Jump!

It has been a tough week. Darling Wilber, who with his side parting, looks like he is off to prep school, has been in baby boot camp, learning how to sleep... And Tiger, has been unwell. Between the two of them they have conspired to test us as parents by waking up over 20 times a night!! So this weeks DANGEROUS CLUB FOR BOYS, was almost cancelled due to ill health... but alas, Tiger arose from his bed this morning with renewed energy, so off we went to our woodland meeting spot!

I used to teach gymnastics. I was fanatical about the sport, but really rather atrocious at it. Thankfully, I was a much better coach! The youngest child I taught was a boy called Michael, he was 2.5 years old and he had a head so enormous he couldn't lift his head off the ground. My oldest student was a 55 year old women called Irene.

The one thing that alarmed me when I taught my young gymnasts  was children who were too scared to jump. Many kids were too fearful to leap into my arms or on to a mat. Many couldn't hang upside down either.  So today in the DANGEROUS CLUB FOR BOYS, we wanted encourage the boys to fearlessly jump. They lined up, and one by one, leapt through the air into our arms... good eye contact, arms wide open, they all brilliantly jumped and jumped... and jumped.

It was a cold day, so before playing the usual hide-and-seek and catch-me-if-you-can games, the boys all had babycinos....

 BABYCINO's
- Warm milk
- Squirty cream
- Generous dusting of mallows


My aim for this week, is to find any wall, ledge or log I can and encourage Tiger to JUMP!!! Do let me know if you get your kids to jump too... I love a good leap of faith!!!!

Wilber in Training

The Colour of the Woods

If I am honest, I would have to admit that I have slightest tendency to become a little, titchy-witchy bit obsessed with things... I get an idea into my head and that is it... I become like an over excited, preoccupied school girl excited in June about upcoming Christmas (which, might I add, that I CANNOT WAIT FOR!!!!). So this is how I feel about the DANGEROUS CLUB FOR BOYS.

All week I have been jotting down ideas for the CLUB and I think I have about enough ideas to take Tiger to the age of 15years, 3 months and 2 weeks!!!!

This week we met again in the woods. The sky was a sea of blue and the air had that edge to it. I love post summer sunshine!

I sat with the 8 boys in a wooden round house and pointed to the woods...

Me:                What colours are the leaves?
Them:            Green!
Me:                What colour is the bark
One of them:  Woof Woof
Me:                 No, what colour is the bark?
Them:             Brown!
Me:                 The moss?
Them:             Green
Me:                 The ground
Them:             Brown!

.... you get the gist I am sure. They distinguished that there were mainly two colours. Meanwhile just behind us, the gallant Mums had been hiding smarties all over the woods (to our foreign Blogees, these are coloured chocolate sweets that really are not the colour of the woods).

I gave each child a treasure pot and they were sent off to find the sweets remembering that would be able to spot them because they were not camouflaged. They LOVED it. The big boys helped the little boys, they ran around filling their little pots with sweets and delighted in spotting them and growing their treasure pots. How cool to find your own snacks.... Wild Boar and Berries next week, me thinks!!!

The boys ate their chocolate and juice and then spent the rest of the morning playing hide and seek and hitting things with sticks. I can genuinely say, from the bottom of my heart, that I am so excited about this little Club and what it will do for our adventurous boys. In the heart of a city, what more could you ask for than to run wild with a pack!!!

See you next week everyone xx

And so the Club Begins....

In this day and age I realise that having a whole group of boys together is actually rather rare...

Tuesday morning of this week, we gathered. 3 little boys, standing in the pre Autumn sunshine for our first ever DANGEROUS CLUB FOR BOYS. The task was to collect stones and fill a bucket. This proved great fun for Benji and Tiger - Wilber watched on thinking 'What are they doing?' or he may have been thinking ....'was machen sie', which is German for 'what are they doing'(....we think he may be German you see).

With stones in hand we marched in to the woods and lined up 10 diet coke cans along a log and set the boys to knocking them off by throwing the stones. By the end of the game we had been joined by 3 more little chaps. The children took great delight in hitting the cans off the log with their hands and wildly hurling the stones over the log. It did not matter that they had no clue how to play the game as they were having so much fun being outdoors and doing something that would have otherwise been forbidden.

The next hour of the DANGEROUS CLUB FOR BOYS, was spent balancing, hitting things, jumping, crying, throwing, swinging and building pretend fires in the wooden house. It was brilliant. Each mother was playing along and when the boys over stepped a mark by, say hitting each other with sticks,  there was a part of me that thought.... This is good.... iron sharpening iron!!! (please note that I don't genuinely think smacking each other with sticks is usually a good idea.)

We came home, Tiger was shivering, with a bruised head from falling off the swing, I was muddy, he was muddy... Wilber was deciding if he would be Spanish instead of German.... we were all very happy.



If you are a boy... in Bristol, or near by and you would like to join THE DANGEROUS CLUB FOR BOYS. We will be next meeting at 10am on Tuesday morning... do contact me!!!!

Joe with an 'e'!

When I was younger Anne of Green Gables was my favourite film. Anne was a fiery red head who was passionate, dramatic and always got in to trouble....I adored her. In fact I adored her so much, I plucked a scene from the film where Anne gets into HUGE trouble for complaining that her name had been spelt Ann, without the 'e'.... And I thought I would be henceforth known as Jo.... With an 'E'! This worked well for a few reasons...firstly, it was in those days, wildly dramatic. Secondly people would think I was a bit naughty.... But more importantly, it was because Joe was a boys name and I really rather fancied being a boy!

23 years later, I have two boys. I am definitely more feminine these days....I still spell my name like a boy.... Much to the pain of the BBC, and I still think being a boy is cool, fun and exciting.

I want to bring up my boys to be active, fun, adventurous and imaginative. This summer I watched Tiger play, and at 2, realised he is not a baby any more....I know I need to step up a gear and engage with his masculinity and start training him in the ways I feel so excited and stirred up about. 

SO.... Here begins my journey of starting THE DANGEROUS CLUB FOR BOYS.... A journey as much for me, as it is for my children. A muddy, adventure that I am ready to run into!!!!