Thursday 9 April 2015
Lovely Vale Life
Today was an absolutely beautiful day in Barry. Days like today remind me how lucky we are to live where we do. We literally have everything you (well certainly I) could ask for: countryside, seaside and a great city just a stone's throw away.
I knew I wanted to take the girls out for a picnic, I just wasn't sure where yet. With it still being the Easter holidays I knew most places were likely to be busy. In anticipation of Little P's usual antics, I wanted to go somewhere quiet and peaceful. I thought it would be easier to get her to leave when it was time to (easier, not easy).
I settled on Porthkerry park, just down the road. Rather than drive right into the main park I pulled up at the first car park and set up our picnic blanket on a bank just above a little bridge where there was nobody else to be seen. I popped the littles down on the blanket next to each other as I began to unpack the picnic. Little P has always been an enthusiastic eater, (she'll eat anything and is always 'hungry') so I warned her to wait until we were ready. Little N on the other hand didn't really get on board with food until she was about 8 months old; she was quite happy on a breastmilk only diet. You can imagine my surprise therefore to turn around and find she had taken all of the sandwiches (triangles of course - it was a picnic) out of the box and taken a bite out of most! I salvaged what I could and we all had a good munch. We ate, we played and Little P collected us some buttercups which were in abundance on our little picnic patch.
When Little P started getting restless and Little N's pretty dress (a Little P hand-me-down favourite of mine) was suitably stained with strawberries we set off down to the little bridge for a good round of pooh sticks. I have to give Little P credit for her patience. She really believed in her stick and despite the bridge being only a meter wide, she waited for ages. She waited after I told her it had probably got stuck. She waited after I'd thrown in another stick and had seen it emerge safely on the other side. She eventually moved on and collected another stick and one for Little N to have a go with ( which went straight in her mouth! Seriously? 8 Months!).
Little N was getting tired and so I convinced Little P it was time to leave on the condition that we would go somewhere else for a walk. What I didn't count on was Little P falling asleep in the car too so I took them both home. When Little P awoke she was in utter despair; she felt wronged, she was in denial. "But I didn't fall asleep, Mummy. I didn't!"
There was only one thing for it! Blowing bubbles in the garden. So we blew and blew to Little N's delight until... well, until Little P found an ant to play with. (Is she sociable or needy??)
Little N and I went back indoors to make a start on dinner. I went to check on Little P a while later. She was crouched down in the garden (still playing with her ant, I presume) and I heard "are you hungry? Do you think you might be hungry? I've got some food for you in my palace..."
Porthkerry Park is a firm favourite here! Probably a good idea to try the first car parks in good weather- we usually run for the hills in fear of tourists ;) x
ReplyDeleteHaha!! I don't take them anywhere near the overpopulated playground bit (besides, it's not worth the hour spent trying to get them out again!) xx
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