Trying out the new wheels

GO!, originally uploaded by Racmol.

A fabulous morning in Queen's Park today - positively tropical at 5 degrees - so Willy took his new scooter out for a spin. He was so excited to see the box - a big thank you to Nanny and Lolo. As you can see, he doesn't believe in using his foot to push off, but he has pretty good balance.

Lots of other things have happened since September and obviously I haven't blogged about any of them but you can catch up with the action on flickr in the meantime.

Windsor half marathon - post-race report

Ready steady go, originally uploaded by Racmol.

A summer of leaping out of bed at 6am to run culminated yesterday in the Windsor half marathon, run in the Windsor Great Park just down from Windsor Castle.

My running partner hurt her back and pulled out a few weeks ago, so it was just me and the Nike+ ipod, plus a support team of Jules, Willy, Fia and Ali (the injured one). The only sports injury was to Jules, who claims he got a chafed nipple from running alongside with the pushchair as I came down the Long Walk to the finish line! Didn't get a great deal of sympathy for that one...

All in all it was not too bad. Whoever described the course as gently undulating needs to be slapped about a bit, but otherwise no dramas or need for toilet stops (always a major worry - not so easy to duck behind a tree with 4000-odd people running past, although plenty of people did just that.

My chip time was 2hr22min53, which I was very pleased with, as usually on a training run 20km would take around 2 hr 30. Then I looked on the website and noticed that the person who finished immediately after me was a woman in the over-65 category!

As I came down the funnel after the finish line, there was a woman gushing to her husband 'I'm so sorry...how did you do?' And he mumbled something and said 'How about you?' And she said '2.20 - woohoo!" So she obviously left him for dead for being too slow.

Ali had brought champagne and a Victoria sponge for a picnic but as I finished it was starting to rain so we just went back to the car, and then spent an hour and a half trying to get out of the carpark, as everyone decided to leave at once.

You can see my official race photos here.

Outside the RAF Museum

Outside the RAF Museum, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Words from William

biscuit
cake
more cake
pancake
dodger (jammy)
apple
(ba)nana
raisin
stars (rice krispie)
ice cream
bread
toast
tato
chip
sauce
beans
juice
milk
water
bath
bubble
bottle
fork
dinosaur
tiger
elephant
rabbit
cat
dog
monkey
giraffe
fish
shark
yellow
red
shoe
my shoe
my turn
up and down
hop hop (little bunnies)
out you go (from Lydia Monks' "Aaagh! Spider!"
Ice Age
swing
slide
park
pushchair
scooter
bike
digger
bus
plane
helicopter
hot
poo
nose
eye
eyebrow
ear
chin
mouth
teeth
where's
after dinner (in relation to chocolate)
tea time
spider
bee
frog
flower
key
hello
bye bye
high five
shower
Fia
Alex
ball
mix
moo
baa
roar
rufF rufF
horse
rough game
ont (I want)
no
yeah

Face painting for beginners

Face painting for beginners, originally uploaded by Racmol.

So we bought a face painting kit at Sainsbury's on Saturday. Somehow I think it is too early to start hiring myself out for parties. In my defence, some of my subjects would not sit still.

We finally beat the snails!

Summer flowers, originally uploaded by Racmol.

This is our third attempt at sunflowers from seed - and the first generation to survive to adulthood.

The best of friends...

Willy and Jules at the Taberna del Temple, originally uploaded by Racmol.

What a heartwarming scene - father and son gazing fondly at each other as they dine out under a plum tree on a balmy summer's evening in Pollenca. And then, quite literally, it all turns to poo.

Two minutes later, when Jules had carted Willy and a complete change of clothes off to the (very small) toilet, all you could hear were bloodcurdling screams. (Mostly William.) The lady at the next table went to the toilet herself and came back shaking her head. 'Ooh, he's struggling in there,' she said cheerfully and picked up her wine glass again. I just smiled ruefully and set about decontaminating the highchair.

However, the holiday wasn't ENTIRELY miserable. We had a great day when we drove up into the mountains to Soller, a small town that was pretty much cut off from the south of Majorca until they put a tunnel in in 1997. It is surrounded by orange groves and quite pretty. From there you can (and we did) take an open-sided tram to Port de Soller, which was where the oranges left for France from and is now a seaside resort. We had a swim and an ice-cream and then caught the tram back again. Then on the way up over the mountain we stopped at some viewpoints for quite spectacular views down to the port.

The day we went to Port de Pollenca was also quite successful - after a morning swim, Fia and Willy both went to sleep in the pushchair while we were walking about looking for lunch so we had a nice quiet tapas or five while they slept.

Our two child-pleasing days were the waterpark (Aqualand) at Alcudia, and Marineland (dolphin show, seals, turtles, aquarium etc) at Palma. Expensive, but the kids loved them.

