Jessica’s Uncle Carl-Fredrik left again to catch a plane home early yesterday (Friday 4th January) morning. Jessica really enjoyed him being here: she was giggling and chuckling lots in his company and he was excellent at finding things to do to distract her and cheer her up when she was getting tired or bored. It was great that the two of them got to spend a bit of time together. Carl-Fredrik played lots with Jessica and also fed her her first hardboiled egg, which she seemed to really like.
On Wednesday (2nd January) Carl-Fredrik and I brought Jessica into London for her very first visit…! It was after some hesitation on my part: I didn’t want to get ‘stuck’ in the middle of a world city with a fed-up, screaming baby and a long journey home. But it’d have to be done some time, there’d be two of us to carry the pushchair up and down the stairs in the underground and Jessica might just as well be fine with it all. And I agreed with my brother that I shouldn’t be afraid to attempt new things with Jessica – after all, I’d been apprehensive about the first time I took Jessica out in the pram on my own and now I think nothing of it…
Jessica had a nice long two-hour sleep in the morning, which meant that we couldn’t catch the train we’d first intended to get but on the other hand it meant that Jessica would be more rested. I fed Jessica her lunch on the train (two thirds of a jar of shop-bought cheesy pasta and veg, followed by a handful of whole blueberries and a few sips of water) to save some time and then she got to sit (well, stand and jump up and down, really…) on my lap for the rest of the journey in to Victoria.
Throughout, Jessica seemed happy mainly taking in her surroundings when on the train, in the underground and walking down Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. There was a chill in the air and a breeze that bit our fingers, so I made Jessica wear her gloves, something she isn’t very keen on in general, but thankfully she didn’t make much of an attempt to take them off. (Usually she shakes and shakes one of her hands until that glove falls off and then she uses her free hand to quickly pull of the other glove – I’ve watched her…!)
As Carl-Fredrik and I had planned to visit a couple of specific shops on separate shopping streets, there was a bit of walking involved and we didn’t get time to actually ‘do’ much. (It probably didn’t help that the underground train on Victoria Line didn’t stop at Victoria, so part of the journey had to be made by a replacement bus, which involved us going back on ourselves a bit as those only went to Pimlico…) We didn’t want to stay too long in London, in case Jessica got really tired but wouldn’t be able to nap in the pushchair with it being so busy around. In the shops, the music was loud and Jessica got a bit bored. So in Habitat I unwrapped and took her out of the pushchair for a bit to let her look around, which cheered her up straight away. She wanted to push the pushchair around while I was holding her, but that tends to make my arm muscles ache after not too long, so I let her walk around for a little bit instead (though the floor was slippery and she started reaching for the stacked sale crockery, so not for very long…).
On the return journey, we didn’t have to wait long at Victoria for our train to come in. I fed Jessica her afternoon bottle when we’d got on board and then had the pleasure of changing her nappy for the first time on a train… It wasn’t too bad while we were still at the platform – although the changing table was high up and without any edges, and Jessica kept wanting to roll over and reach for a bright yellow bar next to her head – but it got trickier as soon as the train started to move. In hindsight I should have ignored the fold-out table and changed her on the floor instead. After that, Jessica was bright and breezy again, standing on my lap looking out the window, reaching for the overhead lights or playing with Carl-Fredrik, stopping to listen every time there was a message on the tannoy.
In the end, Jessica didn’t have an afternoon nap. We got back home and she was happy and giggly throughout the rest of the afternoon and early evening, cruising around the furniture and playing by herself, with Carl-Fredrik and Daddy when the latter came home. Both Carl-Fredrik and I agreed that, although we hadn’t achieved much, it was good to have taken the ‘risk’ making the journey with Jessica and nice to have had the change of scenery. For Jessica herself to really enjoy London, though, it might be better to wait until she’s a bit older and take her to the Zoo or, when she’s school age, museums.
A few other notes:
On Thursday (3rd January), Jessica took let go of my hand and took four steps on her own, then stumbled on the fifth (but she fell slowly and I caught her before she reached the floor).
Jessica reaches her hand out towards things very often now and though I’m not always sure exactly what she’s looking at, I try to repeat short, simple words, so that perhaps she’ll start to copy the sounds.
The last week or so, Jessica has taken longer to settle for the night. Even though she rubs her eyes and acts tired, she seems to perk up towards the end of her evening bottle and then she cries and is restless for up to half an hour to forty minutes before she goes to sleep…! We go up to check on her every so often, and to pick her up and hold her for a little bit so she knows she’s not been abandoned, and then put her back in her cot on her back and the right way around again (sometimes she’s manage to turn herself completely around, often she’s on her front with one or both legs sticking out between the bars, fairly often all squashed up in a corner, and once she was sitting up, which was a first). Ian has suggested we add a bedtime story to the bedtime routine, after her bottle, so we’ll try that.
This morning Jessica put a potato in the washing machine and then left it there. So we definitely need to check inside it in future before we put a load of washing in…
Gabriella