Holiday

Nothing quite like clearing up a poo explosion in a motorway service station to signify the official start of your holidays! I do so love getting poo stuck under all my fingernails. Child wiped down, but with a yellow Simpson-esq tinge to his skin he happily tucked into sweet potato wedges.

Car journeys with small children are stressful. The Bald Kitten asks many questions in both a pitch and volume that is impossible to hear. Naturally when asked to repeat the question he does so even quieter than the first time round. Resulting the standard not-heard-you-but-clearly-you-want-some-sort-of verbal-response ‘Oh yes darling’. I have literally no idea what I’ve been ‘yes darling’ to, hopefully not something expensive. Or dangerous. Despite the fact he can’t seem to ask something in a volume we can hear, sudden loud outbursts of ‘DADDY LOOK OUT!’ are fairly common. This is always followed by ‘There’s a big elephant/dinosaur!’ The car accidents he’s nearly caused by these outbursts are numerous.

Even Balder, chuffed with his giant poo and content with his potato wedges, declined the boob in the services, choosing instead to start screaming about thirty minutes later, in an area with absolutely nowhere to stop. Eventually finding a car park, we pulled over for some boobing. Even Balder decided pulling the gear knob and looking round was preferable to feeding so I assumed he wasn’t hungry and we set off on our journey again.

To the sounds of an infant screaming. For an hour and a quarter.

An hour.

And a quarter.

We got a little relief by playing Bohemian Rhapsody through the car stereo but it was short lived. When we stopped at a supermarket close the the holiday park, I took my tiny, pink, tear stained (and still wailing) boy of of his seat and he stopped. Immediately. At first I thought I’d gone deaf. I’d almost forgotten what the world sounded like without crying. I mistakenly thought he was hungry, turns out he was fed up of being in his car seat and just wanted snugs. He was quiet round the supermarket, meaning I could hear his brother exclaim ‘Mummy, I found bird oil!’ when he saw the bottles of Famous Grouse.

We arrived at the holiday park to much excitement. As hubs and I were busy unloading the car I happened to catch an unholy pong in the caravan.

Long story short, the Bald Kitten had shit himself.

Now, as I was scooping up diarrhoea off the bathroom floor, and showering poo off a small, whimpering boy, (he was upset that he was covered in poo, he wasn’t in any trouble) I couldn’t help but think about how I’d been elbow deep in crap twice in one day.

As much as drinking until I forgot the poo was appealing, I’m both boob feeding and co-sleeping, that’s not an option. Pre-kids holidays involved late nights and too much booze, holidays now revolve around the kids. We do a lot of things we don’t particularly want to, because it makes the children happy. Sometimes it makes them happy for a lot shorter time than you anticipated. Sometimes, it makes them so happy you get an almighty tantrum when the activity has to come to an end. Sometimes you get so excited planning something you’re convinced they’ll love, eagerly anticipate all the wonderful memories you’re going to make and all the ungrateful sods do is whine and moan. That’s a good one for creating a holiday atmosphere.

Today was a simple day. An explore, a walk, a dip in the sea. Then a poorly hubs. We sent him to bed and went to the park. I stood for what felt like hours whilst the Bald Kitten went on a slide approximately fifty billion times, he’s developing a fearlessness that is turning my hair white. I was trying to keep hold of his wriggly little brother, and was surprised when I told him it was time to go that he went without any objections.

On the short walk back to the caravan, he held my hand, bouncing along in the way that small or excited children do and said: ‘I’ve had a lovely day Mummy.’

We’ve done nothing extravagant, we’ve mainly just been together. And our little boy has had a lovely day. And I couldn’t be happier about that.

In other news:

The Bald Kitten has taken to weeing standing up.

His brother has given me a hicky on the arm.

Turns out neither of our children like pedalos.