Skye meets her Scottish family

Five minutes in a taxi and we are at my mums house in Edinburgh. Oh it' s so nice to be home! Not long after we get in my sister and her kids, Luke and Hannah arrive! Suddenly the house is very chaotic! Skye doesn't know what's hit her, but this is good as the noise and activity keep her awake! Everyone gets a chance to hold Skye and she gets a whole new set of toys to play with! Luke and Hannah help me bath Skye, who takes the inopportune moment of de-diapering to let loose of the contents of her bowels. Luke and Hannah find this hilarious but leave the cleaning up to me! Yuk!

Soon it's bedtime and we tuck Skye up all cozy in her crib. She passes out within seconds.

That night she only wakes up once, then sleeps until 7am. Not too bad for the first night!

The final leg!

We are all like zombies as we navigate between terminals at Heathrow. Skye has been a trooper but we are all tired and desperate to be in one place where we can just relax. We list for the 3pm Edinburgh flight and go to the departure area. It's absolutely mobbed, but we find a seat where we can veg. I go and exchange money (and sneak in a shop to buy some good cadury chocolate) whilst John feeds Skye. When I get back, Skye is in a tired and fiesty mood. I decide to relieve John of her for a bit and take her for a walk in the Baby Bjorn. After 10 minutes she falls asleep and is gently snoring against my shoulder. She is still asleep when we board the plane:



















This is soon to change! About as soon as we take off, Skye wakens up and cries for the whole hour long trip. I am sitting in a window seat with Skye and John is sitting about nine rows back looking very relaxed by himself. Throughout the flight, I keep apologizing to the two men sitting next to me for all the noise Skye is making and promise to hand her over to her dad half way through the flight. With 25 minutes to go, I carry Skye down the aisle to her unsuspecting dad, hand her over and return to my seat looking forward to my well deserved wee nap. Lo and behold, a few minutes later John appears back beside me with Skye in tow and tells me that he is in an exit row and can't have Skye there. I tell the back of his head as it's receding down the plane at a very quick pace that I'm willing to trade seats with him! For some reason he has his fingers in his ears ;-)

Eventually we land to the sound of Skye's wailing and she immediately falls asleep as the nice man next to me told me she would.

We are home!! Yipeee!!!

Skye's first trip over the pond: Part 2

We wake up feeling that we are in the movie Groundhog Day! Again it's a mad dash to the airport where we repeat what we did the day before, except that today we head for the Domestic terminal. I have taken John's advice (for once) and agreed to fly via (the dreaded) EAST coast in a bid to actually make it to the land of sheep and kilts! We are listed on the 12:25pm flight to JFK (New York). From there we'll fly to London Heathrow and then on to Edinburgh, Scotland. Yikes sounds like it's going to be a loooooong day!

The domestic terminal is a madhouse! People and queues everywhere, unlike the relatively calm International terminal. But all is good, we eventually make it through the mess to the gate and get on the flight. Yeah! Unfortunately, we are not seated together, but in middle seats accross the aisle from each other. I get up the nerve to ask the nice woman on the aisle beside me if she'll swap seats with John. She eyes up Johns neighbours who happen to be two hunky looking men and immediately agrees (later I notice they all swap phone numbers!). So John and I are now sitting together and spend the whole flight passing Skye back and forth between each other. She is a bit restless so it's a very tiring flight. Five hours later we are in JFK.

Luckily the gate for the LHR flight is right next to the one we arrive at, so we make ourselves known to the united woman on the desk and she tells us things look good for the flight. We get on with no problems and are even given a whole row of 6 seats to ourselves! Fantastic - we are feeling optimistic about our flight now! Ha! Of course, things couldn't go this well...we end up spending five hours (!!!) just sitting on the runway waiting for a maintenance problem with the plane to be fixed. Damn - those maintenance men are slow ;-) Skye sleeps most of this time and I'm scared that she is going to wake up just in time for the flight to take off. But no, she sleeps for most of the flight to London. We even get a chance to watch the movie and eat our meal in peace.

