Trails and Thomas

We've been out and about for a big chunk of the Easter weekend.  On Good Friday, we did the Easter Egg Trail at Petworth House.  We signed up as National Trust members a couple of years ago and aren't exactly making the most of our membership. The trail cost £4 per child. As members, we got free parking and admission to the house, though we didn't look round on this occasion.  Munchkin was given a goodie bag which contained all the bits she'd need to make an Easter chick. We followed a trail around the park, which led us to instructions on how to make our chick. At the end of the trail, you present your chick and are given an Easter egg as a reward.  We really enjoyed it, but get the impression they might do the same thing every Easter, so we'll have to try somewhere different next year.

This is the chick we made.  The poor thing has been dismantled twice and is currently awaiting surgery.

On Saturday, we went to see Thomas... Toot Toot! Thomas the Tank Engine is a firm favourite of Munchkin's so we were disappointed to hear he wouldn't be making an appearance at our local Bluebell Railway this year.  However, a web search revealed that he would be at the Watercress Line in Hampshire over the Easter Weekend.  At £18 per adult and £12 for a child over 2, it wasn't cheap but you got a lot for your money.  Family tickets are available for two adults and two children for £54.  Had we booked in advance and used the promotional code 'NICK' on the Days Out With Thomas website, we could have got a 10% discount but we chose to just turn up on the day.  Thomas will be back at the Watercress Line from 9th to 17th August.

This was a really good day out.  The railway had clearly done this before and had an efficient parking system (the only drawback being that the disabled parking was a bit of a hike from Ropley station) and had shipped in additional toilets and baby changing facilities.  Parking at Ropley was free, but you had to pay & display at the other stations.  The railway meets the mainline at Alton if travelling by train suits you better than driving.

We saw a lot more than just Thomas.  Many of the trains and brake vans had faces on them.  We rode on Thomas's train -I don't think he had Annie and Clarabelle with him though- and in the cab on a "Friend of Diesel's", in addition to having a couple of standard steam train rides between stations.  The lady giving commentaries at Ropley station, where Thomas was, was excellent.  She presented the whole thing as if she was talking to Thomas.

Munchkin went on her first ever tea cup ride and loved it.  There was also a giant inflatable slide for older children.  We spent some time in the Imagination Station at Arlesford station, where she enjoyed playing with wooden trains and bricks, and acquired two temporary tattoos; one of Thomas and one of Percy.  We also met the Fat Controller, Bulgy the Bus and George the Steam Roller.  There was so much to do elsewhere that we never made it to Alton station.

I discovered that there is a train in the Thomas series with the same name as Munchkin and Googled it for more information.  It turns out there is a Thomas wiki.  I found it highly amusing that the wiki is used by train geeks who argue over the statistics of fictional engines!

Dummies are for dummies

For the third night in a row, Munchkin has gone to bed without a dummy -"a soother" if you're reading this in North America.  Angmering Daddy has been trying to persuade her not to use them for a month or two, with limited success.  I hadn't imagined we'd be at this point so soon since Sweetpea was nearly three when she gave up dummies.  I'm very proud of Munchkin and if this continues, I'll be throwing away all her dummies -she has about ten.

She's been a good girl generally over the past week or so.  Her confidence is coming back after half a term of no gymnastics or swimming.  Last week we managed the gym warm up with no screaming and a small amount of participitation.  Post warm up, she was back to normal and showed off her skills on the big beam - it's lower than a full sized one but there's still room to fall off.  Her late granny, who was a gym coach, would have been really impressed.  She smiled during most of this week's swimming lesson, though she's still lacking confidence and won't do half the things she was doing last term.

I've posted on here about potty training in the past.  These days, Munchkin hates the potty and will only sit on the toilet, using her Peppa Pig toilet seat.  Unforunately she only sits on the toilet, she hasn't done anything on it yet.  Despite repeatedly showing signs of being ready for potty training, we're no closer than we were eight months ago. 

