The Natural History Museum is your friend

Back to the routines of home. Esme is a little more out of sorts than usual – Louise suspects she’s missing the attention of the others as they go off to pay with their friends. When I cam home yesterday afternoon Jude was over at Joe’s (not Jo’s) & Eve was off swimming with Amber & Jack was playing with Ethan & Aiden. Esme had been having a snooze & was a bit groggy & clingy. She remained that way most of the time until bed (distraction being the only thing that kept her happy). Lilly came over to play for a bit, but then Jude back & demanded a game of catch, so Esme wanted to join in, dropping Lily. Tears from Esme until she gets her shoes on & comes out to play & Lily has to go back over to her house.
So… In Oxford… what did we do on our first day there? As usual my memory is all fuzz. We walked into town via the canal & it was lovely. The kids were a little bored fro tie to time, but on the whole they enjoyed it as it was a good walk with plenty to look at. We headed into the Centre & tried navigate to a couple of museums with just a tourist leaflet map. That worked OK in the end & we reached the History of Science Museum – or was it just billed as The Science Museum. It’s at that very decorous part of Oxford with the round building & big wall decorated with busts of greek philosophers (in a pleasantly grotesque exaggerated style). Jut off the side of there. It’s a great place proper museum stuff with display cases full of fascinating stuff, but the kids don’t have the time of attention span for this kind of thing. They whizzed through & were bored. When I say, “The kids” I’m not including Jack – he would have quite happily stayed a lot longer & studies a lot more, but the inertia of the younger ones only allowed for skimming. Jack was not included in “The kids” quite a lot of the time. It’s funny how that is developing.

Then to the Natural History Museum (after a few false starts caused by parents being pulled in so many directions by the young & demanding. The natural History Museum in Oxford is great. There was a lot there & there was enough to keep the younger ones happy – Even Jude & Esme after Jude had managed to indulge in the calming influence of a little retail therapy…. Jude needs to satiate the ‘shop thing’ before he can relax & enjoy his surrounding – such is his need to ‘acquire’.

We spent a good long while there & as it’s not too big we could let Jack go off & explore as he wanted – and he did . In the end, when the others had finally exhausted all that we could initially provide (they were getting hungry & irritable) one of us had to go back inside to locate Jack & bring him out. I failed then Louise succeeded.

Then off down a side street to St Giles & into town but unable to get past a strategically placed kiosk with ice cream for sale.

From that day on Esme wanted ice cream every day . There came a point during the day when she would start whingeing for ice cream & carry on until properly distracted (difficult when she’s been placed in the pushchair) or satiated.

One of the tasks on the holiday for us was to not spend too much money as, (to be quite frank) we don’t have a lot of it. This meant some limitations & it meant some occasional frustration for the kids when they could not exceed the agreed budget. Jack was very moderate in his spending as he recognised he could accumulate some money & get something ‘larger’.