Tag Archives: children

Lazing on a Sunday afternoon

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Room 106 at The Bonham, Edinburgh

Room 106 at The Bonham, Edinburgh

On Sunday afternoon Jane and I drove to The Bonham hotel in Edinburgh and enjoyed a blissfully quiet afternoon, evening and morning in the company of one another. It was our first night away together without any children since, I think, May 2010.

The Bonham is a gorgeous hotel on Drumsheugh Gardens, a stone’s throw from St Mary’s Cathedral on Palmerston Place and overlooking the Dean Bridge. It fuses traditional with modern quite effortlessly.

We got a fabulous deal through itison.com: dinner, bed and breakfast, with unlimited movies for a bargain £140 (for one night). To give you an idea of how much we might have been saving, a Scottish cooked breakfast costs £14.00.

After booking in we climbed the stairs to the first floor, unlocked the door to room 106 and were welcomed with a bottle of champagne (or whatever the Italian equivalent is) and the TV was on showing… F1 Grand Prix. Now that’s my kind of hotel room. None of this patronising “Welcome to room 106 Mr and Mrs Saunders” nonsense message on the screen.

Dinner was utterly fabulous in the critically acclaimed Restaurant at The Bonham. I would happily eat there every night!

All in all, a wonderfully relaxing 24 hours in the company of my favourite wife, reading, watching telly and enjoying the silence.

We drove back to Anstruther yesterday afternoon just in time to pick up Reuben and Joshua from nursery, having first bought the boys a present (Star Wars lightsabers for Reuben and Joshua, and an Ikea chair for Isaac) and treated ourselves to a new kingsize mattress. (Hopefully that will help my back mend.)

Washing 3 dogs, a chute and a car

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On Thursday I booked the day off work to look after Reuben and Joshua while Jane enjoyed the day at a local hotel spa. It was a birthday present from her family… last year!

Jane’s mum took Isaac, in case you were wondering.

This is a brief insight into what the boys got up to at home…

20110508-washingdogs

The first thing we did was to wash Copper, the dog from the Disney film The Fox and the Hound. He was filthy!

And of course we couldn’t just wash Copper: Tod the fox plus Blue Dog and Blue Dog also got washed.

(Why do we have two blue dogs? Because we’ve got twins and sometimes you just can’t get away with buying one of something! So we have the Thomson and Thompson of cuddly dogs.)

And of course we couldn’t just wash Copper, Tod, Blue Dog and Blue Dog. I turned round from having squeezed out the last drops of water from Blue Dog and discovered…

20110508-washingchute

Reuben and Joshua were busy scrubbing down the chute in the garden! (And just in case you’re wondering, that’s not an iron that Joshua is using—it’s a scrubbing brush.)

Of course we couldn’t just wash Copper, Tod, Blue Dog, Blue Dog and the chute. The car also got washed. With Reuben in it. While it was moving.

20110508-washingcar

And then the shed got washed too.

And the fence.

And remarkably neither of them got soaked! I was wetter than they were by the time we went in for lunch.

Day 8: A song that you know all the words to #30dsc

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30 day challenge day 8: A song that you know all the words to

Ugly Kid Joe—Cat’s In The Cradle

A song that you know all the words to? Is that really supposed to be a challenge? I amaze myself sometimes by singing the lyrics to songs that I’ve not heard for 10 years. Is that information that stored there in my brain preventing me from remembering other stuff? I hope not.

This is another song from 1992—a good year that for me. Ugly Kid Joe rose to fame and this was one of their most popular songs, a cover of the 1974 Harry Chapin song.

This song came to mind because I was talking about it to a friend just the other day. It’s partly because of this song that I try to spend as much time as I do with Reuben, Joshua and Isaac.

How will you get there, Maisy?

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How will you get there, Maisy?

How will you get there, Maisy?

Subtitle: How a children’s book sums up yesterday’s snow

According to the BBC News website we’re in for another very cold night.

I drove in to work this morning, but yesterday—which saw Edinburgh and Glasgow airports closed due to the sheer volume of snow; which saw hundreds of motorists spend the night in their cars due to the disruption on the Scottish roads—I worked from home.

Yesterday evening, at bedtime, I sat with Reuben on his bedroom floor and read him book after book.  We read 5 or 6 books in all, including the book above: How will you get there, Maisy? by Lucy Cousins.

It’s an interactive book, which shows one form of transport and by way of clues invites the child to guess by which form of transport Maisy actually used.  For example,

“How will Charley get to the farm…?

[There are images of a saddle, horseshoes, apples and the words "Clip Clop!"]

By motorbike?

[Lift the flap]

“No… by horse!”

And then I turned the page and read this:

How will Maisy get to the airport...? By sledge?

How will Maisy get to the airport...? By sledge?

How will Maisy get to the airport…? By sledge?

Yes!

Daddy’s bike

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Close-up of a bicycle chainset
Bicycle Gear by donjolley at Stock.xchng.

Bedtimes with Joshua have been a little tricky of late. ‘Fraught’ might be a word that you could use about them. It’s certainly a word that I have used about them.

At his lunchtime snooze he’s amazing. You put him in his pushchair in the garden and off he drifts to sleep quite effortlessly, waking refreshed 90-120 minutes later.

In the evening, however, after his bath he screams. And eventually so do I.

But not this evening. This evening I was determined to not get upset.

No agenda

I read an article in the TAMBA magazine a while back that one secret about putting children to bed is to not have an agenda afterwards.  Don’t approach bedtime thinking “Right, once they are asleep I’ll have time to do x, y and z.”  they advised. But that’s tricky, because after their bedtime is usually the perfect time to get x, y and z done.

This evening, though, I actually didn’t have an agenda other than to embody a zen-like calm while dealing with Joshua on our bed.  And that’s exactly what I did.

What I got back from him, however, was this.

Daddy’s bike – a monologue

“Bike!” said Joshua.

I looked at him.

“Bike!” said Joshua again. “Bike! Daddy’s bike!”

“Bike?” I questioned. “You want to see Daddy’s bike?”

Joshua nodded an pointed out the window towards the shed.

“We can’t look at the bike this evening,” I reasoned. “It’s sleepy time!”

Undeterred Joshua continued with his mantra. ”Bike! … Bike! … BIKE!! Daddy’s bike!”

I am not kidding for 15-20 minutes he kept this up. At one point I thought I was in some kind of trance.

“Daddy’s bike! … Daddy’s bike! … Daddy’s bike! … Daddy’s bike!”

I couldn’t help laughing.

“Wheesht! with the bike nonsense!” I demanded.

He didn’t listen.

“Bike! …”

At one point he stopped suddenly. His face was a quizzical picture, like he was trying to figure out how he could better convey to me the seriousness of what he was telling me.  And then, there it was, a tiny Eureka moment:  ”Bike! … Bike! … BIKE!! Daddy’s bike!”

I promised that I’d show him my bike tomorrow before handing him off to Jane who put him back in his cot.

“Mummy?” he said as he lay in his cot in the glow of the night-light.

“Yes darling,” she replied.

“Mummy? Daddy’s bike!“