We survived!

 

Thank you everyone for your advice and encouragement prior to our big trip to Spain.  The long flight with the two little ones wasn’t so bad, but maybe I was just psychologically prepared for no sleep at all!  The couple of hours I actually got were a luxury 😉 The 7 hour layover in Madrid was dreadfully long but thankfully we found a rather nice children’s area with toys for kids of all ages and even a quiet room for naps.  We packed snacks, we had toys and crayons and books, but at the end of the day what did my toddler do? Play on the iPad.

Alcalá is a special place.  It’s a place where you walk through town everyday, you bump into friends on the street, and your kids play outside every single day.  Maybe I’m just feeling a little nostalgic but they really do “work to live” rather than “live to work” like so many of us do here.

While there we baptised Bianca and we’re so lucky we could! Such a special day we will always treasure.

We also got to have fun at the Feria which is a sort of carnival that happens every year. It’s really hard to explain, and the pictures don’t do it justice but just trust me when I say it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen!  I’ll puts some pics at the end of the post.

I think the big lesson from the trip for me was to accept that our routines were gonna change.  I focused on trying to keep some of the basic structure of our daily routine but realized quickly there was no way that it was going to be the exactly same.  Bedtime? That was the tough one! The sun didn’t set until about 9pm and we never even sat down for dinner before then.  All in all it worked out, and as family, we really enjoyed ourselves. When we departed all we could talk about was when can we come back? next summer? can more of my cousins make it with their kids too? I have so many wonderful memories of the time I spent in Spain throughout my own childhood and nothing would make me happier than for my girls to have a similar experience.

That was until the flight home.

The baby had been unwell a day before our scheduled departure and I took her to a clinic where we were told she had a virus but that she would be fine to fly.  We realized about 3 hours into our 9 hour flight that she likely had a massive ear infection and there was nothing we could do about it.  The poor baby was just miserable and cried for pretty much the duration. We found out later she also was developing pink eye as a result of the ear infection which explained the non-stop rubbing of the eyes.  Needless to say she did not sleep and no one else did either! Yes we survived, but barely, and when we finally got home my husband declared we are never, ever doing that again!!

What’s that saying? Time heals all wounds…? Maybe this time next year he’ll feel differently.

PS: after a full 10 day dose of antibiotics and eye drops the baby was fine and surprisingly not jet-lagged.

As promised 🙂