All I did was 'pop' to the farm and picnic place and it was like being a military person on a military hike with a 35lb backpack on me.. Not to mention the 14lb baby on the front.. If I'm not 6 stone by next week I'm writing to complain to the, erm, military.
Neither of the kids capable of solids like the same foods, so it's sandwich A and sandwich B which I like to distinguish between by wrapping both in the same coloured foil just so I can hear them whine when they open it that they don't like ham and this is not their sandwich.
Then there's the fruit shoots - one likes purple and the other red (we don't even know the flavours of these teeth rotters just do it by colour)
Then we have dairylea for one but the other can't possibly do cheese so she has plain breadsticks packed for her.
Then they can't even like the same crisps so it's a different brand for each- until we get there and they decide they do in fact like the same and would rather fight over who has what- I live for these moments.
On top of this, we have picnic blanket, wipes, tissues, sun cream, nappies, umbrella for baby and whatever I've managed to whip together for myself.
Once everything is eaten, things get lighter, so I force picnic upon them first, so what it's only 10.30am. Who says lunch has to be at 12!? Not me or my shoulders on picnic day.
Picnic over and off to the maze. Which started as fun but soon descended into a bit of panic when I thought we were trapped in there forever. I was surrounded by privet! Privet with no escape route.
I was hoping some other idiot had tried to come in and I would see humans in there, big grown up sensible humans with a compass, orienteering experience and a sense of direction. It seemed however that everyone else was clearly doing sensible stuff like sitting out in the cafe area drinking a sensible cappuccino, instead of being mental and attempting a maze with a 7 year old wild card, a 3 yr old random and a baby who only cares about sucking the life out of anything that goes anywhere near her mouth- she'd have had the privet if we were still in there.
Eventually, we got out and whilst I did an excellent job of keeping it together inside the maze, once out I was tempted to kiss the ground, I was only stopped by an inability to get down there, and even if I could have got down, I'd struggle to get back up without resembling a cardboard cut out so I just breathed a little sigh of relief instead.
Next stop the farm.. Now I do love a cheeky animal or two but that aside, they stink. I've tried to be all 'at one with nature' but I'm just lying to myself. I don't want to see alpaca poo, I don't want a goat to spit its drool on my palms as I feed it, I don't want to coo at the rabbits and I can't look at meerkats quite the same after all those TV adverts, so the fact that when I do see them and they're not wearing clothes or talking in human voices, it disappoints me too much to bother with them.
The kids want to feed the animals though so 2 bags of food later, off we trot.
Turns out the 3 year old isn't that bothered about following the normal feeding etiquette and prefers to throw the food at them so they have to work for it, which they don't, so he gets mad, calls them stupid 'iddidots' and his attention is lost.
The 7 yr old only entertains the young animals, she just won't feed the adult ones, which concerns me greatly for my old age.
I'm going to be sat in my easy chair having my beans thrown at me by one of them whilst the other walks past sneering because old things aren't cute enough to eat!
But hey, I'll finally be 6 stone!!
They go off to hold a Guinea pig, (sat tight just hoping he didn't throw that too) but this was the calmest they'd been! Hey let's buy a guinea pig!!
It was me that got bored and kept saying 'can we go now, can you put them down now'.
I made them wash their hands straight after because I knew one or both would want to hold my hand and I really didn't want guinea pig residue transferring to mine. I think I've got some sort of animal germ ocd. I blame those alcohol gel dispensers. They shout out GERM ALERT! So I make them wash wash wash- not creating an ocd in them at all.
We ventured into the adventure playground at which point I lose the will to live because I cannot watch them in those places and keep a steady heart.
It keeps jumping into my mouth!
What is it with kids that they don't see danger! Or is it me that sees too much.?!
The firemans pole for example, it's too high. I mean even real life firemen aren't really supposed to use the pole anymore because of health and safety- yet here- at the funny farm, I see no fun police at all to help me out.
Every climbing frame has a section with no barrier to prevent a fall from up high, I've started wondering one of 2 things. (1) are playgrounds designed by some evil child catcher a la Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Ooooh why have I just mentioned him? It's put me right about, I used to 'mare about him as a kid, oh what am I on, I still do. Wondering if I should start a lawsuit against him for my traumas and see what happens.
Or (2) are playgrounds designed by some evil workhorse mum who never got to sit down ever, so she wants the same for all other mums forever in all eternity amen, so she created poles and drops so you have to stand ready to catch at the bottom in a non-standing ready to catch pose so as not to put your fear into your brave little soldiers who think they are the daddy o's of climbing, and probably reckon they could conquer Everest if they even knew that it was a giant mountain and not a double glazing firm with a tit-head advert.
So, yeh, apart from the 35lb backpack, getting lost in privet, stinky animals and the littered with hazards playground we had a great day out. Not the relaxing affair I planned inside my head, but I think my fake calm parent thing is getting better by the outing.
'Calm' and 'kids' are 2 words that you can't really ever put together once you have kids, but to be fair, we should've guessed it was never going to be easy from listening to our parents tales about us!
Maybe they weren't making it up after all!
