Project 366 – Confidence

Arlo decided to be brave this week and try out both his slide and paddling pool. He’s also been eating a ton more, and talking a ton more, so I think we’re in a transitional week.

The slide is now fun! He can’t yet climb up himself so slide-time is a half an hour workout for my arms.

For the first time since last summer when he was a baby, he decided the paddling pool was worth a try. Of course, when he did decide he was ready, he couldn’t wait until he was out of his clothes and shoes.

A walk through a lovely English garden.

More images of The Rookery in this post.

‘Nee Nee Way Way’, otherwise known as ‘The Snail and the Whale’.

At the moment, he asks to read this at least four times a day. Sam and I use it to wind each other up, “Arlo, Dada really wants to read Nee Nee Way Way right now, why don’t you go get the book?”

A trip to Crystal Palace Park Farm.

Read more about that here.

In the pub with friends.

Sam and I both had the same thought this weekend. Are we doing the right thing dragging Arlo with us to the pub?

He loves the pub. He finds dogs to point at, he enjoys running around the beer gardens, drinking juice, stealing chips from our friends or getting his own bag of crisps if he’s lucky. But that’s only because he doesn’t know better. I do feel like we should be giving him better experiences. And I feel doubly guilty because he doesn’t have any regular contact with other children, yet he has loads of contact with our friends at the pub.

The fact is that we are in the pub quite a bit. We enjoy it and that’s where we go if we want to see our friends, celebrate friends’ birthdays, etc. What we should be doing with Arlo is often at odds with what we want to do for ourselves. When the pub ends up being the main activity for both weekend days, the guilt creeps in.

We met the friendliest cat in the world. He kindly let Arlo touch his ears and his nose and follow him all around the playground.

This is a bit of an odd photo, and you can probably tell by the length of Arlo’s hair that it wasn’t actually taken today.

We didn’t have a very interesting day, and I can’t bear to use the photos I did take that day on my phone (I really want to upgrade to the 4S as the camera is ten times better than my 3S… but I can’t afford to change up my SIM only contract). So here is Arlo sitting in my snood. He likes to wear it as a hooded cape, but it always falls off his shoulders and ends up round his ankles.

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I recently wrote a guest post about my 366 project for Georgia’s wonderful blog, Gregarious Peach.  I have mentioned Georgia before, but just for a recap – Georgia formed a group called ‘Documenting Delight’ for people embarking on 365 projects with the aim to do as the title says and document the delight in their lives. This group is where I go to chat about doing a  photo-a-day project and find lots of great blogs to add to my google reader list. Georgia has a real talent for storytelling alongside her lovely shots of her two children, which makes her blog a delight to read.

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July is done and dusted:

Project 366 Thoughts and Observations: