Now we are two

We decided to try an experiment. We went to visit the family in the US. And then we left the girl with her grandparents. She's been there almost two weeks and she comes back tomorrow.

A bit of background. Life's gotten quite busy here. A planned visit to the States was to end with us coming back at the start of half-term. A magical period where not only schools are out, but so is nursery (because why would you need extra childcare then?). So zero free time has turned into negative free time.

When we mentioned this to L's mother she asked Why don't you just leave her with us for a while? You can change her flight home and I'll come back with her. Which we though Ha ha ha. That's silly — Wait.... why not?   Hey, what do you think about staying in the States with you grandparents for a week?

Yeah!

And that was that. Actually not quite. We were quite hesitant. But with her excited about it, we could at least take it seriously. I know we'd always expected for her to spend a summer or other break with her cousins or grandparents, but at 3½... we'd not expected to get the chance so soon. So to make sure we were doing the right thing, we did a number of tests.

Test One: The Sleepover.

The girl had never spent the night away from us. She'd recently gotten to sleep for a sitter, so we knew it was possible. But we'd never tried. So, with her assent, she spent a night a friends house. It worked. She had dinner and went to bed and eventually got to sleep and woke up without freaking out. Score.

Test Two: The Flight.

After staying with the grandparents she has to get back home. Which means a 7 hour flight. Her grandmother was going to fly alone with her, and the girl had to be trusted to behave for the duration. In other words, not run up and down the aisle into first class like last time.

Not an issue, if her flight over is any basis. she spent the entire time engrossed in the entertainment system. Hours of Doctor McStuffins and various other children's shows. She had to be bribed to leave the seat and go to the loo. So this would not likely be a problem.

Test Three: The day with the grandparents

She's a lovely lass, but can be a handful if you're not expecting it. So we had to be sure the grandparents knew what they were getting into. On the first full day we were in the States, we got up early and left the girl with her grandparents while we spent the entire day shopping and seeing friends, with the plan of returning after she was asleep in bed. We had a lovely time. She had a lovely time. She was actually asleep when we got home.

With all those tests passed, we still had one final challenge

Test Four: The airline tickets

We had to change the girl's ticket to a new flight, and get her grandmother on the same flight, and get them linked so they could fly together. And agree on a day with the grandparents. Not trivial but also not a big deal. Except to save like £100 per person we went through one of those cheap ticket resellers. Over email, resellers told me they can make the change. Good. But then they say on the phone only the airline can do it since it involves the grandparent's ticket. The airline, on the other hand, says only the resellers can do it since we bought the ticket through them. Back and forth few times til we learned the grandparent had to buy the ticket less than 24 hours before the child ticket was changed. During the back and forth we had to cancel the grandmother's ticket just so we'd have another 24 hours to resolve it. Finally, after a bit of escalation, a manager at the resellers says Look, only the airline can do it. If you don't believe me, call them. Then call me back on a three-way-call and I'll talk to them with you and we'll sort it out together.

So I gave the airline another call. After being on hold for 30 min. I got through and they, as chipper as can be, said, Of course we can help you with that... huh, there's a funny grinding noise on the line. Is that teeth?

I do understand why they initially denied it. Even with things going smoothly it took another 45 minutes of changing flights, changing times, moving seats, breaking up bookings, regrouping bookings, and so on and so forth. Until finally, everything was in order. The seats were booked and all was set in stone for the girl to stay.

As we stayed there we all became more and more comfortable with her staying without us. At one point when she was sleeping in another room, she got up in the middle of the night and walked to the room sister-in-law was sleeping in, and crawled into bed in between her and her infant daughter, and went back to sleep. In the morning when we spoke to the girl she said I thought you went back to London. Given how blasé she was about it, we figured she'd be just fine.

Our flight back by ourselves is where it started to hit us. First time in ages going through security without the child and her accoutrements. It was pretty easy. And on the plane L and I had a row of 3 by ourselves. It was too uncomfortable to sleep, but I had the luxury to find out, which was nice in itself. And when we landed we could go through the e-passport queues, so that took no time at all getting out, getting baggage and getting home.

