A Day Out

We had a nice day our yesterday, despite all the rain. You know, this is probably the wettest drought I've ever known. It comes to something when you're living with water restrictions and flood warnings all at the same time.
One of Andys friends was coming to town for a visit. He'd come all the way from Australia so we thought we'd better make a bit of an effort. We met up in a nice country pub, a massive group of old work colleagues, wives and children.
That was the big difference since last time, the extra people. I believe it was four years ago that they'd had the last reunion and in that time there were some marriages and a lot of procreation. We couldn't help but note that around the very large table were every stage of baby-hood, from a bump, a month old, less than a year, the interesting toddler stage that Joseph is in and two who were older and talking. I watched one of the older boys eating chocolate ice cream, ah I remember the days when it was more fun to get the food all over your face than to actually eat it.
Before the food arrived, Joseph made friends with one of the littler ones. They were sat next to each other in booster seats and little smiles soon turned into giggles as they waved their arms and slapped the table. Joseph though the whole thing was quite hilarious.
I got to compare Joseph to another little boy of almost the same age. The first thing I saw was that Joseph, despite being a month younger, was much the bigger of the two. I have no idea why, according to the experts I've pretty much done everything wrong so why my boy is above average in size, a perfect picture of rosy health and meeting his developmental targets with room to spare is quite beyond them, those pesky experts.
It was interesting to compare notes as they were communicating in different ways and had quite different temperaments. The other boy, in my opinion, seemed less shy in company and was quite happy to sit on someone other than Mum or Dads lap, as long as he could see where they were. Joseph can often get a bit spiky about that sort of thing. The other little boy was more inclined to share his toys with Joseph, who did share a little too but seemed rather unhappy about it at times.
They did get one quite well, which was nice. They would hold hands and on a couple of occasions there was even a shared little cuddle, probably the cutest thing I have seen yet! The other little boy seemed a lot less picky with eating, tucking into sausages and chips with great gusto. I was impressed.
Joseph is not the pickiest baby by any means, but when he doesn't want something, he doesn't want it. We ordered him cod goujons (posh fish fingers) mash and peas. I had wanted to get him chips, but that would have meant twice in two days so we went with the mash.
He ate some of the cod fingers with enthusiasm and then stopped. In the end I realised that it was the coating he was less keen on and he did eat a little more of the fish, but I had to feed it to him. He ate quite a bit of the mash but the best thing was the peas. He kept reaching out to the plate and picking them up, one at a time and putting them in his mouth. He would reach out with thumb and forefinger, the smaller fingers extended in the manner of a posh vicar drinking from a small teacup.
I shared my pudding with him, a mix of meringue pieces, lemon and vanilla ice cream. It was delicious and Joseph thought so to. If there's anything he's not picky about, it's pudding.
Joseph was the first to flag. To be fair, he had produced a very nasty poop that must have left him feeling a bit uncomfortable. Still, he just got restless. He wanted to run around and the restaurant was busy and it wasn't safe. He got tired and it was very noisy.
He did well, we'd been out for nearly four hours before he got too fractious. We came home and to be frank, I was tired too. A good day, and the beer battered mushrooms were rather good.