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2008-06-24 - 11:58 p.m. previous entry next entry
Matthew's 2nd Birthday! (Part Two)
Phew, sorry for the gap after Part One of Matthew's 2nd Birthday. It has been really difficult lately to find enough time to write here or get photos ready, etc. I STILL have not finished editing the photos for Part Three yet! But I have Part Two sorted at last - the part about Matthew's birthday trip to the farm! Yay! A BILLION photos (sorry, dial-up users!) and two video clips. I just realised the irony of the fact that although we visited a FARM, I have NO photos of any animals, haha! All the times we were near (or feeding!) animals, my hands were well and truly too full (or unhygenic, seriously folks!) to hold the camera and take photos. And it's a play farm, so there is actually more play stuff to do than there are animals to see. My littlies are scared of big animals up close so it's a great place for them. They get to SEE big animals, but not all the time, and they can be as close or distant as they need to be. And there's a big "small animal" area, with hutches and runs where you can watch the rabbits and mice and guinea pigs, etc. They liked that area a lot. And the birds, but that's near the handwashing area, so Matthew was wary when watching the birds, as he was traumatised by the automatic hand dryer thingy there earlier (the noise).
The FIRST thing you see as you get to the barn that is the main entrance, is ride-on tractors!!! Yay! All the tractors were the main reason we wanted to take Matthew to that farm for his birthday. He was so excited when he saw them! He just kept pointing and saying, "Twra-trer!" over and over in such a delighted tone! These particular ride-on tractors require coins to activate them, and you have to put your foot on the pedal to keep them moving. They are pretty big for Matthew, and Arthur wanted to ride one, but we thought next time, when they're a little bit older. There were plenty of ride-ons for littler kiddies inside as well.
Here's Matthew pushing a tractor at the main entrance when we were waiting to pay to get in (he was pretty determined to make it move!):
And then he climbed into one and sat looking very pleased! :) He did not want to get out to go into the farm!
Meanwhile, Arthur ran across the other way and climbed into the big old "display" tractors near the main entrance (he was SO excited, his smile covered like half his face the whole time he was near the big tractors!) - there's a photo of him sitting in the green one of these on HIS second birthday in this entry! Matthew was watching him get into those big tractors in the last of the photos above, and we took him over to see them too:
We walked a way to see more "explorable" display tractors, and the boys LOVED that part!
The last one was next to a barn that was open both ends, and had picnic tables inside and notices about taking your rubbish with you. I had no idea there were picnic barns at this farm! Anyway it was lunch time, and we were hungry, so we set our blanket over one of the tables and ate lunch. There was a nest of, uh, birds (I am rubbish with actual types of birds!) in the rafters and we watched the mummy and daddy birdies fly in and out. Sometimes we could see WIDE OPEN baby beaks presenting at the hole and the mummy or daddy bird would fly over and feed it, and then it would disappear again. And all the time were these sweet little cheep cheep cheep baby bird sounds! :) Anyway, Arthur was very interested and it was a great learning opportunity too.
Here are a few photos of our lunch in the barn - Neil was in a grumpy mood by this point (already!) as the boys were just hi-wired and not remotely listening to us as we asked them to stay close near the roads (working farm!) or not run off too far, etc. I know they were both really excited. Nathan was not the happiest that day. He seemed to have a little bit of a runny nose (AGAIN!) and we wondered if he might be starting a cold. He isn't crazy about outings either, and we had to shove him into the slightly-too-tight Baby Bjorn, so he wasn't all that cheerful for most of the outing! The Bjorn WAS just about okay to use though - if it hadn't been we would not have used it. Anyway, the combination of hunger, feeling exhausted already when we'd only just turned up (!), and the boys running riot a little bit, made for a somewhat grumpy husband who was saying useful things like, "It's not working" and suggesting that we go home (which, NO, today is not about you dear! Tsk!).
