"I'm inspired by people who keep on rolling, no matter their age."

I love scooting!!! but despite all the amazing fun I have with Opeie and his friends I have been longing for another slightly unhinged parent who like me has no shame at all to go whizzing around with. When me and Opeie are out together scooting about there is a mixture of reactions we get from passers by, mainly a lot of "awwwww...", and rightly so, we must be the cutest scooting duo around. Occasionally though I can see people mumbling 'look at that idiot' or words to that effect. Honestly I couldn't care less as the only thing I care about is the huge smile on my child's face and I needed another parent to share that with.

We planned yesterday to meet up with our friends Emma and Matthew from Another Last Story. Matthew is the proud owner of a brand spanking new Mini Micro in celebration of his fourth year on the planet and we hadn't yet been out burning up the streets with him so we couldn't wait to get to the park and see what he could do. I still had my Micro black in the shed and it was a great chance to load it in to the back of the car so that Emma could scoot too.

The first 5 minutes of our scooting adventure was a little hairy when Matthew decided to tackle a hill despite not quite mastering the use of the brake. As we all watched him pick up speed and fly towards a brick wall I thought a hospital visit would be taking up the bulk of our afternoon but luckily those brown cords he was wearing slowed him down and the smile on his face as he looked back said 'don't worry, everything is okay!'

As always for a midweek afternoon play date we had the playground to ourselves, which gave the boys plenty of space to run about and for me and Emma to act like imbeciles. There was a moment where I covered Emma in a handful of dead leaves and was trying to use my phone so that she could use it as a mirror to clean herself off. Sadly the excitement was too much for me and as she looked at me like a mental case I realised instead of turning the phone around I had just flicked the screen and was looking at myself!!

Our scooting venture out soon turned in to an autumnal leaf fight and of course I got buried in leaves for the greater good of two smiling children. I love this time of year, cool weather and colourful leaves everywhere. I'm not sure why but Ive always loved that point where you need a coat or warm jumper, I think I just love that cosy feeling over being a sweaty summer mess.

It seemed that even after scooting, the playground and the leaf battle, the boys were still brimming with testosterone and there was some serious energy to burn off so we hit the park gym hard. It was time to go for burn...

Then it was time to jump back on our trusty scooters and do one last lap of the park before heading home. I'm so glad that Opeie has someone to talk Micro-Scooters with now and having an extra grown up (I use the term loosely) to scoot around with really made the day for me. I'm still thinking that a Shropshire Micro-Scoot meet needs to be taking place.

I had been looking for someone worthy to give my Micro black a new home, rather than it be left in our shed to only come out occasionally and Emma definitely looked like she was enjoying being a part of the action, so the scooter went home with her and Matthew ready for their own scooting adventures and hopefully many more wheeled adventures with us. 

Welcome to the team guys x

(great shot by Opeie i thought!)

"Know your limitations & then defy them"

Over the last few weeks, since Seth has been back at school there has been a lot more chats about what Seth 'can't do'.  Now that may seem blunt, but that's not me saying that, it is what Seth says when he is discussing what's been going on at school. 

It seems that many times throughout the week the other children at school are making comments that are knocking Seth's confidence and teachers are unknowingly doing the same treating Seth slightly different than the other children. Seth is different than everyone else but that's the broad 'everyone else' and not the collective. What two people are the same? But getting this across to Seth can be difficult at times. Because of Seth's muscle condition i think it has become second nature to the teachers to try and make things easier for Seth, and the other children? Well they are just kids and will always pick out differences in other children no matter what.

Although Seth has these moments of self doubt, he is mostly a very confident child and we are so proud of how he deals with everything that goes on in his life. When he has these 'i can't do that' moments we think it is important to remind Seth of what he can do. We do this every day by embracing his intellectual and creative side with Science, Craft, building and reading etc but sometimes we really need to help him get his confidence back about his physical ability.

This weekend as something a little different we organised a family gym session with Gareth at Purity health and fitness. We thought that aside from building his confidence we could help Seth to realise just how strong he actually is plus we knew that Opeie would really be in his element playing fitness games and having an excuse to put on a pair of boxing gloves. 

