Life Outside Labour

So, what else has been happening here NOT connected to babies?!

Well, we've been to Keston Ponds with another HE family, which was good fun. Saw plenty of geese, ducks, moorhens, crows, rats (!), a dead crayfish (!!) and the boys engaged in some pond dipping.

I had a meeting with Medway Positive Parenting Network, to help put together a directory entry for our group. The journey down took ages; we went meant to have time to spend with our friends down there, who were looking after the boys whilst Roarke came with me to the meeting, but the traffic on the M25/A2 was so bad we barely had time to say hi. Then the meeting over ran, so I didn't get a chance to get back there for a chat afterwards - and by then even the M20 had problems. It took us over an hour and a half to get home!

As we knew it would take ages we fed the boys out first - which meant McDonalds. This, of course, meant Samuel and William had gluten in their nuggets, and Joshua had a burger bun. We've been toying with the idea of going back on gluten now, for 3 months, till after the Disney trip, in order for them to have the gluten tolerance test. First thing the next morning, we waited to see if there was any reaction... nothing... then one after the other Joshua and Samuel started really reacting badly. Of course, things are tough anyway. Samuel in particular can't cope with the is he/isn't he stage of waiting for Jonathan to be born and he is very unstable at the moment.

We've also all had a bug, causing vicious headaches, sore throat, dizzy spells (and in Joshua's case, chest pains).

So I'm really not sure what the gluten has done. But I know when we went shopping this morning we couldn't quite bring ourselves to buy "normal" bread!

Today was the regular park day, in Orpington, but most other families seemed to have made other arrangements (and the park of course was packed with kids on half term) so Roarke has brought the boys back here together with the one family who did come along.

More media enquiries this week, more new local EO members, and more general telephone enquiries.

We've been making good use of the BBC's Springwatch. We watch the adult programme every night, and Joshua has been getting up (early for him) to watch the one on CBBC in the morning.

Last night we sat out late in the garden bird watching. We all sat still and watched the birds feeding - seeing how many were nesting as they fed, then collected extra to fly off, obviously to feed young or a sitting female. We saw great tits, blue tits, sparrows, parakeets, swifts, blackbirds, starlings, collared doves and pigeons a plenty. Our robin was absent for some reason.

We've got 3 nests in the garden - one blackbird, one sparrow and one that we can't tell if it is being used or not.

We also toured the garden watching bees on the foxgloves, and trying to work out what creatures are using the old tree stump. Anyone know any good sites for identifying beetles etc from their holes?

Oh, and the cola cups have returned! This week's theme is using them to build "boats" in the middle of the front room... we've had to ask for no masts, as otherwise Roarke and I couldn't see the tv last night from the sofa!