during percy's morning nap we drove to paul's parents home in wollongong. the little car was packed to the rafters! we had borrowed from my brother a travel cot, this along with a bag of clothes for us, a bag of clothes for percy, her change bag, some toys and books, presents, two eskies full of seafood, a box of food, formula, bowls, spoons etc for percy, a couple of hats and the beach bag of towels and swimmers left no room for breathing!
the day was spent chatting and relaxing with paul's relatives out from britain for the first visit in 20 years. plus playing with the present we gave to paul's father for his birthday (we have a number of birthdays in december/ january) -a set of remote controlled cars. one police car and one "drifter" decked out in red flames on a black background. very clearly the "bad" car. if the police car is lined up correctly it boasts an immobiliser that can stop the drifter.
percy quite enjoyed all the attention. she didn't go so well with the sleeping tho. how surprising, hey? i don't recall how long her afternoon nap lasted but i do recall getting no more than four hours sleep through the night. unfortunately she didn't take to the travel cot and probably all the new people and stimulus kept her brain wired. i fed her four times and rocked her between 1am and 2:15am. bllrrgghhhh.... finally the mid morning hours seemed to bring some sleep- until a mobile phone (not one of ours!) received a message at 6:15am accompanied by loud music. why oh why do people need to have mobile phone ring and message tones that could fill a concert theatre and silence an entire public school???!! anyways, percy was awake and up. meaning i was too. paul had asked for the nite off so he could enjoy a few drinks with his cousins. i was happy to say yes. what i sort of figured was that he'd be fully functional the following day and i could have a bit of a break. paul sized hang-overs don't result in functional pauls the following day. oh well. it was 20 years between drinks...
plus this morning was now christmas morning!!
this day was just fine. my brother, sister-in-law and their two boys, our nearly neighbours/ parents group friends and their baby, and two friends came for an early dinner to note the passing of another year for me.
one day we are just going to have to make dinner for my brother et al that consists of meat and three veg! we made marinated lamb skewers to be made into kebabs with hommus, tabouli etc, etc. it's just not their cup of tea; the poor boys ended up having leb bread with cheese and tomatoe sauce! not exactly a nutritious and appetising meal. also we completely forgot that one of our guests is vegetarian. oops again. at least he's not a rabid-"don't even put it in the same kitchen/ plate/ table/ pan" vego.
dinner was about 5:30pm. then i bathed percy followed by our usual bedtime routine- bath, blow dry, massage, nappy, boob, book, bed. i recall she slept quite well despite the racket downstairs. in fact we think the dimming of the racket might cause her to stir! we've noticed on a few occasions she'll stir or awaken when we turn the tv off or otherwise decrease the volume in the house, and get ready to go to bed ourselves.
i think she woke twice for a feed. this seems to be what she does now- can pretty much settle herself from other stirrings but is hungry every four hours. wonder when she'll grow out of that..?
we had yummy sponge birthday cake for dessert. my nephews helped me blow out the candles. there is a photo of this but it is currently stored on a computer i don't have access to. will attach when i can.
i got a lovely red handbag, choccies and a massage voucher as my birthday presents. i did ask myself how one gets to 32 without owning any hand bags. i imagine this will be unimaginable to most women. i'm just not a bag person. i find them unwieldy and generally ugly. particularly the fashion of the last few years that includes lots of tassles, buckles that don't actually buckle, chains, more buckles, etc etc. i do have one bag that is incredibly plain and just black that i keep at work. it nicely fits work files if i have to take one or two to a meeting. so how do i carry all the junk about the women carry? well, i have a nice red back pack that is minimal and can look like a hand bag too. all i carry is my wallet, my keys and my phone. optional items include a water bottle, tissues, lip balm and sun glasses case. i'm beyond make-up; maybe one day again, and with the contraceptive implant i don't have periods so need none of the paraphenalia that goes with that.
having said all this, i really do like the new bag. i'm sure i'll find occasion to use it; and it will probably last me the rest of my life!
ahhh, the feastive season... way too much food, way too much family, way too much excess, way too liitle sleep!
we've had a mixed week. there's been no blog updating because i've either been asleep/zombied or we were visiting at paul's parents and didn't take the laptop with us.
let's see how i remember the days...
percy crawled today!!
at exactly 3:05pm percy crawled off her change mat (we change her on the floor by-the-way) and across the room to her papa! it was a definate crawl- none of the up on tippy-toes, downward dog yoga pose, roll back to sitting, roll to one side, sit up, caterpillar, flop on belly, up on tippy-toes again thingamingy around. however she is an opportunistic baby, meaning that she'll take what she gets easiest. so after that crawl she wouldn't crawl back to me because papa had a glass and her empty bottle that she was content to play with, plus he provides appropriate support to get to a standing position- which is what she'd much rather do. no repeat yet...
we also think that the bulk of the cloth nappies instead of disposable nappies may be hindering her some. she crawled to papa before i got to put a new nappy on her. meaning her cute little bum was having some air time, involving peeing on the carpet. oh well, the carpet is cactus anyways. we mean to replace it next year.
also, no pictures. we'll be more vigilant in coming days.
...in a good way. since being without a dummy (unless you count her two parents) percy has mildly improved in the sleeping stakes. we're definately heading in the right direction. cross fingers it continues. last nite she had two feeds at 9:50pm and 2:15am, then woke at 6:15am- no settles! the nite before it was two feeds and one settle. could this be the beginning of a trend?
i don't think we'll drop the feeds very soon. she seems genuinely hungry both times. she slurped thru the bottle paul gave her at 2:15 in no time at all. he thought she would have taken more if the bottle had been bigger. still two feeds with no other action is much preferable to getting up every hour or hour and half to replace the dummy.
i expect (perhaps foolishly) that as she eats more during the day, including me concentrating on getting lots of milk into her, she might drop one nite time feed.
day time naps are also managed quite well. she varies how long she takes to fall asleep so i can't say there is a 'typical' pattern yet. however i don't recall it being longer than 20 minutes in the last couple of days. how long she sleeps also varies. yesterday morning was one and a half hours, the afternoon only 40 minutes. i'm still operating in tired mode but i do see light at the end of the tunnel.
actually i thought it went quite well. paul might have a different perspective.
she took an hour to go to sleep (7pm to 8pm), the nite then progressing as follows:
9:50pm she woke, i breastfeed her, back to sleep at 10:05pm.
11:58 she woke, paul settled her by rocking and bouncing her; meaning his legs were on fire and the settling period felt like a lot longer than it was- back to sleep at 12:15am (he also changed her nappy.)
4:30am she woke, paul gave her a bottle of expressed breast milk as she lay in her cot, back to sleep around 4:45am.
5:05am she woke, paul settled her again to 5:30am.
