Countdown to a white Christmas.. One dream trip, coming right up...

So.

The kids passports have all just arrived in the mail. Our hotel in Paris is booked. And the flights. The hotels in London, Paris and Amsterdam and the house in Edinburgh are likewise sorted. I think I can finally believe it's really happening. In a few short months we're heading overseas for what will hopefully be our first ever white Christmas, and our first trip overseas as a family, travelling with my Beloved's folks. (I have big plans for sitting in Paris cafes with my beyond-compare sister-in-law while the wild ones are at Euro Disney with their Nana and daddy...) We are over the moon excited. 

While this will be my eightth trip to Scotland,* ninth if you count the time in-mum's-tum, I've somehow skipped Christmas every visit. My last visit - my first with my Beloved, Sprocket and Poppet in-my-tum, was the closest I came, arriving in the UK just after Christmas, so in time to enjoy the decorations, but missing the actual celebrations.

This year we'll be spending Christmas in Edinburgh, New Year in London and have a few follow up days in Amsterdam and Paris before hurrying home for my beloved to begin Doctoring in early January...in ta-da, Queensland. (Yes, packing for a major overseas trip as well as moving interstate will leave us a little busy. We are the experts at biting off more than we can chew. Hello sweet chaos, our old friend.**)

Of course... in order to revel in a white Christmas we need to travel twenty-four odd hours on a plane with three rowdy kids. Well, Littlest isn't rowdy (yet), but I suspect she'll be crawling by then, if not well on the way to walking…

I'm alternating between envisioning myself and my beloved strolling along the snow-banked Seine, hand in hand all chic in black velvet (me, not so much him with the velvet) and bereted, snow falling softly on our chic selves (I will of course have lost all trace of the baby-belly, while my Beloved will have Littlest, also tres chic in a little beret, wrapped to his belly) with the wee ones strolling along before us hand in hand, and nightmares of us rolling off the plane with newly grey hair, clothes covered in baby diarhea and vomit and hauling screaming children - also covered in various sticky substances. I suspect the reality will be somewhere between the two.

But I'm thinking now is the time to ask - recommendations for things to do with kids in Edinburgh, London, Amsterdam and Paris?

And any tips for long haul flights with young kids? Neither drugs nor alcohol are an option…

*Yep, keenly interested in the referendum. The suspense is so hard! 

** Just because where there's chaos there should be more chaos, I have a terrible hankering to do Nanowrimo this year - you know where you write 50,000 words in a month. Which would be November, the month before we fly overseas and move state... Will I, won't I? Will I won't I? It might take my mind of the insanity of it all...

Goodbye Tropics (A heat induced ramble)

Yesterday I made the long journey down from the tropics of Queensland to the scorching heat of Victoria. While I am massively grateful I didn't endure the week of temperatures in the forties (and to all those who did, particularly those in areas around fires, my thoughts and prayers were with you, excepting my mum and brother who thought it was 'pleasant',) I was apprehensive about returning to my baked garden. 

I still can't quite bring myself to check on the worm farm and possibly see fifteen hundred fried worms. (The guilt, the guilt!) 

As I left our home-from-home in Queensland in the early hours of the morning, the cicadas were cicada-ing, the wind chimes were chiming, the pigeons were cooing and the air was moist and cool under a low grey sky.

As the plane flew over Victoria I looked down on a land dried to yellows and browns, the pale yellow fading into a haze of white heat and smoke. Stepping onto the tarmac beneath the high and unforgiving blue sky was like stepping into an oven - 40+ degrees. Knowing I still had a bus, a train and a walk from the station before I reached home, I meandered through the airport, making careful note of all the books I wanted to read in the bookshops. I have a list I'll share soon! (Thrills & Grins of palm rubbing anticipation.) 

I managed to miss my train at Southern Cross, checking out the new (to-me) shopping centre, but an hour in a cafe sipping iced tea is not such a hardship, although the poor air-con struggled and the sweat ran down my legs. My country train also struggled, jolting along the heat-buckled tracks at a snails pace, before giving up the ghost halfway home. We all had to get out and wait for the next train - but by the time it arrived I was so engrossed reading I missed it… I'm blaming baby brain. 

Twelve and a bit hours after I gave my little ones sleepy goodbye-and-see-you-soon-hugs in Queensland I hoist my bags over the gate of home while I racked my brain for the padlock combination, emptied the full-to-the-brim-letterbox and started as a huntsman spider ran up the local paper towards me. 

But I'm home now. About to commence making the house all 'shiny' for the little ones return. (Read, apply CPR to my poor roses and hydrangeas, rid the fridge of all it's past expiry Christmas stuffs, hide the evidence of their dead worms, and throw out and giveaway as many toys and clothes as I can so all the new Christmas goodies vaguely fit.)

I still have to meander up to the shops for food, but hey, frozen peas, tinned corn and olives is a healthy breakfast! 

Breastfeeding to Adventure

I've been thinking about breastfeeding a lot over the last few days, firstly because of an article a British Parenting magazine editor wrote about how breastfeeding her child made her feel 'creepy', and then more positively today because I went to a Breastfeeding Association meeting and it was so lovely talking to other mums.

Reading the article where the writer wrote it felt 'creepy' seeing her breast in her infant daughter's mouth, I considered how it made me feel to nurse my children.

And I came up with - womanly, lucky, bountiful and well, free. 

I've been incredibly lucky in that breastfeeding has been very easy for me. Both my babies were very clued in as to what to do. (Which is lucky, because I basically just showed them the breast and expected them to get on with it.)
I'd seen my Mum nurse my brothers, I'd seen my aunt nurse my cousins. I just assumed I'd nurse my babies and there wouldn't be a problem and, luckily, that's how it happened. 

I also lucked out in that I had seen my aunt feeding while travelling through Indonesia.
When I was fifteen my family joined my aunt's family in Borneo, where they were living at the time, and we travelled into the heart of Kalimantan and then over to Java and Lombok. And my younger cousin, a toddler at the time, was nursed throughout. With her first baby my aunt was living on Bouganille during the troubles and also travelled through Papua New Guinea. Breastfeeding made travel to remote villages possible and opened up so many more options. 

When my own babies came along I knew that as long as I was breastfeeding (and within reach of medical aid) the world was our oyster - we could safely travel anywhere because we would have, on tap, highly nutritious, hygenic all-in-one food and drink for them.
When the Sprocket was 1 month old we moved to Vanuatu. When the Sprocket was 3 months old my husband's work meant he needed to travel to a remote island two small plane trips away. The Sprocket and I went too.
 The island we were staying on didn't have electricity or running water and the toilets were fifty feet away from our huts. If I'd had to worry about sterilising bottles and clean water, we couldn't have gone. Maybe an ultra-organised person could have.

That person isn't me. 

It was an amazing experience and I am so glad we had it. 
Later a friend came over to visit us in Port Vila and wanted to see one of the smaller islands so I arranged a village stay.
Again, not knowing what to expect, it was easy to just throw some nappies and changes of clothes in a bag and head off. Waiting at the bus stop for 5 hours for the ute to turn up? Not a problem, the Sprocket has clean, safe, food at hand. No electricity and no running water? Not a problem. Clean, safe all-in-one drink and food at hand.

Breastfeeding, to me, opened up so many more possibilities. It's meant adventure, travel and amazing experiences.  Freedom. 

                 Nursing, Torres Islands, Vanuatu

          

                 Airport, Torres Islands