And we laughed, and we talked…

And it was a good ‘un 🙂

Up early after a through the night night for Scarlett (which is always a result:-D) and out of the house by 10am. We drove to Drusillas and as Scarlett slept on the way Davies and I had a lovely time talking about all sorts of stuff. He started off by singing a song about the things he could see out of the window : fluffy white clouds, wet green grass, big tall houses, loads of fast cars, big golden trees, big wet green bushes and so on, which I just listened to marvelling at how in just four years we know enough about the world to describe stuff in detail like that. I watch Scarlett just starting out in vocalising herself and know that in two years she will be able to cobble together descriptions about size, colour, texture and so on about things almost without thinking – amazing! We then started talking about the road signs and I was telling Davies about driving, speed limits, reasons for speed limits, what all the different road signs mean, road safety and so on, then he was spottiing signs and telling me what he thought they meant, checking what speed I was doing and so on – all very natural, not at all contrived, served to ease my conscience about not doing much for the early part of the week and reassure me once again that learning happens while we live, not when someone gets a textbook or project out and tells us we are going to learn necessarily.

We arrived and Scarlett woke up, not long afterwards she wanted to get out of her pushchair and walk so I ended up pushing an empty pushchair while they held onto it either side and oohed and ahhed at the monkeys (should that be monkies? don’t think so!) in various sizes and varieties (and other monkey like mammals too!) and the lemurs and the meerkats. We also looked at the penguins, walked through the batcave (where we saw one of those wheels with slots cut out and a series of pictures inside which when you spin the wheel and watch through a slit creates a movie – he was very interested in that and later tonight I spotted an animation kit for a fiver with the same thing so snapped that up to follow up at some point!), we looked at owls, otters, wallabys (wallabies?) and enjoyed all the various activities (timed running between two lines to compare how quick you run in comparison to other animals, monkey bars to hang from to see how long you can do it, a long jump, stand on one leg like a flamingo, shout as loud as you can to compare your decibel level to other animals and so on) around the place too – we almost had the place to ourselves which was lovely. We talked lots about the animals too and I was amazed at how much Davies has picked up from other visits – and how many animal names Scarlett knew and could recognise from her cartoon animals in books to the real thing.

We had lunch in the restaurant (the only expense of the day as we have season tickets) and I had a voucher for a free tea and as members the kids got their lunch half price so that was good. The only tricky part of doing it alone really as the restuarant is one of those self service type canteens where you heap your tray with stuff, get your hot food from a serving area and then take it all to the till to pay – not easy when trying to supervise two children, carry a heavy tray and ensure your kids don’t run headlong into someone carrying a cup of hot coffee or similar! In the end Davies was a superhero and held Scarlett’s hand while guiding her along. They then both behaved like angels and ate their lunch really nicely (there was even a bit of cutlery usage going on!) before we had a quick recap of some of the animals and decided it had gotten too cold to carry on.

As it was early still (about 2pm) and we were all enjoying the novelty of being nice to each other we stopped at Paradise Park on the way home which I have blogged about before and we also have annual passes for – we didn’t do the gardens (although a very quick peep showed a whole area we seem to have missed on previous trips with a crazy golf course and remote controlled boats) but walked round the dinosaur bit, the planet earth and history bits with Davies once again impressing me with how much he knows, how much he remembers and the depth of the questions he asks. Scarlett who by default is also into dinosaurs really liked it too. We then went round the cactus garden twice and quickly through the shop where they were pretty good about not getting any sort of present.

On the way home we talked about the day and Davies decided (with some guidance and prodding from me) to build a Drusillas when we got home using our wooden blocks, our menagerie of various plastic animals (none in size ratio to each other, some cartoony, some realistic and a total mish-mash of farm animals, jungle animals and other exotic creatures!) and a small wooden train track to go all round it. He did get a bit arsey with me when I wanted to set him up with it then check my emails / blog comments etc but by the time Ady got home at 5ish we had constructed a pretty impressive Drusillas with Scarlett finding homes for the animals, Davies building a restuarant and me finalising the train – we had a farmyard area, a crocodile lake, a safari field, a reptile house and finally due to four playmobile reindeers, the time of year and the grotto which only has a santa at the weekends but we snuck in and looked at anyway at Paradise Park we had a grotto too with reindeer, a lone penguin and a house with a path leading to it for Santa to sit in. Ady did take a pic but I still need to work out blogging those so that will have to wait.

In all it was a fab day 🙂