Road trip

We were back on Tuesday from a 2 week roadtrip with Logan. And it was pretty cool. 

3 days to travel North, 1 week on Orkney, 4 days to travel back South. You might think Ayr to Wick/Thurso in 3 days, even worse 4, is ridiculously long, but we were travelling with a 4.5 months old baby and had to follow 3 important rules:

• Never have the baby more than 2 hours in the car seat
• Give him 2 hours to kick about after 2 hours driving
• Avoid driving more than 4 hours in a day 

So our first stop was Cromarty, with a 2 hour stop for lunch at the House / Falls of Bruar just North of Pitlochry. Pretty mainstream touristy but great food as always (if you can find a table) and lots of shops to go round spending time. There is even a great walk up to the Falls which we wanted to show Logan, but it had rained pretty heavily and the path was unfortunately flooded right from the start.

Cromarty is a wee gem of a town. The weather was lovely the next morning, so as we would only leave a place when Logan was ready for his first nap (so that we would drive when he was asleep) we took a long walk to explore and I have to say it is right up there in my list of 10 prettiest villages in Scotland. Logan DID NOT like the change to his routine. He DID NOT fall asleep on the 15 min drive to the Anderson Restaurant and stayed awake, gurning or crying, throughout the whole meal and we had to make a quick escape without dessert as we felt he was disturbing the other patrons too much. His first night in a strange bed was not good either. He kept us awake most of the night. We had to take him in our bed for the first time ever for him to at last fall asleep.

The first morning. Looking as if he'd let his mum and dad have a good night. NOT!

The second night wasn't much better. We were up in Caithness and the great thing was that we had dinner at the B&B, so were able to put the baby monitor on. Again he took forever to fall asleep! 

He loved the ferry across to Orkney, outside in the wind watching the sea!! And once we were there he settled very quickly into his new routine. I suppose we didn't move for 1 week so it helped a lot. 

 We had a great time with him visiting all the archaelogical sites, going to the Isles of Hoy for a hike to the Old Man, and of Rousay to explore Midhowe and Taversoe Tuick. His Auntie Rona joined us from Aberdeen for 3 days and it was brilliant having the extra help and someone to babysit. Orkney was really good: the weather was stunning for the whole week, apart from 2 sites there weren't that many tourists, and even if we're not into archaeological/historical stuff we really loved it.

 Old Man of Hoy in the background. 

 The Stones of Stenness in the background

 With his auntie Rona on Rousay

We came back via Durness, Gairloch and Fort William (Corran) and by then we all had a good routine of driving at nap times, taking breaks fo 2 hours to let Logan kick his legs about and getting to our B&B early enough that he could have his bath and last feed at normal times. He would still be awake all the way through dinner in restaurants, but at least he knew the drill and was very well behaved!

The next test for him is my going back to work on Monday. Mornings only fair enough, but it's going to be a big change for both of us... 

Teething vs Laugh explosion

What a night. Logan was teething (we think!) but of course we didn't know that at the time. 

It started around 5.30 am when all of a sudden Logan starts crying in his cot. Logan SLEEPS THROUGH so we thought he'd had a nightmare. Except we had to go back to reassure him about 4 times and then had to let him cry himself to sleep.

He slept for about 40 minutes and then started crying again. Same scenario took place.

He woke up again at 7.30 am, at which stage we just decided there was no point trying to sleep again. He really struggled feeding (still breastfeeding by the way! should be weaning him this month but the little stubborn monkey won't take the bottle, even if it's expressed milk! Bit of progress as he will drink juice from it). He was really cranky until he got tired again.

He had a really long nap from 9.45 to 12.30, which gave us plenty of time to try and figure out what was wrong with him and of course Google's answer was teething. Poor little soul. He was not himself again all afternoon until his next nap.

When he woke up at 4.30 he was his good old self again, which was excellent. He fed really well at last, and we played wonderfully afterwards. We had so much fun that we took this video. Beware: it's contagious!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZb8y0yNPps 

And tonight for the first time we tried solids! We had just 10 or so baby spoonfuls of baby rice mixed with formula and he liked it! So we'll continue with the juice in the bottle (either baby juice, making sure it's pure fruit juice with spring water, or 100% fruit juice to which I had cooled boiled water) and the baby rice. The latter should give him a taste for formula and hopefully in a week's time he'll take that in the bottle.

