Quality Parenting

Some days I reckon I’m pretty bloomin good at this parenting thing, we do educational activities, we sing, bake, plant vegetables and run about outside All our meals are healthy, balanced and made from scratch and my perfectly brought up child is polite, sweet, fun and sleeps like an Angel.

Then there are days like today.

It was E’s first day back at nursery after Easter, Fred and I had one more day of holiday and we were planning to make the most of the child free day to get various jobs done and maybe even have a proper grown up lunch date before picking up our little cherub, giving her a healthy tea and putting her to bed. That was the plan; this is how the day actually went:

Fred takes E to nursery,
Fred brings E straight home from nursery as it turns out that nursery doesn’t actually reopen until next week. We got the letter, we saw the sign, it’s just neither of us actually read them properly.

We do jobs then rendezvous at the park, E learns how to fire a slingshot (somebody else’s slingshot).

We take E to buy a scooter, this will encourage her independence, improve her balance and motor skills and er stuff (it’ll get her to move less infuriatingly slowly when we go to the shops, plus everyone else has one).
E loves her new scooter but won’t actually scoot on it, instead she pulls it along like a pet chihuahua, really, really slowly.

We go out for lunch, there are various healthy sounding pasta dishes on the children’s menu,
E has chicken and chips and chocolate ice cream,
E stands at the top of the steps into the restaurant and shouts at full volume: “Daddy!!!! I did a WEE WEE!!”

At tea time we give up all pretence of healthy eating and just get a discounted Simnel cake from our lovely local baker (hey at least we shopped local, supported an independent business etc etc).
Fred cuts the cake while I stare out of the window at the pigeon v squirrel battle going on in our garden:

E: Mummy-Daddy can I eat the chicken?
Parents: (distractedly) yeah, sure…    what?     NOOO!

We hurriedly retrieve a slightly chewed plastic chicken.

We’ll do better tomorrow, I’m sure we will…

No children were harmed in the making of this blog post, although it’s not looking good for the chicken