Tag Archives: summer

Outdoor living

Posted in Parenting, Uncategorized by


So we’ve had an early summer this year which can only mean one thing – playing outside! It’s amazing how a little warm weather can make all the difference to a day and ever since the sun has been out we’ve been spending the majority of our time doing outdoor activities.

A lot of the time we have just played in the garden. We had a new patio laid in an attempt to not only make the garden look nice but to avoid an inevitable serious injury that the uneven, stony ground was going to cause. Next to the patio I put some bark chippings and a playhouse and an old plastic toy kitchen. It is here that baby boy now spends the majority of his day. I drink endless cups of tea and eat plates of cake, all of the plastic variety, thoughtfully made by my 2 year old. It’s great fun.

The park is another favourite place at the moment. If I had to guess I would say that 60% of time there is spent on the swings, 30% on the slide and 10% on everything else. For a 2 year old, swings rule! For a Mummy, swings mean aching arms and getting kicked repeatedly when she misjudges the push. Baby boy loves them though so I give in to his cries of again, again because the look on his face and the laugh that escapes as he flies higher gives me the best feeling in the world.


It is tiring work playing outside though. Baby boy stopped having an afternoon nap shortly after baby girl was born but these past few weeks he has quite often fallen asleep for half an hour in the middle of playing. When it coincides with baby girl having a nap I feel like it’s my birthday and Christmas rolled into one (although they are actually only 3 days apart so at the time do feel like they are rolled into one). I actually got 2 fence panels painted yesterday!

Hopefully the summer has only just begun and we will have plenty of time outside. I am looking forward to baby girl learning to crawl on the grass, baby boy splashing in the paddling pool and hope against hope … A BBQ!

What are your favourite outdoor activities?

Summer of Fun

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So the summer is almost at an end. I mean it has technically already ended now that schools are back and so I’m back at work but the odd day of sunshine means that I can try to drag it out a bit longer. I sat looking through some of our pictures of this summer and so thought that I would write a little post about what we have been up to.

One of my favourite parts of this summer has been trips to the park. Baby boy has started to confidently walk and now loves to run around on the huge open lawns at our local park. He is getting so quick now that me and my pregnant tummy sometimes find it hard to keep up! I think one of the reasons he loves the park so much though is that he is sometimes treated to an ice cream. Gone are the days when he would be content to share one and have me hold it. Oh no, now he wants to hold it himself! It goes everywhere!

  
We are very lucky to have access to a flat in the Lake District and so we have spent a few weekends up there with baby boy exploring different places. One of the best days we had was at Sizergh Castle. We have a lifetime membership for the national trust (which we really need to use a bit more) so we can visit some lovely places. We stayed in the gardens this time and let baby boy run around. He loved it. We were chasing him everywhere. Afterwards we went to Lower Sizergh Barns for lunch and then took baby boy to see the animals. The chickens were not particularly impressed when he tried to give them a cuddle! Baby boy was in his element when he found a tractor to sit on. What is it with little boys and tractors. He would have stayed on it all afternoon if we had let him.

  

A lot of time this summer has been spent in the garden playing on the swing and picking strawberries. We were quite disappointed once the last one had been eaten.

All in all it has been a great summer. Next year we will have 2 children to have fun in the sun with!

What have you been doing this summer?