I have an eight year old! How did that happen? To think that eight years ago I had a (five weeks early) one day old child – I was in the first throes of becoming a new parent, learning things at a hundred miles an hour and feeling hugely overwhelmed by all of it.  Do I feel any less overwhelmed now? Not really!

Poppet has not been a child to play with toys for a long time; in fact the last time I really remember her doing so was when she was about three and played with plastic dinosaurs. That’s not to say she doesn’t like role play (dragons, mums and dads, dogs, anything really!) or playing with construction toys such as lego, but she would never ask for a doll or small world toy. All she wanted for her birthday this year was a whittling knife and a chemistry set (a bit more than last year when she asked for some new books because “I really don’t need anything else do I?”) and a trip to @Bristol Science Museum.

Pickle decided to buy her a soft toy cat (which she actually hasn’t put down yet!!) and Piccalilli chose to buy her some sweets (ulterior motive there I think!).

Yesterday we went to Bristol on the train (Poppet really wanted to go on the train; I didn’t, but we had to due to a broken car!) The journey in was great, mainly due to bumping into a friend on the train who helped out with getting the Ps on and off and walked most of the way with us at the other end 🙂

@Bristol was fantastic (and such good value with home ed rates). We met some other home ed friends and they were all so happy and engaged for nearly four hours.

When we’d had enough we went for a walk along the waterfront and enjoyed the sunshine.

Then it was time to head back for the train. We made it with about five minutes to spare, got on the train, sat down and then I felt like something wasn’t right – the train didn’t feel like the right train! I asked someone and he confirmed my worries! So we ran (me carrying Piccalilli and the buggy) down the stairs, four platforms down, up the stairs and heard the whistle… luckily a kind man, who had been running just ahead of us, held the door so we all managed to jump on!

It was an amazing day out with only a minor error at the end!

Poppet’s only issue was that she couldn’t take her new whittling knife, but we’ll take that to Westonbirt tomorrow…