5 months, 2 teeth, 25 miles and 4 1/2 hours

Has it been 5 months already? The date says it has. So it must be true. My little baby is 5 months old. On the eve of her 5 month's birthday (and I kept watching the clock thinking how few hours it was from the actual hour of her birth) she showed us what a determined little girl she is. Placid as she may be most of the time.

After a lovely day with newly wed friends in West Kilbride we embarked on our journey home. Darkness was setting, but Snowflake was well fed and with clean nappy, it was the right time for a nap. She had her favourite blanket, her favourite toy, an attentive sister who will try her best to entertain her.and we crossed our fingers that maybe, just maybe, we might get home without the usual wailing from the back.

How wrong we were. As soon as the engine was started, cheery Snowflake transformed into furious dragon. We made it to the next town (20 minutes), where we stopped and I fed her again. Repeat scenario - transfer to car seat, furious wailing. We drove on. It was late, it was getting to Cubling's bedtime and it was only another 35 minutes drive. You know the way if you know there's nothing much you can do and you just want to get through it? Well, that was us. Until about 10 minutes later, when Snowflake demonstrated her new found skill of hyperventilating to daddy (I'd been introduced already).

There's something about a hyperventilating baby which is really and truly worrying. But we had to get home and there was no where near to stop. So we drove on. Just minutes later, there was the unmistakable sound of resurgitation of the projectile kind (remember I'd fed her well before setting off and again just 20 minutes later? There was A LOT OF MILK in her tummy. It was now no longer in her tummy but nicely distributed across her clothes, car seat, blanket, toys and possibly more, just that it was too dark to see.). She was also choking on the puke, while still hyperventilating.
We stopped as soon as we could, cleaned her up as good as we could.

There we were, somewhere in Ayrshire/Renfrewshire, I don't know which, near Howwood, 17 miles away from home and we knew that this journey could not continue like this. I strapped Snowflake in the sling and walked to the nearest train station, mercifully only half a mile away. By the time we got there, of course we'd miss the hourly train by 5 minutes. Had we driven.... It was cold and I didn't have clothing warm enough for Snowflake to wait for an hour, so we decided to get some food in a local restaurant. That meant another 1 mile drive (argh!!!!).

Once there, we could relax, it was a beautiful country hotel, with open fire and friendly staff, not very busy, just perfect to get our nerves together and Snowflake promptly fell asleep. Of course only to wake up just in time to get into the car for our last leg home. Low and behold I'd also run out of nappies as this outing was getting markedly longer than intended, but at least I had a change of clothes for both kids so improvisation it was and a vest and trousers quickly were stuck into a wrap to make the new style cloth nappy.

Snowflake was all cheery and smiles. Until the car seat was put into the car. At which point mummy lost the will to live and daddy had to rescue her and wave his magic wand (swing the car seat) which instantly sent Snowflake off to the land of nod.

We got home 4 1/2 hours after we set off on our 25 mile journey, and Snowflake didn't wake up until after we'd put Cubling to bed and watched a DVD, sleeping happily in her car seat as if nothing had happened. 

In other Snowflake news, she's got two teeth, rolls over from front to back and back to front, has another bad cough and still wakes a lot at night, but is otherwise a very smiley little girl, extremely good natured (honest) and giggles hysterically when her sister jumps up and down. Her favourite toy is her right foot and she's unbelievably beautiful and cute. When she's not in the car.

February Bilingual Carnival

It just shows how behind I am with everything that this month's bilingual carnival has been out for a good few days and I'm only posting about it today. Sorry. There were two teeth and two colds that descended upon us. My kids are early teethers it seems, just like I was so my proposal is that teething dates are genetically determine. Discuss.

More interesting observations can be had from the fabulous people who raise their kids bilingually, so don't miss out whether you're one of those parents or not, because it's all rather exciting. Maybe I'm biassed though as an old linguist and language teacher.

On another observation, I can certify that a bilingually raised 10 year old (German/Spanish) who visited us with his mum this week has demonstrated that bilingual kids are great at picking up additional languages. I can't believe how good his English is considering he's only learned it for a little while. Hat off R.!

Oh and here's the end of gum smiles: