Easter

We’ve had Sam around for five days as he booked Tuesday off work to make the Easter break last a bit longer, so the past few days have felt like a little holiday. Here’s a little rundown of what we got up to over Easter:

Friday

We had a pretty standard day at home. Arlo and I went for a walk, and had the playground to ourselves. Arlo is determined to climb on all the frames, which can get a bit tricky when there are older, faster children around. This is his new thing when he wants a cuddle, he runs at you with his arms outstretched like a zombie.

Saturday

It was horribly rainy and cold today. Blurgh. But good news for our lawn, which is slowly but surely sprouting new grass shoots every day now. Come on, grass!!

We went on another morning walk, this time to a new park. We didn’t think about how the rain would affect the playground. Sam sacrificed his jumper to dry the slide only for it to turn out that Arlo wasn’t bothered about going on the slide (it’s a learning curve, this toddler stuff).

Again, our evening was a pretty standard dinner and TV affair. I remembered it was this blog’s first anniversary, so I wrote a quick post to acknowledge the occasion.

Sunday

Arlo loves collecting and sorting, so I thought he might enjoy a little egg hunt, even though he is a bit too young to understand the concept. I hid four little chocolate chicks in his stacking cubes and placed them in very visible hiding places. The hunt culminated in the finding of his Thomas the tank engine egg.

Then I ate all the chocolate whilst he looked at the pictures on his egg box and said ‘Ooohh, choo choo!’ over and over again. I did offer him some, but the boy doesn’t seem to like chocolate, so what can I do?

Then it was off to Sam’s parents’ to have Easter lunch with his family. Arlo is very at home there as he spends quite a bit of time there on his days with Grandma and Grandad. He has a very impressive toy collection there too, which he loves as it makes a change from the toys he plays with at home on a daily basis. As he’s very used to being at Grandma and Grandad’s without me there, I found that he was much less demanding of me than he would be if we were at home.

Monday

We were at my mum’s for another roast lamb on Easter Monday. Roast lamb is my favourite, so I was more than happy to have it twice in a row. Mmmm.

Again, Arlo was on top form. He has a long chain of Duplo trains to keep him occupied at my mum’s house. He’s been much easier in general since he started walking. Sam and I seem to have a lot more breathing space. He takes all the disruption to his routine in his stride. As we found at Christmas, busy weekends with long days in different houses are so much easier.

Tuesday

Sam and Arlo had a ‘Sam and Arlo’ day whilst I had an early morning start taking photographs of a friend’s family. We met through NCT antenatal classes when I was pregnant with Arlo. She now has a second baby, just ten days old. It’s been a few years since I did any newborn portraits, or newborn and 17-month-old portraits, so it was a great reintroduction for me. Sam fearfully asked me about my levels of broodiness when I arrived home.

There will be a separate website for my portrait work, but as that is not yet finished, here is a sneak peak of the few shots I’ve edited so far.

So, that was Easter. All that remains is a new word (Chicky), a toddler with a monster cold, and a monster pile of chocolate to make our way through.