Travels with a toddler

There's no real secret to the easy travelling.

The standard advice is (1) be prepared with enough favourite toys and foods, (2) try to adjust to the new time-zone immediately on the plane, and (3) give the kid her own seat. But that is really no guarantee because I have seen kids scream their heads off during the take off and landing, from the safety of their own seats.

For the whole week before they left, I spent many mornings showing Sophie on our World Map where France and Beijing were, and explaining to her that Papa was going to take her to France, Mama would join her the next week and so on.... I had no idea whether this helps or not.

Maybe it does because I am proud to record that Sophie was a dream traveller. I think I had been more nervous about this flight than Fab. 12 to 24 month toddlers are notoriously bad travellers. But Sophie repeated her previous miracle - she ate, slept, read her books, played with her dad and her toys, and didn't cry AT ALL for the entire Beijing - France flight, and then slept for the whole train journey to Lille. Some adults can't even do that without getting cranky!!

On arriving at the house, she saw Fab's father and identified him correctly as "Papy!" (all that skyping does work!!) and settled into the routine reasonably well by falling asleep immediately when they arrived at home at 10pm but then she woke up at 4am, and after a bottle of milk went back to sleep till 6am.

Thus ends the First Report from our skype video conference this morning.

I couldn't be more proud of both Fab and Sophie.

I miss them lots but I am doing all the things which I don't normally do in Beijing when they are both around such as watch a Chinese play with my parents, party with my friends, and going to learn to snowboard.