1.  Peter Pan

2.  Baking Pans 

3.  Panic

Peter Pan was the DVD. Son 1 aged 4y 11m and Son 2 aged 23m were playing with the toy pirates. We bought Son 1 a new Captain Hook yesterday. He has got through 2 Disney ones, so now we’re on Toyshop Traditional.  The old Captain Hook fell to pieces.  Son 1had found a Peter-And-The-Children pin badge that I’d bought him. ”I’m a Peter Pan fan, aren’t I?”  Orwell fashion, I have come to love Peter Pan. Ignore the dodgy author and the political incorrectness, and name another children’s classic that’s as brilliant on Motherhood.  The Lost Boys and The Pirates who want Mothers, Wendy who doesn’t want to be a Mother to Peter, Mrs Darling sitting in the empty bedroom, and poor Peter, damaged by a closed window and another little boy asleep in his bed. ”If you find your mothers,” he said darkly, “I hope you will like them.”  I bought my copy new in 1972, price 25p.  And I grew up and had a son.  Who feeds pieces of broken Captain Hook to toy crocodiles. 

 A grey day, with two shattered children. We decided yesterday went askew because we got the meals wrong. We drove the Big Town to do a Big Shop. Son 2 fell asleep in the car, Son 1 was car sick. We went down to the River and parked. The Man and I had coffee, the boys ate peanut butter sandwiches for lunch.  In the supermarket, we bought heaps of cake and biscuit making ingredients. I have a week off, the forecast is not good, and I have much Uber Mother ground to make up. Son 1 longs for me to make a cake.  I find cake tins frankly baffling.  There are the ones with the clock hand things in them, presumably used for Getting Your Cake Out. And the ones that are rings with round circles at the bottom. Presumably also used for Getting Your Cake Out.  Greaseproof paper, baking paper, baking parchment. All for Getting Your Cake Out.  I’m only guessing, but is there sometimes a problem Getting Cakes Out?  But anyway. We can manage muffins. And Biscuits.  And Wonder Nanny will be here. I bet she can Get A Cake Out. 

We did a massive pile of shopping with loads of Sunday afternoon yellow stickers.  Son 1’s shopping treat was a Scooby Doo biscuit making kit. I thought it was going to be a box with biscuits for them to draw on with an icing pen. Oh no. Back home there was an egg and milk involved. I put too much milk and egg in the packet mix and ended up with gloop so sticky it glued my fingers together.  I finally fought my way out of the mixing bowl, and the boys rolled it, cut the Scooby shapes and we put them in the oven.  Son 2 washed green beans for tea.  They had roast lamb… I went for a run.

1.  Crocs

2.  Rocks

3.  Tuck

Son 2 aged 18m woke at 0630, Son 1 aged 4y 5m wasn’t far behind.  I went through my “Is Son 2 at the window, is he on the bed, is he on the chair, no! he’s in the cot” routine.  Son 2, crouching blearily, ran his hands over the rail - correcting me.  I usually run my hands up and down first looking for his little gripping fingers.  Son 1 cuddled him on the double bed.  Son 2 cuddled him back.  Mush.  We did “What’s That Noise, Mr Croc?” as one of our books.  Son 1 came in wearing the crocodile mask from the dressing up box.  Son 2 slid off the bed, clearly with an idea.  Downstairs. Into the lounge.  Jigging about, clutching  a train.  “Do you want to watch The Wiggles?” Mad nodding.  The Wiggles were doing the crocodile song when we stopped watching them yesterday.  We danced.  Son 2 is in love.  We have the Wiggles on Safari. “Crocodile Hunter - Big Steve Irwin.”   Son 1 wants to go to the Australia Zoo.  I wonder when I should tell them what happened to the Khaki Wiggle.

We drove down to the fantastic playground near the fantastic beach.  Two friends and their Three Year Old joined us.  Son 1 and Three Year Old ran onto big rocks.  Son 2 played in the rock pools.  I put him in a swimming costume wetsuit and his age 9m to 12m sunsuit top from last summer.   And Factor 50.  He picked up handfuls of mud and threw them into the pools.  Out of our sight, Son 1, who was wearing his school shoes,  stepped into a rock pool.  I put him in his sun suit, and found sun suit trousers for Three Year Old too. We built a huge sandcastle.  The Man and Three Year Old’s Dad flew kites.  Not enough wind.  (I have been with The Man for 22 years, and there is Never Enough Wind.) There were other kites on the beach, and dogs, and tractors, and horses.  It was a glorious day.  Bright sunshine and shimmering water.  There’s a tidal causeway and we crossed it to the Island. 

By the time we’d got back it was 2pm. Son 2 was yelling for his lunch in the pram, Son 1 needed carrying. Lunch was sausage baps from a kiosk, and assorted picnic stuff for Son 2 and me. Son 1 ate a bit but then pestered and whined for the playground.  We took them in.  Son 2 crawled up to slide down, crawled through tunnels, played with sand, climbed around a train and went on the swings.  Son 1 went on the aged 6 to 12 section, very pleased with himself.  An amazing afternoon.  We bribed them out with ice creams.  Back here at 5pm.  Son 1 has caught the sun on his face.  We were expecting them to sleep well, but Son 1 has already been up…

1.  Are we there yet?

2.  Tick Tock.

3.  The Ball Pool.

We are members of the local Little Zoo.  Free entry all year, but also, one free entry to the Big Zoo, 100 miles away.  The Big Zoo has rhinos and crocodiles and a cheetah and a gorilla and giraffes.  Our friends - with the 2 and a half year old - are camper-vanning it that way, and so an arrangement was made.  Off we set at 0815.  On the advice of Wonder Nanny I packed all the food last night, so we were able so swan off sedately. Sort of.  Son 1 aged 3y 10m is currently watching Shrek 2.  Where Donkey “are we there yet?”s all the way to Far Far Away without drawing breath.  Son 1 tried it, a perfect impersonation, for many, many miles indeed.  We ignored him.  The effort, as it says in Matilda, very nearly killed us.  We got there at 1040, unloaded the car into the Big Pram and the Buggy, and saw our friends arrive.  The car park was a bit of a… er… zoo… with cars coming in from all angles.  The queues to get in were like football crowds.  But they’d pre-paid, and we had our Little Zoo membership tickets, so we fronted our way in to the only quiet gate.     

Reptile house, cup of tea, walk round the gardens, peer at monkeys and then the  crocodile house. We loved the crocodile house.  Son 1 aged 3y 10m is pirate-mad so crocodiles figure large in most of our games, and there was a model crocodile head with an alarm clock in it.  You pressed the top of the clock to stop it ticking and the crocodile ROOOOAAARRED. Son 1 was terrified, but we thought it was great. Son 1 and his Little Friend were very good value; Son 2 aged 11m was in the sling, which he always enjoyed.  There are advantages to his being small - I’m sure we’d given up on the sling by this age with Son 1. 

Son 1, unfed and knackered, was, it has to be said, a serial delinquent most of the way round.  A very bad influence on Little Friend.  Then he found an under-fives play barn.  We parked the prams, ordered coffees, they charged off.  I played with Son 2 in the ball pool and he loved it.  Laughing, ball-surfing, bouncing the balls, bouncing himself.  Bouncing on top of a very big lunch and a heck of a lot of milk.  I resolved that if he was sick I would just cover it up with green and yellow and red and blue plastic balls and tiptoe out.  He wasn’t.  I changed him in the disabled loo.  There was an adult changing mat in there.  Moaning done for the day for me from that moment on.