News of grandchild no 5

Me siento un poco deprimido esta mañana. Tom, Lucy, Julia and Aureliano are on their way back to Ecuador after spending a couple of weeks with us.

I am writing this in bed at 7am in the morning and there’s no little moley under my duvet. The gang should be an hour or so from Mexico City, where they have a 10-hour stop-over before flying on to Quito. They will reach Quito around midnight GMT which should be 6pm in Ecuador.

Two weeks goes so fast, it seems only a day or so since I was picking them up from Heathrow. Margaret’s big worry was that they would have forgotten us, but Julia recognised me straight away and Aureliano, who was only one year old when he left, was also clearly excited.

Julia had been worried that we might have died, that Holly might have died, and that Margaret might have thrown away her things. Over the next couple of days, it was lovely to see her relax back into her English routine and to rediscover all her toys and possessions.

Julia has grown up a lot. Her language has come on (especially her Spanish), and she’s bigger and more independent. She left us in the midst of the terrible twos and she returned as a ‘threenager’, so there was the odd tantrum, especially towards the end of the holiday when I think she picked up on the general mood of depression (from us that they were going back and from Tom and Lucy the stress of a day-and-a-half cooped up in a plane).

Aureliano is more daring than Julia (he’d love to be able to jump) and he soon settled down into a routine. He’s only grumpy if he’s hungry, so if he starts to cry, give him some food. Aureliano speaks Spanish, but understands English even if he has few words. His vocabulary is mainly:

Teta – he wants breast milk
Nom-nom – he wants food
Chao – goodbye (accompanied by a wave)
Por favour – said in an especially pathetic voice when he wants breast milk and Lucy isn’t inclined.
Hello – which is pronounced the Spanish way, without an H and with a ‘yuh’ sound for the double L (eh-yo). This is also accompanied by a wave and is so incredibly cute.
His name for Julia is "oo-a".

He can also whistle (amazingly) and loves to sing and dance.

The big news that Tom and Lucy brought back was that they are going to have another baby. We will have a fifth grandchild. The baby (my bet is another boy) will be born in October and the plan is to return to the UK in September, about a month before the due date.

They will live with us for a while and then, depending upon visa requirements, they will either go back to Ecuador until September 2020 or get their own place in the UK. They want the child to be born in the UK, so he or she has a British passport (like the others). It’s relatively easy to get an Ecuadorian passport and citizenship, not so this inhospitable country.

So we have something to look forward to in the autumn, but back to this month …

Sadly, Aureliano picked up some kind of bug within a day of arriving. On Saturday, he was playing nicely in the garden when there were a couple of incidents. He was a bit slow going down the slide, so Julia gave him a shove and he crashed a little at the bottom; then he tripped on the uneven path and fell over. I think he was getting tired, but had I known him better, I would have realised something wasn’t quite right.

In the afternoon, we went to Springfields at Spalding, which is an out-of-town shopping area with playground. It was a bit of a cold, blowy day and both Aureliano and Julia were very grumpy when we tried to buy them shoes (normally it’s a real pleasure for Julia). We then went to the play area, which was OK, but Aureliano wasn’t really happy, despite doing his best to enjoy it.

Sad-looking Aureliano doing his best to enjoy the ride-on tractors
at Springfields in Spalding.

That evening, he vomited and went off his food and it took him three or four days to get over it. He’s a stoical little fellow, but we were all worried. Once he had recovered, he never stopped eating – he loves a boiled egg (or two) for breakfast and he loves fruit (grapes and kiwis were a big hit). Also, you can’t go far wrong with pasta and pesto.

Lucy is potty training him and he’s got it pretty well sewn up, although he does like to make the “poo face”, so there were a few false alarms.

We didn’t have anything planned for the holiday, so it was a bit of a muddle. Should we go to London? Should we try Center Parcs? In the end, we found a barn conversion for three days near Reepham in Norfolk and Max and Inna were able to join us.

The barn was rather nice, very spacious with underfloor heating, so it felt very comfortable and it was really well fitted out.

On Thursday, Tom, Lucy and Inna went to Norwich with Aureliano; Max stayed in to look after the dogs and Margaret and I took Julia to Roarr! – Norfolk’s very own dinosaur experience. Arthur loves Tamba Park on Jersey and I expected this to be a big hit.

It was a big hit in the wallet. They charged us £45 to get in, but we’d driven up to the place and I didn’t want Julia to think grandad was a skinflint, so I coughed up. On the way up the drive, there were strategically placed dinosaur models. I pointed them out to Julia and she said: “They’re only bones.”

