A Day Out

I wasn't actually particularly planning on having a day out today.  Sure, I expected to leave the house sometime (the reason why will become shortly), but I didn't expect the day to turn out quite as it did.

So, my wife was at work today (which is particularly bad planning on her part bearing in mind that it's her birthday) and as our son is off school this week I had the day off to entertain him.

Now, one recent change to our lives is that we now have a regular house cleaner.  Once a week, on Tuesdays, we leave the house its usual state (that is to say, not quite bad enough for the Disasters Emergency Committee to begin running commercials asking for donations, but not far off) and we return to a beautiful and sparkling clean home.  I find this somewhat unsettling, and end up frantically tidying and wiping counters before the cleaners arrive, so that they can spend their time doing the more in depth cleaning that I am able to ignore, like cleaning under the sink or sandblasting the external brickwork.

Usually we're all out of the house by 8am so we don't ever see the cleaner, but with school being off, we found the day didn't start quite as quickly as the norm, and in summary the cleaners found me asleep in bed at 11 in the morning, my son laid next to me watching the childhood tale "The Gingerbread Man" for the fifteenth time, in what I assume is an effort by him to watch all of the different animations of this story that can be found on YouTube.

Allow me to assure readers that I had indeed awoken some hours before, but my son had had a minor accident and was somewhat upset, so had retired to my bed for a brief "chill out" session, and I joined him to make sure that he was okay.  Once in bed of course I noticed a Bill Bryson book that I hadn't read for at least three weeks and started flicking through it, before succumbing to the temptations of an illicit midmorning nap.

Anyway, once awoken by the cleaners coming up the stairs, we quickly left the house without a clear plan of where to go or what to do - at least I didn't have a clear plan, my son probably did, but as it would probably involve running at moving cars whilst eating chocolate I wasn't convinced that he would have the best idea of how to spend the time.

So, we found ourselves at the Humber Bridge Country Park.  The country park is sited in an old chalk mine on the bank of the River Humber, and when I was young I remember visiting the park any number of times to prick myself with a nettle or fall down a steep wall or something.  I'm pleased to report that my son promptly climbed up a massive and steep face, and then commanded me to join him.  He didn't fall down anything either, which was an added bonus.

I do like the Humber Bridge Country Park, even though at the entrance it has a box full of leaflets that you can take to learn more about the park, and the park administrators have felt the need to put instructions on the box explaining how a leaflet can be safely obtained.  At the time of our visit, some local do-gooder group (The Holderness Annoying Young Persons Society, perhaps) had brought a dozen death-seeking children of indeterminate ages to the country park, all of which immediately launched themselves at every hazard they could find, hanging off railings, dangling legs off the tops of bridges, and bouncing inanely on play equipment.  My son didn't hesitate to join them, leaving me to chase ineffectually after them, and between periods of heavy breathing occasionally mustering just enough energy to shout at him to stop touching whatever he was touching or to not jump from whatever dangerous place he was onto the row of metal spikes directly underneath him.

We ended up staying at the park a good four hours or so, by which time we were both exhausted from a very enjoyable time running around.  In fact we were there so long, that by the time we got back home, I decided to invent a new meal - Tunch.

Aficionados of Brunch will recognise Tunch as a new fusion meal, where we take the "snacky" aspect of lunch (sandwich, crisps, yoghurt, perhaps a piece of fruit) and give it the "quantity" element of Tea.  Tunch for my son was essentially all the items mentioned, plus another yoghurt, and some sort of biscuit on a stick that he coerced me into buying at the supermarket after the country park (four hours of running around a park will weaken your defenses somewhat).

I attempted to apply the other aspect of Brunch, that is that by having Brunch you don't get to eat Lunch, so I did my best to take Tunch sufficiently staunch as to avoid the need for a separate tea meal.  This didn't work of course, my son seems to be able to eat constantly, except when asleep (and if he slept in a food preparation area I think he could continue eating even then) so the idea of skipping a meal just because he'd had a separate meal an hour beforehand was obviously unreasonable.

All in all an excellent day.  Now please excuse me while I sort out some supper.

No Toast

My wife has just put our son to bed, and had the below conversation.  For information, we used up the last of the bread earlier for sandwiches, but (apparently unknown to him) I went to the garage and bought a loaf.

Son: We've got no toast.
My Wife: Yes, there's toast, daddy bought some bread
Son: But there's no toast tomorrow.
My Wife: Yes, we have bread, you put it in the toaster and you make toast.
Son: But there's no toast tomorrow.
My Wife: Yes, daddy bought bread.
Son (sadly): There's no toast Monday. No toast on Tuesday-
My Wife: Yes there is darling! Daddy. Bought. Bread.