It's been weird not having her around the house. Part of it is reverting to how life was before, when L & I were just a couple. So weird in that it's completely not weird at all. Though I do like being able to make the food I like to eat without worrying about spices or avoiding certain foods. La la la, let's just put a quarter cup of chilli peppers in here. Oh crushed chillies, I missed you. Let's be friends again. For a little while.

Another part of of the weird is recovering from the exhaustion of the past 3.5 years. So far I've twice slept in 12 hour chunks. I once went to bed at 7am and still got some sleep afterwards.

And there's the part where we can finally do the things that we've been putting off, like moving heavy furniture. I've been able to clean and hoover the house, and use caustic chemicals without putting them away immediately. I've done two years worth of shredding. We've 5 full recycling bags with just shredded paper and boxes we no longer need.

L on the other hand is taking the opportunity to let her attention drift. I suppose not having a child around lets you just sit and vegetate. That plus a phone with games and internet means you're not there when you're there. I found earlier that in order to keep her attention for the full duration of a conversation, I had to phone her despite being in the next room.

We've been getting reports from the grandparents about how she's doing. The first week seemed fine, though it looks like she's starting to wear down and tire of all the uncertainty and how different everything is. We've been doing Skype calls every 2 or 3 days, It's been lovely seeing her. Especially when say says I miss you dad. She's so much more rational on the calls than when she's with us talking to her grandparents.

Anyways, she's back tomorrow. We'll just have to see how she comes with this change and all the rest that's in store in the next month.

Holding hands

We spent a long weekend away on holiday, doing a good deal of travel by car. For the first time, the girl has been comfortable holding my hand. I don't mean sort of holding like grabbing onto a finger, or guiding while walking down a street, but actual hand holding – the idle sort you do when you're just being comfortable with someone's presence.

When in the car, I usually sat next to her in the back seat, with her in the car seat. Not always, but often enough the girl would sit quietly and hold my hand. It was the first time she'd done that. It was really sweet.

It was also the first time in ages I'd had time to just sit down and watch TV with L. We were staying with L's cousin. A few times after we'd put the girl to bed we'd plop down in the comfy chairs and watch something. The weird thing was holding L's hand. I didn't recognise it. It still fit, fingers interwoven, like it has for ages. It just somehow it didn't feel familiar. I mean, we must have held hands at some point since the girl was born. I'm fairly sure, at least. Maybe her hand has changed... I know mine are much drier these days – all the extra handwashing has taken a bit of a toll. Maybe that's what feels unusual. It's hard to tell. But regardless, it was nice to have those moments to just sit together.

L has taken the lass with her to visit the family in the States. I'm back here in London getting, what I hope will be, a lot of work done. And, with luck, give the house a decent tidy – the first real opportunity to clean it without the girl being around. Time to break out the noxiously fumed floor cleaners.

Travel fever

I don't understand why the girl gets sick, usually with a fever, every single time we go on holiday. Except for that one trip we made when she was ten weeks old, she's come down with something every time we travel. It does not matter if we go by car or plane, stay in a house or a hotel. She always gets sick.

We live in London, so she's not wanting for constant exposure to strange germs. Could travelling have such an impact on her that it weakens her immune system?
I'd potentially blame it on travelling in winter and her dealing with the unexpected chill, but the same thing happened when we went to the beach in August. She eats mostly the same things on holiday. The only notable difference is that we put her in disposable nappies when travelling (rather than reusable cloth). That can't possibly make a difference, can it?

We're going to be in the States for 3 weeks at the end of the month. I'm dreading what sort of cold she'll come up with this time. Must stock up on baby ibuprofen.

Now we are flying again

We're now on the wee lass's second intercontinental trip. At 10 months she's far far more active than she was at 3 months. Which makes travel much harder. No downtime at all for us. I got maybe 10 min of sleep on the flight – all of which was on the runway.

The first experiment was taking the tube to Heathrow. We've been hiring cars to the airport so far. But that was getting expensive. At some point we had to try it, so we did. We took the bus to the Piccadilly line, and sat and sat and sat. Part of the experiment was travelling with no pram or car seat. I carried the girl in the Baby Bjorn, and L did the bulk of the heavy lifting of the two bags.

