Diary of an (ex)London mum

One of the characteristics of state-funded schooling is the allocation of school places according to postcode.  This generally means that the students for any particular school may live quite close to their school.  It also depends on the density of schools at a location, e.g. children in living in rural areas may live further from their nearest schools in comparison to children living in built up areas.  We are fortunate that the school Baby goes to is relatively near home and it is possible to walk to school.  There are benefits in engaging with physical activities and the advice is for children, where possible, to walk to school to increase their active minutes.  That is important but the biggest attraction of walking to school with Baby is spending time with Baby.  On any typical work day, I don't get home till fairly late in the evening, when we rush through dinner, shower, homework and then bedtime.  Thus, the time that we spend having breakfast...

My husband introduced me to rock climbing and I love the activity.  Without wishing to wax lyrical about it, it exerts both the body and mind, and requires participants to be very aware of their physical abilities.  Each route is a problem which each individual has to solve according to what their bodies are able to do.  I am much shorter than my husband, for example, but we do the same climbs as we are climbing partners.  I would approach a route in a manner that suits me- e.g. I can't reach as high as as he can- and he does it in his own way but we get to the same destination.  Same route, different challenges, different solutions.  And it is lovely to be up high. We haven't had much of a chance to climb since we had Baby.  However, we have been taking him to the wall off and on since he started walking.  We didn't tend to climb very much on these trips as Baby required a lot of attention.  However, he is becoming a more capable climber ...