Cliveden. Twice in One Week!

I've not been to Cliveden since hubby & I celebrated our third wedding anniversary with afternoon tea there in December 2008, and now I've been twice in one week. On Wednesday afternoon my friend Trevor & I went for afternoon tea; it was Trevor's idea as a sort of celebratory send-off for me; usually we meet in the Costa inside Waterstones, so this was a bit of a change!

We had delicious finger sandwiches - salmon, cucumber, beef & horseradish, chicken; yummy cakes - chocolatey ones, fruity ones, macaroons, fruit cake; and scones with jam and cream. All washed down with coffee for me and Earl Grey for Trevor.Tea was served in the Great Hall and we spent a lovely couple of hours ensconced on a squashy sofa eating, drinking and chattering away.

Then on Sunday, we made a visit to Cliveden en famille, although this time not to the house, but to the grounds. DC had a whale of a time playing with his football - letting it roll down the steps and chasing after it (great way to burn off his energy while we watched from the top..)while hubby & I enjoyed a little breakfast-y snack outside the orangery:Then we hop, skipped and ran along the parterre to enjoy the fabulous view back to the house, before heading off through the water garden to the picnic area. The weather was fabulous and since we arrived at 10.30am on the day the clocks had gone forward we had the place almost to ourselves for quite a while. By the time we were ready to head home at lunchtime, it was getting busy so we were very pleased to have got ourselves up and out before the crowds.

Tooth Update, and Other News

So far we've taken small boy to see two different dentists. The first didn't really have much to say except for the scary mention of anaesthetists; her colleague, however, who we saw yesterday was much more reassuring. He poked and prodded small boy's tooth quite firmly, and small boy didn't even flinch, he was a little superstar in fact - opening his mouth wide when told, biting together when told and generally being in awe of the big blue chair, the bright lights, etc. The lack of flinching on small boy's part, coupled with the fact that he is eating, drinking and behaving (or mis-behaving) in his usual manner suggested to us and the dentist that the tooth is causing him little or no trouble. It simply looks a mess. The dentist wants us to get it checked regularly but is not keen on removing it or doing any work since putting a toddler under sedation is not an easy task. We left the dental practice feeling much better than we had 24 hours earlier. Just a pity then that small boy then proceeded to bump the same tooth twice in the course of the day at nursery...

In other news, it's exactly four weeks today that we move to Somerset. EEEEEEEEEEEK!

Small Boy Has An Eventful Weekend

Sounds like an Enid Blyton book, but it wasn't all quite as lovely as that, I'm afraid.

On Saturday, Granny & I took small boy for a walk along by the river (Thames); we had lots of fun kicking a football, running about and picking up twigs and when small boy tired of such fun, we bundled him in his pram and walked along to the park. Once there small boy got very excited and insisted on going on the bigger slide, not the baby one he is usually hearded towards by me. Still, he's just a day short of being two, I thought to myself, and he really is quite adept at climbing the steps and hurling himself down the slide, so I let him carry on. Uh-oh. What a mistake that turned out to be as, on his third (or was it fourth?) slippy-slide down, he came down feet first on his tummy (if you can picture that), landed with a thump at the bottom and smacked his face right on the end of the slide. ***shudder***

My first thought as I rushed to gather him up (apart from 'why did I let him go down the slide that way round?') was ''Oh god, he's broken his nose' so I was actually pleasantly surprised (if it's possible for anything to be pleasant in such circumstances) to see just a small amount of blood on his bottom lip. Then it dawned on me, as we mopped up the blood and tears that there was actually a large amount of one of his front teeth missing. Bugger.

I was straight on the phone to the emergency dentist who advised taking small boy to A&E first because of his age. So Granny and I hot-footed it home with a not-particularly worried small child who was busy sitting in his pram drinking milk, bundled ourselves in the car and drove the 10mins to the hospital. After being assessed by the triage nurse we then spent the next hour with small boy running around, chattering, eating and generally bouncing off the walls in a "look at me, I'm perfectly well, what on earth is my over-protective mother doing here with me wasting the doctors' time while there are some properly poorly people waiting to be seen" kind of fashion. Five minutes with the doctor who advised taking small boy to our regular dentist and handed over a tube of antibiotic cream (meant for conjunctivitis, according to the leaflet...) for the small cut on his lip (about which said doctor was "not overly concerned") and we were back outside in the spring sunshine with a small boy who just wanted to go home and have his lunchtime nap.

As it happens, small boy's tooth really is in a bad way, but he is showing no signs of discomfort and is eating and drinking normally, and behaving in his normal boisterous manner, thank goodness. We went to the dentist today and have to go back again on Thursday. There was much talk of "pulp", "anaesthetists", "not something that can be done on the NHS", "concern for adult tooth", etc, etc. It doesn't sound good, but at least he seems unfazed and isn't in any pain. At the moment...

Such a Busy Day

A couple of weekends back Family W had an extremely busy day.

We went to the zoo and saw the lions Then we saw the changing of the guard at the castle

Then we walked along the pier

Then it was off to the races for a little flutter

Then it was time for a little history lesson at the archaeological dig

Before a quick round of golf

A whizz past the airport

and, finally, a zoooom down the helter skelter and round and round on the carousel.

All before lunch.

We were exhausted!
(In case you're wondering/worried, small boy hadn't just fallen off the slide but was instead sulking because I either wanted him to stop doing something he was doing or start doing something he wasn't doing - I forget which...)