This weekend, I’m mostly in absolute awe of anyone with a toddler or two. My best friend (and old housemate!) came to visit for the weekend, and after a Friday night spent drinking gallons of tea and catching up, we headed over to Layer Marney on Saturday for a spot of babysitting.

Her niece and nephew are both under 4, and I’d only met them briefly at her wedding last summer… the children’s parents were off to an adults-only wedding and I have to confess that despite my multitude of cousins, who I’ve looked after unsupervised for years, I was a bit nervous.

However, they were as good as gold and after popping to the beach with their mum in the morning so they could get to know me, we spent a very rainy day making cards (translation: covering things in glitter glue), playing pirates using beds as ships (surprisingly fun, I may introduce this as an after-dinner game) and watching Shrek. Because dragons and pirates are a really big deal when you’re three and a half 🙂

It was a surprisingly lovely day, but I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to be horizontal as I was when we finally stumbled home and into bed at half past one this morning. People with toddlers must be superhuman… I don’t think either of us had ever really appreciated how much work small children are, even when they’re behaving like angels!

This morning we sleepily agreed went shopping, had a lovely Pizza Express lunch and then I dropped her at the station and went home to sort out my house, wash my car and generally do useful things.  And buy a camera – more on that in another post!

Pictures at the top of the post from our short excursion to West Mersea in the morning – blue skies, gorgeous beach huts and lots and lots of shells… I was probably even happier than the children!

Oh, and the wedding was at the rather stunning Layer Marney Tower – when I first set eyes on it a few years back, I decided it’d be somewhere I’d like to get married if I ever do get married. If you’re ever in this part of the world, it’s well worth a visit!

My week ahead consists mainly of meeting two big deadlines for the day job, updating Ink Drops with some exciting new boxes, and trying to see my parents, as although I’ve swapped cars with them twice this weekend, I haven’t actually had a proper conversation with them.

Now to bed… if I can persuade my weary limbs to propel me off the sofa and up the stairs…