A Very Slow Walk

We were away for the weekend, at a pre-Christmas get-together with friends in Shropshire. Being the only little one among two dozen people meant that G was often the centre of attention, which unsurprisingly kept her happy.

One less happy event was our attempt to get her to the nearest pub for lunch on Saturday. At last year's event, I had used a back carrier to get G there through the snow. But she's too big for that contraption now, so we were left with little choice but to take her pram.

I gave up routinely using G's pram months ago after she made it clear that, as a big girl now, she'd rather walk. This is fine for toddling about our local village where distances are short and we've rarely got to be anywhere in a hurry anyway. But walking a couple of miles is a different matter.

Saturday's trek to the pub started off well enough with G in the pram, but after a while she started fidgeting and whining and asking "Walk?" until we finally got her out and let her toddle. The picture shows G taking a close interest in one of the many puddles we encountered at this point.

But no matter how much fun it was watching G splash about, the facts were that it was very cold, and the pub was still some distance off. G refused point blank to go back in her pram, so I picked her up and started carrying her down the road. This led to a tantrum, accompanied by wriggling, sobbing and more cries of "Walk?" as I hurried along as quickly as I could. The tears stopped as soon as we reached the pub, and G realised there were lots of people besides mummy and daddy to dote on her.

It wouldn't have been so bad, but we went through exactly the same process on the return journey too. I'm looking forward to when she can walk a bit faster.