It's been... emotional

[ailbhe]

That quote from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels sums it up. You need to visualise the guy who's saying it, though, and I'm far too tired to remember his name. He's very famous.

So I got back yesterday evening after crossing from the Aran Islands on public transport. With a toddler. I would like to report that I'm alive, and so is she, and we're pleased to be home, we think.

We went to my best friend's wedding, but the hire car driver showed up without a map so he got hopelessly lost and we missed the entire wedding ceremony in spite of allowing plenty time for the trip. But the bride was radiant and the groom was smug the reception was fantastic fun and Rob and I danced together for the first time since our honeymoon.

We had ten days together with my mother, which was lovely, and then Rob left and my sisters and nephew and nieces arrived and there was general mayhem - it was good to meet them, but it was mayhem, not least because one niece has some kind of night terrors and wakes screaming, and I can't get back to sleep after that kind of thing. The best night's sleep I got was when Linnea refused to settle so I cuddled her in the cooling garden until midnight and then put her on the two-seater sofa. She slept there all night and I shared my time between the sofa and the floor. At one stage we were joined by a friend of mine and her fiance - I can't remember her journal-name right now but you know who you are.

Then Linnea and I had a couple of days with my mother to recover, which was pleasant, and then I took her by minibus, small ferry, train, and privately-owned car driven by Radegund to Radegund's house and we spent two days there - one doing grocery shopping, which included a two-buggies trip on a no-buggy-spaces Dublin bus, and staying at home and hoping the babies would sleep, which was far more restful.

I developed some kind of infection of the nether regions the day I left Aran, too. It's more or less gone now but it made the trip itchy.

After resting with Radegund, she gave us a lift to the ferry terminal and we took a big ferry and three trains from Dublin to Reading. There was a 25-minute wait between trains at about 3 pm so I got a snack. Luckily I always pack a lunch for Linnea, even though she can now eat out with me, so she was fine. She met a doggie.

On the last train we met Emma who was coming to visit for a night while she and I were in the same country, and she helped us off. Rob met us at the station and we all went home and he fed us. Emma had excellent chocolate - a nice high-fat dark dairy-free one, but unfortunately the company who make it are owned by Nestle so we won't be buying it ourselves.

Linnea has grown, and tanned, and loved the ocean, running back into it even when I dragged her out for being shivery and blue, and now has some words that can be understood by anyone sufficiently patient and/or acquainted with the way babies talk: Hiya, Hello, Thank-you, There, That, Ball, Birdie, Pussy, Baby. Baby only showed up today and she's trying to see what it applies to - birds and cats, among other things. There's also Nyumnyum, which she even says when looking at pictures of a table set for baking, with a bowl and a spoon.

And she's bigger. The 24-36 months vests fit lovely over a disposable nappy, but not over a cloth one. We're going to have to start shelling out the extra for cut-for-cloth clothes. I'll start the research when I'm less tired.

Holiday purchases: books, including one called "The no-cry sleep solution" which is the friendliest title I've ever seen ("Don't Panic" was only a fictional title, remember).

I'm tired. I'll read huge backlogs of email and livejournal later. Maybe. No promises.

Night-night.

Comments

[k425.livejournal.com]

Yay! Glad you're back, rested. And with a grown Linnea - expanding vocab and, no doubt, skills.

You know, oldbloke and I had both reached the stage where we were missing you!

As for vests - would you miss them if you didn't use them? I've quite been enjoying not using them over the summer and will think carefully about getting more when the cold(er) weather comes.

[ailbhe]

The loss of the nappy retention device would make things complicated, yes...

[k425.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, I can see where that would be a problem!

Would trousers be any help? That's what's keeping YoungBloke's nappies on. Seriously - now he's got the hang of velcro I rely on his trousers to prevent him shimmying out of his wraps...

[k425.livejournal.com]

PS Have you considered superglue or staples? I swear, both have crossed my mind at times...

[thereyougothen.livejournal.com]

you can get (or make) extender things with snaps at both ends, makes the vest 3 inches or so bigger, which is more than generous for a cloth nappy. can't remember where i got mine, and have since lost them all, but nifty little things. actually, now that i think about it, it was probably thebabycatalog.co.uk.
welcome back, BTW.

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

We used them a lot. They come in different sizes/types! There seem to be two sizes of poppers on vests, and then there's the spacing between poppers.

Vest Extenders!

[ailbhe]

I use them a lot - they give us an extra 6 weeks or so per vest. Daisy-chaining them doesn't work, sadly :( but they are so excellent that I always give one or two to people with big babies - finding out they exist is the main thing. We get ours from Twinkle On The Web.

Re: Vest Extenders!

[k425.livejournal.com]

Another thought I had - now about getting t-shirts/vests in her size and some plain t-shirt material, and sewing crotch extensions on? You can get machines to put poppers on clothes (John Lewis and similar haberdashery depts as well as craft places often have them) and make the clothes to fit.

Of course, you may be as handy with a needle and thread as I am. Hoho.

[buzzy-bee.livejournal.com]

Welcome back! Glad you had a good time :)

[helenprev.livejournal.com]

Welcome back!! :-D

I really missed you!

If you see me on msn, could you ping me please - I did a mass cull of my msn list and a couple of people got chopped off by mistake *blush* - I want to add you again!

[feetnotes.livejournal.com]

rehi, ailbhe - good to see you back safe & sound (idiot hire-car driver unmurdered), and your little wonder still getting along in leaps & bounds, raletions caught up to date with (she was ok with your superabundance(?) of sisters?) and having generally enjoyed yourself/ves :-))

take your time catching back up on lj'n'mail - they've kept this long...

[liadnan]

Vinnie Jones says it, I think.
Glad to see you back

Re: It's been... emotional

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

welcome back! and yay for the good times.

you boycott nestle?

Re: It's been... emotional

[ailbhe]

It's not so much a boycott as that I refuse to actively support them by giving them my money for unnecessary things. If they made anything necessary for my survival I'd probably buy it.

They make me a lot angrier now that I have a real live baby of my very own. But I haven't knowingly bought a Nestle product in about 14 years, which is more than half my lifetime.

[rmc28]

Welcome back. Backlogs are less important than people.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Yay! Glad you got home safely. It was really lovely to see you - and to get some practice on the next-size-up model from Oisín :-)