I have to say, OMG, that was a success. Everything was easier. Getting to the airport, walking around the airport, going through security, not checking the pram at the gate. Everything. Everything was easier. If I can get away with it, we're not air travelling with a pram again.

Rush hour was over when we got on, but the car was still pretty full. I headed toward an empty seat, but L forced a man sitting in the "give this up" seat to get up. My husband needs this seat. Perfectly in character for her, considering she did that when she was pregnant. But not truly necessary since there was an empty seat.

The car emptied out just past central London, and we had a long but uneventful trip. I listened to podcasts, while the baby slept and L played games on her phone. That was the last relaxing moment we had for a while.

Our plan was to go to Boston. L's family wanted to see us. We did the maths and it turns out to be cheaper to fly to DC and back for a few days, than the equivalent in hotel fees for everyone. So a month after getting the tickets to Boston we bought an internal flight from Boston to DC. We got the last flight of the day we could, with 2 1/2 hours for getting through passport control, customs, check in and so on.

Checking into a flight with a baby is hassle because you can't check in in advance. So we take our chances that we'll even sit next to each other (I bought my ticket separately), let alone get a "sky cot" for the lass. In between checking in and bag drop, I take the girl to the loo. The baby changing rooms at Heathrow do not work so well with EC. No toilet, just a changing mat, sink and very very full rubbish bins. Fortunately we brought the portable seat which acts as a loo in a pinch. Which, for the first time for me, she used. So with that success behind me, I head back to L, still in the queue, next to someone with an identical nappy bag – which was a bit of a surprise since ours was gift from my mum, bought in the US.

Airport security was soooo much easier without the pram. I just walked through with the baby still attached. Everything went off without a hitch, including lunch, boarding and so on. We even had the middle row of four seats to ourselves. The pilot came on to say we may be able to take off early too. But instead, we sat on the runway for an hour and a half while some engineering issue was being resolved. Eventually they told us to get off the plane, and get on a new one which would be ready in two hours. Our Boston to DC transfer was 2 1/2 hours. At this point we knew we'd be at least 3 1/2 hours late. Bugger.

I was very wary of taking Virgin again after they broke our pram on the last flight we took with them. We spoke to Virgin at the desk, who said Not our problem, you bought the other tickets separately. We spoke to US Air who said Sure, we'll change your flight to tomorrow, but it's up to Virgin to pay for your hotel. We spoke to Virgin on the phone, and they said It's up to the people at the desk, but they should give you a hotel voucher. We spoke to the travel insurance emergency line and they said It's after 5 (it was 5:07), call back on Monday. Can you at least tell me what, if anything, is covered? Nope. Call back Monday. Good luck. Back to the Virgin desk for us, No hotel for you, really. Full Stop. they tell us.

On, the bright side, on the way back to the desk there was a big queue, but it was moving at a moderate pace. So I took out the lass and walked her through the queue. It was going just fast enough for her to keep us. Her first queue!

So, we qet on the new plane in bit of a cranky mood. Adding to the annoyance was the fact that there were people sitting in the row next to us now. However, it wasn't such a bad thing – they were there for the other sky cot. They were travelling with an 11 month old girl. We did the usual introduction of the children, and giving their ages. This time after half a minute I remembered to add Oh, and I'm Bob and this is L.

I'm trying to hard to remember this part of introductions. Almost always I meet other parents and come away knowing their child's name, but almost never do we exchange adult names.

At one point the two little girls sat next to each other and tried holding hands (the best they could do is hold wrists) which was really cute. Another cute point was when L was holding our child on my left, and the other girl was on my right. I announced I'm surrounded by baby toes! to the amusement of the rest of the row.

Our girl just would not sleep in the sky cot. Every attempt L made to put her in would wake her up crying. So she eventually just held the sleeping girl in her arms. After a few hours I tried my luck. Success. Except ten minutes later when the other girl started crying which woke ours, crying.

In the end, L and I got maybe 20 minutes of sleep between us. The girl got about 4 hours. The toilets were just small enough that she couldn't wriggle too far, but large enough I could put her on the loo without raising the changing table. she loved the air jet. It distracted her and she played with it.