7:00am i woke her up for the day with a breastfeed, change of nappy and getting dressed.
she since went back down for her nap at 9:20am, asleep without any action from us at 9:30am and now at 11:30am we haven't heard a peep. i'm about to make her a bottle and see if she is ready to rise.
so not the perfect nite but in the right direction i think. what's the bet it will all go to really smelly shit tonite?! "don't be so pessimistic!" paul would say.
we threw all percy's dummies in the bin today.
gasp.
anyone who has a baby that just won't sleep will understand what this action means. paul is trying to get her to sleep right now. so far we've only been going 27 minutes. however percy has been screaming so hard i'm sure her throat is raw.
we made the decision that the dummies have to go because her sleep is so badly dependant on them. aside from that four and half hours i mentioned earlier in the week she has been atrocious- i've been up at one and half hour intervals for either feeding her or to replace the dummy she has lost and can't find by herself nearly every nite. we think if she doesn't have the dummy going to sleep she'll not be wanting it later in the nite. if we haven't gone mental over nite i'll let you know how the nite progressed tomorrow.
the day today was not an encouraging beginning. she took 40 minutes to fall asleep for her morning nap and after 50 minutes of unhappiness we got her up without her sleeping at all in the afternoon. i subsequently took her out for a walk which saw her fall asleep before i got two blocks; she slept an hour. (the thing about walking in the rain is you've got the footpaths and parks all to yourself!)
hi, back. paul did his best for 35 minutes. then it was my turn. talk about a mummy's girl! she took awhile but she is asleep now. considering someone recently told me she did this for five hours one nite we doing alright so far. but let's not jinx it! she might awaken in ten minutes.
anyways, the line is crossed. there are no dummies in this house and all the shops are shut. see you in the morning.... hopefully!
who would have thought that four and half hours could be such a significant amount of time? i was up last nite to feed percy at 11pm and again to settle her at 2am. she was crying quite strongly at 2am and i couldn't think of anything else to calm her down than to feed her. so while i am very reluctant to feed her at less than 4 hour intervals in case she decides this is a nice way to pass the dark hours, demanding more and more warm drinks thru the nite. she did take one breast and fell asleep right away. i figured i'd be up again in an hour or two to do the other side- but no! not a peep; at least not one that i heard. so i got to sleep from 2:30am to 7:00am. how's that!? miserable on most accounts but near to bliss as i can expect. i almost feel refreshed.
this is significant on another account too. percy is quite capable now of rolling onto her stomach, there to pop onto her hands and knees. what she can't do is get back down again to sleep on her side or back. (i've only seen her sleep on her stomach twice.) in the middle of the nite, she's tired, frustrated, possibly a little frightened and just wants to sleep (i assume/hope.) she then cries out for help to roll her over. the previous two nites we were up three times to do this, adding in two feeds amounts to hardly any sleep. there are devices (eg. ockie straps) that could keep her pinned to the bed but i am reluctant to use these as they have to go eventually. we've already learnt the hard way not to get dependant on something!
so the significance is also in the lack of rolling over assistance requested in that 4.5 hours.
who's up for heavy vehicle driving today?!!
because percy only slept half an hour instead of the booked 2 hours at 1pm today i took her out for a walk at 4:30 today, hoping for a little doze in the stroller. we went around erko oval and then up park street, along henderson for one block then turned up clara street. approaching the tom bass sculpture school i thought i recognised a familiar shape... colour.... presence.... on the footpath ahead of us. sure enough, as it came into better view, there lay, in neglected and pensive mood purple futon. oh, how immeasurably sad. i stood beside it and mourned its demise in the world. i almost thought it might be staring back up at me; dejected, forlorn, asking 'why, why has it come to this?' this being a much raggeder state then when it left us- the purple cover torn, wet stains and marks, dirt, leaves, yet more animal hair...
i sorely wanted to scope it up and bring it home again; give it a bath, something hot to eat, a nice cuddle and replace it in our home and hearts. of course it's too heavy to pick up let alone drag across the entire suburb. (and i'm not sure a bath would suit.)
that's the nature of giving things away; you fool yourself that the two bucks you gave the homeless person will be spent on a mango, banana, berry swirl infusion blast from a juice bar but you really know it's going towards a bottle of burbon. once you give it away it's not yours to dictate how it's used any more. don't offer the beggar a burger, let them choose how to spend your largesse, does your boss tell you how to spend your wages? hence i walked away from purple futon ever so slightly misty eyed, ever so slightly heavy hearted, with the occasional backward glance and '"c'est le vie" on my lips.
hasn't been percy's month for family. which is not to say she hasn't seen other members of her family, it's more that seeing them is not conducive to her routine, especially her sleeping patterns. this causes her parents no end of grief. percy wouldn't be including 'good sleeper' as a "strength" on her resume anyways, with long drives to wollongong or castle hill and back thrown in it definately classifies as a "weakness."
we are not doing these trips again unless completely unavoidable. judges decision is final, no argument/ discussion will be entered into.
on a cheerier note everything else is pretty good. the list of attempted foods (not necessarily all accepted and repeatedly consumed) would now include: plum, kiwi fruit, weetbix, cherries, blue berries, banana, green beans, nectarine, zucchini, red cabbage, toasted cheese sandwich (mostly just the bread bit), chocolate, red wine (not by me! a dipped finger tip from her grandfather) tandoori lamb cutlet (very cutely gnawed on while clutched in a tight fist for a good half an hour) and some store bought mixes including fruit muesli and spaghetti bolognaise. the standard fall back is still baby cereal; farex, mixed with formula or water. it would still comprise 50% of her intake. we're not putting much effort into boiling water for her anymore. she hasn't had any illness yet and she's having straight tap water more than boiled.
crawling is anticipated pretty soon. she now easily gets to a hands and knees position, rocks for a while, sticks an arm or a leg out, then back to tummy down. this is frustrating for her- evidenced by the scrunched face and the whine so we think with the right motivation she'll be on her way to independant travels soon enough.
standing is still the preferred position. she's got the cordination to pull with her arms, get her legs under her and push up 'til upright. what she doesn't have is the balance once she's there. making standing a supervised only activity.
swimming class has been going well. this week is the last class for the year. i've re-enrolled her for saturdays next year, as i'll be working on fridays. this way paul and i could also share her classes while the other does some laps if they like. i think the main thing percy has realised from swimming class, and her baths, is that things still exist under the water. she will reach for things below the surface- toys and toes. i'm not sure she understood the three dimensionality of water when classes first started.
her laugh is infectious and everybody loves her- der!
paul made a delicious lemon cream sauce to accompany dinner last nite. we wondered whether percy would be interested in the taste of lemon....
what feels like more than half a life time ago i left my parents home to make my way in the world, as they say. i took with me, amongst other things, the single wooden bed that my father had built and that i had slept on for most of my childhood and teenage years. it was pretty nice of my parents to shift this bed for me given that my leaving was acrimonious with me unequivocally telling them to go fuck themselves. (story for another story.)
upon relocating to sydney after a year or two at uni i decided i would like an adult bed. me big girl now! i bought a double futon bed from a shop now closed on king street, newtown. they delivered it to the apartment i was sharing with my flat mate, now husband, paul, in parramatta. (story for another story-if you're interested that is.) i adored this futon. it was my first major purchase, it was furniture; a big deal in itself, it was funky, it was oh so comfortable! i know futons don't work for a lot of people but i really liked the hard mattress and the solid lumpiness of it as you tried to tuck sheets around it or turn it over.
