One week off, one sunny day

Following the Jubilee bank holidays last week (poor attempts by us to take part in local village festivities due to living inbetween two villages – although I’ve been informed there’s a commemorative mug for N down at the nearest village), I’d taken the rest of the week off as holiday. Of course, after the previous lovely weather we’d had in May, it was a bit of a wash out.

N was still in nursery for his usual Wed & Friday morning, so I’d planned a glorious relaxing childfree day of shopping and mooching round Oxford…two shops in and a phone call from nursery. He had a temperature and was really sleepy. Half hour later another call, calpol hadn’t brought down his temperature, so that was the end of my shopping day. He’d banged his head a couple of times (quite a regular occurrence, he doesn’t seem to learn!) on the bathroom sink in the morning, so the sleepiness was a bit of a worry.

Rush off home (via catching the park & ride bus and drive), check OH had picked him up, to find he’d let him go to sleep. Mmm, worry that maybe he should have kept him awake as nursery had also mentioned eye rolling so concern that we might have to visit A&E to check him over if he continued in the same way.

Of course, I get home to find his temperature had come down, and apart from being a bit wheezy, he seemed ok (pleased to have been picked up by Dad. I reckoned he was playing us a bit after not having been at nursery for a while). But the next day (having cancelled our plans to meet our online mum & toddler friends), I felt a tad guilty as a visit to the doctors saw him having antibiotics for ear and start of chest infection…oops.

Needless to say, as soon as he’d started on the medicine, he seemed to suddenly be back on form and we ended up having a great Friday and weekend. The hard thing about being stuck at home with the weather is that he just wants to be outside seeing the tractors, animals and everyone who’s working out there.

Luckily Sunday turned out to be a lovely day. We went along to the Banbury & District Show in a local park. Lots of stalls, music, food, pet farm animals, and rides.

N’s now discovered:

Fairground rides. I sat alongside while he went on the children’s vehicle ride. He loved it and needless to say didn’t want to get down, but then he noticed the bubbles being emitted from another crazy house type place, so was happy to leave the ride. I’m hoping when he grows up he’s like me and not his dad when it comes to rollercoasters, otherwise he’ll never want to progress to anything past the simple kids rides. He did seem quite keen to try and climb up the silver steps which led to the adult rides so there’s hope.
Burger vans. We hadn’t found any of the other food stalls in the other part of the park by lunchtime, and I wasn’t sure what to order. It’s really hard from stalls as you don’t know size of portions, and I knew there’s no way N would be able to eat even half of the burger or pork bap. So cheeseburger it was, with a touch of ketchup, and he had a third of mine. First cheeseburger, so don’t think he was sure of the ‘cheese’ at first, but he scoffed it down, followed by a box of raisins I’d brought out for him.
Ice creams still don’t make sense to him. He likes ice cream with strawberries in a bowl, but a cone with whippy type ice cream…no idea. I show him how to lick it, and put it to his lips but he just keeps them shut and shudders at the cold on his lips. Oh well, all the more for me. Works out cheaper too!
Zorbing. Ok, so he obviously didn’t have a go, but he loved watching the older children and adults having a go, and he couldn’t get close enough with the barriers for his liking.

It was a tiring few hours for him, lots of walking around and petting various dogs that had been brought there for the dog show, a bit of grooving to the music blaring out. I hadn’t realised that it was going to be so warm, so worried he’d got too hot having not taken his hat or sun cream out with us, but I was the one who’d caught the sun and he seemed fine.

I now need to make sure I can find lots of similar events to take him too as he enjoyed it so much.