A Yorkshire Solution to Teething

We've just got back from three days in Yorkshire visiting my sister in law, three of the wettest summer (or winter) days I've had in a long time. Arriving in the station, it was about 30 seconds before I had someone call me "duck". I think the ducks were more in their element that us - they have waterproof feathers, we had to dig out the raincoats.

We felt sure the time was right to leave London, Wimbledon had been fairly dry and tradition said it was due for a drenching, but instead we seemed to take most of the weather north with us. The rain ruled out most of our ideas for walking through gardens and all the outdoor things we had planned so the search was on for other pursuits.

Ever since seeing it on the TV ad (for double glazing, I think) one of my goals was to visit the Tan Hill Inn - the highest pub in Britain. So with a lot of sweet talking and promises to get up and rock the baby, to change nappies on demand and all sorts of other things I'm hoping won't be remembered, we set out on a miserable day to drive through the moors to drink a pint on top of the world.

Yorkshire is an amazing place, there must be hundreds of small villages, all perfect pictures with stone houses and stone walls and flowers everywhere. It's like the locals in every village had put on some kind of special decoration for us tourists whizzing through on our cars.

It was our first time in a car for a long while, and Sophie loved it. There's something about cars and babies that just puts them right to sleep and all her toothing troubles were forgotten as we sped along. It was just a pity we did have to stop every now and again, becuase she had some sort of 6th sense that woke her up the second we stopped.

Not sure whether it was teething or being in a new place, she just doesn't like anything at the moment. But there was one other time she quietened down, and I should know by now that's she's becoming one of those children that when it's quiet, you have to worry.

I was sitting there enjoying my pint and watching the driving rain against the (new double glazed!) windows when I spied the above picture out of the corner of my eye. Cold is meant to make gums feel better, so I guess whether it comes from an official, specially designed toy that you put in the freezer or a bottle the landlord puts in the fridge, the principle is the same.

So it's a moral dilemma. On the plus side, it keeps her quiet, and it keeps Dad busy making sure there are enough cold empty bottles to keep her happy. On the negative side, there are some people who might take this the wrong way, and the government is coming up with more drinking restrictions and proclamations (though this might be more of a reason to go ahead with my new solution).

Yep, it's a tricky situation, I think I'll have another pint while I think about it ...

Meeting the Grandmother

One of the greatest moments of my life was introducing my daughter to my parents (she's their first grandchild and they've waited over 30 years). They've heard her on the phone and seen her on the webcam, but nothing compares to meeting in the flesh.

Even over the few weeks we spent back with them she changed a lot - growing from someone who could fit in our overhead luggage compartment, to someone who, well, who would still fit, only not so well.

Unfortunately I think my mother had seen so many photos and so much video of Sophie that she thought they knew each other. I gues this is the sort of thing that happens to TV and celebrity stalkers, this example was just a bit closer to home - no one expects the grandmother stalker!

Mum's first reaction on seeing Sophie was to rip her out of my arms (not even pretending I was the one she wanted to see) and turning away as she did it.

Of course this meant that Sophie couldn't see her Mum and Dad. This got a predictable (howling) reaction and so my poor Mum was stranded with a crying baby in a crowded airport lounge. Not exactly the meeting she had imagined.

But things soon warmed up between them, and in a couple of days they were the best of friends. With Mum it was the first time we'd had a babysitter and it quickly became adictive.

• Crying baby in the morning? Pass her over to her grandmother.
• Baby who wants to play at 6am? Over to her grandmother.
• Baby who should be taken out for some fresh air? Over to her grandmother.

Very quickly there was basically one answer to every question we had about Sophie - Very quickly grandmother became our crack.

Back in London

If anyone is wondering why things have been super quiet on this blog, it's because I've just spent three weeks going cold turkey on computers while on holiday back in New Zealand.

This meant lots of travelling in planes (about 30 hours from check in to check in) and a lot of hours in carseats as well.

As a way of getting to know your baby, travel must be right up there at the peak. There's something about taking a baby in a confined aeroplane that brings all the eyes and ears of the world to parents with babies. I can hear their thoughts as we walked down the aisle to our seats, every set of eyes I met had one simple message, "please not next to me, please not next to me" as we looked for our seats.

In the end we were lucky enough to sit next to another couple with a baby a couple of weeks older than ours. They were both great, with sleeping in great proportion to crying.

We've come back to two main challenges, the first is that we spent the last three weeks taking full advantage of not having to bother about a routine. With a gaggle of grandmothers and grandfathers and aunts clamouring to change nappies and try their hands at quieting a crying babay, it's been easy to get lazy. The second issue is sleep, three weeks is about the right amount of time to adjust to a different time zone and now adjusted, it is of course time to adjust back again. New Zealand and London are 12 hours time difference, so we parents are literally about to change day into night - I just hope Sophie appreciates what we're doing for her!