Lucasdigital

The weekend was fine. Fine, fine, fine. Saturday, Noah and Leo attended an army-themed birthday party (which offended Clara's progressive sensibilities but allowed Noah to dress in camo gear). I got to stay home and enjoy 2 golden hours of me time. Rainbow Six: Siege , mostly. A Morrisons grocery shopping trip in the afternoon and an episode of season 2 of Stranger Things in the evening. Sunday, Clara worked a late shift. It was cold and wet so I decided to spend the day at home. I allowed Noah to play some Bastion while I cleaned out the fridge. Leo watched Pepper Pig on my tablet. It's nice to have days at home. I can only think of a handful of weekends where I've not taken the boys somewhere -- to the city for a walk around, or to a soft play centre. Going out is great but it's when you do it week after week, with never a day of rest it can really wear you out. We did go for a quick walk in the mid-afternoon and then we had dinner at my mum's.

This morning, on the walk into school, Noah told me that he wanted to change his name. I was surprised how much this hurt me --- but your name is great, Noah! I asked him why but he wasn't able to provide an answer. What new name would you want? He said that he'd have whatever name me and mummy wanted him to have. I said that if he really wanted to change his name, he could do this when he was older. Moments later I dropped him at breakfast club, then picked Leo up and ran for the bus -- causing my left knee to 'pop'. I guess children ask things and say things that rattle parents. I've decided not to get rattled. Who knows, maybe he wants to be renamed Ziggy Stardust which is an even cooler name. Noah had asked me to comb his hair to make him look like a rock star -- actually, his pre-combed hair already has that scruffy-chic quality. Breakfast of chimp-ions

Dear online diary... type thing, nothing really happened. My alarm woke us up unnecessarily early. Naturally, I turned it off and we all overslept. Leo didn't mind, the later-than-usual bus was a double-decker. That's a big win for him.

Morning This was the morning in which the heavens opened - and I mean absolutely deluged the place -- and I didn't even know it was raining until I pushed the boys out for the walk to school.  By halfway, our coats were saturated and then Noah asked where his book bag was. *EXPLETIVES* I marched them back home, they waited outside while I tore the house apart, looking for Noah's little blue bag. Turned up on the porch shelf, I'd searched every other bloody place and had just decided that Noah would have to survive without the bag today, before spotting it in the dimly lit space. We dropped Noah off at Breakfast club, just as the door opened. Providing no assistance or hug, I said goodbye, reminded him that mum would pick him up and promptly scurried off with Leo under my arm. We missed the bus. It must have been early. *ADDITIONAL EXPLETIVES* I walked to Hillsborough, carrying Leo. At this point, sky tsunami had been reduced to a regular drizzle. A task that was

It was nice to dump some notes about the weekend's activities, a reminder of the time that I left a daily brain dump each morning on my old Live Journal . So, here we are again. Hmmm..

Weekend I took the boys to the local soft play, only to find it closed due to flood damage. I narrowly avoided a meltdown by leaping us onto a tram to the big  Monkey Bizness  soft play centre at Centertainment. Makes for an exhausting day because Leo is big enough to play in the main climbing area, providing dad shadows him at every turn -- you might be shocked by how fleet-footed a 2-year-old can be, although it's less a footwork thing, more the fact that he can careen his way through the web tunnels while poor old me has to slowly and carefully crawl everywhere. Sunday, I persuaded Clara to have a day in. Her thinking was that after a couple of hours of being stuck at home, the boys would suffer acute cabin fever. Turns out that so long as you keep giving them things to do, they're happy -- still shouty/teetering on the edge of conflict but happy. Clara took them into the yard to make a snowman, during the day's brief flurry. We let Noah play video games on the now wo