The studio was packed full of fun equipment and I could see the boys faces light up as soon as we walked in. The boys didn't waste any time, taking full advantage of the time that we had there.
 
Because of Seth's muscles he can be quite uneasy on his feet at times, but thanks to Gareth with some short balancing games Seth's confidence was soon slowly creeping back. He still needed help to sturdy himself but he could see that we were also having to concentrate to stay balanced.

 Seth was eager to show of his manly strength with a bit of weight lifting and was confident lifting some of the smaller weights. Gareth explained the importance of not pushing yourself to much and taking care of your body to avoid injury, Gareth then showed Seth some of the larger weights, one was the same weight as a canon ball, and Seth said when he's older he will do these, bless him!

Opeie was just happy playing with balls. You cant beat the good old fashioned exercise equipment.

There was some agility training and games to test the boys hand eye co-ordination which they both had a lot of fun taking part with. It was good to see them both having fun in that kind of environment, they were both very confident talking to Gareth and were taking in everything that he said.

What i loved was there was no 'i can't do that' during our session, each game/activity started with Gareth explaining a technique, positions and benefits from the exercise and Seth and Opeie showing us what they could do. It was a great confidence boost for Seth. Mrs M being the pro that she is has trained with Gareth many times,  so she showed us how to do many of the exercises and Seth couldn't wait to give each activity a try.

And then it was time for a game Gareth called 'lets see how strong Daddy is'. The boys excitedly filled the bars up with weights to test me, I think they were impressed by my butchness and Mrs M swooned in the corner as I did my bit (i wish) haha.

We explained to Gareth that there are no need for weights and we showed him how we do bench presses at home.

 As i said there was no shortage of equipment and definitely no shortage of motivation from Seth, he took on every activity like a pro and was genuinely excited about getting involved.

 And then it was time to do the thing the boys had been itching to do since entering the studio. It gave us the chance to take our own gloves, Opeie doesn't have any boxing gloves at the moment so he decided to take his incredible Hulk gloves which was really cute. It was boxing time and by this point in the session Seth's confidence about his physical abilities was through the roof and it was great to watch.

Seth was feeling pumped by this point and asked if he could try the treadmill, we had one at home till a few months back and Seth loved using it even if it was for only short times. Walking is very difficult for Seth but is something he desperately wants to feel more comfortable doing and something he does try to push. A few minutes on the treadmill and Seth was feeling really good about what he had achieved.

 Opeie? well he was still happy kicking and throwing various shaped balls around the studio.

The session turned out to be one of the best things we have done as a family and was something that Seth really needed. I don't expect that it is going to make things easier in Seth's life but I hope that these confidence boosts make him realise just how strong he really is.

Thank you Gareth the Session really helped Seth appreciate a little more what he is capable of physically.

To find out more about personal training or to talk to professionals about activities suitable for you or your families needs contact the trainers at www.purityhealthandfitness.co.uk

"After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb."

After dropping Mrs M off at the gym earlier we had an hour to kill before picking her up. I had noticed somewhere that looked like a hillside walk a few days back while driving and had no idea what it was so we headed there for a little walk. We walked a bit of the way up and stopped and asked a lady walking her dog where we were. turns out we were walking up the Wrekin. Ive lived in Shropshire a few years now but i still don't know where a lot of places are.

Opeie was happy walking for all of 5 minutes and as he has never liked being in his pushchair our relaxing walking turned in to something that resembled Luke's Dagobah Training from The Empire Strikes Back. Opeie had a big smile on his face though so i was happy.

We didn't walk to far as i didn't want us to be late picking up Mrs M, plus Opeie was stopping every few minutes to find rocks that he wanted me to put in my pocket for his apparent new collection. The ones he decided he didn't want got Hulk smashed (that's my boy). I'm one of those strange people you see in the street that says hi when they walk by, Ive always been that way. After passing a few people tackling the hill and saying hi Opeie started saying 'afternoon' to people too. It's nice to be friendly to people you don't know but i do get some funny looks sometimes.

I explained to Opeie that we couldn't take all the rocks home with us so he had to sort out his favourites, the rocks that he had become more attached to, Then we filled my pockets and we headed back to the car to get mommy.

What shall we do with the rocks, any ideas?