First times

It's been a busy week for Logan as we have been up to a lot of things, including a couple of "first times".

It started on Monday when for the first time we went to the swimming pool. My parents bought a static caravan at the Craig Tara holiday park and as their UK contact I have a pass which allows me to use the facilities as I wish. Which means I can go to the 2 swimming pools (the public one, very busy, and the owners one, smaller but much quieter), use the gym facilities, and get 15% off everything I buy - very handy for that "after swim" coffee and cake!

I really wanted Logan to take part in a baby swimmers class, but the Ayr class starts at 6 months old and the closest one after Ayr is in Irvine and I really don't fancy driving half an hour each way for an hour's class. So the Craig Tara pool will do just fine, even more so as when Logan is old enough he will be able to get free swimming lessons. Brilliant!

I was a bit worried about how old he should be for the first time, and what temperature the water should be at but Baby Centre is just a great website that gives lots of tips and advice. So at 11 weeks Logan was well old enough (they say there isn't really a minimum age but to wait until 6 weeks is advisable, plus mums can't do any physical activities before 6 weeks after the birth) and the water temperature should be 26-27 degrees minimum. As this is your standard swimming pool water temp, there was no problem there. 

Baby Centre also recommends to do it slowly. So we were going to go into the water for 10 minutes max, or until he started shivering. Well he took to it quite well. No smiles, but no cries either. Just a bit of a puzzled look on his face really. Unfortunately the owner's pool had a problem with its hot water so we had to go to the main pool and it was really noisy for a first time. Hopefully next Monday we will be able to go into the smaller, quieter pool so he can start really enjoying it.

The second "first time" was a bit more challenging. For the first time since Logan was born, we spent the night "elsewhere", i.e. not in our house. We went to Edinburgh on Thursday where we visited the Botanic Gardens (highly recommend them, especially the Glass Houses, entry fee of £4 per adult but well worth it), and on Friday morning at 9.30 am I had a double appointment to renew my passport and get Logan his French passport (which will be his only passport until he can get a Scottish one, so his Dad says!!). 

So Thursday night was spent at the lovely Aaron Glen B&B just South of the city. The landlady had added a travel cot to the bedroom, and for the first time since Logan was moved into his own room 8 weeks ago, he slept in the same bedroom as us. Keeping the routine was really hard!! We had to shower him instead of bath (a bit tricky! tip: both mum and dad are needed, mum to sit in the shower and hold baby while dad washes and rinces baby, then takes baby away to be dried and clothed. Mummy can then have some "alone" time in the shower!), then we put him in the pram and walked to the restaurant to make him fall asleep for the night. It worked and he was well zonked. But weirdly he spend the night moaning, squirming, talking to himself while being fast asleep. So WE didn't sleep a wink as he was keeping us awake!!

And we came back on Friday afternoon to set the normal routine again. Much better. We had a great night as Logan slept through from his 11 pm dreamfeed to 8 am this morning!!! Amazing. Not so good for me though as I had to get up at 4 am to express some milk since my boobies were exploding...