Passport control and customs were fast and easy to get through. We were out by 9:30 or so. We could have made the 2nd flight if we'd arrived a couple hours earlier. I was hoping the 2nd flight was delayed enough we'd make it, but no. It left on time.

We went up to the Virgin making-connections person just past customs, explained the situation, and he said, Ok, we'll get you a hotel, but you'll have to go to the US Air desk at Terminal B to sort out a replacement flight in the morning. Just sit here for a few minutes while I do the paperwork. Okaaaay. Why they couldn't do that in the first place is beyond me. But I'm not complaining. Literally. This saved me the effort of a huge scathing letter I was going to write to them about their drop in quality of customer service.

We went out to catch the shuttle to terminal B. No shuttle in sight. The sign said it was 0.3 miles, so we decided that since we still had the trolley for the luggage, and the girl was safely in the Baby Bjorn, we'd just walk it.

Bit of a mistake there. The airport is a big U shape. And the route through from E to B, walking inside the airport is not direct. Two notable things. First, there's the rocking chairs in terminal C. The other is the really nice baby changing facilities in terminal D. Enough room for both adults and the luggage. A huge bin which was easy to get waste into, and wasn't full (like in Heathrow), a good size changing table and a toilet, so we could EC the lass. Which was good, since she was ready to go by that point.

We finally got to terminal B, which was itself a big U shape – we had to trek through the car park to bypass the bulk of the walk. I was terrified that they'd be closed, but at the far end of the US Air area was one open desk with a live person. We wearily marched up to him and explained ourselves. He told us that when they built this airport, they must have done huge amounts of research on airport design so they could build the worst possible layout that could fit in the area. We certainly agreed. He also told us that the only reason he was still there is that there was a delayed flight to Buffalo still to come, and if it were on time, the desk would have been closed. Scary bit of luck for us.

He cheerfully and immediately put us on the next flight at 6am (ick) and were done. He told us how to get to the hotel and we were on our way. Via terminal A – so we'd walked through the entire airport by the time we were done.

The hotel is attached to the airport. We found ourselves suddenly in the conference centre in the hotel still pushing the luggage trolley we got when we picked up our bags. This did not work at all well on the carpet. So we cheekily abandoned it and went off in search of the lobby. On check-in we found we also had $100 of food vouchers. Which was good, since we were starving, and room service in the US is hideously over-priced. We got to our room at 10:57. L found the room service menu which said it ended at 11. A mad selection of food and a panicked attempt to figure out the room phone followed, but we got the order in on time.

They gave us a travel cot for the lass, but she did not take to it at all. We had to be up at 3:40, so cosleeping was the far better option than trying to convince the child to use the cot. We collapsed on the bed and were up again far too soon.

This time we took the shuttle to the airport. A quick check in and baggage check and we were off to the security queue. They saw the girl and sent us through the business-class queue, which was nice. I had to take off my shoes, but the baby could stay attached. They took me aside for a hand check, at which I joked, Whose hands? We have four of them before I panicked and realised you do not joke with airport security. But the woman laughed and passed me on to someone who brushed over my hands with a magical chemical-sensing wand. Whatever it checked for, I did not have, so all was well. I still wonder if that's standard with people carrying babies, or it was random? Were they checking for baby poop and sudocrem?

There were no baby changing rooms in terminal B, so we had to make do with L changing her in the ladies'.

The puddlejumper we got on to DC was small, but at least we sat next to each other. No sky cot. Not even a baby seatbelt. We just held on to the kid during takeoff and landing. We took turns walking the lass up and down the aisle during the flight, so she'd not get restless and maybe use up some of her energy. I passed person after person head down and asleep on their tray. One of the stewardesses was friendly and chatty, which helped keep me awake enough to survive the flight.

At the end, we landed early, breezed out of the airport and spent 1/2 an hour trying to get the car seat fitted in L's sister's car. The baby cried the whole car ride, and would only be settled by being sung French lullabies by L and her sister. She finally fell asleep two minutes from the house.

Now we fly

Just over a month ago, we took the child on her first intercontinental plane trip. We went to see her grandparents, aunts and uncle in the US. Planning this journey was a lot of work. I've travelled a lot, so at this point I've got it down to an art. At least if it's just me, or just me and L. No need to plan how to get to the airport, or anything. Just set out on autopilot and don't think till we hit the destination.

