I'm a walking...

I went for a walk yesterday evening to clear my head. I find that by the time I'm walking back up the hill the original thought has long passed and I'm pondering less stressful matters. By the time I got home I was almost ready to celebrate the little things that have cheered me up recently.

Brown Bear really enjoys forest school and Blue Bear is fascinated by insects and minibeasts so I bought this insect and bee house for the garden. It doesn't have any occupants yet, but we are keeping a close eye to see if any take up residence. 

Neo loves the sunshine and it's one of my favourite pastimes to try and spot him during the day. Thanks to the overgrown front garden it took me a little while to spot him at the weekend.

This is possibly the most beautiful cinema foyer I have ever seen - it's the Picturehouse on Shaftesbury Avenue and I'll definitely be going there again. 

Brown Bear is obsessed with Star Wars and at the weekend we went to a Star Wars party. I love this action shot of him with the entertainer.

This really baffled me the other day. When we visited Kerala we were greeted at the hotel with fresh coconut with a straw in the top so we could have a drink. The natural step from all that faffing about cutting a hole in the top is - of course - to add a ring pull. Isn't it ? No it's not.

Anyway, just thought I'd share :)

A sensory walk on an Autumn day with my toddler.

Rushing on ahead to see the ducks

Baby Boy has been gabbling for a while now. He will exclaim loudly and point to get what he wants as his vocabulary is limited to family names and animal sounds. The latter is pretty helpful when I ask if he wants to go and feed the ducks as he makes a quacking sound which I treat as agreement with my plans.

As the sun was out today we decided to go and see the ducks at the local pond. I had a pot of  leftover toast slices in the car to feed them and picked up some coats as I wasn't entirely sure it was really all that warm.

Pesky Pigeons stealing all the bread 

People often ask if Baby Boy is speaking yet and will console me by saying, "it won't be long." as if I should actually be worried that he isn't. I don't worry about it at all. We communicate well enough and I encourage him to express himself and experience the world in many different ways. He is really into sensory play at the moment and today was an ideal opportunity to use all the senses during our morning outdoors.

Visual: We often observe trees and have been watching the leaves change colour for weeks now. Today we also saw lots of colourful leaves on the ground. Then Baby Boy spotted the duck pond and ran ahead to watch the birds swimming contentedly round on the water.

Crunch crunch crunch 

Sound: There is nothing like the sound of leaves crunching underfoot, I love it. Where we go to feed the birds they can be very noisy - not as loud as Baby Boy admittedly, but still. He does a pretty impressive duck quack sound which either draws them near or scares them off depending on how screechy he is.

Taste: When we feed the birds Baby Boy always gives in to the temptation to try some of the bread. This is why I have to make sure it's edible just in case he pops it in his mouth before giving it to the ducks.

Quack, quack, quack

Smell: Autumn has an amazing smell all of its own. The freshly cut grass, wet leaves and that distinctive tang of autumnal air.

Touch: On our way home from dropping off Big Boy at school we regularly pick up leaves, conkers and pine cones from the ground. We feel the different textures and compare them with each other. As we were preparing to come home for lunch I felt his hands and they were very cold so I knew it was time for something hot to eat and a nice nap.

Lovely leaves

Autumn is my favourite season by far. In writing this post I can now see why - it really is a feast for all the senses.

A Good Friday to take a walk

I've been a bit absent lately as I've been poorly since Easter - as a result I've had not one chocolate egg (boo) and haven't been up to writing blog posts (double boo). To make sure you don't forget me this is a mostly photo post of images taken on one of my training walks for the Moonwalk that is in a few weeks.

This walk was on Good Friday and it was a beautiful sunny afternoon in Hythe in Hampshire. Enjoy the images. I hope you don't catch what I have :)

The loveliest bridge and weeping willow

Hythe Marina

Mother-in-law's gorgeous garden

If you'd like to sponsor me and my walking pal Soraya please do - any amount will be great and we're delighted to have received such generous support already.

A wild walk

I might have mentioned that I'm training for the Moonwalk that takes place in May. This means taking walks while the boy is at nursery or weekends when the boys are at football or shopping. I'm quite enjoying the walking actually as I ponder while I walk and it's giving me a great knowledge of my local area.

