papa's visit

paulie came to visit over the weekend just gone. he arrived late on thursday nite and left mid monday afternoon. it was so good to have him here. while i'm enjoying living in the west rather than eastern europe for these three weeks it is very hard to be away from the love of my life. (he's also kinda handy to change the odd nappy too!) i'm sort of doing the single parent thing- but much easier. i have no idea how single parents do it. they are all heroes. while i'm solely responsible for percy i still have my dinners cooked for me and only do some of the cleaning, washing and shopping. my hosts rob and phil do everything else. i think if i really was on my own i'd be lucky to eat anything other than cereal, i'd go spare within about two days and start talking to the cereal box. so my hat is off to single parents.

on friday paul, rob, percy and i caught the train to brussels. i still can't get over how easy that is. it's like catching the train to newcastle from sydney. we travelled from one country to the next and didn't even notice where the international border was. i think i could enjoy western europe and it's tiny (comparatively) size far more than miles-from-freakin'-anywhere-kiev. maybe that's another adventure for the future...

brussels has a great town square. it's bounded by buildings dating from the 14 and 1500s, has dark cobblestones and looks like i thought kiev might. we had a very yummy lunch in a restaurant overlooking the square, with paul relishing a genuine belgium beer. so much for a low carb diet! we wandered around looking in windows, taking photos, hiked up to the cathedral, bought delicious belgium chocolates (they did not last long), paulie bought 3 bottles of beer to take home and generally behaved just like the tourists we were. percy spent the day in the sling or cradled in our arms and did not seem to mind at all. she slept some on the way there (two and half hours), and a little while walking around. she was over it on the retun trip. she whinged but not badly. we had to change trains so while waiting the 20 minutes for the second train we lay her on the cloth bench so she could wriggle a bit and get a different perspective. she seemed to appreciate this and went back into the sling on me and slept some more before we arrived home.

on saturday we went into den bosch. saturday is market day and the boulevarde festival (theatre) was also on. percy soaked it all up, as i think did paul. we were stopped on a corner by a women with a camera and a microphone who asked paul, he was slinging percy, to sing a song for the baby. part of the festivities apparently. poor woman; i'm sure she was expecting "twinkle, twinkle little star" or something like that. no, she got, after prompting from us, paul singing queen's "we are the champions" while getting percy to do the actions- including air guitaring the riff in the middle. (is riff the right word, or am i just making myself look like the complete music twat that i am?) regardless, it was hilarious. i do have a version of paul and percy performing this song on a disc but i haven't a clue how to put it on this blog. one day i'll get edumacated about it and will do so.

sunday and monday we hung around at home and took some long walks about town. it was heavenly. except the bit where i got a blocked milk duct- oowwchhh! this lasted most of sunday, during which i was walking with my left arm held out from my body as the block was on the left side of my left breast and hurt to be looked at, let alone touched! thankfully it cleared after consistently feeding percy on the left side first and some firm massaging. on monday i was fine again. does throw the whole illness-in-a-foreign-country thing into stark relief. quite a worry. cross fingers that nothing else happens to any of us.

on monday paul left at 3pm to catch his flight back. it was very depressing. however a four and a half month old baby doesn't leave much time for sadness. i'm sure she enjoyed having him here and is aware that he's not here now, but she doesn't ache for him like i do. percy gets a feed at 3pm and then is up for a few hours. no time to dwell on my now left the country husband.
i'm returning next monday. i'm trying to find the word that describes having to return to kiev and desparately wanting to be with paulie again. it would be much nicer if paulie could come and live here. i think 'annoying' is the best fit. don't want to be back in that country, don't want to be away from paul.

so it was lovely to have percy's papa visit us. we had a very pleasurable weekend, sorry it wasn't weeks instead of days.
percy was able to show off that she can now 'stand' for much longer than 5 seconds too.