Anyway - the first photo demonstrates the above, hehe ;)
The boys enjoyed lunch in the barn (especially exceptionally excited Arthur, bless him!), and once we went back to the main entrance and into the farm, Neil became much more cheery and normal :)
We saw the sheep and goats and cows and pigs, and Neil bought two bags of feed for the sheep/goats. Arthur begged him to get some - he was trying to feed them the straw they were lying on until Neil went and bought some feed! We bought some when he was 2 and really encouraged him to feed the animals, but he didn't want to, he was too scared of them. So it made us smile to see how different he is now. He is a GREAT age for visiting the farm. Matthew is a little bit young, I think, for maximum benefits, but still enjoyed it! Arthur and I fed the sheep and goats. Matthew watched warily from the tandem pushchair. He held some feed clutched tight in his hand, but seemed frozen in front of the animals and got a bit anxious about the sheep being overly eager to eat what he had in his hand! Arthur got a little nervous about the ones that were very pushy, but otherwise enjoyed that. Then we went to the handwashing station, as per what-d'you-call-its (I'm coming across so concise and intelligent here, no?), and both boys got really scared by the unexpected noise of the hand-dryers. They never really come across those as we never take them into public loos really. Anyway, Matthew was especially scared and cried huge tears which dripped off his poor little birthday-face continually while his mouth wailed wide open in terror! It was so sad! We had to stay to wash our hands properly though :(
Right after that we looked at the small animals in their hutches and runs, and some displays. I was holding my poor traumatised birthday boy (!), and showing him some miniature tractor displays, and then I turned round and saw that Arthur was exploring by himself - soooo eagerly! Neil was nearby but basically walking Nathan to keep him from melting down in the Baby Bjorn. Arthur found a "milking" cow, and I got the camera out and took a photo of him getting a closer look:
I figured I go and help him explore it, show him what it was for, etc, and I put Matthew down. By the time I got to the cow, I couldn't see him, so I looked around for him. I found him here, doing this!
He had just got stuck right in and didn't need any instructions from me whatsoever! He was milking really well and had a great technique. Matthew was very interested too!
After that we reached the little area where there are ride-on cars and tractors for the Under-5s. The boys were delighted to see them and spent quite a long time just "brumming", as Arthur calls it! :)
Did you notice the sort of blue railings raised up behind the Under-5s area, in the first photo? That was closed last time and I didn't see what it was, but this time it was open with a staff member supervising. It was trampolines!!! I was so excited because I knew the boys would be ecstatic about it! They are both so energetic and particularly love jumping and bouncing (they jump on the beds and sofas often enough!). I checked to see if they were okay to go on, being so little. And they were. Anyone under 14 could go on. There were six individual trampolines put together inside the blue railings, with colourful crash barriers separating each one. Right at that moment, the pig race (!!) was announced and all the kids on the trampoline got off and went to the pig race (which we didn't care to see), which was perfect! So I took the boys' shoes off and on they went, with the whole thing to themselves! I was allowed in to supervise them, which - YAY! - because it meant I could take some photos! Arthur went on first, as Matthew wanted to stay driving cars and things for longer until he saw Arthur boinging up and down inside the blue railings, hehe! He got there pretty fast after he saw that ;)
They had the MOST fun! I am not sure if I've ever seen them so excited - although they are mighty excited about a lot of things a lot of the time, so maybe... But anyway, they had a great time - see photographic evidence! :) The ones of Matthew are sadly too flash-y, but you can still just about see his expressions! They squealed and gasped and laughed at each other continually! It was hard to capture Matthew jumping properly as his jumps were not so high as Arthur's. His little body was stiff with the thrill of jumping so freely! Arthur liked to jump and jump and then fall down on his side or back giggling :)
Then Neil called up to say that I should put the camera on video function - d'oh! I hadn't even thought of that! So, here is a little video clip of the boys jumping on the trampolines at the farm! I have to keep all the clips short so they upload properly as the file sizes are huge. They had done the best part of their excited squealing by then, and it's only a little clip, but here it is! Matthew is as tough as nails - he is always crashing into things and just getting up and carrying on, and he was doing the same here, happy as anything!
After the trampolining, which eventually had to stop because the boys got a little TOO excited and weren't playing safe, not staying on their own trampolines (one of the rules), etc, we went outside where we saw some horses in their stables, a peacock that unnerved Matthew, and some HUGE working tractors. I didn't get any photos of those things. But then came the outdoor play area! It's a GREAT one. Arthur went straight to the "walk-in" sand pit (!!):
And Matthew went to one of about a dozen different types of climbing frames, forts and tunnels:
Then Arthur came running, shouting, "LOOK!!" and he was pointing up to a HUGE structure over to the side of the play area. It was a big wooden sort of "building" with climeable ramps leading into it. It had several storeys. Each had a big colourful tube slide coming down from it! He soooo wanted to go down one, and I took him up. When we got to the first storey, a notice said that you have to be 5 years old or over to climb any higher. The one shute that went down from where we were was yellow and straight (by far the shortest - the longer ones had curves and turns too!), and Arthur eagerly hopped into the shute and slid down! Neil was right there with Nathan on his front, to take a photo as he shot out!
