And a totally relaxing weekend was had by all. Not.

*this is a long post, it might be a bit boring for some so feel free to skim read/ignore the blabber/click the back arrow, its not too late!*

We’d planned a long weekend away, even strapped a poorly toddler into the car, there’s is no chance of any cancellations! We decided a weekend in Surrey would be fabulous. I’m not going to do a step by step diary of my days out because that would be totally boring. Let’s just go over the bits that had me wanting to sell my child, tie the monster from the top of the Cutty Sark glue his bottom to the naughty step forever! I note these are all things that are generally frowned upon.

Our weekend started fantasticly when the other half drives straight past the m25 turning and we add an extra hour to our journey driving through Kingston! Nothing says happy Friday like bumper to bumper traffic at 6pm- if that was what we were looking for we’d have driven for 15 minutes up the road and joined the Glastonbury queue for the heck of it!

The relief of parking the car was a massive celebratory sigh. A sniff and a little cry from the back seat. I give him his dues, the monster was poorly. Normally the terror sits back and checks new people out before deciding if he likes them or not, this time he’d entwined himself in my cardi (yes I’m approaching *cough* 30, cardis are totally acceptable!) So tightly it was cutting off the circulation to my arms. Meeting new people always involves a bit of ‘you chase me and I’ll chase you’, the terror pretends he’s shy and coyly peeps out from behind my legs; fast forward 5 minutes and he’s rummaging in your handbag and destroyed your house – his poor great great auntie and uncle. Safe to say he slept well that night.

The next day the trial began. Trying to stop your toddler crying at 6:30 am in someone else’s house is always fun, especially when he’s crying just because he knows your panicking about his crying! He’s a little shit don’t you know! There was more snotty nosed hanging around in bumper to bumper traffic in the queue for the festival of speed. We had a mixed bag of emotions at Goodwood. Watching your toddler jumping around infront of 100 people to a live funky brass band playing a song called “make your screw face”, clambering his muddy footprints on the seats brand new cars so he can test the steering lock and then adopting the ‘throw your arms in the air so mummy can’t pick you up’ manoeuvre when its a grown ups turn whos actually interested in buying the thing, the screaming that happened when there’s an extremely pricey car or helicopter they won’t even let him look at without prepping the valeting invoice!

He spent a good 5 minutes looking over some very posh blokes shoulder in the grandstand whilst he was texting/playing candy crush, or what ever posh blokes do on their iPhones! Then we (monster child and I) spent a few hours trudging around muddy fields getting soaked to the bone with the never ending rain and growing more and more grump. Throw in me having a panic attack and the other half chucking a cup of hot coffee over me; safe to say we won’t be going next year!

The next day we decide to visit some places in London. Great! Monster child will love the underground and the buses! The first tube we get on we end up carriage hopping avoiding the bloke drugged up to his eyeballs -beautiful! Monster is a star with the tube jumping and underground drear, some squirming and wanting to stand by himself on the seat, a bit of restraining methods used. What really hacked me off was when I was sat on a seat with a nearly zonked 2 year old on my lap and others who I wouldn’t class as elderly gave me that look, like they expected me to stand and offer my seat, I had a little ranty scene to myself – me: oh I thought I saw someone but oh no they’ve gone, you might be stood crotch to eye level but I CANNOT SEE YOU! *looks down at toddlers head for rest of journey*. The DLR was his favourite train journey, like a really slow roller coaster with the front seats, he pretended to drive the whole way, including irrational horn beeping and telling daddy to “get ooorfff” when trying to hold him steady. He doesn’t get his road rage off me!

Tantrums were plentyful. We had a melt down in front of the royal naval college, tower Bridge and any other time he was too tired to wall but too stubborn to sit down! The worst one yet outside Strada in the warf when the wind blew his crisps down the path into the water! In 2 minutes he’d gone from bat shit crazy to “fishes yum yum crispies gobble gobble!” What the?? Strange child! But apparently our hosts thought the monster is a “very laid back boy!” And so impeccably behaved, I was rather dumbfounded by those comments: who my kid? The little shit on the floor pretending to be jelly so no one can put him in the pushchair?

This is when I was reminded that he’s only a little shit to me because I’m the only person that is bothered by his behaviour. Actually, on the scale of things it’s nothing to get the blood pressure up for! He’s two, he should be head strong and testing the boundries, learning how to behave in public. It’s fine, I can say that, he’s currently tucked up in bed fast asleep. All monsters are angels when they are sleeping right??

Anyway I could go on, but I’m quite bored of my own waffling. There’s a night at a posh hotel in guildford that u wasn’t mightily impressed with either but I’ll save that for TripAdvisor! Thanks for reading. How do you cope with these tantrums? Like I said up there a few sentences ago, take an out of body experience and look down at the wailing child and remember – he’s learning, developing and more importantly it the favourite parenting phrase “it’s just a phase!”.

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