30th July 2007
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Just like his mummy Caroline, Evan is going to be ruthless at Monopoly!
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Happy Birthday to me.... or Happy Birthday to Evan?
Today was my 28th birthday - wow I'm getting old, so
close to the big 30! It was a Monday and we weren't
doing anything special so I went to work as usual,
stopping off at my local Krispy Kreme doughnut shop to
collect 4 dozen doughnuts for the guys at work. I saved
3 doughnuts to take home as I knew we hadn't arranged a
birthday cake so I planned to put some candles on my
doughnuts and have a makeshift birthday cake.
I wasn't sure if Evan would understand, but he seemed
to know exactly what was going on this year. He wrote in
his special birthday card for me and was really excited
when it came to blowing out the candles. We filmed the
little event on the camcorder and this year Evan knew
the words. He did a great rendition of the Happy
Birthday song for me and he helped me blow the candles
out on the doughnuts.
I'm not sure I really got a look in after that, Evan
decided he was best equipped to open my cards and
presents - though he did let me have them once he'd
opened everything. We had a really lovely evening.
14th July 2007
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My First Festival!
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My First Festival - Aged 2. How many of us can say
that? Evan has just been to his first festival "Legoland
Live". We've had these annual passes for Legoland, so we
thought we'd try and make a note of some events that
would be good to go to throughout the summer. Today was
a special festival with all the favourite stars of
children's TV (Barney, Lazy Town, Pingu, Bob the Builder
and lots more).
Because of the annual passes, we didn't feel the need
to go early and get our money's worth because our entry
was free, so we set off at lunch time to make the short
10 minute drive to Legoland. The roads were some what
busy and we had to turn around and try an alternate
route to get towards Windsor. I couldn't understand
where all the traffic was heading - surely it wasn't
Legoland!?!? After listening to a news bulletin our
fears were realised, we were sitting in a traffic jam
with other festival goers all trying to reach Legoland.
2 hours later we arrived, luckily Evan had become bored
in the car and fallen asleep. The nightmare journey
hadn't ended, we were directed to this overflow area for
cars where we were instructed that the car park was full
and the park was almost at full capacity. We could still
go in but the car had to go. We couldn't bare to go home
because there is no way Evan would understand - he was
so excited about this day out. I decided to drop
Caroline and Evan off so that they could go to the park
and I would go and find somewhere to park. Luckily I was
able to find a spot on the grass verge outside Legoland
and it wasn't long before I caught Caroline and Evan who
were trudging up the hill towards the park.
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Evan shows off his cardboard Bob the Builder!
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We went into the park - not realising that the
festival event was being held in the field at the end of
the car park. We let Evan go on some of his favourite
rides like the Spinning Spider and the Flying Chairs. We
queued up for the Dinosaur roller coaster that he liked
last time we came, it took us about 30 minutes in this
queue. When we finally reached the end, Evan refused to
go on the ride. I couldn't believe it - we'd just queued
for all that time and he point blank refused to get in.
I was not amused, this seemed like a good time for us to
get some lunch!
After wandering around the park unable to find the
festival, we decided to ask at the information desk.
When they told us that it was outside the park, we
decided we'd better head up before it ended. We did
manage to get onto a new ride we'd not been on before -
it was a train that went really fast and I couldn't stop
giggling because it was throwing us everywhere! We
stopped off for Legoland's famous chocolate covered
waffles (with sprinkles) on the way out of the park.
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Evan rides the swings alone this time.
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We managed to catch the last part of the festival and
I actually thought it was a really good organised event.
Evan thoroughly enjoyed himself dancing and waving the
giant card board cut out of bob the builder. There was
even (what looked like a mosh pit at the front of the
stage), lots of little children dancing, chanting and
bopping around. It was so cute to see. Bob the builder
was the headliner event and it made Evan's day to see
him, Wendy and Spud the scarecrow.
All three of us were absolutely shattered by the end
of the day!
10th July 2007
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Evan masters the giant bubble making machine.
