Ricky's First Holiday {In Pictures}

On the 26th of February Rod and I had officially been together for ten years. To mark the occasion we thought we'd take a trip back to the Midlands where Rod had proposed five years earlier. We also thought it would be the perfect place for Ricky's first holiday, since we had yet to take a family trip after his birth nearly two years ago! The Midlands is a beautiful part of our diverse country, and definitely one of my favourite places to holiday, and the endless green proved popular with our little man who ran around like a crazy person, exploring every nook and cranny. We booked a cottage at Caversham Mill for three nights, and were told upon arrival that we had been moved to a bigger cottage. Our "backyard" led right down to the Lions River, with beautiful views stretching across miles of endless green. I didn't object. 

On the second day we ventured into Pietermaritzburg to visit my Grammy before heading into Durban for a couple hours. My aunt Anne lives in Durbs, so we met up with her for a coffee and a catch up on the promenade before letting Ricky barrel head first into the ocean. If there are two things that Ricky loves, it's sand and water, so he was in hog heaven! We didn't even have a chance to change him into his cozzie before he was waist deep in waves, so we just let him at it. I was quite impressed with his boldness; not once did he cry or run (except into the sea), and when a big wave took his feet out from under him, he just laughed and stood up for more. Needless to say, his battery was flattened by such a busy day and he slept like a log.

The Importance of Getting Dirty

A healthy diet of leaves and dirt

For those of you who haven't been paying close attention, let me state for the record that I am a decidedly old-fashioned kind of mom. I believe in the old style of parenting. No prenatal classes or any of that jazzy crap for us. No Baby Gym to help us celebrate our child's mediocre (and inevitable) achievements as though they've just won the Nobel Prize in Physics. No hand sanitiser in the nursery, no wildly expensive organic baby food for our little man, no sterilising every little thing he may happen to lay his hands on. I am often agitated when visitors keep telling me what Ricky is doing or where he is going, as though I am not watching. "He's going toward the coffee table!" Yeah, and? "What if he bumps his head?" Then he bumps his head and he feels a little pain, or not, and learns to be more careful. Life happens. Sure, I don't intend leaving power tools or a barrel of scorpions or a set of newly sharpened Shogun knives lying around where Ricky can get to them, but I refuse to envelop my home in bubble wrap for fear that my child may actually experience a little of what we call living. If a parent chooses to wrap their own child in cotton wool and hide them away from the world for fear it may actually impact them in some way, that is their prerogative; but I am the parent who can't remember the last time I sterilised a bottle or sippy cup, and I let my son roll around on the floor with the cat. He enjoys the freedom, and that makes me happy. Don't mistake my relaxed attitude for neglect, though. I have taken every precaution to latch cupboards that may house anything detrimental to the well-being of my little explorer, and I keep an ever-watchful eye on the goings-on in my home. I just believe in getting dirty.