this futon has been shipped to every place i've since laid my head; ashfield, ultimo, pyrmont, brisbane, erskineville mark I, jannali, erskineville mark II, kirribilli. it was in kirribilli, the first place paul and i moved into together as a couple that we sawed it to pieces, screwed hunking, heavy blocks of timber and industrial hinges to it and converted it to a sofa bed. this operation also involved covering it in psychedelic purple material and sewing lime green ties thru it. we broke at least half a dozen tapestry and furniture needles on that task.
as a sofa bed it has served us many years in accepting the weary bodies of expected and unexpected guests. it has sat and lain in our numerous, changing lounge rooms, bombarded by baby boys, clawed by our cats, dusted in dropped dinners; all equanimously recieved. only once did it extract a revenge. while in pyrmont, unfolding it from sofa to bed on slipping wood floors it threw me off balance, happily engulfing my right little finger in its closing maw, crushing the bone, causing me to cry and curse at once.
now the purple futon is adventuring without us, cast adrift in the unpredictable homes of the inner west. moving percy into her own room, where the futon had previously reigned supreme, necessitated me breastfeeding her also in that room. the futon without arm rests or method to support my arms and back sufficiently made way for an arm chair more suited to the task. poor futon took up position on the footpath with a neatly scrawled note "free - note, very heavy, no liability accepted." hardly two hours had passed when purple futon was gone.
so this bed that carried me thru many homes, many tears, many tumbles is now someone elses to enjoy. i hope they do.
percy accompanied us to her child care orientation day today. from mid january next year she'll be going to SDN early learning centre in erko for three days a week.
oddly, or maybe not so oddly to people that don't have mortgages and careers and do have under utilised family nearby, we were asked not to bring her to the orientation session. uh duh! if we had someone else to look after her we wouldn't be needing child care at $78 a day.
she did sleep for a little while, while there. hopefully she makes up the short fall this afternoon. on a funny note i got her home, while paul went to work, at 11am. since this is her usual getting up time from her morning nap, accompanied by a boobie feed i thought we'd do the feed and then try some more sleeping. feed good, sleep not happening. getting to the funny bit! we leave a dummy in percy's cot in case we really can't find any other way of soothing her, it's a last resort to reach for in the middle of the nite. well after half an hour or so of her being quiet in the cot i looked in on her- she'd wriggled up, grabbed the dummy and popped in her own mouth and turned on the music to her mobile. so much for sleeping!! it was adorably funny tho.
back to child care... we've got the enrollment form and all the other 'welcome pack' guff. i've written down her name for two settling in periods in the second week of january and then she'll start the week beginning the 14th (think it's the 14th.) so let the fun begin. i'm sure it will be harder for me than her. the settling in sessions are when i or paul or both us of accompany her to the centre for 2 or 3 hours to get her somewhat familiar with the surrounds, the people and the new life before being left without her usual "blankie" of mum or dad. for the little time she spent looking around today she was happy.
more of the same and some new stuff. gee, that's enlightening!
sadly we've slipped back to being dummy dependant. i don't even know how it happened. it's annoying because i'm sure it's contributing to her not sleeping as well as she could thru the nite. our nightly routine seems to be two feeds and two 'settles' at indescriminate times. the feeds generally four hours apart.
sleeping is pretty much the only gripe as she is steadily coming along with the eating caper. i've got to read up on what i can give her and start being a little more adventurous- including combining foods. presently she has one food type at a time, unless i mix some with her baby cereal. meals follow a pattern of vegetable or fruit mashed up to refusal, then baby cereal into which i surreptiously mix small portions of the previous veg or fruit if any was left after the refusal point. and also a good slurp of water from the sippy cup along the way.
on the adorable side she's taking independant steps. if we hold her elbows she will "walk" a few steps without us influencing her by dragging her or manipulating her in other ways. this is very cute to watch her little knees raise up high and her feet swing and solidly plant themselves before the next foot takes off.
she takes great glee in her baths, sucking the face cloth and splashing with whole body convulsions- don't need to clean the bathroom once percy has wet it down! she has some bath toys that fill with water enabling us to squirt her. her preferred target is straight in her mouth! this causes occasional splutters and coughs but she's always back for more. sucking, trying to digest the bath sides is also a preferred activity.
her appetite for paper remains undiminished. we have a really thick papered magazine from mcgrath real estate that has kept her entertained for two weeks now. it's an appropriate use seeing as we can't afford any of the property in it! ordinary magazines are confetti in minutes while newspaper is pulp in seconds. in fact we don't bother with newspaper anymore. i assume i'm not teaching her any respect for books- oh dear. perhaps she can differentiate between mags and books tho as she doesn't try to destroy her books as vigourously as the 'lighter' media.
that's it for now...
what a very interesting weekend we've had. for the first time in her life (seven and half months of it) percy slept thru the nite on saturday 17 november 2007. fancy that, hey? this was the perfect nite to do it as paul's parents agreed to babysit while we went out. just paul and i. just the two of us. alone. no percy. what a decidedly odd feeling that was.
we did our usual bedtime routine and she dropped off nearly instantly. we were out the door by 7:30pm. home again around 9:30pm so not an extensive nite on the booze or anything like that but really, really appreciated. she had a little protest at 11:30pm which was soothed away by the dummy ('nother story about the resumption of dummy use.) and then we didn't hear from her until 6:00am! paul woke around 4:00am and asked when i had fed her, to which i replied "i haven't yet", that surprised him. consequence of not feeding thru the nite was terribly engorged breasts come the morning. they didn't know percy wasn't going to want them! she cleared that problem up quick smart at 6:00am anyways. then went back to sleep for another 40 minutes. gee whiz it keeps getting better!
sadly last nite was back to the usual, a couple of feeds and a couple of settles. oh well. there is hope. it can be done once- it can be done again!
percy is still in her own room. it's working no worse than having her in ours. so far it's not actually working better either but perhaps that will come. the regime last nite was bed at 6:45pm, paul settle with 'shooshing' around 8pm, breastfeed at 10:30pm, me settle with 'shooshing' at 1:30am, breastfeed at 2:30am, awake at 6:15am. paul brought her into our bed when she woke in the morning as we just couldn't move yet. she gurgled and scratched our faces and pulled our hair for half an hour before she had her breastfeed breakfast at 6:45am.
it's not perfect but we can only hope for better as she gets older.
her eating is now going backwards. damn it! can we please have a break some where? i'm sick of "persisting", i want a bloody result!
on an interesting note; she fell asleep on her side this afternoon.
on a not-so-encouraging note; we are resorting to using the dummy a little more again. just to get her calm if she really screams when in her cot. we then ease it when she is nodding off. is this a good practice? don't bloody know, don't care that much either.
proof she does actually sleep...
after a 4:30am melt down from me this morning paul shifted all percy's things out of our room and into our second bedroom. which means no more spare room but hopefully better sleeping and a less irrational me.