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Evan has shown signs of really picking up on things that we
do around him lately. A few months ago we were watching my ladies
football team play their final home game of the season. I'd
had to take Evan with me because Caroline was away at a
Karate event. We took his ball and played football on the
pitch when it wasn't in use - he absolutely loved that.
Every time I cheered for the team, Evan shouted "Come on
Tottenham" making everyone in the stand laugh at how cute he
was. We were all cheering for Burnham, but Evan was shouting
Tottenham - love it! Whilst we were wandering around, he got
a little excited and fell on the rough grass surrounding the
pitch. This patch of grass was littered with stingy weeds
and Evan ended up getting little stingy bumps on his face.
We found a doc leaf and used a bit of saliva (as you do) and
rubbed the doc leaf on his face because apparently that
helps the bumps go down. I always thought it worked for me
and I've fallen into some pretty nasty stingy bushes as a
child. Someone always use to say to me, "Doc leaves are
never too far from a stingy bush because they are the cure."
Well it looks like Evan has remembered this little
trick. I was sitting on the sofa with my shorts on
exposing my white legs when Evan spotted a little graze
from football. He wandered over with some pebbles from
the garden and some bits of leaf that he'd pulled from a
shrub in the garden. He said he was going to make me
better. He placed a heap of pebbles on my knee and then
gently rubbed them and the leaf pieces over my graze.
"That's all better now mummy." It was so cute, he'd sort
of remembered what I did but not quite.
7th July 2007
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Evan is starting to appreciate his lego more now he is older.
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Evan had a birthday party to go to today as a friend
from nursery was having her 3rd birthday. I wasn't
particularly prepared for this as we'd only just come
back from our holiday in France. Nevertheless, I still
managed to get a present and card during my lunch break
in the week leading up to the date. I wasn't sure what
to expect, but I figured it would be something like the
birthday party that he went to at Christmas time.
Evan had a nice sleep in the car on the way to the
party so I hoped he'd last the few hours without getting
too tired. As we approached the Community Hall where the
party was being hosted I spotted a huge bouncy castle
inside. "OMG" was my initial reaction. This bouncy
castle was the main feature and Evan has a thing about
them, being that he won't go anywhere near them. His
friend Rachel and her daddy came to great us and Evan
just burst into tears and dug his feet into the ground
refusing to go into the hall. I was so apologetic and in
the end they had to leave us outside while I tried to
reason with him. ...Time ticked on...
...After about 10 minutes I finally persuaded him to
come with me, so I picked him up and we walked inside.
Obviously Evan decided that it was a little too much to
take so now we had a screaming baby inside the hall and
I could feel the colour filling in my face. I walked him
over to the play mat area where we had the secondary
toys - being your standard cars and farm animals with a
little play house. After a few minutes and the
occasional glance at the bouncy castle to check that it
hadn't moved, Evan started to settle. He spent the whole
afternoon in between eating and pass the parcel, playing
with this set of toys. He kept saying "wow look mummy, a
slide" because there was an inflatable slide attachment
on the bouncy castle that the children loved. I said
"Yep it's great, don't you want to join in?"... "No
mummy I don't!" was the assertive response I received
back.
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Evan and Noodle decide that they just can't go on anymore.
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He did seem to have a fun time once we'd overcome the
initial bouncy castle horror. I've no idea where he has
this fear from, he's only ever seen a bouncy castle a
few times and we've never been able to get him to go on
them. We had one moment when they let the bouncy castle
deflate whilst the children ate because it was so noisy
when pumped up. Evan was relieved to see it flat, but as
soon as they re-inflated it, he cried like he had
earlier. I couldn't help but laugh. They supplied these
really cool looking bubble wrap sheets with giant
bubbles that the children could stamp on to make pop.
There were some children that didn't like this and
wouldn't put their feet on them, I wasn't surprised to
see Evan fall into that category as well... I'm glad he
doesn't like the big party events because it means we
won't have to host a party for him for a few years until
he overcomes his issues with things like bouncy castles.
