Bump watch - 23 weeks

 My two precious kiddiwinks ;)

Still able to do a Double Hammock (just!) in a size 6 wrap - slinging a friend's child at the Zoo.

Half-term plans

After a 4-week half-term, the half-term holiday is suddenly upon us. I'm ignoring the fact that I've got a long 7 week stretch now until the summer holiday, and making the most of my time off.

I've already written a half-arsed list of things I would (quite) like to accomplish, which goes something like this:

1. Sort out sewing/crocheting/crafting stuff so neat and tidy and accessible.

2. Move printer upstairs.

3. Sort and organise toys.

4. Weed and plant garden.

5. Weed and clean patio.

Right now, we're trying to figure out what to do over the weekend. We suddenly realised that it's the Hay Festival over the next week, but due to a very late email notification, all the good stuff is sold out. The 2011 Eisteddfod is also happening just round the corner from us, but the tickets seem to be very expensive. I think we must be out of touch with how much things cost, as I constantly seem to be shocked at ticket prices.

On that score, we're trying to decide whether to go to Folly Farm this weekend. We've developed an obsession this week with watching the Giraffe cam, seeing what the giraffes are up to at all hours of the day, and fending off tears of disappointment when the giraffes are outside and not visible. We love Folly Farm, and last time we went we thought it would be fiscally sensible if we bought annual passes next time, as it were. So now it's next time, and we've seen that as it's now high season, it's £9 a pop. Which is a whole lot more reasonable than the £13 ticket price for the Eisteddfod, or the entirely-unreasonable £18 they were charging for Devon County Show last weekend (we didn't go). But it would still make more sense to buy an annual pass, and then we could just go any time we liked, and it would seem free. But ... £60 (£30 each, J-cub thankfully is free) is an awful lot of money. A lot more scary than shelling out £18.

So we're umming and ahhing, and wondering if we should go to Tenby and walk on the seafront instead, or go back to the National Waterfront Museum, where we went today and where J-cub was strangely content to ignore the toys and activities set out for exploring pre-schoolers (the purpose of our visit) and instead pottered around the exhibits; comparing the sizes of boats, exclaiming at flags, and showing lots of interest in entirely random things which I would never have thought to have taken him to see.

But none of those options have giraffes, and really, how lucky are we to have five giraffes just a short nap-in-the-car away? I'll spend the evening searching through jeans' pockets and old bags and down-the-back-of-the-sofa and see how many pennies we can dig up.

Fun on the Farm

I've been meaning to post this all week, but work and illness (Jacob's) have not allowed me any free time at all.

Last weekend, Nurse Rachel came to stay, as she'd only been here for a few hours at J-cub's family party and wanted to spend some more time with him. We hadn't really wanted to do anything other than relax all weekend, but talk somehow turned to zoo animals and before long we were googling our local zoo options. They turned out to be twofold: Anna Ryder Richardson's wildlife park (near Tenby), and Folly Farm (near, um, Tenby). It seems the two zoos in Wales (there may be more, I'm overgeneralising) are 5.8 miles apart. Not really the best business plan that.

After comparing websites and restaurants and baby facilities and number and type of animals, we elected to go to Folly Farm. I had been there several years ago, on a school trip, when I was caught up with trying to encourage the teachers that we were there to look at the animals, not to sit on benches while the children played on the adventure playgrounds. Since then, they have got themselves some giraffes, which got J-cub very excited at going.

It was a lovely day, all sunny and fresh and springlike, and after a relatively easy drive (only marred by some bizarre procession of walkers and policepeople which we got stuck behind for 15 minutes before they inexplicably vanished) we arrived bright and early (which seemed even earlier, as the clocks went forward overnight).

(Let's just have an aside about the clocks. The clocks went FORWARD. I thought, then, that when J-cub thought it was between 6 and 7, and therefore time to wake up, we would be delighted to see it say between 7 and 8 on our clock. Did that happen? Of course not. When J-cub woke for the day at 10 to 5 ... his body clock KNEW it was really 10 to 4. Did that stop him? No. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, he was happy wandering around downstairs and went down for his nap at 8am. He does it just to keep us on our toes, I'm sure).

Anyway, he was all alert and happy when we got there, and was happy poking around at the sheep, goats, pigs, ponies and donkeys in the farm bit and the iguanas, guinea pigs, rabbits, tortoises, birds, chipmunks and chicks in the pet bit. We had lunch, and a bottle and a nap in the buggy for J-cub, while I pushed him around and Jamie and Rachel played on the arcade game things. When he woke up we went down to see the giraffes, who were a-ma-zing. I mean, I know they're tall. But when you're confronted with one standing in front of you, and you're thinking "Crikey, that really is TALL...", and then another one walks up and you realise the one you were looking at is a youngster and his friend is towering above him, it screws with your perspective and makes you feel like falling over. Or maybe that's just me.

J-cub loved them, although his 'love' of giraffes is entirely inflicted by me, as I craved giraffes in the same way some women crave bananas and sardines when they're pregnant. I was convinced the baby would like giraffes, and bought giraffes left, right and centre. Luckily, he seems to echo this affinity, and drags Jemaine the giraffe with him wherever he goes.

After the giraffes, and a quick change of clothes as somebody had forgotten to change somebody else's nappy since they arrived (I'm not naming names), we looked round the rest of the zoo animals, most notable being the shaggy camels and the cute little meerkats. Who doesn't love a meerkat?

We had a big play in the massive indoor play centre/vintage funfair, then bought some crap souvenirs and drove home. Bearing in mind that it's March, I managed to get my face all sunburned, and walked around looking like a tomato for the rest of the evening.

J-cub further delighted us by waking up at 2.30am and screaming for hours, but that's another story.

1. Waving hello, 2. Goat for lunch, 3. Stroking a pony, 4. Watching the Meerkats, 5. Cute ponies, 6. Meeting a goat, 7. Seeing the giraffes, 8. Giraffe, 9. Tall giraffe, 10. Shy giraffes, 11. Group shot, 12. Shaggy camels