Mr Cool

So we went to the Teddy Bear's picnic yesterday. We were lucky in that we decided to go early, we had our picnic, Tom made himself at home playing with all the toys and we were treated to a fantastic rendition of The Three Billy Goats Gruff by a story teller. The heavens then opened and we had to run for shelter. When we got to the car park, the sun came out again, so we dumped the picnic and blanket and went for a walk, before tucking into an eccles cake in the tea room. Tom was on quite good form and did quite a bit of walking. And as you can see from the photo, he was Mr Cool - wellies and sunglasses - a great look!

We got back around 3.30, so had a little play, dinner, bath and bed. Rachel M came round at 7pm (we have a reciprocal babysitting arrangement, I sat with Mae last night) and we popped out to Shifnal. We stupidly thought we would be able to get a table anywhere. We got turned away from every restaurant we tried (didn't realise Shifnal is so popular), so ended up at East End Balti - not a disaster.

Today dawned quite miserable, so we decided to stay at home and do some shopping. (Very exciting!) I'm in need of a dress for the Battle of Britain dinner Pat and Bob generously got us invites for. After consulting with a number of people, I decided that I needed a long dress for it - I don't have one so today I dragged Matt and Tom round Telford shopping centre trying to find one. Went into almost every clothing shop there was - the number of long dresses for sale could be counted on one hand, when I did find them, they tended to be in sizes 8 or 10 - not a chance I would fit. Our last stop was House of Fraser, I found a long black number which fitted and didn't cost a fortune - yahoo, it was purchased immediately and then we headed for the restaurant for lunch.

Tom behaved badly, wouldn't eat any of his lunch, couldn't even be tempted by chips! In the end I hid his lunch under fromage frais, not a traditional way to eat food, but I did get it down him in the end.

He was showing signs of boundless energy, so I put the reins on him and then we walked to the town park. Tom did really well, considering the shopping centre was busy, although he did show signs of being a spaniel - zig zagging from side to side. He had a good play in the park - showed his dad his new tricks, until suddenly he got tired, so we packed him up in the rucksack and came home.

Oh - almost forgot to say, he's not sleeping very well at the moment. Yesterday night he was up at 9pm, 2am and 4am. At 4am we ignored him and eventually he stopped and went back to sleep. Last night he was up at 3.30 - we tried to ignore him, but he screamed and screamed. We had to go in to see him in the end, he was absolutely furious! I think that he has got used to us being with him in the night again from when he was ill, and he now expects us to visit him each night. Not sure how to resolve it other than ignore him when he cries, but that is so difficult and doesn't always work.

Oh and he now says 'yeah' - don't think he knows how to use it though, as he is saying yeah to everything!

AND he has worked out the stair gates. He will crawl up the stairs, go through it, pull the gate too and then push the clasp down to lock it. Very useful for me when I have my hands full, good to know he has a sense of responsibility.