This time we had to actually plan. In great detail. How do we feed and change her on the flight? How many changes of clothes do we need to bring? How many just for travelling. How do we get her and the pram to the airport with our luggage? Do we need the pram? How does security work? How do we carry her around the airport? How will she deal with the air pressure changes on takeoff and landing? What do we do if she fusses? How do we get from the airport at our destination? Our birth plan wasn't this complicated.

Or expensive. We ended up using minicabs for the London-side travel, and a rental car in the US.

The minicab picking us up at home arrived 45 minutes early since they wanted to fit in an extra fare that morning (or, as they said, traffic). We weren't done packing so all we could do was have them wait. We barely squeezed our luggage plus the folded pram in the car. So now we know how much we can take with us an fit in a reasonable sized minicab.

Rather than detailing the whole adventure, I'll just recount the interesting bits.

The wee one had about as much luggage for just herself as we did for both L and I combined. Or more for her, if you include the pram.

All the airport and airplane staff cooed over the child. Even UK immigration said awww. Only Dulles security were heartless and mean. More on that later.

We flew Virgin Atlantic, which had good parts and bad parts. The seating on the plane over was lovely. It was one of their newer planes. The "sky cot" was easy to get the kid into and out of. She even slept in it a little. We were sat next to the double-sized loo which had a good sized changing table. We had row of 5 to ourselves.

The real down side was Virgin breaking our pram. Two of the wheels just snapped off. They said they'd pay us back for the repairs, but I'm still following that up with them. Not at all impressed. Especially with their customer service: Here's all your paperwork, phone the number at the end to make the arrangements. When we got to our destination, only then did we notice there was no number in the paperwork. Or on the web site. Or anywhere. Not impressed.

They also appear to have a policy of taking 3 weeks to respond to any communication. This is not sarcasm. This is their actual policy.

Anyways, once we arrived, we got to spend some quality family time plus occasional visits to friends in the area. The little one behaved quite well through most of our social events. In fact, we benefited from her jet lag since she was not able to get to sleep at a reasonable time, instead of after midnight.

My first time alone together with the wife after the child was born was when we left her, with the mother-in-law and a bottle of breastmilk, while we went off to renew the wife's drivers license. Then shopping at Target.

Sounds romantic, doesn't it?

The worst trouble we had was car rides. The babe would sometimes just hate them. That was yet another thing which was the opposite of what we were led to believe. About 1/3 of all drives had her needing consolation at some point. Either I had to reach to the back seat and try to calm her down, or, I would just sit next to her for the duration of the drive.

We ended up not using the pram much at all – even after we got the replacement parts. It was car seat for the drive, then the sling at the other end. I did end up getting a number of amused my god, there's a baby in there when people noticed that the bump on my chest was a cute little tiny person rather than too many pies.

Flying back the UK was less pleasant than leaving the UK. Dulles has dropped in my opinion to a strip mall with airplanes. There are no changing tables at the airport. None. The family restrooms are just large restrooms with a single toilet and a sink. I had to change her on the floor. I still cannot believe it's that bad.

Security made things worse. They were nice and cooed over the babe up until the metal detectors. At that point they made us dismantle the pram, on top of all the various take off shoes, take out laptops, etc etc they usually make people do. Then when madly putting the pram and luggage back together, with just one shoe on between us, all while trying to keep the child calm, then they told us to vacate the secure area. Really. That actually happened.

I swear, if I didn't have to return to DC, that would be enough to convince me to just give up and never go there again. It's not that nice a place to warrant that sort of trouble. (Then again, arrival wasn't so bad, maybe next time I'll try leaving from another city)

The plane ride back to the UK was innocuous. The plane itself was not as new, so the facilities were less nice, but certainly passable. The cot did look like it was slept in more times than I care to imagine. This time Virgin didn't break any of our stuff, which was a bonus. Passport control was a breeze. There was sizeable queue, but they herded us to a new queue with no one ahead of us. We were stamped in by a officer in training, who clearly had not gone through her cynic training yet. She cooed the most of any public official yet over the child. That made for a nice welcome home.

I'm stopping the story here so I end on a high note