So we make it across the pond! Here's a photo of us on the transfer bus in Heathrow:


....to be continued

Skyes first trip over the pond: part 1

First, apologies for not keeping this blog up-to-date! Sometimes we are too busy living life to find time to write about it!

Now back to the interesting stuff....

We are about to embark on our first trip back to Scotland with Princess Skye. Oh was she in for a treat! We planned to try and catch the 7pm flight from San Francisco to London Heathrow so after a lot of organization we left home at about 4:15pm. Poor Tommy had already be taken to his friends house in Vacaville for a 10 day vacation of his own basking in the Vacaville heat, cooling off in the pool and being molested by Rakhi!

Off we head to the airport. All goes really well and we eventually are sitting at the gate waiting to go. We are going standby so it's touch and go as to whether we'll get on the flight. John is optimistic, but somehow I am thinking the worst. We wait and wait and wait. Eventually we are called up to the desk...they have only one seat left and it's in first class where wee rascals like Skye are banned. Aaaaaarrrggghhh. We have no choice but to sob gently and head back home. John somehow loses his cellphone in the interim and after getting back our checked luggage and Johns hour long trip to get the car, we evenutally get home at 9am!!! Way past Skye's bedtime! What a disaster!

Standby travel sucks!! (unless you get on and can then brag to people about how cheap it is ;-))

Tommy says "...."

So today I go Scuba-diving with Liz and Alan in Monterey and leave Skye and Tommy in John's capable hands! Tommy tells me all about it when I get back.......

"I was so confused when you got up at 5:30 this morning mummy. You made me think it was later and I jumped off my futon bed in anticipation of the day and was ready to go! You even opened up the deck door and let me chase away all those pesky racoons for you! You got annoyed when I barked though..I can't seem to help myself and I DID think it was later anyway. I was very upset when you left without me, but soon got over it and took over your spot in your bed and snuggled in with daddy. Ah, a few hours alone without my pesky wee sister Skye in tow. Luxury.

Soon it was 7am and the little toe-rag made her presence know to all. Daddy staggered downstairs to get her ladyship (looking rather scary I must admit in his big white underpants - I must tell Grandma Angie to buy him sexier underwear in the future :-) ). I love my wee sister but she gets far too much attention. I remember when I used to be the center of attention - sigh.

After daddy fed Skye, I was suddenly remembered and was lucky enough to be fed! Thank goodness. Sometimes I have to take extreme measures to make mummy and daddy remember to feed me! One day I even went as low as to steal mummies cheese-on-toast as it waited to be melted in the toaster oven. To this day mummy does not believe that daddy actually made her breakfast that day - tee hee ;-)

Anyway, I got fed and thought , yipee now time for a walk! No such luck...we all jump in the truck and head off to Cosco!!! Oh no!!!! I hate Costco. I get left in the car and daddy and Skye go off together without me. It's soooo boring. I amuse myself by sitting on all of the seats and pretending to drive the truck for awhile. Then I see a cutie-pie chocolate lab a few cars down and I make doggie-eyes at her. She blows hot air on her window and writes down her phone number in the mist. Maybe I'll call her..if she's lucky ;-)

Soon daddy and Skye come back. Maybe I'll get a walk now??? We drive and drive and eventually stop half way up a windy road. It's walkie time!!! Yippee!! I am sooo excited and I run about all over the place. Daddy has Skye in the baby carrier and she seems quite happy. She likes going for walks....she told me so. I can understand baby talk you know and we quite often have wee chats when no-one is listening. Anyway I frolick in the bushes and grass making sure I find some of the green and red plant which everyone seems to talk about. Poison something?? I can't remember...it doesn't seem to bother me though. I then run back and rub myself against daddy to let him know I love him. If I'm nice to him, i may get fed later! Much too soon, the walk is over and we head back to the truck. It's all Skyes fault as it's almost time to feed her.

When we get back, mummy has just arrived. I LOVE my mummy. She is so beautiful and kind and is the best mummy in the world, even though she is sometimes pre-occupied with Skye these days.

We all have a lovely evening in, relaxing and watching a gruesome BBC America murder mystery on the TV.