He'll have to as I'm starting work again on Monday 29th of this month!!

 Trying to rollover!

  In his "doughnut". He does not like it very much. Hopefully he'll like it better when he can sit!

Farewell Haggis the Cat

Gosh it's been 10 days since my last blog entry. Well a sad event took place the day I was going to write something new: our cat Haggis very unexpectdly died. He was only 7 years old! And he'd only used 4 of his 9 lives!

Every time he used a life it was hilarious.

The first time he used a life Mike and I were both working in the office, upstairs. Back then, Haggis would jump on top of the desk to sit on the windowsill. That day, it was quite warm so the window was open. The window is right over the front door, and the front door protrudes a little from the rest of the house so there is a roof starting right underneath the office window going over the front door (if that makes sense). Well what does Haggis decide to do? Let's have a wander on that roof! Except the roof is in a much steeper slope than he thought and that was him skidding down the roof, onto the gutter, then flop onto the front lawn!!! If you can picture how it happened it will no doubt make you laugh. I rushed downstairs to make sure he was all right, but cats always fall on their paws so by the time I got down he was wandering off to a neighbour's garden.

The second time was in winter. To save on heating bills, we very often light up candles in the living room. It might not be that money-saving because we have to regularly spend money repainting the walls as the soot lies everywhere. Anyway, that day we had a candle lit in the windowsill, with the curtains open enough so that they wouldn't catch fire. Haggis LOVED winsowsills (as all cats do I suppose). What does he do? Jumps on the windowsill and looks out. Sees a bird, gets his tail wagging. Well what should have happened, happened and his tail caught fire!! We screamed and started to rush to him, but our screams scared him, he jumped off the windowsill onto the carpet and the motion took the fire out. Phew! The smell was pretty horrid after that! But it still has us in giggles every time we think about it!

The third time I was away for a few days on a work trip. So I can only tell the story as Mike told it to me, and he may well have made it sound better than what it actually was! Mike is always hot when he sleeps, so he took advantage of me being away to have the bedroom door open, and the windows wide open. Another windowsill for Haggis to sit on. Picture the scene: middle of the night, a bit warm so Mike is slightly awake. He is aware of Haggis on the windowsill because as the cat jumped up there, the bell on his collar chimed (possibly what woke Mike in the first place). It's June, so the birds are up early in the morning. What we think happened was that a bird flew by the window, close enough for Haggis to think he was going to be able to catch it. Well, he didn't and fell off the window down to the patio at the back door!! Mike burst into laughter and quickly checked if the cat was fine downstairs, then left him outside to chase more birds.

With regards to the last life he used, we're not quite sure what happened as we were upstairs while Haggis was downstairs. Winter again, so candles lit in the living room. Dinner was cooking away, and I'd just put on the steaks to fry, so had gone upstairs to tell Mike dinner was just about ready. We then smelt burnt so rushed downstairs, believing the steaks were burning. They were fine. Couldn't figure out where the smell had come from. We sat down to dinner. After our meal I decided to brush Haggis (he LOVED being brushed). And it's as I was brushing him that it downed on us where the burnt smell had come from! He'd burnt his tail again! It was only a bit of fluff (fluffy cats are best) and somewhow he'd managed to take the fire out by himself, but we're not quite sure how! 

In the end it was a weak heart and lungs full of liquid that took him to cat heaven. It was very sudden as he'd only started struggling to breathe on Monday, I took him to the vet's on Tuesday and he died there. We buried him in his favourite spot in the garden, using his favourite stone as a marker, and put his favourite things in with him: his food bowl, fish on a string, squieaky mouse on a string, brush and purple ball. Hard thing to do, that was! To commemorate how much he made us laugh at times, he is buried in an empty Tesco's box of frozen peas bags... :)

 Haggis is on the front door step on this photo

    Here Haggis is on the armrest