New thing 1 : World Book Day

At the risk of showing off I am a two time first prize winner of best fancy dress at my office. I only have a Marge photo saved, and I’m happy I do because that was a significant face paint commitment. I even made my own necklace and dress, the things you can do when you have no children or social life!

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Even better than Marge was Banana Man. I bought each part of the outfit separately which involved trips to more than one supermarket in pursuit of the exact shade of blue in those baggy older man cotton boxer shorts. They don’t exist so I just wore vaguely inappropriately tight mens pants over some leggings. I crafted a cape complete with logo. I strapped numerous real life bananas to my limbs and I turned up to the office, fully home made masked up, at 9am.

I did not a lot of work that day. I instead posed for photos and shot people with my bananas and more than likely put one in my (outer) pants for the lolz.

With such a disproportionate level of enthusiasm for a non-important event you would think World Book Day would be my absolute crack. No.

6pm nursery pick up one of the staff gives a friendly reminder about World Book Day in the morning and I couldn’t even swear out loud.

Thank god for Halloween costumes and a child who is obsessed with Room on the Broom. Except the broom we had was no longer a broom but a bald stick, so we couldn’t go home until we had foraged a suitable amount of those very thin little twigs to tape down onto it.

Once home I had to donate an old t shirt to be a cape and cut it up. The IKEA cat got wired on to the broom and the craft box came out in order to cover her existing wand which was unfortunately in the wrong colours.

As you can see she looked pretty pleased with the end result but it was not the carefully planned and home made costume I thought she would wear for our first World Book Day. But also…is this the authentic World Book Day experience? Surely real mums are a bit shit and forget things and fudge it last minute?

Either way she still talks about World Book Day and her wand and broom and cat so that seems pretty good to me.

Fun factor (for one of us) 9 out of 10

Stress level (for me) 7 out of 10

21st April: A beach bunny

Emily’s first trip to the beach was SO MUCH FUN. I was a bit worried that going to Aldeburgh beach on what was supposed to be the hottest Easter Sunday on record might be a bit stupid. It turned out to be a wonderful day, not too hot and as you can see it wasn’t too busy. Excellent.

As it’s a rocky beach my very organised sister brought three massive ikea mats to spread down. She also brought a blow up paddling pool and we put another baby mat in and lots of toys to (theoretically) keep the baby from crawling away / choking on pebbles. The rascal only sat in it alone for a couple of minutes but it was still handy if we went with her to avoid pebble negotiations.

I’ve included some Aldeburgh pictures because it was bloody beautiful. Alongside Bamburgh I think it’s my favourite seaside town. As well as the huge beach and pretty painted houses there were some good shops like Joules, Seasalt and L’Occitaine en Provence. Parking was pretty easy with lots of spots right next to the beach. There were lots of cafes, pubs and a gelato shop.

We just chilled on the beach, tried to read magazines (but Emily also wanted to eat them which made life difficult) and ate loads. I even let Emily eat a chip at the end of the day, she loved it the little potato head.