I head off into dreamland to dream of Raccoons and baby sisters :-)

Skye the Giraffe!

Today we decide to embarass Skye and dress her up as a Giraffe for daycare! She has never worn this outfit and is threatening to outgrow it, so it's now or never! And it is casual Friday ;-) We think she looks cute, but she's not too sure about that!


That evening I decide to try my hand making baby food again. This time it was to be butternut squash. I chopped up the massive vegtable as outlined in the recipe book and popped it into the microwave to steam. This was the tricky part. Trying to get the steaming just right with our overly powerful microwave. I took my chances and scooped what I could out of the big gourd into the blender. It turned out ok and I transferred the contents into little storage containers. I then picked up the jug to get out the last few spoonfuls of squash and disaster struck! Waaaaahhhhhhh! Why me???? Look at the mess I made. The base of the jug stayed where it was on the blender and the jug came away spewing the contents all over. Sigh - I should just give up on this cooking thing! Skye did not even appreciate my efforts and gave me a look of absolute horror as I advanced with a spoon full of orange gunk. I think I may take after my mother after all. Even the dog wouldn't eat HER cooking ;-) Hmm..that's an idea....here Tommy....

Baby Snogs and Bathtime!

Skye was so happy to see me when I got back from work today! As I carried her upstairs to our living room, she grabbed both of my ears and planted a wet, soggy kiss on my lips!! Her aim was a bit askew, resulting in my very wet face! As I've said before, she shows many of John's traits ;-)


Bathtime is always fun at our house. Skye loves to splash around and play with her toys. Here's a photo of her in her element!

She always protests to being removed from the bath though and no amount of singing and making stupid faces, placate her....oh but I try!


Work from home day tomorrow and I get to see a little more of my wee girl. Yipee!

A new baby, a family outing, and a post-wedding party!

Today is a busy day! We have far too much to do and not enough hours in the day. Our friends Ali and Shanti who live a few miles away in Montara have just had a baby who they've name Zeke and we want to go and see the wee creature! John has spent the previous evening cooking lots of food for them! For once no fish is included as Ali has an aversion to the scaley creatures and since she has just put in lots of hard hours delivering Zeke, we decide she should come first. Shanti will have to get his fish-fix some other time!

Next, we have to head off to San Jose to meet up with Duffy, Pete and Kellan at Happy Hollow park and zoo. It's warm and sunny when we get there, quite a change from the coast! We head inside and luckily it's not too busy. We have lunch by the Merry-go-round and decide aferwards that we should take the kids on for a ride! I decide to just sit on a bench on the ride as I think going on a horse may be a bit much for Skye! She happily sits through her first Merry-go-round ride and make silly faces at her daddy!



We relive our childhood on a dragon train and then Duffy and Kellan pose as a Dog and Cat for our amusement!

John tries to compete with Skye...

Then off we go to the zoo. Skye just loves looking at all the animal and she especially loves the petting zoo and getting down and dirty with the goats! She is absolutely mesmorised by the animals and wants to pull their ears and poke their noses. Some of the poor creatures don't know what's hit them!



The day ends with a visit to Liz and Lars for the post-wedding bash! They 'eloped' a few months ago and after lots of harassment from friends were 'persuaded' to have a little party to celebrate. It was lots of fun with a good group of people and lots of kids for Skye to play with. We'll have to watch out for that little George though as he seems to have taken a liking to Skye and likes to crawl all over her when no-ones looking ;-)

Skye in a red stroller

Exercising with an Ocean View

So on Saturdays I have a 'Mommies n Motion' stroller exercise class in Half Moon Bay. These are really fun classes and I get to hang out with all the coastside moms group moms and their cute kids. We jog along the bike path and stop and do exercises along the way! Depending how much you push yourself you can get quite a good workout! This is often dependant on Skye's mood and also how sociable I am feeling on a given day! Often it's nice to catch up with the girls and I forget that I am supposed to be huffing and puffing!

Today Skye was a bit grumpy. This is the first day she is in her jogging stroller without the carseat and she's not sure she likes it! She just refuses to bend her wee legs and sits there with her legs sticking out all rigid! Then the sun gets into her eyes....wahhhhh!

