a relaxing stroll

This week I've been housebound with my 3 monkeys as our car has been in for repairs after the hubby had a bit of an incident with a carpark pole. Ahem, moving right along. I didn't realise how much I relied on my car until it was gone. As the saying goes, you don't know what you've got til it's gone - well I be missing my freedom bigtime!!??! Playgroup returned this week and rather than not go, I decided we could walk there. It's only 4km away. Today we had to get out. So I loaded my monkeys into the pram, the girls in their seats and Monkey Man on his skateboard, hats and sunglasses on and off we went. The walk there was actually ok. Apart from one reasonable hill where I was fairly puffing, we did ok. We did it in 40 minutes, and it would have been quicker but we had to stop frequently to adjust hats, put sunglasses back on, pick hats up off the pavement, look at rocks, examine how big trees were and to explain why some people have mail in their letter boxes when others don't and why some people have long grass in their front yard and others don't. For the record, I did my best to explain that everyone is different and thus treat their houses differently but I don't think it was understood as Monkey Man spent the best part of 1km telling me how some people are 'just disgusting mummy!' .... hmmm ok, we'll try that one again another time.

We made it to play group, cold water was consumed by the gallon as I composed myself and fun was had by the kids. We then had some lunch in the food court with a friend and her very well behaved 18 month old. Both mother and daughter looked on in amazement as my 3 'angels' carried on, yelling for more food, fighting amongst themselves as someone looked at the other the wrong way or something or other. . . . sigh. Fun times. Monkey Man ran off into the playground after I said it was time to go, just to ignore me and then screamed all the way back to the table whilst everyone looked on in disgust. I can bet you my friend was thinking something along the lines of 'thankgod my child is well behaved'. I know I would have. I had a fleeting thought of 'how I miss having a placid baby/toddler that just sits and eats'.

Given Monkey Man was throwing a mini tanty that wasn't far off a full blown melt down I made the call to strap him into the pram. I was worried he was going to try and escape on the way home and given we had to cross a major road, it wasn't worth taking the chance. I was also worried he would want to go to sleep on the way and I honestly wasn't sure that if I stopped to swap the seating arrangements I would actually be able to go on again. It was a long walk, and mostly downhill on the way there which of course meant it was mostly uphill on the way home. Gah! Who's bloody idea was this anyway? Oh that's right! *blush* A) I grossly underestimated how far 4km is. B) I grossly underestimated how hilly our area is. C) I didn't really think about the timing, ie playgroup finishes at lunchtime which means walking home during their normal sleeptime and more importantly, the hottest part of the day. Bugger. Little Miss was on my back in the carrier and it was windy so her hat kept coming off, and as a result the poor poppet is a little sunburnt. Man do I feel guilty about that. I copped the most sun but Missy Moo has little red knees, Little Miss is burnt on her face, arms and legs and Monkey Man talked at the top of his lungs ALL THE BLOODY WAY HOME. Meanwhile I was too busy huffing and puffing my ass up every bloody hill to actually talk back to him much, meaning he got cranky and frustrated that 'I was ignoring him'. It's a bloody hard slog pushing 35kg of toddler, 20kg of pram and carrying another 15kg toddler on my back.

this is pretty much how we looked setting out. coming home was a much more disheveled look!

I got everyone home and into bed, peeled my hot sweaty clothes off and collapsed in a red, puffy, sweaty heap on the lounge with the air con cranking. I considered a sleep myself but had visitors arriving and a car to collect. Oh yes, my car is back, repaired and good as new and tomorrow I will totally drive her wherever we need to go. Just cuz we can. Terry, we missed you baby girl xx