she's having her first nap in her own room right now. it's a big move in my mind but probably not in reality. i'm too tired and over-wrought to do anything else this morning. my parents group have organised to meet to see the mums and bubs session at broadway cinemas this morning. the movie starts at 10:30am and even with the huge number of ads broadway always plays, if percy is still sleeping there is no way i'm getting her up to get there on time. we shall see...
p.s i'm having the cats killed- they pissed me off just way too much last nite. the only thing stopping me so far is lethargy. the cat cages are under the stairs behind heaps of other crap and i can't be assed to get them out. otherwise they'd be on their way to the vet and permanent sleepy land.
by the time we got to hawaii we were all touristed out. so while there are plenty of things to see and do both on the main island and all the other littler ones we flexed out. the only energetic thing we did was climb to the top of diamond head crater to see the sunrise one morning. this was because percy was still on some other time zone and woke, ready for the day to begin at 4am.
otherwise we had lazy swims, some slow walks, big meals and happy playing sessions with percy. percy scored herself some new swimmers here too. and her mum got another hat. well, it was hot and sunny and it would have been dangerous for me to be without one! funny story about the hats- yes, paul got one too. everyone we have asked since we arrived home thinks they look like straw versions of american cowboy hats. we think so too. well, in hawaii we had three different people, without them hearing us speak, ask us if we were aussiiieees. very weird. we put it down to the tv program 'mcleods daughters', which is very big overseas. apparently they wear hats like this. i'll have to watch an episode now. i would have assumed they wore akubras.
the hotel in honolulu was very nice. the new otani kamani beach hotel. it's away from the main wakiki tourist area but only 20-30 minutes walk back to there if you want to. we had a fabulous (upgrade) room overlooking the beach and the ocean, with views back to wakiki. the dining "room" was an outdoor terrace covered in an ancient, gnarled tree, facing the ocean. we had good weather every day, except for one spot of rain one evening. it was lovely to sit either on our balcony or the dining terrace and chill. percy gave us a mad dash back to our room one breakfast. this was funny in hind sight... we'd just been seated for breakfast, hadn't even ordered yet when i look down at percy sitting in her stroller to see poo leaking out her pants leg and all over the stroller!! yucko! "hold the table- we'll be back!' paul picked up stroller, baby and all and made a beeline for the lifts. after washing percy and her stroller down we returned sans stroller, plus sling, as if nothing had happened. was that the worst applied nappy ever? i have no idea, i thought it would have been the same as most others. oh well, it's funny to laugh at now.
piccies from honolulu... (coming soon)
we did go there. i'm just a long way behind in writing about it.
primarily i'd say new york is made for childless adults. we still had a good time, saw a few of the sights and enjoyed ourselves. i am thinking of re-naming our trip: "the world tour of scaffolding", a lot of the buildings i want to take in were either partially or completely covered in scaffolding! this included the palace at versailles (one whole wing), the flat iron building (part of one facade), the gorgeous buildings lining central park and believe it or not the entire guggenhiem museum!! we'd been laughing about what was covered as we walked up the side of central park to the guggenhiem. we'd decided that because we'd just spent a few hours in the metropolitan museum of art we were museumed out and would just gawk at the architecture of the gug. not to be! paul spied it first and starting laughing and apologising all at once. i was confused until he pointed, "that's the gug..." am i the god of scaffolding? does this stuff just erect itself when it sees me coming? never mind, i'm thinking of stealing percy's 'gap year' for myself, sending her straight to uni or down the mines and taking the world trip myself. will the gug still be there in 17 years? might have to go earlier than that.
we had a hotel on west 46th street. which is not an interesting part of town really. it just seemed sort of central to me when i was booking. we did walk nearly everywhere- including one monster trip on our first day from 46th street all the way to the southern tip of manhatten. this is not just a 46 block walk for those of you not familiar with new york, as the southern end continues with streets that are not numbered but have normal names. we went past times square, down broadway, thru soho and washington square, past the world trade centre site to arrive at the park on the southern tip. sorry, the name escapes me and i'm too lazy to go look it up. we decided not to visit the statue of liberty as being trapped on a boat with a potentially nuclear percy is something we think we can do without. besides, i understand you're not allowed inside and to the top anymore anyways.
we walked part way back up the western side of manhatten. nice parks and some pretty boats to look at on that side. we took the subway/train the remaining two thirds, once the parks ran out. the new york subway is not designed for strollers. stairs everywhere, locked gates, narrow barriers and no-one to query or ask for help. oh well. i'm coming to think that most metropolitan train systems are relics from days when only men in dark suits would use them to get out the rain and have clandistine meetings with their handlers from the cia. except singapore- singapore is big and wide and clean and has escalators or elevators and runs so on time you can set your watch by it. however it's a modern system.
we did go to the top of the empire state building. which was being renovated- is this a close cousin to scaffolding? i could have spent ages looking out from the observation deck. not necessarily because the view was that captivating, tho it was quite impressive, rather because i'm fascinated by the detail. i would have picked out every roof top water tank, window, plant, gargoyle, pool, billboard, boat, bridge and bus if i was left alone long enough. not sure what this points to- my prediliction to autism? gee, that's positive. however we didn't spend that long as percy didn't seem so chuffed- does nothing impress that girl!
an interesting aside to the ascent of the empire state building is this tourist schmaltz of having your photo taken in front of a green screen and then purchasing said photo printed over the building or view or whatever. we hate these things and largely try to skip it. the guys running the gig at the empire seemed very angry that we walked right by insisting we we're going to buy their crappy photo anyways. afterwards i started to think maybe it's got two other purposes; 1. crowd control- if things get a bit pushy or out of hand one way to slow it all down and return order is to get your damn picture taken. 2. the more sinister idea is that with everyone having their piccie snapped there is a record of everyone entering the observation areas. were we risking national security by refusing to smile for the box browning? uh oh.
who's got $20 for a cheesy shot anyways?
i really liked central park. i think percy did too. we spent a while walking about, exploring belvedere castle and stumbling thru a movie/tv shoot which looked a lot like a wedding scene from 'wedding crashers' or similar.
the smaller city parks were a revelation in one regard. areas within the park are fenced off, quite small areas really, for leash-free dog runs. i suppose i'm spoiled with having sydney park just down the road, seeing doggies run over the hill and far away without a care. these little dog runs presented as very poor comparisons.
one day we booked a boat ride. as the time came to board we fronted up to the ticket kiosk, waiting patiently. not something i'm good at with percy in tow. we didn't wait long for the news to arrive that all river traffic has been shut down; our boat wasn't goin' nowhere. why was this? because the UN was having a big pow wow and little george was arriving by boat!! rude bastard. well we got our money back and took on of those open top, hop on/ hop off bus tours instead. this wasn't the brightest idea either. just 'cause little george was going by boat didn't mean all the other big wigs were. traffic in new york, which i understand can be a little tight and stressful anyways, really wasn't moving. even the tour guide apologised and said he'd rarely seen it this bad before.
i definately want to spend more time in new york. there's absolutely heaps we didn't see and couldn't do. i'd like to live there for a while to get a real grasp on it, much the same as london. somehow paris didn't exert the same pull. perhaps i want to keep paris for romantic visits, while nyc and london are places to find all the sides, shades, quirks, good and bad points. of course there is nowhere like sydney. i imagine i'll always want to come back here as 'home.' however there are plenty of places in the world i haven't been, one might pip sydney for the relaxed embrace of welcome one day.
leaving new york was less stressful than arriving. our flight into new york was held on the tarmac for three hours because a terminal couldn't be found for us! percy was over the plane thing by that time. she wasn't screaming or crying, just a lot of squirming and 'can i please do something else now.' due to the plane having landed but not yet arrived at the terminal we were required to remain seated the whole time and the bloody crew wouldn't return the bassinet either. it's not like the plane was moving!
all up new york was good and will be better next time around because we'll take longer and percy will be a little (or big) girl so we'll do much more.
photos up separately...