See above photo of us warming up in the sand!

Later that day I turn into one of those dreaded beings - a mall rat! I head over to Valley Fair, specifically to Hanna Andersson to look for some new cool and trendy clothes for Skye, who is quickly outgrowing her current selection! I stop at a kiddies shoe shop in the mall and marvel at all the little leather cute shoes (and almost choke at their pricetags!). I'm almost tempted to buy some, but manage to resist. We wander around Hanna Anderssons and I buy a few things. Then I spot another store ...babystyle. Now this is a cool shop! If they had the clothes in my size I would buy them!!! But they only go up to about 4 years old. It's never going to happen. I buy some cool cords and tops for Skye and off I head. A quick stop at a cafe to feed Skye and I'm on my way home.

I don't arrive back until 6:15pm just in time for Skyes nighttime regimen. Where do these days go to!

Big day tomorrow as we're going to visit Happy Hollow in San Jose with Duffy, Pete and Kellan, then off to Liz's for her post-wedding gettogether!

Tommy and Skye on Labour Day

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Skye at the Beach!

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Labour day at the Beach

So, I'm not doing very well keeping my blog up to date! Things are so busy these days with a certain wee someone (and work!) taking up all my time! So I'll backtrack a little bit, to Labour day with a quick note of what we did.

We decided to spend Labour Day in the most traditional way at the Beach! Jan and Tim and their two kids, Will (2.5) and George (10mth) joined us. George was not feeling too well and between him and Skye there was a lot of crying going on! Will had fun in the water with his dad though. Skye mostly played on her blanket on the sand and went for a walk in the Baby Bjorn with daddy. Both John and I took turns boogie boarding and surfing in the Ocean! It was a lovely day.

Skye all clean and fresh!

Yep

Bad mummy goes mountain-biking

Today I abandon father and daughter and meet Liz and Alan to go mountain-biking up Mount Tam! Not before feeding and changing Skye though and hanging out with her for an hour or two.

The mountain-biking is fantastic, but I do get a few guilty pangs back in town when I see mothers out together with their kids. It's still a lovely break though.

When I get back to El Granada, John is bathing Skye and they are having fun together. Apparently she has been a little terror all day, but now she is being a little Angel. See photo above of her after her bath all wrapped up in her towel - how cute!

Tomorrow is Labour Day so no work for us all! We're going to head to the beach to have fun!

Guess I'll have to feed myself today Martha!

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Crazy Kitten!

Today Skye encounters her first feline friend! But that comes later in the day. First a summary of our Saturday together.

John goes fishing for Rock fish with Tom and his father-in-law and Skye and I head to our mommies-in-motion exercise class! There are about 7 moms there with their strollers and we all head out along the coastal path for our workout. It's a fun class, with jogging, exercises and singing. Skye is as good as gold today - hurrah! Afterwards, we all head to the HMB coffee company for lunch, where a few others join us. It's a nice morning all in all.

After lunch, I head to Bob's fresh farm produce stand down Hwy 1 to buy some fruit and veggies for Skye's homemade baby food. Can you believe it? Alison (Martha Stewart) Monteith is going to make baby-food for Skye! I choose some Sweet Potato, Squash and Pears to begin with. Soon the fun begins. The book says "It only take 30 minutess a week to make healthy, fresh baby food". Even I can manage that, I think! I start with the Acorn Squash. "Cut in half and scoop out the seeds", it reads. I do this, and there is nothing much left except the skin, but I decide to trust the 'recipe'. "Put squash into dish and cover with cling-film, then pop into microwave for 7 minutes". Easy-peasy I think. After about 6 minutes, there is a vague smell of burning coming from the microwave. I 'rescue' my dish.... The so-called farm fresh squash are sitting all shrivelled up at the bottom of the dish looking very sad and burnt and the cling-film is melted hard to the side of the dish. Hmm - not very appetising. "Pop the cooked squash into a food processor and blender and puree". I peel off what I can of the cling-film from the dish and chisel out the squash. There is no hope. The squash are past redemption. I look around the kitchen....it is a disaster area! All the mess and nothing to show for it! So much for the 'Fresh baby easy baby food making kit'! Martha Stewart I am NOT!

