6/52

It's been an indoor kind of week. That's partly because of the apocalyptic rain and partly because I've come a cropper with Mangled Mum Back (I'm sure that's the medical term for it) and I can't carry Samuel down the stairs right now. This has meant that imaginative rainy day toddler entertainment has been required. Quite a lot of it.

Before I became a mum, I genuinely considered myself to be a creative person. My job was all about creative writing. I worked within the Creative team. People referred to me as 'a creative'. But after a week stuck indoors with a toddler, I've come to realise that when it comes to fun activities for a one-year-old, I don't have a creative bone in my body. 

First off, I built a den. Samuel thought it was fun for five minutes, then got bored and toddled off to watch Mister Maker. I stayed in the den and read Twitter undisturbed, so it definitely wasn't time wasted. Then I went around the flat carefully selecting weird and wonderful household items to go in a treasure box (aka a Cadbury's Heroes tub) for him. The feather duster was a momentary success, as were the many Clinique containers that I filled with rice and pasta, but mainly he just wanted to play with the lid of the tub. But we did find one thing that provided hours of amusement: my green scarf. Samuel stole it from me for numerous games of hide and seek. He'd then run around the flat with it over his shoulders and trailing behind him like a red-carpet Oscars gown. 

If we don't manage to get out much more this coming week then I'm seriously considering signing up for clown school.