He ran straight back up and slid down, back up, slid down, back up, slid down, etc. A whole bunch of other children were doing the same thing, racing as fast as they could to get back up to slide down again! Some were bigger than Arthur and were going up to the big slides. I was a little surprised that the whole thing was unsupervised, though there were notices to tell parents that, at least. Anyway. Some of the kids climbing up to the very top were definitely as young as Arthur, maybe even younger. One little girl there was really pushy - she looked a bit younger than Arthur even! And she kept on trying to race him to the slide and then shoving at him saying, "It's MY turn, it's MY turn!" Tsk! In the end, I found it best to supervise myself, at the top of the slide. If she pushed Arthur (or any other kid, for that matter), I put my arm to block her from pushing her way to the slide, and said gently, "No, it's not your turn. You wait nicely and you can slide after this little boy." She was pretty impatient all the same! I also came in useful tying other people's kids' shoe laces, picking other people's kids up off the ramps and asking if they were okay when they had fallen trying to get to the slides so fast, etc. *sigh*
After a short while, Matthew saw what Arthur was doing and wanted to join in. He was so little compared with the other children, and I was nervous about him going up there! We had squeezed him into his slightly-too-small Bob the Builder boots for the outing, as his sandals would not have cut it at a farm! And it was too warm for wellies - we knew it would be dry and not muddy too. He seemed fine in his boots but sometimes he stumbles in them so I was anxious about him running up those bumpy ramps and falling and then a herd of stampeding children trampling him to get to the slides! He was so little against them all! (hear my heart-strings a-twanging?!)
But he was eager, and it's so hard to say no to something Arthur is excitedly doing, so I took his hand and walked him up, protecting him from the herds of children pushing past us! At the entrance to the yellow slide, I faced him and squatted down to explain to him that it was a BIG SLIDE and he didn't have to go down it if he didn't want to - we could walk back down if he wanted. Arthur suddenly came charging up the ramp, whizzed past us, sat down on the top of the slide and vanished into the tube in the space of a nanosecond, and Matthew did a sort of double-take, peered into the tube, and then unexpectedly turned square to the opening and LAUNCHED himself into it on his tummy, head first!!!! Hehe! He LOVED it, and was happily keeping up with the hordes of stampeding children - up the ramp, down the slide, up the ramp, down the slide, for AGES!
Until we lost Arthur, and took a while to find him again, and then Nathan was reeeeeally really cross and grumpy and screechy in the Baby Bjorn, and it was getting hot in the play area. The sun wasn't out all day, and the wind was quite cool and strong, but when the sun was out for a while it started to feel too hot. It was actually the PERFECT weather - NOT what was forecast, and EXACTLY what we had prayed for the night before :) Thank you, Jesus!
Nathan had not pooed for 6 days at this point, and we had joked the night before that he was SURE to do a massive blow-out catch-up poo at the farm, where else?! ;) Which he did, at about this point in the day! Of course! Hehe!
We went to a grassy area opposite the play area, and laid a blanket out under a tree for some shade. We got snacks out for the boys and Neil (wonder husband!!) set to changing the mega blow-out pooey nappy. The poo was EVERYWHERE and the boys were not behaving nicely or doing a THING that we asked them to do. They kept running off back to the play area despite us telling them that we were sitting down here for a while and they were not to run off till we told them it was okay to do so. I don't know what got into them - mainly Arthur though. Anyway, between the ubiquitous poo and running after boys and repeatedly carrying them back up the hill under arm, only to have them run off again, Neil returned to his previous grumpy state and started talking about us leaving, etc. Here are two photos of this happy happy part of the trip, where the boys were actually captured sitting on the blanket for a moment between sprints for freedom! Neil looked up at one point and said, grumpily, "What are you doing?!" I said, "Capturing every part of the day!" :) Yes, I should have been helping with that nappy ;) I did wrangle boys though.
