4 Days Until My Transatlantic Breakdown

I am in the crux of organizing, of list-writing. My mood swings pendulously between excited and terrified. Gone are those days of fun travels flying first class (alright, premier economy) enjoying a $5 glass of wine and listening to the latest movie droning from the in-air entertainment screens. Now we have a baby in tow, and I’m scurrrred, people.

To keep you up to date with our travel situation, here’s a heads up:

* I have one dress for the wedding, plus shoes, but no accessories. I have shoes for the christening but no dress.

* Seren has one dress for the christening (obvs), plus socks and hairband, but no shoes.

* Daddy has a shirt, tie and jacket for the wedding, but no pants. God knows what he’s doing for the christening.

When the frigg did we start forgetting how to dress ourselves?!? We’re the regular odd-bod family now.One last weekend to search for the missing articles of clothing, or else we’re screwed. And what kind of idiot throws away a pair of pants and keeps the matching suit jacket eh? Men, I’ll never understand ‘em.

The good news with all this failed planning is that I haven’t had the chance to start hyperventilating over the real issue that will be my travel terror. Flying itself. I’m terrified of it, wholly and truly terrified. Look, here’s the deal or at least as I see it:

- New planes = Safety with me. American Airlines have old planes. American Airlines recently announced they are buying 460 new jet planes (200 Boeing, what we’ll be flying on). Therefore American Airlines have really old planes. Really old planes = fly at your own risk cos you might end up swimming in the freezing Atlantic at 3am (Titanic-style), and you better hope your whistle and flashlight work. I’d rather not end up like Jack, know what I mean?? Translation: We are all going to die.

- I absolutely MUST have a seat on the wing; when I board a plane I sit next to the window on the wing and I meticulously check the wing for a good 30 minutes for scratches/dents/wear and tear and make an assumption of how safe the flight is going to be on the basis of my findings. A clean and tidy wing = Safety. I also watch when the little things come out of the wing (I don’t know what they’re called for chrissakes!) to slow it down when you land to make sure they are not wobbling too much and/or are too rusty (if you don’t believe any of this, ask my husband. He has been the unfortunate spectator on countless flights and he takes the mickey every single time). I also watch the wings when we hit turbulence, just to check they haven’t fallen off. I have huge problems, I know. Anyway I don’t think we have wing seats, so we are all going to die.

- Flying at night is a completely different ballgame than flying in the day. Flying at night is more dangerous because the pilot/s can’t see a damn thing outside of their matchbox-sized windscreen and they therefore have to rely on sleeping Air Control staff for direction. Yes I still believe they navigate out of their windscreen, I’ve seen them cleaning it for gods sake! Why would they bother if they don’t look out of it? Think about it people. I can handle turbulence during the day, at night it is not an option. When there is night turbulence, we are all going to die.

 

I’m hoping Seren will surprise me and be an angel on the plane, but I’m trying not to kid myself too much. At least the night flight, through all its faults, should warrant a sleepy and (god willing) sleeping baby. Then there’s the almost 3 hour enjoyable journey of driving to Wales from Heathrow after we have landed. Oh and I almost forgot that we land at gate #3,265 so we have to walk the length of the airport before we even get to Customs. How exactly do we navigate Seren through the International Customs aisle and ourselves through the EU??! This, my friends, should be very interesting.

But let me change the tone by saying we are incredibly excited to see our friends and family again (and I know I shouldn’t start a sentence by saying ‘but’). We haven’t been home since 2009 and I haven’t seen my sister since last July.  It’s going to be great to spend some time with everyone and for them to meet our newest addition to the family, Seren is going to be so excited – gosh I hope she sleeps at some point.

I guess I should finish up tonight with some pictures. Behold, Seren in her christening dress and hairband.

 

I promise I will take some decent pictures during our trip, I might even edit them.

If only I had more time on my hands.

Been a while (sorry!)

So the laptop finally died on me around 3 weeks ago. I have to say I’m not surprised as I don’t think we ever really fixed the problem. We contemplated replacing the hard drive and battery but without any certainty that this would even work we decided to buy a nice new shiny one instead! Well, it’s not as fancy as the one we had but we have to get what we can get.

Windows 7 is taking a bit of getting used to, and I still haven’t uploaded everything from my old PC (incl. PSE and all my pics/documents) – and actually my pictures take up half the memory space on this thing so I guess we need to get an external hard drive as well.

Anyways the little madam turned 10 months while this was all happening.

Best shots I got!

What’s she up to these days??

* She has 8 solid teeth now and I think she is working on no. 9 up top. omg. I should have bought shares in Motrin. She likes to randomly chew my stomach and arms from time to time which is nice.

* She doesn’t like to eat many finger foods, in fact she’s incredibly picky about the texture of things. She currently has a repertoire of Graham crackers, Cheerios and puffs, Anything remotely soft of squidgy gets a big thumbs down.

* She can eat the entire innerds of a sweet potato in one sitting however. So this has become her regular dinner

* She has started taking steps – up to 4 so far – and I’m surprised at how good her balance is. She is saying ‘dah-dee’ a lot but I don’t think she knows what it means yet (she called the dishwasher dah-dee the other day, ‘aint no similarities there). She does understand ball, daddy, mommy, ‘no’, TV (lol!), duck, blocks, puppy, teddy bear and a few others I cannot recollect right now.

* She loves reading books so much that she has started to rip and eat them. Grrreat.

* She has discovered toilet rolls and the endless fun there is in pulling them from the holder and running down the hallway; she also eats the paper when I’m not looking (I think I have a future Cindy Crawford on my hands).

* Her sleeping is still atrocious but we occasionally get the odd good night. Rich thinks its teething but I sense we are being played somewhat.

 

Anyway, in other news the Christening planning is well under way. Invitations are addressed and ready to go:

This is the template, obvs.

My sister is kindly making the cake, my ILs are helping with the food. It should be a great day, the headcount is at around 100 at the moment!!?? Now I just need to get outfits for all three of us and we’re set.

Speaking of outfits, I finally found a dress in Macy’s of all places for the wedding we are attending (sans baby); I also found some cute nude platform pumps and am just waiting for them in the post. Whether I’m going to be able to stand up or even walk in these babies is still up for question. I hope to do my first fashion-related post when they arrive! Yay. And maybe one for Seren also lol.

I have a ton of pics to upload and post (after editing them of course, cos we know they all suck) so I’m off to go get started.

Happy week, y’all.