even exchange names! All I know is that she taught me in those 20 minutes that kindness is really the most important thing we can give each other during these dark times and I’m so pleased we shared that walk together.

Another walk just this afternoon will be memorable for a whole different reason. I took the girls on a trek up a different hill nearby and Polly was proving a great conversationalist much to the amusement of a gentleman who passed us on the way up… Me- “Watch out for that poo.” Polly- “Eeeeew it’s huge, what is it?” Me- “It’s from a horse.” Polly- “Horses don’t poo.” Me- “Of course they do, every animal including us poos.” Polly- “Oh yeah, I do.”

Anyway when we reached the end of the road we stopped to admire the view and the same man was on his way back down with a smile on his face- “Does your youngster like actual animals as much as she likes admiring their poo?”. After a bit of confused giggling all round he let us know that if we ventured a bit further up the track there were 3 deer in the field. I’m still amazed that Polly kept quiet for the next 5 minutes (anyone who knows Polly will understand this as she is usually the loudest child on the planet!) but she did and we were rewarded with a beautiful view and the deer still in the field. Too far away to see if they’d done any poo for us to chat about though!

She has been an absolute superstar this week with her home schooling and this showed too, when she was awarded star of the week after putting in lots of effort with her letter and number writing. We’ve been keeping the learning varied and fun to keep her attention and it seems to be working on me too as I now can’t read letters properly without sounding them out- something I discovered while doing a word puzzle the other day which Henry found hilarious.

Another hilarious thing that keeps happening is curtesy of Seb. He keeps getting the giggles. And I mean really getting the giggles. There’s something so refreshing about watching a 2 year old loose himself completely as he sister is making the voice recording dinosaur repeatedly blow raspberries.

Talking about blowing raspberries, this seems to be Clara’s party trick at the moment. She’s started imitating people and this is her favourite noise to copy. She’s started to get to the stroppy ‘I want to move’ stage but hasn’t quite figured it out yet, I mean she can roll all around but crawling isn’t quite on the agenda just yet, although I don’t think it’ll be too long.

And that’s it from me for now. I’ve got the blog’s social media accounts all active now so I thought I’d try and post regular little snippets on there to just encourage me to keep writing.