Well, eventually the boys got put in a "time-out", and we relaxed a bit while they stewed (not that it's ALL that terrible to be in time-out with lovely views of fields and animals, but oh well!), and had a snack. Neil cheered right up interacting with a now-super-cheerful post-blow-out sweetie boy!
Here's a little video clip of Neil and precious little Nathan that I took at the same time as the above photos. He was laughing and laughing right before I started videoing, but then he got hiccups, so I pretty much missed what I wanted to capture! But oh well. He did so well, because I don't think he was 100% well. His nose was running and he seemed a bit under the weather most of the day. He didn't seem horribly coldy, though he was sniffly for a few days. He has a horrid cold at the moment though, since the weekend! Poor boy - he's only 5 months old and it's his 5th cold so far!! Not counting that weirdo throat/eye virus we all had. None of the rest of us have this cold, but Nathan is really quite poorly today with it :(
Anyway! The video clip!
After that, everyone was getting kind of tired. We also discovered that the brakes on the tandem pushchair have broken - the wheels are bowing out at the back for some weird reason and the brake doesn't slot into the wheels properly therefore. Soooooo dangerous. We turned around to pack the blanket up, and the boys ROLLED AWAY in the pushchair!!! They picked up speed and a lady stopped them - THANKFULLY, because there were headed for a wooden post which would have given one of them a nasty whack. We had put the brakes on carefully, and couldn't understand why they had rolled away like that, but when we tried to put the brakes on again, we saw that they were broken and wouldn't stay locked. Urgh. So, that's unusable now! NOT helpful of it!
The boys got out of the pushchair but were not behaving at all, so they went back in it for the rest of the outing, which was not very long as we headed home soon after. We walked a little to see the animals in the fields:
And then just as we reached the main entrance to go home, we surprised the boys with a Smarties ice-cream cone each! Arthur was beyond excited! Matthew was sort of laissez-faire about his, and wouldn't hold it himself, but he enjoyed the smarties on top and then I ate the rest, yum! :)
We went back to the (too hot) car where Nathan - yes, you guessed it, hehe! - did Part Two of his "I've got six days to catch up on!" poo. I changed him on the front seat (not as easy as it sounds) and then we headed home.
The little boys napped on the way home, which was good as it was Matthew's only chance for a nap on his birthday, and he really still needs his nap in the day. Arthur stayed awake though, just about! He got pretty "noddy" but stayed awake. When we got home I nursed Nathan (though I'd nursed him on the blanket briefly), because he was hungry and tired, having not had his usual routine of naps and feeds. He doesn't nurse well out and about, he gets too distracted by anything and everything, and hates breeze on him! Oops, there he is now! It's getting so late (WELL after midnight, tsk!). But I'll be back to finish and post this in a bit!
Okay, back! It's sooo late. *sigh*
The last part of Matthew's Birthday entries will be about the part of his day between getting home from the farm and bedtime! That includes opening another present or two, including the sand and water table, and dinner! Which included birthday cake as dessert! So I have a few video clips for next entry, particularly the birthday cake ones :) Those are a little longer than the short ones here and took an AGE to upload, but worth it!
I'll try to update again asap to finish off the stuff about Matthew's birthday! It's over a week ago now so I really should! Also I have crazy amount of stuff to write here that doesn't relate to Matthew's birthday - Shannon, yes there is stuff to write about Neil's job searching (still no job but this could change by next week!! Eeep!!) and related money-ish stuff. Also I'm DESPERATE to write about general boy stuff and what a couple of little boys are saying lately! Thanks Megan for being eager for such waffle! ;)
Okay, to bed. Plleeease leave me comments about my "Matthew's Birthday" entries! Yes, I know - shameless plea! But seriously folks, six of my precious evenings out of 8 spent getting the photos and clips ready! Yes, yes, I do it for my own records and nobody else, blah blah blah - girls (and guys??), you know I am just being polite, and really I long, crave, PINE for your comments on my simple little life! ;) Especially when my baby boy turns TWO! I still can't believe he's two. But I feel such a swell of fond pride when I look at him and think it's been two years with Matthew as part of our family now, and how I love him! And how precious he is. And how well he's doing. And how proud I am of him. And how I LOVE him.
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Christmas Eve! - 2008-12-24
Long-overdue update, a few Nathey pics and a video clip :) - 2008-12-01
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