Once Bittern...

Dressing up in Chelmsford museum

We went on a family holiday last week. We cashed in our air miles on a beautiful 14th century cottage in Suffolk.
We broke the journey up by stopping in Chelmsford and visiting the museum there. We had a great time looking and playing with all the stuff. I thought the boys would be interested in the fossil collection as they have recently been asking lots of questions about fossils but it rather passed them by amongst all the other interesting things that caught their eye. It was a really good mix of hands on stuff, artefacts and displays. We even found a worksheet for toddlers that the boys really enjoyed and I was genuinely impressed with its age appropriate questions and tasks. As with all these things though I was glad we worked through it on the second (Bean's third) walk around otherwise we would have missed over half the museum as we would have just focused on what was on the sheet.
I had to feed Plum in the car which was to become a favourite feeding place on our holiday! I also feed her in the play park later, the weather was beautiful all week so we managed lots of outdoor feeds too that weren't too cold.
The cottage was every bit as lovely as it looked. It came complete with a wood fire place, uneven stairs, ceiling and door frames too low for my husband, a stable style back door and a tv that exploded! It was a little cold on arrival but heated up nicely, the bed was particularly comfortable which is really important for me as I do love my sleep sooooo very much :)

The closed castle at Framlington

The next few days we spent out and about. On one particular day we thought maybe Suffolk was entirely closed as we went to visit a castle ...closed, so we moved on to a mill...closed, finally stopping at the 'teapot pottery' place by which time Pumpkin and Plum had both fallen asleep so I took Bean in and we painted egg cups together. In true to himself fashion I had to hold the cup whilst he painted it so he didn't get paint on his hands but this is a move on from not painting at all. Bean painted his brown because it was a rabbit egg cup and rabbits are brown. I painted a blue one for Pumpkin and we wrote their names on them. Bean asked the ladies there lots of questions about what they were doing and how they made things and what the different things in their workshop were. It was great to be able to see their workspace and they were friendly and answered all his questions even bringing things over for him to look at. After this we moved on to an owl sanctuary that also housed birds of prey. A lovely little place, again because we were visiting out of season, there were no flying displays but we watched them exercising the birds which was just as good. They also had a bug hotel so we had a good look at that to give us some ideas for ours. They had a nice little stamp book for when you saw different birds and you got a gift at the end if you'd found them all. A great idea. (Slightly ruined visit by the school party that was there, rude, loud children that at one point surrounded Bean as he was trying to stamp his book, taking the stamp from him and passing it between themselves. Thankfully he just waited patiently for them to move on and seemed none the worse for wear because of it).


We took the boys ice-skating. This was the coldest place that I feed Plum, brrrrrrr. Pumpkin, who by nature is far more out-going, was very apprehensive and only skated for a few minutes at a time around the gate area. Bean, on the other hand, who by nature is a cautious fellow, was skating a few feet unaided by the end of it. He had a couple of falls but picked himself up and carried on. The use of the 'penguins' was excellent. I don't remember seeing them when I was younger. Bean also commented 'are grown-ups learning to ice-skate too mummy, she's very wobbly?' It occurred to me that it was probably a rare thing to witness a grown-up actively learning something and struggling in quite the same as he does.

This same day we visited Norwich Cathedral, which is beautiful but was definitely one of those places that I did not get to explore as much as I would have liked because we had the children with us. It is also worth noting that the acoustics are wonderful in such places but do nothing to improve the cry of a baby!!

And finally, we took the boys to an RSPB site. Bean got his own explorers back pack, we hired binoculars (couldn't fit them in the holiday packing!) and off we trotted. We spent some time in the first hide just watching the bird on the water before finding a picnic bench for lunch. I always feel like we might be spoiling someone's peaceful day out in such places but the group lunching next to us where very happy with our boys running around. We found some good trees to climb and insects to observe with the magnifying glass. We followed this with a walk to another hide situated next to a beach. As soon as we got to the beach Bean went to explore the sand and I took the buggy with Pumpkin and Plum in it towards the hide as I know Plum would want a feed soon. Unfortunately the path took you over a bridge with many uneven steps so I had to turn back and look at the map to find a more accessible route/ hide. We collected Bean and daddy on the way back and walked a long way to get to a hide that according to the map was wheelchair accessible. Well, thank goodness we had a buggy and small children as the hide was in fact 30 feet off the ground! We bowled up here to find excitement in the air amongst the gathered bird watchers. Someone had spotted a Bittern! The bird spent some time just poking its head out of the reeds but proceeded to walk to and fro across the water stretch and the stand in full view whilst fishing for its supper. We felt like complete imposters! But the group were really great about having the children there and came over to ask if we could see what they were looking at and did we know what it was etc. The best thing though for me was watching Bean. He was knelt up on the bench, peering through his binoculars exclaiming most excitedly, 'I can see a bird with a green head, I can see a bird with a green head,' he then proceeded to get out his book of birds from the explorer pack and ask me to help him find it. 'What is it called?' He asked.'It's a mallard.' I replied. When we returned to the cottage I had to ring my dad and tell him about the Bittern, Bean however was still just as excited about his mallard. Watching Bean in this way was by far the best thing about this day.