...from lack of sleep. poor little percy ain't doing so well. this was the regime last nite:
7:00pm: to bed pretty much asleep before her head hit the mattress
7:40pm: wake up crying, turn into inconsolable screaming- i took her to bed with me; no success, dummy; no success, rocking and singing and bouncing; finally success
8:25pm: back to sleep
10:00pm: settle in cot
11:00pm: breastfeed, back to sleep in cot immediately
1:30am: settle in cot
3:00am: breastfeed, back to sleep in cot immediately
5:30am: settle in cot
6:30am wake for day, clapping, talking quietly, clicking tongue in cot
6:50am: paul got her up.
i really can't think what is causing this, nor what to do to make her sleep longer periods. i suppose i ought to be thankful that she goes back to sleep after the breastfeeds immediately. and perhaps i shouldn't have put her down at 7pm for all intents and purposes asleep. i could have woken her a little and read a story before placing her in her cot. would this have changed anything? i have my doubts... she's been waking earlier in the evening for four nites running now. nite before last it was
8:45pm, before that 9:15pm. maybe we'll get it back to 7pm and then it won't matter! ha ha.
it's lucky she is so cute and adorable when she's awake during the day because she's pushing the friendship at nite!
aarrgghhh! it's finally happened. i'm officially a neglectful mother.
percy rolled off the bed today.
as everyone says- "i only turned away for a second!" in actual fact i probably didn't have my eyes on her for five or six seconds. she was comfortably sitting in the centre of our bed playing with some toys. i was looking in a cupboard for something, next instant; "thud!" i've never moved around that bed so fast! i scooped her up and said excitedly- "well that was different wasn't it!" i was frantically trying to distract her whilst checking for broken limbs, bruising, floppy bits, any sign of damage. thankfully there didn't appear to be any. she also didn't seem half as bothered as i was- not a cry, not a tear, not even an exclamation. she landed on hands and knees which probably meant she didn't knock her head and therefore wasn't hurt. (is she part cat?- we were contemplating that the new ability to click her tongue means she's part dolphin; are there other animals present?) she carried on just fine and is now having her afternoon nap. she generally has a good sleep on friday afternoons because the swimming class in the morning means her morning sleep is short, added to the excitment and adventure of the class she's pretty tuckered out come the afternoon. of course if she sleeps really well i'll probably just panic again thinking it's a response to the fall and that i've irrepairably hurt her.
lesson learned; she really is getting pretty mobile what with rolling and squirming and stretching, i can't assume she'll be fine and i ought to be more diligent.
yes, your honour, it will never happen again (until the next unforeseen calamity), please give me my daughter back.
i imagine you're all dieing to know how our dummy weaning weekend went. well the score is
baby: 1, dummy: 0!!
yes, we are now dummy free. despite all our angst and conjuring of worst case scenarios it went quite well. we're not perfect yet but there is resassurance that if we put our collective minds to something we can achieve good results.
as i said earlier percy went well last thursday and friday sans wrap and dummy. this continued thru the weekend and also monday and tuesday. we had forgotten that this weekend was the change to day light saving time. if so we probably would have conjured up other horrors and put off the wean for another week. i'm so glad we didn't. it's an absolute load off my mind not wondering whether percy has come out of her wrap and lost her dummy. i think i even sleep deeper not having this 'wonder' constantly knocking for attention.
congratulations all 'round!
having said this, there is plenty of room for improvement. little miss still gets two feeds during the nite. the first anywhere between 10pm and midnite and the second anywhere between 2am and 4am. i'd so like to drop at least one of these! she's waking at 5am now too. good god! aren't you still tired little one? i certainly am. she generally ends up in our bed, dozing, waking, pulling our hair, playing with the bedclothes and dozing again until we get her up at 6:30 or 7am.
the last two nites she's woken between 9pm and 10pm with an inconsolable cry. i comforted her while leaving her in the cot, to no avail. once picked up and in bed with us she settles quite quickly. hope this doesn't become a pattern! she isn't hungry as i don't offer her any milk yet she still falls asleep. the feed comes later. is she having a nightmare? is it something i can't think of? is she still settling into the idea of sleeping without a dummy. i'm patient, but only so patient...
so we want more sleep. paul took the option of sleeping on the lounge last nite while percy and i had the bed to ourselves. this also is not to continue! i hope paul is better rested today.
another score:
baby: 0
food: 1
percy is happy to chug away baby cereal now. (yippee!) however she acts like we are trying to posion her if we give her anything else. we've tried; apple, pear, avocado, banana and sweet potatoe. each time she gags and sticks her tongue out, her eyes water, her back arches, her arms flail... if it wasn't upsetting it would be comical.
i managed to get her to have three spoon tips of sweet potatoe last nite by concealing it in a larger helping of cereal. when the ratio on the spoon increased in favour of the sweet potatoe the posioning act started again. of course if i do it too often she doesn't trust me and refuses to have whatever is on the spoon, even if it's just cereal.
we'll have to persist because it will be hard to explain sending her to school with a bottle breast milk and a box of farex.
in our walks around the streets of erskineville, newtown and alexandria i have noticed a number of old bbqs left on the grass beside the roads. these rusty, worn and cracked hulks are sprouting in their spring time of neglect. just as old age of any sort gives way to youth so these once cossetted machines are put out to pasture, making way for younger, sprightlier versions. versions with perhaps more burners, knobs, hooks, accessories, maybe even with a sink attached!
so winter turns to spring and spring soon to summer. and the great aussie tradition of backyard bbqs will send pungent wafts of charcolising (word?) meat across the neighbourhood. the old bbq that has withstood the winter storms of rain, hail and wind, visitations of dog and possum piss, not having felt the scrub of a good brush nor been oiled and neatly rubbed, for months, is now decrepit. "not our snags on that filthy thing!" goes the cry.
a new, shiny machine is required. in our inner west suburbs we pride ourselves on our environmental credentials- recycle, reuse... i forget the third 're'. surely some sap out there will want our old bbq... surely? we won't send it to the tip, we won't call council to collect it. we'll leave it here on the grass or the footpath. by morning it will be gone. it'll be wanted by someone for some purpose; even if not for bbq-ing. wouldn't it be funny to see our old bbq turn up in some mixed media modern art installation in a few months time?!