I thought she was going to be singularly unimpressed, but once we’d paid and went through the door, there was a seven-foot dinosaur that moved its head and roared as we went past. Julia was terrified! Not a bit scared, she was absolutely terrified. We had to carry her past a couple of other models (silent ones thankfully) and took refuge in the indoor play area. This would have been a huge success had she not seen the velociraptor near the soft-play slide. She managed a snack and drink and a very quick play in the ball pit where the dinosaur couldn’t be seen.

We ventured out and she was interested in the mammoths, the Neanderthals and sabre-toothed tigers; she also enjoyed the mini zoo and the farm animals, but we had to leg it past the T-Rex on the way back. So Roarr! Wasn’t a roaring success. Lucy said later that Julia had been frightened of dinosaurs and she’d told them they were all dead so there was nothing to worry about – there were only bones left. I think she was happy with that explanation until the bones moved and roared.

It was windy and showery, not great weather for the beach, but Max and I took the dogs to Sheringham in the afternoon. I was hoping the tide would have been far enough out to expose the sandy beach, but it wasn’t, so we walked part-way to Weybourne on shingle. It’s hard going and the whippets were not too impressed.

On the beach at Sheringham - hard going on the shingle.

The barn came with Netflix and, that night, we watched Roma, a film that’s won loads of awards. It was very good – made me cry (which isn’t hard).

Chilling on the sofa.

It was still windy and showery on Friday. We all went to Hunstanton for a walk on the beach. Aureliano was excited to see the sea, but it was too cold and windy for the children, so they headed for Hunstanton town and we walked on the beach with the dogs. The whippets were much happier on sand than shingle and really got some speed up trying to catch redshank. They even had a short swim/paddle when they found themselves on the opposite side of a creek to us. Normally, they don’t like water (even paddling in puddles) but Ollie did once jump into the river at Toneham when he saw Holly swim across to the other side. I think he expected to be able to walk across and it was quite a shock when he couldn’t. He got out fine, but it took a while for the adrenalin to wear off. This time Archie managed to wade/plunge across the creek, but Ollie chose a deeper section and needed a few strokes. There was a slight panic in his stroke – they’re not water dogs. Tom took this video of us collecting shells on Hunstanton beach - click HERE. 

We all met up again and had lunch in a pub on the way back. They were very accommodating of dogs and children, so that was nice. The food was pretty good too and because I wasn’t driving, I allowed myself a couple of pints of Woodforde’s Wherry.

In the evening there were a couple of rounds of Catan, a board game. Lucy won both games (no surprises there – she’s as ruthless as ever).

It was a really nice break and a good place to stay. I found Reepham a bit pretentious (too many antique shops and fancy food stores) and it’s a nightmare to walk around because the main road through is fairly busy and the pavement disappears whenever the road narrows. It does have an interesting church (or churches). Two are built, end to end, so that it looks like one church with two towers. Why didn’t they build one big one? Who knows – God’s house has many rooms!

We had a nice drive back along the B-roads to King’s Lynn, Max headed back early because Inna had a baby shower and Tom & Co headed to Sheringham for a look around.

I had enjoyed reading Room on the Broom and Stick Man with Arthur and so I bought the books for Julia. She’s always loved books and it was interesting reading stick man to her; I could see that she was really worried that he might not get back to his family. She’s developed a level of understanding and empathy that wasn’t there previously.

Julia and her friend at music club

The weather picked up thankfully and the second week was much warmer and less windy. It meant the children could play outside, but the time flew by. Faz came up to see Tom, Lucy had to go to Cambridge for a day, Tom and Lucy spent a day in London and a day in Baldock, there was some last-minute shopping for Marmite, Yorkshire Tea and Ginger Nuts (essential supplies for Brits abroad).

It was nice to go back to Crowland soft play and to Thorney Park – two old favourites – and Margaret loved taking them back to Matthew Coates music sessions and to Play and Chat. Julia met a little girl at music that she’d not seen for a year. Margaret said they knew each other straight away and gave each other a huge hug.

We were amused by how much Aureliano loved the purple buggy. He wakes up around 6am, starving hungry, but needs a sleep at lunchtime. We found the buggy a perfect way to get him off to sleep. He loved being tucked in and wheeled around, there would be some contented singing for a while, then ZZZs.

I ran them all back to Heathrow on Friday for a 10.30pm flight home via Mexico City, where they had a 10-hour stop-over before heading on to Quito. It was the cheapest option and seems to have worked reasonably well. I hope the Ginger Nuts weren’t too crushed when they unpacked.

Aureliano will always have a snooze in the buggy

Catan at the Barn - Lucy won 2-0.