Racing at Crystal Palace

There's been car races at Crystal Palace since 1899! Now it only takes place once a year, this weekend, the May Spring bank holiday. We've never been but I do have a framed picture from an old GWR ad hanging on the wall, so thought it was probably a good idea to experience it for ourselves.

We packed a picnic and headed across the road to see the races. We met little friend T and his mama and the boys had lots of fun.

Highlights included; having a go on real diggers (C and I had to hook ducks from a pond, whilst R and T had to knock down skittles), seeing inside the car's engines and watching the barrel train (a quad bike pulling multiple barrels on wheels.

The races were timed and we saw loads of vintage cars circling around the track. We had a lovely picnic at the top of the hill looking down onto the race track.

It was a lot of fun and so close to home! When C is a little bigger we will definitely look at going to other races and air shows etc. as C didn't appreciate fully just yet but I'm sure he will.

Beach holiday fun

I've been having lots of fun over the past month creating some new boards on my Pinterest account and thought it would be nice to share them here.

This board is inspired by all things seaside, just looking at these pins makes me think of sunny days with wind swept, salty hair and sand between the toes. See for yourself - Beach Holiday Fun.

Blue sky in London

The weather so far this May has been driving me crazy. Way too cold and wet with depressing grey skies. It was pretty cold today but the sky was beautiful, brilliant blue with cotton wool clouds. I captured it on my journey to work.

St Martin's in the Field, The National Gallery, The Shard from London Bridge Station and the bottom of Hay Market. Beautiful.

How miscarriage changes you

Taking from Pinterest - Inspiration After Miscarriage

 

Until it happened to me I was extremely naive about miscarriage. It was something I learned about in A'level Biology or something that happened to other women. Surely it happens to those who smoke, or drink or take drugs during pregnancy, to those who are really underweight or hugely overweight or who are pregnant for the first time. When I fell pregnant with our 2nd child it did not even occur to me that I might lose him.

 

None of my close friends has ever miscarried and the only person I knew who had was a friend I rarely see. At the time I passed on my commiserations but didn't think of a miscarriage as the major life changer I now know it to be. And that's the strange thing about miscarriage it's rarely talked about and if you haven't experienced one it's simply a sad, unfortunate fact of life. It's all there in Biology class, the chromosomes don't match up so the baby doesn't develop. When learning this at 17 I never thought that one day I would lose my baby in this way and when you experience it its far more than a case of too many or too few chromosomes.

 

When I lost my baby at 12 weeks, it wasn't simple biology because there's a whole emotional side that's never taught. I lost a baby. It doesn't matter that it was only 3 months along and the size of a plum, invested in that baby was a whole lifetime of hopes and dreams that will now never be lived and it's changed me completely.

 

I'm no longer the woman who walked happily into that scan two months ago, nor am I the woman who 12 weeks before thought a 2nd pregnancy would be as easy as the first, nor am I the woman who 4 months before that started trying for a 2nd baby and began investing in dreams about the future. I laugh and joke and look the same (though I tried hard not to with a haircut and new clothes) but the loss is always with me. It is there when I wake up and there when I go to sleep and is only kept at bay by keeping busy.

 

My boots and nails have never been so polished, nor the laundry so up to date. The hallway junk cupboard has been cleared out and everything is in clearly labelled boxes. I've signed up for another 5 weeks of Pilates and am thinking about running once a week in the evenings. Charlie's baby equipment has been catalogued and offered to be lent to my brother's first born due later this year and I'm committed to my work book club. I'm desperately trying to live the path I find myself walking to the full but inside I know something is horribly broken.

 

I have lost my inner calm, am quick to anger and will cry at the slightest thing. I've lost my ability to make small talk and find concentrating hard. My confidence has disappeared. Inside I am an emotional wreck, no longer the woman I once was. Time bends, it stretches and shrinks but so far time has not been the healer it is often promised to be.

 

There is now the added whirl of trying again, not to replace what was lost but to complete our family. There are date calculations and ovulation tests and a lot of being frustrated by the waiting. A lot of time trying not to think about it going wrong again and a lot of time trying to dodge pregnant women (who are everywhere in London). Every time I see a swollen belly I feel a blow in mine, a deep ache for what might have been. This week I would have been 5 months along and over half way through. Instead I am waiting for two lines on a stick to be the same colour so we can begin the whole process again and it hurts.

Charlie's 3rd Birthday - A Day Out With Thomas

Last week the boy turned 3 and for his birthday we decided to let him do the one thing he's been asking about for ages, a steam train ride. This boy is so into trains, he lives, breathes and dreams about them and Thomas the Tank Engine is absolutely number one for him at the moment.

The Spa Valley Railway was holding a Day Out With Thomas, so 11 of us went to help Charlie celebrate, including his little cousin M who loved the trains too.

It was really well set up, designed to be so exciting for little boys (and girls) with a Thomas addiction like our son. When we received the tickets in the post there was a message from Thomas to Charlie, we've read it many times. On the day, all the staff were really friendly and the Fat Controller was wandering around meeting everyone, he stopped and talked to Charlie and me for a long time and even though the boy was a little scared, he liked talking about having met the Fat Controller afterwards. Other staff members gave out Thomas books, we now have two new stories to read, and there was a balloon man on the train who made balloons for all the kids. Charlie got a white dog, little cousin M got a yellow parrot and Aunty N got a cool flower hat.

