Travelling light

Well kind of.

It's amazing the reduction in Stuff when you no longer need to remember to pack nappies and all that paraphernalia. We made up for it by taking Ben's mattress though! He now has his own suitcase, this bee trunki. All his clothes and coats fitted in there. I managed to get away with using the smallest of our cases as well, for me - and that even had my big coat packed in it! For road trips I don't put toiletries in the case though, so we had a plethora of other bags and things with toiletries and shoes and art stuff and food and Ben's bed and his bike and etc etc etc. The car wasn't exactly full, but I'll be impressed if I can pack everything back into the car so neatly for the journey home. Especially as we'll have my mum and her stuff in the car as well for the return journey!



Bad night, good day. Up in the night again with Ben, we caught his temperature before it spiked properly this time so he wasn't sick, but he refused to let me let go of him to get the medicine because he was shivering and shaking from the beginnings of the fever again. It was fairly traumatic getting the medicine into him, and we needed a damp cloth to mop up the sticky patches of medicine on the bed afterwards, but once that was done we managed to settle down again. Of course I couldn't sleep then though, and didn't want to fall asleep until I knew his temperature was going down. So, Sunday morning arrived on the back of yet another bad night's sleep.

That said, Dad was able to look after Ben while Steve did the PA at church and I was in the band, and Ben settled happily in creche because one of his favourite staff was there so it was good all round. It's my last band date next month... baby will be here after that. Going to miss being in the band!!

After church we were off to a farewell picnic for some lovely friends who have been with our church for a couple of years. Their visa is up at the end of this month though, and they can't get an extension so they are back off to Bangalore and we are going to miss them HUGELY. It was lovely to see Ben playing with so many different children at the picnic, I don't often get to see him playing and interacting like that with so many kids of different ages, it's normally just creche age children, or he's off playing after church with his minders and fan club usually where I am not standing.

And then after the picnic it was time to pack and get going. Packing was pretty stress-free as I'd spent part of the time lying away waiting for Ben's temp to go down by writing a list of the stuff I needed to take with me! Even with all my organisational skills I still managed to set off over half an hour after I meant to. Ben and Steve spent a while exchanging hearts and kisses and saying 'bye and telling each other to look after the kiss, and then we were off. Ben chattered happily about this that and the other until we were about halfway to Steyning, telling me he didn't want his chair lying down because he wasn't going to sleep. And then he had a bit of a cough and went quiet. And it turned out that he'd fallen fast asleep, less than 20 minutes into our journey!!

The journey was good. Hit traffic on the M25 which I wasn't expecting at that time of evening on a Sunday, but Ben slept all the way til Warwick where I couldn't wait any longer for a wee. He was asleep almost before we got back on the motorway though after that and slept the rest of the way to mum's house.

We arrived about 12:40am and by 2am were in bed - after chatting and Ben playing with grandma (he was happy to see her!). And fast asleep.