How was the holiday?

Despite all my fears the holiday was good from a parenting point of view. DS took long haul air travel in his stride - mainly by sleeping through it. He slept constantly through the 12 hour flight from Heathrow to Singapore - woke when we landed and for the transfer to the hotel and settled down for a full nights sleep about 3 hours later - okay cough medicine did play a small part but he DID have a bad cough. The flight from Singapore to Sydney was a bit different as it was during the day- he was excited about the flight and the new game we presented him with for his Leapster. Then as we went to take off he suddenly fell asleep for about an hour before waking up and taking advantage of the in-flight tv. As we began the decent he again fell asleep - must be to do with the air pressure. In between he was entertained with the various offerings of the Quantas staff - meal, choc ices, bananas, hot chocolate, meal and more choc ices (I'm surprised we made it off the plane!). The pattern was repeated on the return journey - on the flight from Sydney he repeatedly asked if we were on the runway and as soon as I said 'yes' he fell asleep - so four flights and he's yet to experience take off or landing! The toilets were a bit frightening but he was a very brave boy!

As for the actual trip we fell in love with Singapore - we stayed on Sentosa Island which is holiday island with many attractions. The hotel was very child friendly and they made a huge fuss of DS (he has red hair which apparently is a novelty). In Sydney he shouted out excitedly 'it's the Opera House' every time we caught a glimpse of it and he was very proud of his daddy for climbing the bridge. He took seeing Koalas and Wallabies (in the Zoo) in his stride and was even unimpressed by the Cockatoos and Parrots flying in the trees instead of the sparrows and starlings we have at home. Hong Kong was less than child friendly and he was quite constrained there as we were frowned upon for letting him show any exuberance - we found out later that there aren't many children in Hong Kong due to the high living cost. He did have a special treat - Disneyland Hong Kong - okay we really enjoyed it too. And what does he remember of the whole holiday - the 'orange monkey' (Orangutan) at Taronga Zoo!

We've had some adjusting - for 3 weeks the 3 of us have shared a room and have been 'together' with no break. Behaviourwise he got away with a lot which caused many cross words between myself and my other half! Is it wrong that I was SO glad when he went back to nursery and hubby went back to work and I got some space to myself?

Grumpy, sunburn and secrecy

It's increasingly hard to write this blog as I've had very little privacy this week. I am currently in a 2 bed apartment with my OH's sis, her flatmate, his girlfriend, my OH and our DS. The upside is that we look directly out onto a Sydney beach.

SO far my worries about travelling have been unfounded. DS slept through the first flight entirely (12 hours) and didn't bat an eyelid when 4 hours later we put him back to bed at the hotel. And despite a couple of power naps on the second flight he spent most of it watching the inflight TV - even the toilets didn't scare him. I've been underestimating him obviously.

The secrecy is compounded by the fact that my laptop died 2 days before we left so I am using OH and for some reason the WiFi wont work on my log in so I'm using his.

I have something new to worry about - my DS is sunburnt - despite liberal applications of factor 40 he wouldn't keep still to put it on - the draw of the hotel pool was too much and so he has odd burn marks all over his body (so have I and my OH). In 10 years time he'll look at the photos and berate me for being so careless with his health.

Living here we've had an insight into the single life - being old and decrepid (sp?) now we can't remember the time before we got together at the tender age of 18. We've had a tour of the bars and eateries around the flat, were greeted off the plane by drunks who were then less than polite at being woken by an excited 3 year old (and his 34 year old dad). They then went out partying the next night and came home at 5am - luckily we'd had the foresight not to let DS out of the room when he first woke up at 7am but to leave it till at least 10 but as it was it took till 2pm to get any sense out of them. Grumpy, me? Well I haven't come to the other side of the world to nurse their hangovers but I think they learnt a valuable lesson 3 year olds and partying don't mix. But then again we are boring old farts ...

The funniest bit is that the shoes that we simply had to bring ended up being 2 different sizes - turns out MIL brought 2 pairs, one for her and one for her daughter and they were different sizes. When we told her she groused that we'd have to pay the postage for the missing one to be sent to Australia - till I pointed out that in that case she'd have to make a contribution to the flight of the first one and for bringing the second one back! Hmm ... went a bit quiet.

Planning a holiday

Planning a holiday is like a military operation nowadays. Because we are visiting my sis in law ALL of my OH family have rung up with 'can you take ...?' recently. They have been a bit flabergasted at my response of 'no'. They seem to think that as we are taking a 'small person' who will have the same baggage allowance as us that THERE WILL BE LOTS OF ROOM. I don't need to tell you that they either don't have children or it was a long time ago that they did :-)

Because of the stopovers we will be taking 4 flights each of around 12 hours with a gap of at least 3 days in between. Part of the journey will be with British Airways and part with Quantas - this is the start of the problem - we have more baggage allowance with BA and also more hand luggage but the rules haven't been relaxed with Quantas. So although it appears that we have more luggage allowance, we don't, unless we dump half our stuff en route.

These same relatives have been buying cute little outfits for DS to wear on his trip - we have about 30 pairs of shorts for a 21 day trip - and will expect photos! Once you factor in all the suncream, swimming equipment and nappies for bedtime and swimming in the pool I don't think there is going to be much room for carrying things too heavy to post. Not to mention that we will also be carrying the buggy.

With only 4 days to go I'm starting to worry about the flight - not just keeping a 3 year old entertained for so long (his Christmas presents of a Fisher Price FP3 player and a LeapPad Leapster should help) but I keep having nightmares about the toilets. You see after months of struggle our DS is toilet trained and can go without a nappy in the day time but airline toilets are scary for an adult - or it was for me en route to New York when the lights went out and I couldn't get out - let alone a child! The last time we flew with him he was 15 months and hated being changed in the toilets because of the noise. I'm terrified it will undo all our hard work.
We've already decided to take the dummy - the last vestige of babyhood that we've managed to confine to bedtimes but haven't quite gotten rid of yet - for the sheer sake of a quiet life (and I don't think the other passengers would appreciate the tantrums that usually occur when he is denied it).

At the moment he is really excited because he is going to see his auntie and nursery have said that he can take their mascot (a stuffed lion) on the trip (oh great another thing to worry about losing!) with us.

So my next post maybe from our first stop off proclaiming that we're never going on a plane again and are staying there for the duration!