On
the off-chance that you've been feeling somehow bereft without a
regular dose of Adaptive Daddy, I'm glad to let you know that we are
back.
Mrs T, SJ and I have recently returned from a holiday based mainly at Adaptive Grandpa and Adaptive Grandma's house in Deepest Darkest outskirts of London.
We haven't done much travelling of any kind since the baby was born. Every new, un-mastered task seems overwhelming, the greater the amount of logistics involved, the more mind-mindbogglingly insurmountable it can seem. And so it was with the prospect of our first (international) air travel as a trio.
As a couple we are not prone to irrational panicking. In general my calm (if occasionally stern) rationalism is generally a useful foil for Mrs T's intermittent moments of snappy unreasonableness. Add to this the fact that I'm married to a woman who makes the German nation seem grossly blotted and inefficient and you'd be forgiven for thinking that the prospect of getting the 3 of us in a plane and to the UK all present, correct and accounted for would be a doddle.
Well, it would be a doddle, except you forget to consider two things. First, my lingering bachelor tendencies and, second the accumulative effect of parenting and being a breast-feeding Mum on Mrs T.
To the bachelor tendencies first. Gone are the days of my throwing my luggage haphazardly in an unnecessarily large check-in bag and looking forward to the 'Giant Airport Combo', bought at the Hudson News closest to the gate -that's a massive bag of cheezits washed down with Diet Coke. It wasn't just with vacuum packing and home-made sandwiches for the journey that Mrs T rocked my world and won my undying affection, but these definitely helped.
The fact that I'm still tempted by these old habits and that the perennial exhaustion of parenting and nursing means I can no longer rely on Mrs T to do the logistics for both of us, definitely made fuflilling our international travel commitments seem even more daunting.
In the end, the day of our trip to London passed without major incident and all three of us were packed and ready when the taxi arrived. Once at the airport, with the advantage of wheelchair assistance for me we were waiting by the gate in no time. This all seemed too easy- SJ had either been asleep or too drowsy to care what was going on around him.
But there was still the flight to come....
As for the flight itself....we needn't have worried! When SJ wasn't eating, he was sleeping. Indeed the only time he threw a bit of a tantrum is while I held him so Mrs T could use the loo - typical! Of course we're saying nothing of our darling son weeing all over the plane in front of all of the bemused passengers as they waited to deplane after landing. (Why did we decide to change his nappy on the table they have for the baisonette, rather than in the privacy of the arrival hall toilets again?)
Sound too good to be true? Join us in part two for a reality check...
Mrs T, SJ and I have recently returned from a holiday based mainly at Adaptive Grandpa and Adaptive Grandma's house in Deepest Darkest outskirts of London.
We haven't done much travelling of any kind since the baby was born. Every new, un-mastered task seems overwhelming, the greater the amount of logistics involved, the more mind-mindbogglingly insurmountable it can seem. And so it was with the prospect of our first (international) air travel as a trio.
As a couple we are not prone to irrational panicking. In general my calm (if occasionally stern) rationalism is generally a useful foil for Mrs T's intermittent moments of snappy unreasonableness. Add to this the fact that I'm married to a woman who makes the German nation seem grossly blotted and inefficient and you'd be forgiven for thinking that the prospect of getting the 3 of us in a plane and to the UK all present, correct and accounted for would be a doddle.
Well, it would be a doddle, except you forget to consider two things. First, my lingering bachelor tendencies and, second the accumulative effect of parenting and being a breast-feeding Mum on Mrs T.
To the bachelor tendencies first. Gone are the days of my throwing my luggage haphazardly in an unnecessarily large check-in bag and looking forward to the 'Giant Airport Combo', bought at the Hudson News closest to the gate -that's a massive bag of cheezits washed down with Diet Coke. It wasn't just with vacuum packing and home-made sandwiches for the journey that Mrs T rocked my world and won my undying affection, but these definitely helped.
The fact that I'm still tempted by these old habits and that the perennial exhaustion of parenting and nursing means I can no longer rely on Mrs T to do the logistics for both of us, definitely made fuflilling our international travel commitments seem even more daunting.
In the end, the day of our trip to London passed without major incident and all three of us were packed and ready when the taxi arrived. Once at the airport, with the advantage of wheelchair assistance for me we were waiting by the gate in no time. This all seemed too easy- SJ had either been asleep or too drowsy to care what was going on around him.
But there was still the flight to come....
As for the flight itself....we needn't have worried! When SJ wasn't eating, he was sleeping. Indeed the only time he threw a bit of a tantrum is while I held him so Mrs T could use the loo - typical! Of course we're saying nothing of our darling son weeing all over the plane in front of all of the bemused passengers as they waited to deplane after landing. (Why did we decide to change his nappy on the table they have for the baisonette, rather than in the privacy of the arrival hall toilets again?)
Sound too good to be true? Join us in part two for a reality check...
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