Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Aimee's first holiday

Phew – we just made it back from a week’s holiday in Scotland. We decided to drive all the way from London to Arbroath and back again – that’s a lot of driving!
Luckily Aimee slept all the way in the car. Unfortunately, that meant she didn’t sleep during the nights and oh boy, how we needed the sleep. Still, she settled after about two days and got down to the important business of charming all those around her and meeting her cousin Callum, who was born in the USA four days before Aimee.
Just before we left, Cat got Aimee weighed and, for the first time, the health worker noted that she was dipping below her usual progress chart. Nothing to worry at this stage but she had dropped a centile on the expected weight chart. Cat and I dithered over what could cause this and concluded that her fussy drinking habits and copious diarrhoea meant she wasn’t gaining weight as expected. So we embarked on a more rigorous feeding regime with bottle/breast/expressed/spoon – whatever it takes to get that milk into her. It seems to be working as Aimee looks satisfyingly chubbier and feels heavier. She also is expanding her repertoire of solids – now loving the mashed banana and puree apple.
We had a very good time in Scotland. Aimee was exposed to a whole bunch of new stimuli – new faces, smells, sounds and sights. She obviously enjoyed herself as she smiled and laughed non-stop. At one stage, when I walking her in the pram into town, I couldn’t move for old ladies stopping me and saying how beautiful Aimee was! Guess they don’t see too many cute half Chinese babies in this part of the world.
The holiday was a good challenge for us. We proved to ourselves that we can travel with a baby in tow. It seems some days almost impossible to get anything done, but we managed it. Mind you, we did bring half a ton of baby accessories with us in the car to help cope. This compared with Callum, who came over with just a few essentials all the way from America.It’s a great thing that Aimee has a same age cousin, I hope they will meet often over the years and become close family, just like Cat is with her aunty and uncle’s family.

No comments: