ailbhe | It's been... emotional (Reply)

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.