Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Back-blipped....

Meanwhile back at the ranch, yesterday, Ben had foregone his afternoon nap, and had started nodding into his dinner. But, after a fairly short nap, he'd woken up again and carried on going until about 8.30pm! After pyjamas and teeth and story and whatnot, dad put him to bed and cuddled him and told him that he had to be brave while mummy and daddy were away, to be brave to go to sleep by himself. And Ben thought about this for a moment or two, very deeply, and then pulled the duvet up and rolled over and fell fast asleep. And they didn't hear a peep out of him until 4.30am when it appears he'd got out of bed, looked in our bed and couldn't find us, "where mummy?" and gone to stand at the top of the stairs asking for mummy. No crying or anything. Dad found him standing there, picked him up, reassured him, and Ben was asleep again instantly. Woke again at 6.30, same thing happened, picked up, cuddled, asleep again instantly. Woke up for the day at 8.30!

They took him to both the tuesday morning toddler group and the wednesday morning toddler group that we usually go to, so they got to see him in his usual territory outside of the house. They went to the park, to the beach, played in the garden, managed not to have an accident with the boat on the roof of one of the sheds (it's in the sort of position that.... well, you walk along, eyes on the ground picking your way along, and then you look up and teh point of the boat is 3 inches away from your eyeball and all the hairs on your arms and neck stand on end in fright. And it's happened more than once and I still haven't learnt it's there!), changed nappies, fed him weetos and brioche and ham and cheese which to me seems fairly sensible, looked after him, had a ball.


While I was trying not to fall asleep during day 2 of the conference! Now you may have sussed by now that I am pregnant - yes I officially made it official tomorrow (gotta love back-blips) but it will help with what I'm going to say now. Early pregnancy is exhausting. And so are late sleepless nights! Needing a wee every two hours without fail is seriously annoying. And as interesting and captivating as the sessions were, I have to confess during the last two sessions I think I fell asleep at least three times. Bless you Stephen for not drawing attention to me, and thankyou for waking me up gently and without making a fuss. I love you!


Driving home we had two satnav things in the car, plus me on the google map app, pitted against each other. That said, it mattered not what the satnav and the navfree app said, my word was final anyway. And the two satnavs did well to keep up with me and my decisions. We made no wrong turns, avoided the M25 carpark, took about the same amount of time to get home as we'd taken to get there the day before, but we'd gone the scenic route and it was very very pretty - FAR nicer than motorways.

Home by 7pm. And Ben, bless him, mum had picked him up telling him they were going to watch from the window for mummy and daddy, and Ben had conked out and was absolutely fast asleep in seconds. So fast asleep that mum went and popped him in bed. When he woke up a couple of hours later all he wanted was mummy and pyjamas and bed and he was back in bed asleep in an hour - well, less than that, but he wasn't giving up his boobs in a hurry.

It's good to be home. It's been a fantastic couple of days and I'm so proud of Ben and grateful to my parents for looking after him for us, but it's good to be home.