A: Because of three kids.

That is literally how long it took us to walk home from picking Quindy up from kindy the other day. Darby and I left home at 2:20pm to walk down to Chanbe’s kindy which is only 650m down the road. Pushing the big pram, this normally takes about 8 minutes. We picked Chanbe up from kindy, and he hopped on his bike that I brought along with us. The whole way to Quindy’s family day care is flat, and Chanbe can really scoot along on his balance bike, so I have to walk quite quickly to keep up. Even so, with all the stoppages, drinks breaks, “my feet hurt can I ride in the pram” stops etc etc etc, the 1.5km can take up to half and hour to complete.

We arrive at Quindy’s kindy (ha ha) and as her educator is giving me a great debrief of the day, the kids play for a bit longer together and the carer has a cuddle with Darby-doo. By the time I put Darby and Quinn in the pram, and get Chance sorted with his helmet, then stop to find Q’s drink bottle, it was about 3:30. The walk home is 1.2km up a bit of a hill.

This is where things start to get ridiculous. Now I have to say off the bat that I’m in no hurry to get home. The longer it takes us, the better as far as I’m concerned. So when Q wants to hop out and walk, I encourage it. and then when C wants to get back in the pram, I say “sure thing buddy”. It’s when they both want to get in, that my back and neck and shoulders let out a whimper. This means I have to strap Darby into the carrier on my front, and push the pram, (18kg) Chance (20kg) and Quinn (10kg) up the small hill. Oh, and Chance and Quinn like to stand up in the pram and try and touch the low hanging trees.

Look, it’s a lot of fun really. Apart from when, 50m from home, Chanbe had a bit of a meltdown – I think he was honestly so tired from a full day of kindy, and riding most of the way home (he was back on his bike at this stage) and he’d just had enough of life really. But we got there in the end, and now that we have a wonderful, glorious, huge backyard, this is what we spend most of our afternoons doing…

I actually have a really cute video of the kids on the tire swing (behind the plane) but I can’t quite get it to work (still getting used to WordPress!) and since then, Hubs put the Red Barron plane bed up as a swing! So. Totally. Awesome.