It's easy to smile in the woods.
Lockdown certainly has its moments. Moments of frustration, moments of joy; moments of anger and tears. Days where everything feels like a weight you can't see a way to shift and times everything around you shines just a little brighter.
Now that the rules on exercise have been lifted, we have been trying to get out more. The kids have been better than I ever expected at playing with each other, but 9 weeks is an awfully long time for them to only have each other for their play mates and neither of them really have the emotional vocabulary to express their feelings. Sally is a little more mature, but Pip, faced with two sisters determined to take his stuff the whole time only has screams or violence to resort to. Nature doesn't make this go away, but it does at least give us a break from being at home and bickering over the toys.
We've been on a few different adventures - some with Ed and some just me and the kids. With Ed means we can go rather further as Pip gets to ride on his shoulders - though again with Cleo in the carrier and Pip on Saul's shoulders Sally ends up feeling a bit left out and tries to get a carry too. Ed has had quite the work out at times.
Of our adventures, the river is sparkling and pretty, but I find it easiest to smile in the woods. Something about the shady leaves and the dappled light spotting the ground makes it easy to smile. My spirits inexplicably lift and a smile that is so hard sometimes in the house pastes itself to my face almost the moment I find myself under the trees. The children also seem to find energy from it in a way that they somehow don't from a field or a river. The woods are our happy place.
These woods are out near Marlow - they're on a massive hill up from the river. We might have got a little lost and needed the knowledge my phone had on the location of the car in order to find our way back. There was a ridiculously steep bit of hill that Ed climbed with Pip on his shoulders, the first picture does no justice to it at all!
Rivers and fields are good too. Pip has also found an excellent new way of being carried by daddy. He now thinks this is hilarious and it has become pretty tricky to persuade him to sit up. These are some photos from three different days - it all looks like one ridiculously sunny day, but there seem to have been a lot of hot blue days recently.
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