*AD: The following was a gifted experience*
Myself and Hollie are trying our best to get time-sensitive tasks done as soon as we hear about them, so we avoid ever having to worry about deadlines. I double-checked with Hollie and she was just like me a school – the day that homework is set is the day that it gets completed. Unless it’s a massive project, the whole thing has to be 100% completed before the morning. That way, there’s nothing lingering over me and I can go about my business afterwards.
As much as this was a fun day out with the kids, we were treating it this way. Hollie got offered to go and have a fun day out in Birmingham anytime in the next month, so long as she posted about it on her blog within that time scale too. Rather than longing it out – knowing we’ve got loads of things coming across November – she decided that we were going the very next day. All four of us.
Birmingham is just down the road and I go a lot, but I don’t think I’ve actually done the drive myself before. I’m usually passenger or going by train. As driver it means that I have complete control of the soundtrack on the way there. I decided that we’re only allowed to play music made by POBOs – people of Birmingham origin. I put too many CDs in the car, considering it’s only an hour away. Regardless, there and back we managed to get through a thorough POBO Playlist of Jamelia, Safone, Mayhem and Sox. (As if Trilla still hasn’t got a CD out, after all these years).
Food first. So the main place we were heading to was right next to a lot of restaurants, so we would find something fairly familiar to us when we got there. Yeah, we should have planned this better. So we had options, but they weren’t saying much in terms of being the most toddler-friendly. Pizza Express (which we’ve done before with them) felt very risky. Zizzi felt even more likely to go left. We are wild people, so decided to go to somewhere that we’ve never eaten before – Slug & Lettuce. And we won.
Cameo and Marlo loved the sausage and chicken meals (respectively). They behaved themselves. Other kids in the place behaved very badly. It was perfect. We’re really getting good at this eating out stuff.
When Cameo (the big one) was about 14 months (just before we moved to Nottingham) we went to Sea Life in London and we had a bad time. He was at that stage where he could walk but not in any direction that we wanted him to, so he was too heavy to hold, too reckless to walk and too restless to stay in the buggy. The plan was to do the buggy thing until he got bored, and then push him around.
We took the buggy out of the car and a wheel came off!
Came off!
There was no going back, so we persisted. Buggy back in the car. I’m carrying him. It was packed. I had no stamina in my arms. He didn’t even care for the fish. It was so much more effort than it needed to be.
Fast forward and we have two boys, and we’re heading to the Birmingham one. Cameo’s a big boy – nearly 3 – and Marlo’s 15 months. Marlo’s very capable of walking, but impossible to direct, so he went in a working four-wheeled (!!) buggy and really had a great time, along with his big brother, as we explored the place. Just a few months ago when Cameo went to Drayton Manor’s zoo, he didn’t care at all for many of the animals, but he was proper into the penguins (because obviously), sea lion (because he somehow thought it was also a penguin) and sea bass (because they’re so damn big).
Another successful trip in the bag. Go to Sea Life if you want something fun to do in Birmingham with toddlers.
I have to disclose a literal dampener that happened at the end of the visit. So it was chucking it down on this day and Cameo decided that the first puddle he saw when he left needed to be jumped it. It was huge. There were tears. He now knows he’s not a penguin.
(NB: Guess what? Hollie (uncharacteristically of her) managed to do her post before bed that very night.)
Sea Life Birmingham can be found at Eleven Brindley Place, The Water’s Edge, Birmingham B1 2HL.