MonkeyDispenser

A large group of us went across to Flamingo Land in North Yorkshire this Sunday for possibly the last summer activity this ’summer’. To say it has been a poor summer is a bit of an understatement considering the unprecedented flooding around the country. Ironically, now that we’re coming into autumn the weather has improved greatly and held out for us all day. There was even the danger of sun-burn in the morning!

I wouldn’t say Flamingo Land  is the best theme park in the country but when you have kids from age 1 to 5 it does well enough to entertain them. Good job really at £74 for a family of four! Once Holly is 2 years old that means we’ll have to get a family ticket plus another single ticket for £20. Ouch! Why does ‘family’ mean two parents and two children? I’m sure there’s cause for a legal challenge there…

It definitely helps to have other parents around when going somewhere like this. At least you can pool the children and give other adults the chance to go on some of the bigger rides. It is a bit like herding cats though.

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My youngest is now at the walking stage and recently won a whole batch of hair ties at a school fete. When I say won, she obviously received a little help from her brothers given that she is 1 year old and doesn’t quite understand the concept of gambling yet.

I know girls and boys are quite different, that’s fairly obvious and a biological necessary for the survival of the species, but it’s the small things that seem to be built in which always interest me. For instance, Holly already appears to like dressing up. Now that’s not unusual as her 6 year old brother does too - but his motives are very different. He dresses in superhero costumes so he can do a bit of harmless showing off whilst Holly just seems to like dressing up because it’s what girls do. It is a fairly normal girly trait but I didn’t expect to be able to see it before she was intellectually capable of understanding the concept, or before the peer pressure kicks in when they start full-time school.

Anyhow, I digress. The fact is it can be slightly eerie. She seems quite happy to have her hair dressed with these new ties, something the boys would never suffer until old enough to be reasoned with (not they they would have hair ties now, but there are entirely different reasons for that which involve their own reasoning over the difference between boys and girls). I have no real exposure to girls of this age, let alone raising them. I’m from an entirely boy family - except for my mother, obviously. Girls don’t seem to stay little for very long. Boys are eager to grow up just so they can do ’stuff’ and often talk about how they wish they were older. Girls just seem to do it while you’re not looking.

Seeing Holly with her hair tied is cute but spooky at the same time. I put a lot of it down to having read too much manga…

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I think this is why I bought a Mac…

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This weekend was quite depressing as we suddenly realised one of our cats hadn’t been seen around the house since sometime late last week. When you have kids to deal with you kind of ignore the cats a bit too much so we felt a little guilty that we didn’t even know exactly how long she’d been gone for!

The one that disappeared was Larrs. She’s always come across as a dippy kitten - the blond of the cat world. In reality she’s 14 years old now so all sorts of worries started going through our minds and I think Celeste and I really feared the worst. If anyone was considered likely to disappear it was always her scrapping brother, Etta. But as an old man himself he really is slowing down these days.
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