The train ride was fun though quite short, we were on the ride for 45 mins, but that included 15/20 mins at a station down the line waiting for the train to turn round. We rode inside Daisy who was being pulled by Spartan. Thomas was there but he doesn't do rides so that everyone can see him. As we were leaving the station the Thomas train went past our carriage pushing oil drums.

So a great day out and a good price, £9 for children and £11 for adults, which included the free books, balloons, ride on the train, talking to the Fat Controller and time to play at the 'imagination station' which had brio tracks and other games plus a Punch and Judy.

We'd packed a picnic to have at the station, but realised there was no space at Tunbridge Wells West, so on the way back to Nana and Grandad's house we all stopped at Hall Place in Kent for our picnic. It started great, but the grey clouds soon came in and we had to make a dash to the car . Nevertheless Charlie had a great day and hasn't stopped talking about it since.

Charlie's 3rd Birthday - Cakes

Making birthday cakes for my son is something I take really seriously. My Mum used to make epic cakes for me, I had treasure chests, fairy toadstool houses and even a roller boot, and I want Charlie to have similar great birthday memories. Plus he won't be able to remember the early birthdays but we'll always have photos of him and his cake, so his memories of the first three birthdays will be solely created by the photos we've taken.

For his first birthday I made this hedgehog cake:

When he was two, I took the day off work to make him this Gruffalo cake:

He loves the Gruffalo, plus years before he was born I worked at Macmillan Children's Books, so the Gruffalo is a particularly special book for me. I wrote this 2nd birthday post last year.

So I needed to find something special for his third birthday. After doing some research on Pinterest (check out my Birthday Cake Ideas board) and flicking through some cookery books, I decided on a Dinosaur Chocolate Volcano Cake. I got the recipe from The Birthday Cake Book by Fiona Cairns (she made William and Kate's wedding cake!). The instructions looked complicated and the cake needed chilling time before sculpting it in the volcano shape, so this year I took two days off work.

The instructions were easy to follow, there were just loads of them. I made the grass with granulated sugar and green food colouring and the volcanic lava rocks with homemade cinder toffee (sticky but a brilliant home science lesson with syrup, sugar, white vinegar and bicarbonate of soda). The dinosaurs were supplied by Charlie (he picked his two favourites to sit next to the cake). The part that made it so spectacular was the indoor firework fountain in the centre. When we lit it Charlie's eyes went wide, he loved the erupting volcano. We had to wait for the sparkler to stop and then he could blow out the candles (his favourite part).

To add to the cake making this year I made a mini train cake for his actual birthday day. I hadn't planned to but on Sunday he turned to me and with real excitement said "and Mummy on my birthday on Wednesday I'll blow out three candles on my cake". Luckily Granny had given C some train shaped muffin moulds as an early birthday present, so I practised making the chocolate marble cake recipe and we had a mini train cake on the actual day. I had some gold cake glitter spray which worked really well on the galaxy minstrel wheels and the cake to make it look metallic.

 

Linking up for Mama Memoirs with Mandy @ A Sorta Fairytale:

Last day as a two year old

A busy bank holiday Monday

Today Charlie and I caught up with friends and enjoyed the beautiful May Day sunshine.

 

First up I went for a run this morning. Yes. Me. A run. I used to run all the time but haven't for years, not really since before C was born. So with some early morning sunshine and Tom watching C, I put on my gym kit and headed for the park. Obviously I was pretty rubbish, but it was fun and lovely to see the early morning sun light sparkling on the whole of the city as I stood at the top of the hill.

After a quick shower and picnic making session, C and I went out to the park again and met up with his best friend and her mama. They've been on holiday for a couple of weeks and C has been asking about little Miss C for ages. They had fun at the play park, watching the birds on the lake and playing football on the grass. Plus C was a champ using his potty in the park.

 

 

 

Back at home I picked up the picnic, C used the potty and we set out again. This time to our local museum to catch up with some NCT friends. The three boys had lots of fun together, seeing the fish, blowing bubbles and eating outside on picnic blankets in the sunshine. After lunch we wandered over to the sheep, then on the way home as the buses were running late, the boys were excited to get the train. C was not so much of a potty training champ with two accidents but he countered that with one proper potty use, so not all bad.

 

 



Back home I did some baking for Wednesday (little cake for C to have on his actual birthday) whilst the boys watched the muppets.

Bank holidays spent at home are the best.

Urchfont Scarecrow Festival 2013

This year's scarecrow festival was excellent, the theme was Singers which my husband excelled at, we think we may have got all 53 of them correct, but won't know until the end of the bank holiday weekend when they publish the answers.

When we went a couple of years ago in 2011 Charlie was almost one, so although he liked being in the buggy and walking around the village he didn't really appreciate the scarecrows. This year we didn't take a buggy and he walked/was carried which meant he could spot and run up to the scarecrows. He was pretty good, though we had a lot of tears when he fell off the curb and grazed his hand. Grandad bought him a toy scarecrow which he loved, and got v upset when we lost it on the walk, Grandad kindly bought him another one, and there was no pulling the wool over this boy's eyes, even though it looked exactly the same, he knew it wasn't the same one!

David Bowie was the most extravagant, but I also really liked Liam Gallagher, Bob Dylan and Johnny Rotten. The weather was wonderfully sunny, so warm we could get an ice cream and lots of beautiful blue sky to help make the photos look great.