It’s another wild Saturday evening in our house, Seb and I are watching Bluey together on the sofa, Polly is on the other sofa in her onesie writing a story about a horse and Clara is playing trains completely naked the other side of the room. I’m not really sure where the day has gone to be honest. We went to see Nanny and Pops this morning, Henry is working a split shift this afternoon/evening, I took the kids for a play by the river (that turned into a play in the river), we’ve watched a film, ‘baked’ some cakes and are now just vegged out. I keep trying to pack a lot into the Saturday’s as I’ve been working most Sunday’s so feel like I’ve lost half my weekend with the kids. Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s been all idyllic today though- Clara screamed from the house to the river that her legs wouldn’t work, I had a stupid amount of ironing to plough through and the kids have scheduled at least one fight every half an hour throughout the day.

Easter feels like it was several months ago already as does our little trip up to see the family in Suffolk. It was a fairly eventful trip up, the kids got to meet their new cousin (who is absolutely adorable), we had an interesting walk in the woods and we had a great trip to the soft play with friends (even if we all felt financially violated but the price). Our walk in the woods was meant to be a quick stop at at beauty spot that we used to go to as kids, a chance to eat a picnic in between family catch ups. Sadly, when you haven’t been somewhere for 20 years it can be tricky to remember which path to take when the map at the car park seems to have been drawn by a drunk octopus. At the car park, as we were changing into wellies, a group of ladies were coming back and said we’d definitely need those on as the path was ‘terribly muddy.’ We thanked them and headed off. Pretty soon we were smugly laughing about how tame the path was and how over-dramatic the old ladies had been- oh we regretted those words. Five minutes later and the path has turned into a replica of the Glastonbury campsite and the kids were crying for their lunch. We dragged ourselves through the mud-fest and half way round the woods finally found the pond with some benches that I could remember from my childhood. The kids calmed down again after some food and the rest of the walk was thankfully mud free.

Seb thought he’d add an interesting expense to our holiday whilst we were at my brother and his fiancé’s. Oli was teaching Polly to play chess after it turned out she had an interest in it from a previous family do, whilst the younger two played a bit of PlayStation. Faye and I were chatting on the sofa and both casually looked up at the screen and in a moment of slow motion horror realised what Seb was about to do, we both shouted for him to stop but of course he pressed the button anyway- purchasing £70 of game add-on’s that nobody really needed. Brilliant. At least it didn’t have another zero on the end.

He did have a hilarious word mix up that he kept doing that luckily makes him quite cute and forgivable. He kept mixing up ‘destiny’ with ‘destination’ so kept asking us each time we went to set off anywhere- “Where’s our destiny?”. And Clara’s cute mix up was that she didn’t quite understand the concept of ‘Suffolk.’ She was having full blown arguments with everyone, telling them they weren’t in Suffolk, that they were in their house and that she was leaving their house to go to Suffolk. I guess we need to add Geography to list of things to teach her, as well as wiping her arse properly and why we don’t lick our friends faces.

Unfortunately she has picked up another terrible word straight from my potty mouth (proof that I can teach her some stuff, even if it’s not the stuff I do want to pass on just yet). She’s using the word ‘fucking’ and she’s using it completely in context. One evening when we were leaving to head back to the hotel she agreed it was time to go with “yeah, because I fucking tired.” And then when we got caught in the rain it was “oh no, it’s fucking wet.”

The last couple of trips up I’ve struggled with keeping the kids occupied in the car and am so fed up of fucking I-spy that if the kids try and play another game of it I’ll sneak out at the next service station and jump in someone’s car for the remainder of the trip. So, this time I introduced them to ‘would you rather?’ This had hilarious consequences and filled many hours of the trip as the questions got more and more weird. I am still laughing at the fact that everyone I’ve since asked ‘would you rather be a wee or a poo?’ to has consistently voted the same way- it’s also been hilarious listening to people justify why the obvious answer is a wee of course.

Apart from her new potty mouth Clara has also given us another couple of giggles with her words recently. From declaring ‘oh no, I’ve got puddle in my wellie,’ to shouting ‘oh that kitty cat’s jowling is keeping me awake’ when I crawled into bed at 4AM after a night shift and disturbed the cat into run around like a dickhead mode (she meant meowing of course, but Henry and I are now sticking with calling it jowling).

Anyway it’s about time to sign off I think, Polly has just pulled out the scissors and has started making a boat from a box which is not the ideal activity five minutes before bed. I also need to turn Bluey off as I don’t want it to carry on and put me through the emotional abuse of watching ‘The Sign’ again until I’m quite ready for it. I actually cried the whole way through the bloody episode and then continued to cry for some time after whilst my sympathetic husband looked on with open mouth and the comforting words of “what the hell is wrong with you, it’s a cartoon about a family of blue dogs.” Don’t worry all you Bluey fans I soon put him in his place for his disrespectful comments and reminded him it is in fact the greatest kids show that’s ever been made!