Aileen and The Pines

Altho our visits from Aileen finished a fortnight ago, we'd made arrangements to go to a playgroup today.. it made the last official visit easier to handle altho i still blubbed obviously... well, today Aileen took us to The Pines as a stop gap between going to the Opportunity Group and Nursery... driving in the car was fun as Nina was very conversational and seemed to relish discussing what she'd been up to since we last met =) .. s'all progress as Aileen likes to remind me =) ..The Pines wasn't quite what Aileen had been led to believe and i felt like i was the friend of a guest rather than an equal parent ...still, Aileens hardly the quiet retiring type and dived in with question after question until we both realised this was just a bunch of friends with children of crawling age getting together in their local community centre for a cuppa tea and a natter- nothing wrong with that but Nina was bored after her initial inspection of everything on offer: pram toys and soft teddies =| ..still, we stayed, enjoyed our cup of tea, appreciated that Nina was the eldest and conducted herself in a careful, if not a little clumsy, fashion and thoroughly enjoyed playing in the garden which had been specifically designed for older children... I appreciated Aileen coming out of her way without work obligation to take us but we both decided that it probably wouldn't do any good in the build up to going to Nursery =( Aileen left like she'd be back in a fortnights time.. *sulks*