Travelling with & without twins

We've had a week of travelling with twins back-to-back with a weekend of holidaying without them. No prizes for guessing which excursion was more peaceful.

With-twins week was a bucket and spade holiday in Norfolk with friends who have very kind friends who lent us their chi chi house near Burnham Market (think Chelsea-on-Sea). Highlights included our first experience of crabbing - we must have caught 20 of the little side-steppers - and little ones baking bread in a working windmill which also had chickens, rabbits, goats, guninea pigs, a donkey and a pony in the grounds. They even made their own cheese and had great homemade cakes plus much needed coffee.

Without-twins weekend was spent enjoying the most amazing wedding in Mallorca - "top two weddings, ever" according to Him. And it's hard to disagree. The sun trap terrace where the happy couple made their promises was perched high over Port Soller with stunning views over the sea and mountains, and the booze was free flowing. After 3 days of partying we were missing one phone and two livers...

Home now for 2 days of work followed by more play... Glastonbury. Rain is forecast, oh blow.

A month from 4

If you want to time travel, have kids! Unfortunately doing so will only enable you to hurtle forwards skipping years in your time machine... never back. 

Somehow our babies are soon to be 4. I look back at small babygrows they once fitted into and laugh, the laugh of a very relieved person, a person who is hugely relieved that they will never have to go through all that (nappies, potty training, tiredness, communicating only in screams) ever, ever again.

Four is very grown up. Caitlin comes out with enormous sentences that make me laugh. Oscar is writing without following the dots. Caitlin reads - well, she makes up stories while having a book open in front of her, but if you couldn't understand the book you'd think she was reading. So let's call it reading.

We've been to a glut of 4th birthday parties lately - the art party, the soft play party, the football party, and most recently the superheroes party. Now it's our turn to keep 20 4 year olds entertained for 2 hours. I'm slightly dreading it, or really just the clean up afterwards. This must be why birthdays only happen once a year; parents couldn't fairly be expected to host them at a higher frequency.

Plenty going on before the Big Bash - a week's holiday in Norfolk, a weekend wedding in Spain, then it's all go for Glastonbury for a few 40ths. Just don't tell the kids their birthday is being postponed so mummy and daddy can have fun in a muddy field. Fast forward 14 years and the tables will have well & truly turned!