This week I was walking back home on the last stretch of a 3 mile walk and I spotted some wild flowers growing alongside the road. At one point there was a carpet of tiny white flowers stretching back along the grass verge virtually hidden away. It was such a lovely surprise and made me smile at the end of a tiring uphill walk.

Strictly speaking it's not my garden, but it's still nature and it's like a secret find when I spot them peeking through the fence with cars and buses whizzing past in the background. There is a rustic charm to these teeny tiny flowers and the fact that they exist on the sidelines makes them all the more special.

This post is part of the epic Mammasaurus' "How Does Your Garden Grow" linky

Thank Honk it's Friday !!

I've never bought into this idea that Friday night is for going out and getting hammered. When I was a single lady (oh oh oh, oh oh oh... thanks Beyonce) I used to spend Friday evening in the gym as it was quiet and I could watch telly while on the treadmill and not have to deal with sweaty people working at a maddening pace to achieve the body beautiful. If that sounds a bit sad to you please be assured that I did really enjoy it and preferred to not wake up with a massive hangover on a Saturday morning.

Of course now I'm a parent my Friday evenings are spent at home bathing the boy and getting us ready for a weekend of toddler activities. Often I'm preparing for my radio show - Are We Nearly There Yet ? - that is live on Saturday morning or talking to listeners during His & Hers - the radio show that me and Hubbie do together that goes out every other Friday evening. This is what we consider to be a Friday night in our house.

The new thing that we do on a Friday night is swimming. Since we joined the pool just down the road I've been swimming 4-5 times a week and often me and Hubbie take it in turns to have a swim when he's back from work. I used to go swimming with my siblings on a Friday evening when we were kids so the exercise on a Friday night thing is pretty traditional in my family. Tonight, however I was paddling up and down the pool in serenity and bliss ie. no one else was in there so I could pretend it was my private pool. I often do this and in my head I'm singing Julia Fordham 'Happy Ever After.' I recall she gave an interview where she said she swam every day and it helped her stay happy. It makes me happy too.

As I swam tonight though I was very aware of how much my body ached and hurt from walking all day on Wednesday for the Team Honk Baton Relay. It was a wet, windy, cold day and at one point when I stopped to get a cuppa at St Pancras with the lovely Gretta from Mumsdotravel I saw flashing lights in front of my eyes - this is not a good sign is it ? By the time I arrived in Fleet to handover the baton to Mummy Barrow I was very tired and hungry and my phone was down to 2% battery. I sent Hubbie a text saying what time I'd expect to get home and settled back in the quiet carriage with the half filled pizza box for the long journey back home. As I arrived at my station I saw my bus leaving so I took the tram instead and in a last flourish of energy scootered back home.


So you can imagine how chuffed I was to catch up with social media - once I'd charge up my phone -  to find out that while we were making our way around the Monopoly board in real life the hashtag #honkopoly was trending !! A few of us were taking photos and posting them as we went round and there was an army of social media helpers making sure that the attention was firmly on our efforts.



And if that wasn't brilliant enough we've also found out that not only are Team Honk top of the team fundraisers for Sport Relief, but our London team are top of the Freestyle Fundraiser category too !!

Totally worth it to ache all over, have bruises on my ankles and getting a bit wet and cold.

Now that's my happy ever after :)

Thanks again to micro-scooters for kindly providing scooters to so many member of Team Honk. 

What makes me smile ? A man, a boy and a cat :)

I'm joining Mummy never sleeps in her new linky to remind ourselves what teeny tiny things can make us feel a teeny tiny bit better when things aren't feeling so great. So for the inaugural All The Small Things I present the following:

1. Homemade soup with homemade bread - nicer than expected and my boy even said, "it's very tasty Mummy."

2. The first daffodils in our front garden - a delightful surprise every January :)

3. Looking out of the kitchen window and spotting our cat sitting in the window of the den - an unlikely sunbathing spot :)

4. A walk with my boys on a winter's weekend 

and finally

5. Finding a packet of cookies named after my cat :)

I hope at a least one of these things made you smile too - see you next time :)

[All photos are mine - please ask permission before reproducing them or any content]