Sunday 10 May 2015

Busy days and early nights


Something a bit different happened on Saturday evening. Arlo fell asleep in about 5 minutes flat. This is the boy who's been routinely taking anywhere between 1 - 2 hours each evening to fall asleep after we've taken him up to bed. It was totally, totally, brilliant because I felt like I'd been given the amazing gift of an entire evening to myself - Alex was out for the night so the house was all mine. I choose to spend my evening in the best way I know how - with cups of hot tea in my hand, Charlie Brooker and Gogglebox on the TV, and family photos all over the sofa. I'm still scrapbooking all our photos and I'm just loving getting them all out and going through them all again. Arlo's almost two years old and it seems all at once like it's gone by in a flash and like it's been infinite, it's weird. I'm so desperate not to forget any of it that I'm trying really hard to get photos printed and sorted so that's what's taking up a lot of my time at the moment.


Anyhoo, our boy hasn't always been the best sleeper and this welcome snooze was the result of a really active day for him - after a morning shopping we took him to soft play which isn't something we do that often (especially not on a weekend, as it was pretty mental there as you can imagine!) but he spotted one of his pals from his childminder's straight away and spent the rest of the time following him around and trying everything out. I was especially proud to see him go down the massive slide over and over with the biggest smile on his face (very blurry action shot above that captures the joy - it's hard to focus when someone's sliding THAT fast), after our time at the start of the year when he became a bit too nervous to go down the slide at our local park. Any slide concerns he may have had are officially over, and every time he came hurtling down he picked himself up and yelled "NUVVA WUN!" before doing an impression of an elephant and running back up the stairs. (not sure what the elephant bit was about, tbh).

Then this afternoon Alex and I took it in turns to play with Arlo in the garden while the other did some work on the spare room (more of that in another post because I haven't taken any pics yet, but it's looking GOOD!) and we had such a brilliant time. The garden is becoming one of my favourite places to hang out and Arlo just loved it - we both got soaked playing with his water table on the patio, watered the weeds with his little yellow duck watering can, and I turned a couple of old slates (found propped up against the shed when we moved in) into a makeshift blackboard for us to doodle on. Arlo loved drawing away with the chalk so much, he was a natural. Something tells me that boy is going to wake up to an easel on his birthday next month...

So all in all, it was a day very well spent. The kind of day that I remember having when I was a kid and loving - going ever-so-slightly feral out in the open air, scant regard for usual clothing conventions, getting soaked and having a right laugh.  It was only out in the back garden, but it did feel quite back to basics in a "oh the wifi doesn't stretch to here,  it must be the wilderness" kind of way (I'm joking. Kind of.)




2 comments:

  1. Feral days outdoors are what kids are made for. We are really lucky to live in 220 acres now and my kids literally dissapear (they are a little older, lol). Good news about the evening to yourself too. Mich x

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    1. I couldn't agree more - sounds lovely to be able to let them run off and explore! Anything that really tires them out has to be good in my book :) xx

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