the coming summer is marked by the strange plants of metal and plastic growing along our streets.
my obssession with percy's sleeping continues- in a positive way!
on thursday she took her naps without being wrapped or with a dummy. thursday nite she was in a sleeping bag with a dummy and it didn't go too bad. during friday naps she was in a sleeping bag with no dummy and the longest it took her to fall asleep was 20 minutes. this is less than half the time from only one day before. things are looking positive, tho we have learnt that just because something happens one day doesn't mean it will happen again.
last nite, friday nite, she fell asleep at 7pm sans wrap and dummy and slept thru to an 11:10pm feed. asleep again 'til 1:15am when she woke and cried from unhappiness, not needing more food. i tried to calm and shoosh her for 10 minutes. with no success i popped the dummy in her mouth and she settled instantly. i let her suck it for one minute before easing it out of her mouth. she stirred and snuffled and wriggled but was asleep within ten minutes again. she woke at 3:45am for a feed. i'll try to cancel these feeds in the future, perhaps when she is eating a variety of solids consistently. back to sleep without assistance. woke at 6:00am. we left her to talk to herself for 50 minutes before i got her up at 6:50am. she was not upset during this time just not asleep either. the improvement at this end is she woke at 6am rather than 5 or 5:30am like many previous mornings. maybe we'll eventually get her to sleep 12 hours from 7pm to 7am!
she's gone down for her morning nap in a sleeping bag without a dummy, taking only ten minutes to fall asleep.
i'm trying to be positive while also manageing my expectations!
if you're getting as little as i am it's no wonder an obsession develops. i'm talking about sleep of course!
little percy has gone backwards in the sleep stakes over the past week, consequently so have i. she was sleeping 4 hours, occasionaly 4 and a half to five. yes, i know, nothing like the 'thru-the-nite-12 hours-at-a-go' babes i have heard about. never mind. i was doing 4 hours alright.
she's regressed to 3 hours and even 2 a couple of times. this is unsustainable. what is causing it? well, if i knew that i might have a chance to fix it! i'm going with the old stand by of growth spurt. there's nothing i can do about that.
she's napped well today so hopefully that means a better nite sleeping. there does seem to be a correlation between decent day time naps to better nite sleeping.
on the topic of daytime naps. we've had a first today. a small and significant one. i wonder if it will continue..?
to put this in context percy has two very definate cues for going to sleep- being wrapped/swaddled and using a dummy/pacifier. at seven months it's probably not wise to wrap her any longer but we don't have much option- if she is not wrapped she knocks or takes the dummy out of her mouth and this will result in her crying for one of us to put it back in. she hasn't learnt to put it back consistently for herself. she'll manage one go in ten. so even if she is deeply asleep and the dummy comes out when she reaches a lighter sleep stage she realises its not there, wakes up properly and starts crying. that's my explaination anyways.
the first... i put her down for a nap at 3:50pm; wrapped and dummied. she is adept at wriggling out of wraps (adding to our problem) and was out of this one in no time. i rewrapped her and put her back in her cot once. after half an hour i could see this was going nowhere. i took her out of the cot, took the wrap off- it was only draped across her tummy by this time, took the dummy out the cot where she'd spat/knocked it, put her in a sleeping bag, tucked her back into the cot tightly, told her gently to go to sleep and left the room. i stood watching at the doorway (door open just an inch) while she wriggled, swung raffles her sleep comforter around her head striptease style and pulled her blankets off for 20 minutes. she then started to ease off; raffles was no longer in danger of decapitation. ten minutes later she was asleep- no wrap and no dummy!!! yeeha! so in total 50-55 minutes of settling which is quite some time. i take heart that she didn't actually work herself into a lather and scream or yell at any time and that maybe in the coming days the time taken will be less and less.
this new development is important as we've resolved to take the dummy away for good this weekend. we've warned the neighbours, we've got frozen meals in the freezer, we've told everyone we're booked this weekend and no-one is to visit. in other words; we're bunkered in and ready to fight!
(piccie taken a few days ago of percy being adorably asleep.)
i am encouraged that percy ate a good amount of baby rice cereal over the weekend. mostly with paul feeding her whilst singing queen or jet songs. hmmmm....
she doesn't seem to be as interested or happy when i feed her. we figure she is thinking of paul "where's the one with the boobs? not here? oh well, i'll eat some of this goop then." whereas when i'm feeding her it's more "i know you've got the boobs, they're right under there, can we skip this goop and get to the good stuff, please?" i will persist.
she is also happy to take a bottle too. so that persistance paid off. the conclusion here is that she doesn't like formula. i've been expressing and giving her cereal mixed with breastmilk and bottles of breastmilk. which is great but also difficult because i hate expressing i'm so bad at it. never mind, i'll just work on that too.
wish us luck
probably one of the most significant things we did in london was catch up with some relatives of pauls. obviously mine by marriage now too, and definately percy's by blood.
thelma is paul's dad's sister, making her paul's aunt and percy's great aunt. she is married to steve and they have two children shonagh and euan. paul had not seen the family since his family departed bonny britain 20 years ago. so it was quite significant. we had lunch with steve, shonagh and euan one day and dinner the following with thelma, steve, shonagh and her girlfriend alex. both meals were great with lots of laughter and "oh really's", and "that was ages ago!", and "before you/we left...." i was particularly pleased with how well percy did out at dinner. we went thru the usual bedtime routine before leaving the apartment. the difference being instead of settling her in her bed we tried to settle her in the stroller. she did play along for most of the nite. at least enough for us to get thru three courses! she also had a cuddle with her rellies and another breast feed. maybe i praised her too enthusiastically because she did decide enough fun was enough and it's bedtime now. yes, i mean now! we'd gone to a restuarant quite close to the apartment so i bundled her up and took her home while paul stayed for another hour or so of drinkies. not begrudged in the least... there was 20 years to fill in.
funnily enough in december steve and thelma are visiting oz for an extended retirement holiday and shonagh and euan are coming for i think three weeks around christmas and new years. going from not seeing them in 20 years to twice in one!
p.s. they're really lovely folk and it will be great fun showing them around sydney.
percy had her first swimming class today!
sorry no photos, class was at 10:30am so paul couldn't attend and i had enough to do without drowning a camera.
i think she quite enjoyed it. we sang songs, floated, chased toys, rode 'noodles' (those long floating tube thingos), practised moving along the edge of the pool holding on with our hands and sang more songs. her lips were a tiny bit blue by the end of the half hour. i wrapped her up, dried her off and redressed her as fast as i could. she didn't protest at all. in fact she was all wide eyed and quite smiley for nearly the whole time. carol, our instructor, also praised me for how i was holding and handling her. so pats on the back for mama!
once home i tried to feed her some baby rice cereal. i think she may have swallowed four spoon-tip-fuls wihout protesting. which is better than previously. persist? god it's draining tho!
still no luck with sucking a bottle either. back to good old boobies.
we'll judge next week whether we have a new ian thorpe on our hands. i think one class is a little too early to tell; two is fine! her elder cousin is supposed to be quite a good swimmer so perhaps it's in her genes?