On our last night in Pollenca, we finally discovered how you eat out with small children in Spain. We tried to go to a fairly nice restaurant and ended up with William shaking and incandescent with rage so we had to leave without having dessert, which was a shame as the menu looked pretty good. So we wandered into the town square, thinking we could at least have an ice cream. And there we found all the residents of Pollenca relaxing with a bottle of wine at outdoor tables while their children ran and scooted around the pedestrianised square in the dark. So we did that, and all was well.

Family holiday in Mallorca receives mixed reviews (Part One)

Fia and Willy on the Formentor Peninsula, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Well, we all survived a week of family togetherness in the old town of Pollenca in the north of Mallorca, although some would argue only just!

We may as well just be honest about this up front - there were some bad moments. In retrospect, when you get stuck driving up the incredibly narrow Calle de Porquer and you realise it's a dead end, the best option is probably NOT to continue driving ACROSS the town's trademark cobbled Calvari steps into a driveway that turns out to be too small to turn around in without scraping the front of the car and destroying a tyre. Luckily a very helpful resident of Calle de Porquer (looking like he'd seen it all before) and his mechanic friend came to our aid and the ordeal was over in an hour or so.

As I was saying, hindsight is a wonderful thing. When I booked the house we were staying in, my main concern was to make sure the pool was well separated from the house, as Europeans don't believe in fencing swimming pools - and it was, being at the top of a section that cascaded steeply down the hill with the house at the bottom. Next time I will ask some more searching questions, such as:
Are there a million steep stone steps on the section with vertical drops off the side and no rails of any kind?
Do you have random glass vases full of dried flowers on the landing half way up your marble staircase? (And if so, WHY? What were you thinking?)

We didn't actually break the glass vase standing on the floor of the landing and nobody fell to their death off the side of the steps, but Jules broke the handle of the freezer door and Willy broke a blue glass bowl, the ceramic base of a bedside lamp and (although this might have been a coincidence) the volume control of the satelllite tv. This probably sounds like reckless vandalism, but actually the freezer door formed a vacuum seal of incredible strength, Willy grabbed the glass bowl off a high shelf while I was holding him and reaching for the remote control for the fan, and he broke the lamp while I was brushing my teeth in the next room. I was happy enough to see him leave the room as the last time he'd been in the bathroom with me he had turned the bidet jet on full and sent a flood of water out into the hallway and then slipped over in it and howled.

I slightly lost patience with the landlady when she came to sort out the satellite tv while we were out (after we'd reported our long list of breakages) and left a large fake Ming dynasty type vase on a low table in the living room, as if she was daring us to break that too!

That probably seems like rather a long moan, and I haven't even got to the liquid poo incidents (one in our bed and one in a restaurant).

And then there was Black Tuesday (or possibly Wednesday, I forget which). When I finally got to bed after the bloodcurdling screams had stopped (17 renditions of Puff the Magic Dragon later), Jules rolled over, yawned and said: 'They're horrible. I don't like them and they've ruined my life.'

Part Two will be the highlights (yes, there were some!), and of course the full details of the liquid poo, which I know you are all anxious to hear more about.

Northern Ireland in a day

Siblings at the Giant's causeway, originally uploaded by Racmol.

So, last Saturday we went to Northern Ireland for the day on a whim. Or not really a whim, exactly - I did look into apartments over Easter but everything was expensive and already booked and we couldn't face the idea of another night with four of us in a hotel room like the nightmare in Norfolk.

So we drove to the airport for an 8.50am flight to Belfast, picked up a car at the other end and hit the road.

Drove up the scenic coast road to the Giant's Causeway, played on the rocks, had a quick lunch and drove on to the Carrick-a-rede swing bridge. There is a little path along the white clifftops to get to the bridge, which joins two pieces of headland across a chasm. It's a lot like an NZ swing bridge now, but it used to be have a single rope to hang onto and fishermen used it to catch salmon. Just as we were coming back to the car it started to rain, so we timed the day perfectly.

When we got back to Belfast we had just enough time to stuff about a bit and almost miss our plane, (7.40pm) but not really enough to have anything to eat so we ended up running for the plane with some toasted sandwiches in a paper bag.

Fia and Willy slept all the way home in the car and we were all pretty shattered the next day but aside from that I would say it is just about doable as a day trip. Where next?

Happy birthday Willy

And here is Sofia singing 'Happy birthday' to William and helping him with blowing out his candle. The cake is a first attempt at a Thomas the tank engine - tasty but probably easier to buy one at Sainsbury's next time.



In other news, we went to Norfolk for the weekend but it was closed. Some places, like for example Gorleston-on-Sea, should just have posted a sign on the road into the town saying 'We are closed for winter. Try Norwich'. Still Sofia got to run along the beach in the mist so she was happy.

Movie time

Willy learnt to walk last month, and I finally got around to filming it the day before his birthday.