I decide to give the Sweet potato a try instead. After peeling the potatoes and chopping them up I microwave them for HALF the time stated in the recipe and they come out perfect! I then experiment with a hand blender and food processor. The food processor wins and soon I have the perfect sweet potato puree! I transfer this into ice cube trays and pop in the freezer. Success! And just in time for Skye's feeding!! She LOVES the sweet potato - yeah!! It was all worth it. I also make a batch of pear while trying to entertain and feed Skye her milk in her high chair, which is interesing. I'm getting the hang of this cooking lark now thoughso it all goes relatively smoothly. A quick clean up of the disaster area (ie the kitchen) before the kitchen cleanliness inspector (John) comes home from his days fishing and we are done. I am absolutely knackered and am ready to pass out!

John arrives home to a pristine kitchen and says I look radient and that staying at home cooking suits me. Hah! I won't fall for that one. No pinny wearing convert am I!

There is a kitten mentioned in this story....honestly. Read on.....

An hour later, we are on our way to Tim and Renee's for a bbq. It's a 45 minute drive to their house and I have to feed Skye in the car as we are running late. We arrive there at 6:30pm and Skye is happy to roll about on a blanket and take in her surroundings. We move outside as it's a nice evening and I lay Skye out on a blanket on the patio. Tim and Renee have not long aquired a little kitten. The kitten is very curious about our little bundle of joy and very tentatively stalks around her checking her out. As we are chatting, we forget about Skye on the blanket until we hear peals of laughter!!! The cat is darting in and out of the bushes to within a few inches of Skye then running straight back into the bushes again. Skye thinks this is hilarious and giggles hysterically!!! This goes on for some time and is very cute. That is really all there is to the kitten story... you had to be there to enjoy it ;-)

Soon Skye is tired so we move her up stairs. After a little bit of crying (she misses the kitten I think) she falls asleep and we don't hear a peep out of her until we leave around 10pm. She sleeps all the way home and we feed her when we get there. Who said having a baby would tie us down????!!!

Another exciting day is over!

Happy Skye!

Happy Skye!

A trip around a shop in a backpack!

Today I am working from home thank goodness! This gives me time to get up and feed Skye, then go for a run with Tommy before logging into work. I also get to hang with the cherub all morning! Skye is a happy girl and shows it by giving us a big cheesy grin for the camera!

Since it's Labour day weekend, my work is letting us all off at 2pm. I decide that instead of taking Skye to daycare at 1pm, I'll keep her for the afternoon. There is also a work do going on at the Ramp in SF in honor Nancy, the QA manager who is leaving. Skye and I decide that a little trip to the big city is in order! First we'll go to Sportsbasement to look for a baby backpack, then we'll head to the Ramp to party!!!

We drive up to SF to the sounds of 'She'll be coming 'round the mountain....'. Skye falls asleep to the sound of mummy's sweet voice - ha ha! At Sportsbasement I transfer Skye from carseat to Baby bjorn and we head inside the shop. A very nice guy asks if we need help and I ask if they have any baby backpacks. He takes us to the kids area. Skye coos and smiles at him and he is sufficiently enamored and goes out of his way to help us. We try out a few packs and then wander around the shop with Skye perched behind me like a little Princess. She is still smiling at the nice man...wee minx that she is! We eventually leave the shop without buying anything...pretty amazing feat these days.

I feed Skye a bottle of milk in the car and she wolfs it down. Apparently all that flirting has made her hungry.

We head over to the Ramp, 2 hours late! Luckily there are still a lot of people there. I hardly see Skye for the rest of the afternoon as everyone wants to hold her and play with her. She is in her element! It's a lovely afternoon sitting by the bay with the sun shining and the steel band playing the sounds of the caribbean. Soon we have to head home though.

At home Skye grimaces through her baby rice cereal feeding and passes out while nursing. She's had a busy day! I wonder what tomorrow will bring!

Skye's cute little bottom