In about 24 hours I'll be in Heathrow

So I called my sister, and actually spoke to her - the one with pneumonia - and she's exhausted because my nephew - the one with the feeding tube - swallowed a 5 cent coin and it got stuck in his unusually narrow oesophagus and the hospital in Cork couldn't remove it and my sister is too ill to go to Dublin so he had to go to Dublin with his Daddy and they removed it but that's two general anaesthetics in 24 hours for a boy about Linnea's size, age 4 and a half.

And of course my sister is worried about her sick child while she's ill herself.

Also in addition as well, my mother may have bought her new house by Tuesday, which means we'll spend Christmas there, which would be good for everyone, I think.

Physio again this afternoon, and packing.

Nativity Scenes

I was struck today by the serene look on Mary's face in all the Nativity Scenes around the place. In my experience, new mothers rarely look serene. Options are: utterly exhausted, guilty and panic-stricken, or hysterically happy with wildly exaggerated facial expressions and high-pitched meaningless chat.

A deliriously happy, gobsmacked Nativity Scene would be a nice change, I feel. We could get Donkey from Shrek in to help.

Packing!

The packing is almost done. I have far more bags than I wanted, but that's what happens when packing for a month away from home with two small children. I can't imagine lugging bottles as well as this lot. Part of the problem is the kind of stuff we're not allowed to take through security and the kind of stuff we can't allow into the hold - when I repack for the cross-country train trip I'll have at least one and possibly two fewer bags.

We're waiting for two pairs of Linnea's trousers to dry on the radiator, and one of Emer's babygros, otherwise she has to wear a polyester one. Tomorrow we'll all three be wearing matching tie-dye tshirts for ease of finding lost lambs.

The Citilite buggy is down from the attic! I no longer need a pushchair I can lean on, so the lovely easy-fold narrow lightweight one is back. Suitable for Emer or Linnea (though Linnea's weight will kill it pretty quickly), it fits on all known buses and trains, folds one-handed, weighs less than the baby, and has a decent shopping basket. This is the first buggy Linnea used; we put it in the attic when the handle got too weak to be used as a walking frame any more, and bought a new one, which we used until it couldn't be steered any more.

Where do I go in Dublin to get prints from digital pics on a USB key, within 24 hours at the most?