Munchkin's toilet habits have caused me to change nappy brands.  Being environmentally conscious, but wanting an easy life, I've usually opted for eco disposables.  We started out in Beaming Baby, which was great until Munchkin ended up between sizes; their mini nappies leaked but we couldn't do up their midi nappies tightly enough.  I gave up on Beaming Baby and switched to Sainsbury's eco nappies.  These served us well for a year but are now leaking like mad.  I changed from a size 4+ to a 5, which was slightly better but still not great.  I bought some Naty pull-ups, the only other eco brand they sell in Sainsbury's to see what they were like.  They seem much more absorbent so I'll give their regular nappies a go.  I think, until we're really potty training, Munchkin can have a mixture of nappies and pull-ups depending on where we are and what we're doing.  The pull-ups were brilliant yesterday because we went to a family party at a pub with no baby change and they were easy to whip off in the Ladies' without having to lie Munchkin down.

Well, I think that's enough blogging for one week.  I'll try to blog more regularly in future but certain aspects of my writing regularity are just shocking.  I've got three international penfriends whom I haven't written to for almost a year, and a novel in my head that refuses to be put onto paper.

I blame it all on the Two TT's

Things have been a bit trying round here recently, and it's mainly down to the TT's; Terrible Twos and Tommee Tippee, that is.  Munchkin has been testing boundaries, which is nice.  She is having to learn the hard way, that if you scream for 20 minutes solidly, it doesn't get you what you want.  On Sunday, she insisted that the only thing she wanted for tea was a chocolate chip biscuit.  Daddy told her she could only have one if she ate her sandwich.  She refused, and spent 20 minutes screaming, "Want a biscuit."  Daddy won.  She eventually ate her sandwich -amazingly, she ate it without deconstructing it in her usual manner- and had a biscuit afterwards.  Dummies have been the cause of many screaming fits.  At some point in the next year, dummies will be doing a disappearing act.  For now, we've told her dummies are for sleeping, and she's still allowed a dummy in the car seat... If she asks for one - I've noticed that she sometimes forgets that she needs one.  However, she's been screaming for her dummy at times when she's not allowed to have it.  The screaming fits always end with Mummy and Daddy winning and Munchkin turning back into a sweet little girl, but they're not pleasant.  I've got a perforated eardrum at the moment and all this screaming isn't helping it...

The Terrible Twos are also causing Munchkin to tell me she doesn't like me from time to time - usually alongside a screaming fit.  I don't think this is unusual behaviour as I believe my late mum told me I did this at the age of two.  All the same, it's quite disheartening to be told that your only child doesn't like you, even if she has said she loves you and every other family member at another point on the same day.

I've come to the conclusion that Tommee Tippee -other brands of infant feeding equipment are available- has a lot to answer for.  My daughter has been coming back from nursery with food round her neck for months.  I always blamed the nursery but I now know what the problem is... Tommee Tippee bibs.  The bibs we'd been using until recently fitted snugly around the neck.  We replaced them with Tommee Tippees -the brand that nursery use, only to discover that they're too loose, even when done up on the tightest hole. 

Tommee Tippee struck again when it came to getting Munchkin to drink from a normal cup.  I tried giving her a TT sippy cup with no lid.  This worked fine for a few weeks but now she insists on having the lid on just because she knows it exists.  I need to buy some child-sized beakers with no lids so that she thinks she's drinking from a "Big Girl Cup".  Tommee Tippee will be reserved for her one cup of milk a day, which Angmering Daddy wants to phase out anyway.  When I say "beaker", I mean a plastic cup with no handles.  I just thought I should be clear since Mrs Bucket and my mother-in-law -who are in no way related- seem to think a beaker is a ceramic cup with a handle.  Now, that's what I call a "mug"!

I'm really hoping Munchkin can make it to her swimming lesson this Friday, for the first time this term.  We both had ear infections last week -I think I've still got mine- so swimming was out of the question.  This weekend, we're off to her cousin, Sweetpea's, birthday party.  Sweetpea will be three and I bet her parents are rejoicing that she'll no longer be a TT!

Not the best of weeks....