3:30pm today i get a call from work advising me that i did not get the senior position i applied for. fuck them. no wonder the dept is short staffed; they don't know how to treat the ones they do have, so they leave.
i'm upset about percy not sleeping and eating. add to the mix i'm a professional failure too. yippee. 'course if i wasn't on maternity leave and hoping to return part-time i would have got the job. yes, illegal discrimination- wake up! it's reality.
now i get to return to work and have some junior bastard that has been there for less time than, is probably less qualified and needs the job less than i do promoted ahead of me. (my apologies if the "junior bastard" turns out to be one of my friends. i don't expect i can consider myself a success on the friends front either.)
so percy has been screaming in her cot for that last 20 minutes instead of sleeping. i suppose i ought to do something about it. exactly what, i haven't a clue. throw us both off a cliff sounds plausiable
percy is a poor sleeper. i give up. one day she'll sleep thru a nite and i'll think she's died because there couldn't possibly be another explaination for it.
yesterday started out so encouragingly. percy slept a 2 hour nap in the morning and just shy of 2 hours in the afternoon. wow!! virtually unheard of! i may recall she's done this twice before in kiev. she also had a 25 minute kip in her stroller when we went out for a walk from 4pm.
i got so much done yesterday, plus had time to rest myself. yay, yay, yay- let this continue!!
yeah, right. who do i think i'm kidding?
percy went thru her usual bedtime routine last night and was tucked up in her cot at 7pm. being the lazy, tired person i am i followed her to bed at 8:45pm. unfortunately i have a bad cold and cannot help coughing a lot. the cot is barely a metre from our bed. i'm sure the coughing woke her. so i fed her back to sleep at 10pm. then she woke again around 1am, fed back to sleep at 2am, woke again around 3am, wrapped, shushed and otherwise encouraged back to sleep at 4:20am. woke at 6:40am and up for the day. shit. shit. and more shit. can't keep doing this.
her morning nap today was 1hr and 20 minutes so not so bad. so far this afternoon she ain't slept.
i really don't want to hear about the good sleepers and the good eaters. i want absolute horror kids to compare her to so that i can take some solace from the poor sucker parents out there that have it worse than us.
london really is a cultural mecca. we passed so many places to go into and posters for shows and exhibitions i thought you could do one every day and still not get around to all in a year. then of course it's always changing.
note i said we "passed". unfortunately we only had three days... and a baby. a darling, gorgeous baby who nevertheless requires feeding and changing and entertaining. her idea of entertaining doesn't always include marble scupltures and modern art paintings- well, unless she is doing the painting!
so we did pass by a lot of places. we'll get back one day...
we did visit some good places. including the tower of london and tower bridge. percy had a feed in the tower. i had scones and jam- very british. we walked thru hyde park a couple of times and 'round the streets near our apartment. we did a block or two of oxford street but it was incredibly crowded. also had a burl thru harrods. yes, very flash, yada, yada; ultimately not a place i would spend any money- what's the point?
we walked past buckingham palace, nelsons column, the london eye, westminster abbey (20 pounds to go inside- i think not!) houses of parliament, the globe theatre, st pauls cathedral- short look inside, south bank and all the streets in between. i quite liked it. tried not to think of the cost of living, particularly conversions between aussie dollars and british pounds.
our first morning in london paul decided it was crunch time for a hair cut. he walked into the first hairdressers we came upon. they had time right then so while i walked around the streets and sticky-beaked with percy paul got his hair cut by a lovely aussie girl! yup, i suppose the odds aren't that high but it was entertaining to us.
we had a serviced apartment in london. this worked out much better than a hotel room as we could put percy to sleep and have a little life in the living area. still creeping around quietly but better than crouched on the floor eating take away in the dark! we decided on staying in this apartment building because lovely sarah and chris with their baby rose were going to be there at the same time. it was also well positioned near paddington train station and hyde park.
on saturday the six of us met in the morning to head off to the science museum. paul really wanted to see babbages' machine. proto computer thingo. he's a code monkey! of course he was interested. beside i was too and there are lots of other things to look at, plus it is free.
it was so nice to see sarah and chris and talk baby stuff with them. it was our first opportunity since we left australia. i was reassured that percy is tracking along about averagely. i think average is what parents hope for at this age. we'll go for genius in a few years!
again we wondered what it would take to get a posting to london for a few years. i could probably get a planning job relatively easily. planners are in demand all over. it's getting the right thing for paul that would pose more of a challenge. however, i'd miss the sun. do we want percy growing up not knowing there is a bright ball in the sky that gives heat and life? it was pretty grey the whole time we were there.
anyways, i'll attach some pics and see if darling miss is ready to get up from her nap. hopefully not just yet! nope, can't- errors happening. will later
being at home is the best.
it has proven difficult to settle in with percy tho. she obviously doesn't realise that this is home, no more new rooms, planes, buses, trains, and that we (or maybe just i) expected easy bliss with her sleeping and eating and starting to crawl and being a joy every second of the day. my expectation management system clearly crashed on landing at kingsford smith. if i had expected a shit time i probably would have been less upset. as it is i stupidly expected her to fall happily into our home life and for me to lighten up and enjoy the time i have with her.
it really is more like starting again tho. percy has to get comfortable in a new environment and a new bed again. could she have any memories of here from her first 10 weeks of life?
we want to stop wrapping her and giving her a dummy to sleep. unfortunately these are her cues to sleep and she doesn't unless she has both. we are working up to taking the dummy away this weekend. (say a prayer for us!) if we unwrap her she either knocks or takes the dummy out of her mouth with her now free hands. this might be alright for a short while but she'll invariably cry for it to be put back in. she can put it back in herself but only one time out of five and then sometimes she neglects to let go before she moves her hand away so out it comes again. my advice to new parents- if you can avoid it don't ever give your baby a dummy and certainly don't use it to get them to sleep. couldn't someone have told us this before we started?
on the positive sleep side. she is completely capable of self-settling. she is wide awake when we put her down for naps or the night and she puts herself to sleep. no more rocking or singing. so little pat on the back for small victories.
feeding!! crap, here i go again. percy, despite all the interest she shows in our food and us eating, isn't keen on her own food. we've tried tiny amounts of baby rice cereal, apple, pear, banana and avocado. she has fought and yelled and turned her head away after two spoon tips nearly every time. i've given up with other types of food; i'm just going to go with the rice cereal until she takes it well. i'm a little bouyed by her dinner feed yesterday. she had around six spoonfuls of cereal before she turned her head away. and no yelling. of course i've also learned that what happens one day does not mean squat for the next day. so we shall see.
second bad food front thing- she now also refuses a bottle. she took a bottle a few times before we left and i think twice while in kiev. now she won't. perhaps because it was formula and that shit tastes like it! can't say i blame her. so i suppose i will be expressing a lot from now on. unfortunately expressing is not one of my strong points. s'pose i better get better fast.
this is primarily a problem if i go back to work soon and darling perc has to go to day care. she'll be getting a bottle there...
