It recently occurred to me that I have yet to blog about our Dec 2011 trip to Sydney. Not that that’s surprising for me though. Hah. I barely get round to blogging about holidays because I get overwhelmed by the number of photos we have, and there’s daily life of course, which gets in the way. The sad thing is that the better the holiday, the less likely I am to write about it because there would be too much to tell!
This is a terrible state of affairs.
Anyway, here is my attempt to reverse this trend, albeit rather belatedly.
We went for a family holiday to Sydney from 30 Nov to 7 Dec 2011. Our first holiday overseas as a family of 4! I was really looking forward to it, seeing as it was our only holiday for the year. Noey, who still has fond memories of our previous trip to Sydney, was terribly excited too. (Meips was none the wiser.) Because Noey took to the overnight flight so well the last time, we plumped for the same 12.25am flight again and prayed for the best.
I had hoped that Meips would – magically – sleep through the whole check-in procedure all the way on to the plane, but that was just wishful thinking on my part, wasn’t it? She went to sleep at her usual 7.30pm/8pm time at home, and we more or less managed to transfer her, half asleep, into her car seat. But once we arrived at the airport, she roused herself and that was that for her sleep!
She was in good spirits at the airport. My family had come to send us off and she was delighted to see everyone. A baby kicking and smiling in excitement is very cute. Just not at 11pm. It was only upon getting on to the plane that she started to fade a little.
We had booked seats in the centre block of 4 (this was in the A380) because we needed a bassinet and the other 3-seater bassinet seats were taken up. This turned out to be a good call because we found out the the armrest for the centre 2 seats could be raised, unlike the rows next to the windows, so Noey was still able to lie flat on my lap when he needed to sleep. The problem with the centre block though was the lack of a window for Noey to view the take-off. Fortunately our flight was rather empty. The flight attendant for our section was also a very lovely lady, and she checked and found DD and Noey an empty window seat to occupy. I just love flying SQ with kids.
With Nomi looking like she was settling down to sleep, I let DD and Noey go take their seats. And of course, shortly after the boys disappeared, Nomi started becoming incredibly fussy. The memory is fuzzy now, but there I was, stuck in the seat with her yowling away. I tried to nurse her, but she wasn’t cooperating, and I realised to my dismay that my nursing cover was in the storage compartment and D had packed away all the blankets so I had nothing to cover myself with. I twisted away from the passenger in the next seat and struggled to nurse her anyway. It was the longest 30 minutes ever!
Thankfully she eventually settled down to nurse through take-off and finally fell asleep. I managed to plonk her in the bassinet then grumpily went to look for DD, who hadn’t returned to check on us. Noey had fallen asleep in his seat on the other side of the galley, so DD remained with him there with him for a bit, but we eventually decided to shift him back to sleep in our original seats so that DD could be around to help me if necessary.
The rest of the flight was relatively uneventful. Noey managed to sleep pretty well all through till breakfast was served the next morning, which means he barely clocked in 5-6 hours of sleep, but I guess it was to be expected. Nomi alternated between sleeping and waking up looking incredibly blur several times that night. The bassinet is rather tiny for a girl who likes to roll around in her sleep. Suffice to say, we barely got any sleep that night! Not sure we’ll be attempting the red-eye with the two kids the next time we fly to Sydney unless Nomi too manages to sleep better.
I was definitely happy when we arrived and I could hand Noey over to his doting grandfather. Whew.
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