Fourstar

I take your Eduardo 2 match ban for diving and raise you a 2 transfer window ban on signing new players.

Think you're treated badly by the powers-that-be? Pah, you're a bunch of rank amateurs, my friend.

Menorca FTW!

Just back from 11 days in Menorca; the temperature was a balmy 29 - 31 degrees for the duration of our stay, the skies a beautiful blue (one for fourstar), and the sea and pool temperature perfect (not the freezing water conditions we'd been warned of by a couple of people).



We stayed in Santo Tomas on the south coast; about a 30 minute drive from the capital, Mahon. The apartments we stayed in were excellent, mostly because of this:-



a splash pool that was no more than 18 inches at its deepest, which meant that the boys could play in there without Doug or me having watch them constantly for imminent signs of drownage. Totally relaxing.

There were two other pools in the complex, both with adjoining childrens' pools and a bar; perfect for heading to once the sun had dipped behind the palm trees, leaving it cool and shady. But the boys especially loved the splash pool, especially once we had been gifted a couple of inflatables from holidaymakers going home.


The beach was a v short walk away from the apartment and was relatively busy, but certainly not up to the cheek by jowl standards of the costas in peak season. One of the most enjoyable parts of the holiday was going along at around 7pm and staying for the hour till sunset - still warm, but not so baking that you spend every minute slapping factor 50 on the kids or retreating into the sea to cool down.


We hired a car, so managed to get to Ciutadella (former capital of the island):-




Fornells (harbour on the north coast famous for spiny lobsters and big yachts, but it wasn't one of Roman's):-




Aquapark (water park with top slides, too busy sliding to take photos), Cala Morells (cave dwellings):-



Son Bou (for the, erm, supermarket, no photo) and Mahon (boat trip around the harbour in a glass bottomed boat):-




Because its such a family oriented holiday destination we saw none of the bad behaviour typically associated with the brits abroad and most of the restaurants had a kids' playground attached, allowing the parents to relax with their meal while their offspring messed around on climbing frames. At the edge of Santo Tomas, there was a particularly nice seafood restaurant that overlooked the sea; while Jacob and Sam made new friends, Doug and I relaxed with a bottle of wine and watched the sunset. Lovely.

Help! I married a freak!!

That, in a nutshell, is the subtext of Doug's post on Metafilter; although he claims that he was merely interested in finding out if anyone else out there has this particular behavioural quirk, what he was really trying to do was to ascertain whether I'm a freak or not.

*sigh*

Chickenpox

I think we got off lightly with Jacob - he had a couple of days of feeling under the weather and one afternoon of being sick with a very high temperature - but by and large, he came through it ok. Sam, on the other hand, is really suffering with it. I took this photo on the second day when the spots were largely confined to his head and neck and it wasn't too bad:-


but by Wednesday morning he'd got more on his face/neck and they'd spread to his torso and legs - he was absolutely covered. The blisters have pretty much all scabbed over, apart from a few on his legs, but they're proving quite sore; he can't sit down comfortably because of ones round his groin and bumhole, and because he's a mass of sores round his armpits and shoulders, its difficult to pick him up without hurting him. This photo gives you an approximation of how he's feeling right at this moment:-



Hopefully the sores will heal up quickly so he's able to move around as per usual, and get back to Playgroup next week.

Someone remind me again why we don't immunise against this?

Thomas Part Two

About 2 or 3 years ago, Jacob was mad keen on Thomas the Tank Engine but, as with most things in Jacob's life, he went off it completely after a while. So by the time Sam was able to take notice of such things, Jacob had moved on to Spiderman, Batman, Transformers, Ben 10 et al, and for a while Sam was happy to watch these programmes, play with the toys and wear the clothes/dressing up outfits. Which was ok (ie it led to less arguments about what was on the tv etc), but I couldn't help feeling that Sam was missing out a bit on the stuff that was more suitable for his age.

Anyway, on Sam's third birthday, he was bought a couple of Take-along-Thomas toys and some train track; my initial reaction was that Sam wasn't going to be interested in them - after all, we've got a box full of Thomas stuff from the first time around, and on the rare occasions I'd managed to wrest the remote control away from Jacob, he'd shown no interest in watching the tv programme. However, something must have sparked within him, because now Sam is a fully paid up member of the Thomas the Tank Engine Fan Club. And as such, a visit to the Thomas Day Out at the Bolton Abbey/Embsay Steam Railway was a must for a Bank Holiday Saturday.

Here he is driving the train:-



With Bertie the Bus:-


And showing a great desire to have his photo taken with Daddy and another of the tank engines (note that lip making a guest appearance):-


He's also (courtesy of the books) a great fan of the Mr Men and his favourite item of clothing is a Mr Tickle top. He also has Mr Happy Adidas trainers (don't blame me, I didn't buy them for him), Mr Bump and Mr Happy t-shirts, a Mr Happy umbrella and Mr Men underpants. He has also developed his own sign language for the various Mr Men, and is making a very good stab at actually saying their names too.

And I'm just happy that he's coming out from under Jacob's shadow and developing his own tastes and interests. Even if it does make for more arguments over the tv remote ;)

Monkeys!!

These two pictures just about sum up Jacob and Sam at the moment:-


and:-


He can get that lip out by well over an inch, its quite an achievement.

But most of the time, they are just both cheeky monkeys par excellence:-

5 Today

Where did the time go? It doesn't seem five minutes since Jacob looked like this:-


And now he looks like this:-



(that's not actually taken today, he's got chickenpox and is covered in spots, so no photos atm, I think)

Mummy in Stereo

Sam has now mastered "mummy", so when I'm in the kitchen and he comes up behind me saying "mummy, mummy", I honestly don't know which child it is until I turn round. Which is nice. However, now I have two of them going "mummy, mummy" every moment of the day - arghhh!!

Jacob has also taught Sam to say "bum".

*sigh*