I'm kinda excited to see what happens tomorrow when I try to make him some toast for breakfast while he insists that we can't have any.

Here is the bread.  It exists.

Not that I care - it's Fathers Day, I got candy pizza :)

All the calories of real pizza, but without those nasty vitamins.

And to celebrate Fathers Day, I made a video of dad jokes - and if you think these are bad, you should have seen the ones that I didn't include :)

Dave The Robot Angel

Here's a photo of my son with my GorillaPod Tripod, which is apparently a robot angel.

Called Dave.

Dave got fed carrots and mash for dinner.

Dave is now in hiding.

Princess Daddy

This morning I asked my son to tell me a story.

With a little prompting from my other half, we got the following out of him:

Once upon a time, there was a princess.  And the princess was called Princess Daddy.

Princess Daddy wore a white and pink dressing gown with little hearts on.

Yes, he does.  In my defense... actually,scratch that. I have no defense.

Princess Daddy likes eating peas.

Princess Daddy went on a blue and white boat, and sailed through the clouds to the sky!

Then he had a wee.

The End.


He's got a bright future as an awesome storyteller ahead of him.

Bang! And the vomit is gone!

Yes, if you couldn't tell from the title, this is a bit of a gross blog post.  You have been warned.

My son has just been having a bath (supervised by his mother), when he decided that the best thing in the world to do was to drink the bath water.

I remember doing this when I was little, I seem to think that sucking it out of the flannel was a particularly tasty way of enjoying this particular treat.  Disgusting yes, but it was twenty five (or more) years ago.

Now in my partners defense, I usually do bathing duties, but this time she was sorting him out as my back is playing up a bit and I wanted to get a start on some paperwork that needing doing.  My son has this trick where he floats in the bath, and lowers his mouth into the bath, to drink the water.  He's only done this occasionally, but I've learned to notice when he tries to do this and intervene, while I don't think my partner realised immediately what he was planning and he took full advantage of this.  You can always tell when our son is doing something that he shouldn't, and that he knows that he shouldn't, because he'll do it as quickly as possible.  He was knocking my birthday cards off the windowsill the other day, and when I told him "No" his response was to accelerate the process so that he could complete it before I stopped him.  So you can imagine, being given a split second to drink something he shouldn't, he went for it.

I heard some coughing and noises, and then my partner called up to me "Mike, can you come give us a hand please".  I ventured downstairs to find her drying my son off while he cheerfully announced "Sick!", and the water draining out of the bath, leaving a rather nasty looking ring of... well I'm sure you can imagine.

So, I got him a drink, checked all was otherwise well, and left her taking on the bath with the aid of Cillit Bang.

I bet they haven't thought about advertising how well it deals with that sort of stain.

(I will end this blog just to say that I too have cleaned various... substances... out of the bath!  Just not this time!)

Warning: May Contain Spoons

We've been working on my son's speaking recently, as he's a little behind on talking.  He has come on very well and is making lots of noises, but we're trying to get him over the next hurdle from noises to words.

This generally involves an alphabet, and a lot of encouraging and smiling. Saying "Yes, that's a b!" a lot, you can imagine it.

To be fair, he can do some letters quite well.  S is a strong point for him.  Words with "it" as well, he can usually enunciate the "it" part, certainly so it is understandable.

So when his nana had him for a little while the other day, and had a little accident - nothing too severe, nothing to worry about - she, without thinking, emitted a word that can only be described as foul language.

A word which includes an S, and an "it" bit as well.

And our son can now say it.  Thanks! :)

One other thing to mention...

I was in Asda, getting various random bits of household gubbins and food – no alcohol, which to be honest is unusual for me as despite the fact that I can't hold my drink, I do like to keep a little in the house.

I go to the checkout, unload my trolley, and mosey on down to the far end to bag my purchases and to prepare myself for parting with my hard-earned money.

About two-thirds of the way through, the checkout girl stops.

“Have you got ID for this?” she asks. I'm not too surprised as I used to get ID'd quite a bit and although it's less common now, it does occur. I always say the most accurate way to check if someone is underage is to ask them, and then if they burst into a beaming smile, you can be sure that they're overage.

I fish around for my driving license, my brain slowly catching up with me as I show the girl my license.  I haven't bought any alcohol today.

“What am I being ID'd for, anyway?”

“You've bought some cutlery, sir.”

I've bought some cutlery. Was it a meat cleaver? A smaller, but concealable knife? A serrated bread knife, perhaps?

No.

I've bought a spoon.

A ******* spoon!

What am I going to do with a spoon? Gouge out someone's eyeballs? Sneak into an egg and spoon race and beat all the kids? Bop my servant in the middle of the forehead, Basil Fawlty-style?

If I hijack a plane with a spoon, I deserve to keep the plane.