Ok, The Bean is just over two, but holidaying with small children is hard work and rewarding! The nicest part was having my husband around the whole time which meant I could have a few luxuries like indulge in an hour long bath (I haven't had a bath since Pops was born, it's quick showers for me I'm afraid), and read a novel (Two doors down, by Annie McCartney - very good but I didn't get to finish it because it's pretty difficult to breastfeed and read/turn the pages over at the same time).
Both girls behaved impeccably on holiday. We were only in Ireland, but the weather was fantastic so it felt like Spain until we dipped our toes into the Atlantic and remembered we were on the north coast of Ireland - Brrrrrrrr. The Bean didn't enjoy the flight as much as I thought, as this was her first flight being over two and therefore having her own seat on the plane. All she wanted was to take her seat belt off and crawl around the floor. I had to restrain her with a bumper pack of Iggle Piggle stickers which ended up being stuck to all our seats. She also threw a tantrum because the Plane wasn't pink, but some things, even mums can't change!
We took the girls to a beach fun fair one day which they loved (well, Pops slept the WHOLE time), but most of the rides were either for toddlers or for toddlers accompanied by parents. This resulted in my husband and I taking turns to squash into tiny rides made for tiny children. I have bruised shins from the caterpiller ride and I wacked my head on the 'tumble train'. Our mistake was taking The Bean on the Ghost Train. We assumed it would be crap, like all the ghost trains I have ever been on, but we forgot that what is rubbish to an adult is super scary to a two year old. Off The Bean went beaming with happiness into the ghost train tunnel... a couple of minutes later she came out the other end clinging onto her Dad and crying for me. My husband said it was actually really scary and skeletons were popping up all over the place. The Bean calmed down with an ice cream (a pink one of course) but spent the evening telling us not to take her back to the 'dark place'. We felt like the worse parents in the world!
Luckily she seems to have forgotten all about it now and if I ask her about the fair, all she talks about is the helter skelter which was brilliant. Anyway, after about one hundred ice creams later we returned home on the plane last night. When we got to Heathrow and collected our bags we realised that The Bean's buggy hadn't arrived. As the baggage reclaim room emptied we found ourselves standing with six other families, all with toddlers, all without buggies. Apparently they had left all our buggies at the airport we departed from... By this stage we had waited for an hour to find out where our six buggies were, all our kids were tired and hungry and it was bedtime and we were all at Heathrow, Then an Edinburgh flight arrived and the same thing had happened to another set of parents. Now, It did strike me that if you didn't have enough baggage room on a flight you might 'accidently' leave behind the bulkier baggage i.e buggies, rather than leave suitcases behind. I just wanted to warn other parents that this happened and that it could be awkward, especially if you are travelling on your own with more then one child and you rely on that buggy.... Please let me know if this has ever happened to you as I was pretty annoyed by it. We didn't get home until 10.30pm, with a very tired grumpy newborn and a toddler who had to have chocolate buttons for tea....
Our buggy still hasn't arrived...
posted on
Monday, July 14, 2008 2:52 PM