I think it can safely be said that there have been better weeks in the Angmering Mummy and Daddy household.  Munchkin has basically been unwell since she turned two.  First it was chicken pox, then it was teeth with a bit of a cold.  Around the middle of this week, I noticed that her ear smelt and she had spots around her eye.  It turns out that she has a bacterial infection which has also spread to the back of her hand.  Well the good news is she's not allergic to penicillin, she's been taking it for three days without any issues (apart from loose bowels... ugh).

Until Saturday I was despairing, Munchkin had decided that she only loved Daddy.  All other family members were to be avoided, particularly me.  Every time she was mildly upset, she screamed, "Cuddle Daddy" and even told me that she didn't like me.  To add insult to injury, some members of Angmering Daddy's family told me it was normal in their family for little girls to love their Daddies and ignore their Mummies.  What kind of a culture had I married into?  I was getting rather upset, particularly when friends were writing on social networks that sometimes your little one just needs a cuddle from Mummy...  However, since the antibiotics have kicked in, she's started turning back into my little girl.  Today she was more interested in cuddling Mummy than Daddy.

Our search to find a Saturday morning group to replace the brilliant Sing and Sign continues. We tried a music and movement group called Boogie Beat twice but won't be trying a third time.  The main issue was that the class just seemed too advanced for a child of two, even though it's meant to be suitable for age two plus.  Munchkin didn't want to know.  She wouldn't join in anything apart from playing with the parachute, and then she was disappointed that nobody would give her a ball to hold.  Some parents were encouraging their children to join in by carrying them as they did the dance moves themselves.  Neither Angmering Daddy nor I have the strength to do that for long.  Munchkin is heavy and I still haven't fully recovered from my fall down the stairs.  Boogie Beat also seemed to be a misnomer; there was nothing that could be described as boogying and not much of a discernible beat.  It seemed odd that most of the songs were sung without any backing track.  This was made worse by the fact that the instructor's singing abilities were similar to mine, and I won't be auditioning for a choir any time soon.

Munchkin's social life has been a bit pants recently.  She hated the new group and hasn't been to swimming or gym because of my back.  I felt well enough to take her swimming this week but she wasn't allowed to get her ear wet.  Maybe we'll make it into the swimming pool next week!

To blog or not to blog...

Ooh, scary, I've left it so long, I'm not sure how to blog any more!  Life just got in the way.  I left blogging for so long, I wasn't sure if there was any point going back to it.  My Christmas went with a bang, quite literally.  I fell down the stairs, went to A&E in an ambulance and spent Christmas so drugged up, I slept through half of it.

Munchkin's grown up a lot in the last couple of months.  She no longer uses a highchair and we took the sides off her cot this evening... Fingers crossed we don't get a 5am wake up call!  We keep being told that she's a brilliant speaker for her age.  We put this down to Sing and Sign.  Despite my high hopes in the summer, she still isn't potty trained.  She seems to have developed an aversion to the potty recently but has agreed that a Peppa Pig toilet training seat would be lovely.

I'm still unsure how my child (who only ever watched CBEEBIES and Disney) developed an obsession with Peppa Pig.  She watched it a handful of times at cousins' houses and there was a Peppa Pig themed charity event at nursery in the summer.  The next thing I know, she wants to watch Peppa every time the TV's switched on!  I can only assume it sends out subliminal messages to all toddlers...

I've been thinking just recently that becoming a parent has given me a whole new social life.  Admittedly, it's more difficult to go out as a couple now.  But on the plus side, I've made more friends in the past two years than I did for donkey's years pre-baby.  Last night I met up with some mummy friends and friends of friends for a meal at The Lamb in Angmering.  I highly recommend The Lamb.  It was recently converted into a gastro pub and has a busy bar on one side and a decent restaurant the other side.  The only thing I wasn't so keen on, was that I'm always on the lookout for child friendly pub/restaurants for weekend lunches.  I wasn't impressed with the children's menu since everything appeared to be served with chips.  Not one to add to our list of family favourites!

Well I did it, my blog is resurrected!  I've got another defunct blog out there somewhere and it will have to stay defunct for now because I can't remember the password!