This has been one of our many pet projects. We need two – one for carrying the kids around generally to and from the shops, nursery etc but we also need one for Sunday mornings. On Sundays I run with our son around Richmond Park, one of the most beautiful open spaces of parkland in the UK. I’ve regarded it as my back garden for the last 10-15 years since living in South West London. I’ve been running there since the early 90’s and it’s become a bit of a sanctuary for me. And now we have Monty, I push him around a 7 mile loop of the park each Sunday. After that we go to the café where we have “the usual”. Monty has cake and the froth off the top of Mummy’s hot chocolate and Daddy has coffee and whatever cake Monty hasn’t eaten.

It’s become a bit of a family tradition – we always used to run before Monty came along and we didn’t see any need to change things afterwards. On the contrary, I thought it would be good for Monty and any other siblings to get used to the idea that Mummy and Daddy like to exercise too so it must be normal. That way maybe they will grow up wanting to exercise too. But it was always going to be logistically tricky. We just had to adapt. But now I realise I will have to run with him and the twins as well. Richmond Park has some hills which can be appreciated best when seen from a distance as they enhance the beauty of the Park. Pushing a buggy up them, however, is a different kind of experience. It’s knackering. So I reckon that instead of pushing them up the hills I’d be better off hauling them up in a kind of running rickshaw.

So if anyone knows where I can get a running buggy which will sit three please let me know. I saw a guy out in the park with a double buggy last week so I know it can be done. It’s not that I’m competitive but I haven’t seen anyone pushing or pulling three in a buggy yet. OK, so yes, I do want to be the first.

I do an extreme sport which is footracing across wilderness environments. Twice I’ve done races of over 300 kilometres in the Arctic hauling a sled so I’m thinking of asking the guy who designed my sled to build me some Heath Robinson style contraption which will fit all three kids in it. I have some time as I won’t put the twins in a buggy for the first 6 months. Therefore we need to have this by May 08.

Exciting stuff! And just one of our many projects…

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