Sydney’s parents arrived a week ago Monday, a little later and more tired than we’d expected, due to some flight delays in Nova Scotia. We rested up the remainder of Monday and early Tuesday, then took a trip out to Blenheim Palace on Tuesday to see large, old trees (not the palace) and enjoy some walking after all of that travel. Wednesday we had another day at home, getting things together for our trip to Switzerland, Thursday through Saturday. We were pretty tired when we came home from that trip, but decided to run out to London yesterday to pay a visit to Kew Gardens.
Not surprisingly, we found ourselves juggling rest, children, and the desire to see fun things. We probably saw too many things to get much in the way of rest and children on their best behavior, and I’m afraid that our experiences are still largely colored by crying sessions and temper tantrums, but I’m hoping that that is not all that we’ll remember from our adventures.
For those of you curious about, specifically, our travel with children, we’ve learned that it’s best if we do everything possible to help Katherine get sleep and take that into account as a serious travel consideration. She’s not a fantastic sleeper anyway, and she really needs those afternoon naps and long nights in her crib (and even those hours of talking to herself before going down). We can get away with a day without a nap every now and then, but she only had a couple of naps in the past two weeks, and we could really tell (as could everyone else who shared a plane, train, or subway car with us). We’re not sure exactly what that means for our future travel ambitions, but it’s probably something about which we should have better warned the grandparents!
Erin
Alan Schmierer
Oh my, yes, we’ve too learned that Lily is quite a bear if we veer off the sleep schedule! Great pictures! Looks like you all had a good time together– how fun for K to have grandparents visit!