last tuesday percy had her six month check-up and immunisation shots. the doctor is happy that she is a picture of health. this was reassuring to me- just being a paranoid first time mum. often when meeting people on the street they will guess her age; and it's always less than she is- i'm wondering if she is small for her age. am i malnourishing her? the doctor did weigh her at 7.9 kilos but that was with nappy and clothes on. those cloth nappies weigh a fair bit. i'll weigh her myself at bath time tonite. i estimate 7.5 would be the upper end of the mark.
she cried when the needles went in but was happy again a minute later.
i have some really down moments when percy is inexplicably crying. what is upsetting her? am i just not being interesting enough? i've got to admit she's not that interesting some of the time. i get bored with the same toys, songs, tickles, walks, books, changing nappies, baths, changing clothes, naps, sleeping, feeds, struggles, always looking at the clock... i wonder what else there is to life with children. everyone says it's the best thing that's ever happened to them. hmmmm... is it just me that finds it tedious? perhaps i'm a terrible mother but i can think of other things that i enjoy as much as i enjoy percy. that's probably my selfish side coming out there.
there is a huge juxtaposition here. i love and adore percy more than she'll ever know, i'll guide and protect her as best i can. and on occasion i wish i could send her back. i'm sure i'll come to regret writing this.
anyways, this blog is about percy; not me feeling miserable for myself. we're off to a mothers and babies yoga class in a hour so i better get my shit together.
we arrived at paris's gare du nord train station around 10:30pm, from frankfurt airport. the train journey was okay, if a little tedious. percy didn't sleep a lot but she was happy nonetheless.
exiting the train station we brushed off a few taxi offers and joined the official taxi queue. sometimes percy comes in really handy- we were bumped to the front of the line and got a nice taxi immediately.
using the official services was much cheaper than the spruikers too- 15 euro compared to 50!
our hotel was in a cute little lane only two blocks from the arc de triumph. little was a word i was going to associate a lot with paris. little on one hand and enormous on the other. our room was the littlest hotel room i have ever seen. no wonder they ignored our request for a cot- there was absolutely nowhere to put it. never mind, percy sleeps quite well in the bed with us.
we were buggered that nite so just pulled out our toothbrush and jammies, had a shower, made percy happy and fell asleep. the following morning i had my bitch to reception that the entire room reeked of cigarette smoke. every time we turned our heads a waft of fumes would rise from the pillows!! urrgghhh! i asked for us to be moved to a non-smoking room, to be advised that the whole hotel was non smoking but that some guests smoke anyways. what??!! given that we had to stay in this place another 4 nites i didn't smack the receptionist with the ash tray from our room and suggest that these be taken out of the rooms to reinforce the message that no smoking was permitted in the hotel. stupid europeans; i suppose if they all want to die from related diseases, let them.
i did ask that every piece of linen from our room and the pillows and the curtains be replaced. "sure, sure." hah- did not happen.
anyways, what is that saying? "such and such would be nice if it wasn't for the so and so's"?
i imagine europe would be a little bare without europeans tho.
onto the nice stuff!! and there was a lot of it! we walked under and around the arc de triumph, up and down the champs elysee, down to the eiffel tower, and caught the lift up it, around the louvre, thru the latin quarter and the hotel invalides, gawked at napoleons tomb, caught the cliched tour bus a few times, past the moulin rouge, around notre dame, rode the funicular up to a big church i forget the name of, caught the train out to the palace of versailles, ate in restaurants we couldn't afford, avoided buying suitcases full of souvenirs, admired many quaint streets, strolled thru gorgeous and lush gardens, gazed with envy at the mega expensive townhouses, wondered what we'd have to do to get a posting to paris for a year or two and generally fitted in as much as we could in four days with a bubba in tow.
the estimate is that to just glance at every item in the louvre would take nine months. we gave it a shot in four or five hours. plus fed percy in the napoleon suite and had some lunch ourselves. really loved it. could have spent much longer. the intention is to go back when percy is of an age to remember and appreciate it. that's the intention for every place we visited.
my highlight for paris would be the palace at versailles. i've always wanted to see the palace. recently the hall of mirrors was restored, discovering much more gold than was previously thought to be on the walls- it had been painted over!! i suppose i like the fantasy that another era, another time, another accident of birth i might have walked the halls and lived in the rooms?! oh well, just a harmless day dream.
once again percy was instrumental in skipping the queue! sometimes i think it might be worth taking a stroller with a cover, whacking a portable cd/tape player in it with a recording of baby cries and then seeing the sights! very naughty but oh so tempting. good for carrying water bottles and extra clothing too.
we caved in a bought a stroller in paris. (i boast that percy is an international shopper- stroller; paris, swim suit; honolulu, shirts; london and holland, toys; holland and kiev, and if they count- nappies everywhere!) actually, it's not that we didn't intend to get a stroller it's just that you'd need a hummer version in kiev because there are very few naviagable footpaths. we figured we'd wait until we got home. however it proved very useful in getting about on our holiday and equally so now we are back in syd. i'm not going to look at what it cost. we bought a very basic maclaren model however i think paris prices are higher than sydney prices and the aussie dollar doesn't stack up against the euro very well. all in all our trip put a sizeable dent in the savings for the next home deposit. never mind- how often do you get a plane ticket to europe and the usa and back for free? got to enjoy it while we can. which makes me sound rather ukrainian. uh oh! i'll try to explain the ukrainian mind set and attitudes in another entry.
our hotel included breakfast. this was great for me as i'm starving from about 3am. poor paulie couldn't find a decent coffee in the whole continent! he certainly wasn't going to get one in the hotel breakfast room. it did provide some cheese and yoghurt to pinch as provisions for the remainder of the day. i know, i know... you're supposedly not supposed to pinch breakfast foods for eating later. stuff that i say! it costs the hotel cents to provide breakfast and they charge 20 dollars; i'm getting as many meals out it as i can.
so provisioned up we generally got on the move around 8:30am. we walked a lot as most of what you'd like to see in paris is within walking distance. by 3 or 4pm i was definately knackered, paul was also getting sore feet and percy deserved a proper sleep in a bed rather than the sling or pram. we'd head back to the hotel for a kip and then try our hand at dinner. this was a game of dice as percy might sleep or she might scream. not a lot of middle ground. we pissed one restuarant off by ordering and then cancelling because we just could not get percy to settle and stop yelling. apparently the food was just about to be delivered to our table. boo hoo. we got chinese take away and ate it in our room instead. this was probably the only disappointing thing about the holiday- percy couldn't let us enjoy the night life. i don't mean clubs and pubs and raves- just dinners out, the night lights, the street atmosphere and romantic walks under the moon light. she went to bed at 7 or 8pm so generally so did we. there's nothing one can do in a tiny hotel room with a sleeping baby that won't wake her. oh well- next time.
i recommend getting a suite if you can afford it or a serviced apartment. at least bub can sleep in the bedroom and you can enjoy a little life in the other room.
we did manage a dinner out that she slept thru in a lebanese restuarant. unintentionally we have eaten in a lebanese restuarant in every city or country we have ever visited. well, they have good food!
paris was lovely. i definately want to go again.
