We’ve just come back from a short stay in Spain, and it’s been quite pleasant. Here’s the latest update from the twins.
Feeding.
Nothing major to tell here, they are still eating more or less the same as they have always been. Elisa is still a champion eater and Eric still needs some encouragement. Still, in Spain they both ate quite well, which made me very proud, because there’s nothing worse than having your own mum tell you that your kids don’t eat well… But my mum was very impressed and that made me happy.
We had a bit of an issue though on Sunday when the whole family went to the beach to eat some fish and seafood. Very long story short, they didn’t serve any “child-friendly” food for a while, so the twins got bored of waiting and just wanted to play outside. Until Elisa saw another child with an ice cream, and then they both wanted an ice cream as well. Eric tried a bit of lobster too, I must add, and he seemed to like it!
Sleeping.
No issue whatsoever here in the last month. The only problem we’ve had was that Elisa went through a small patch where she kept pulling her nappy down in the middle of the night, weeing herself and then waking up crying. She did it probably three or four times in a 10-day period. I ended up putting her “onesie” PJs every night, as she can’t access the nappy that way.
In Spain the both slept brilliantly too, waking up quite late every morning too! They were exhausted after long days playing outside.
Development.
Big big news this month is that we’ve got rid of Elisa’s dummy (or “bibi” as she calls it). Whilst we were in Spain, her lips got very chapped, so we decided to stop giving her the dummy and put some lip balm on her to try and repair her lips. She asked for it a couple of times each day, and started to whine for a minute or two each time, but that was it. When we got back she asked for it again, but Jon and I have decided that there’s no looking back and we’ve thrown them away.
Not having a bibi has made miracles on Elisa’s speech. She is way more talkative without it, so she is always talking! Jon even reckons that her grammatical structures are even more complex than Eric’s, but I think they are more or less the same. But, yeah, she’s always talking and singing now 🙂
We are going to start potty training Eric very soon. At nursery they’ve told us that he is ready. He goes to the potty very often there and at home he almost always does a wee in the potty before bath time. He is just not telling us when he needs it, although we don’t ask either. We need to buy him some underwear and be ready for the accidents! It will take lots of patience, but as my uncle said, we are going to appreciate the financial side of not having to buy any more nappies! Elisa is not quite there yet. They even think so at nursery. She asks to go to the potty from time to time, but nowhere near as consistently as Eric.
Their imagination is amazing, they both play with imaginary things all the time and want us to join in their games too, be it by eating the imaginary food they are giving us or doing other things that they come up with. Elisa loves playing with her soft toys, she’s got a few favourites like little teddy, little girl 1 (a little miss sunshine plush toy), little girl 2 (a purple doll she “borrowed” from the hairdressers in Spain) and dollie (a doll we bought before Christmas).
Socialising.
We knew it would take them a little bit to get used to my family again (it took them like five days to even acknowledge my mum and uncle last time) but this time it was slightly easier. They were still very shy and didn’t appreciate the Spanish custom of being touched by strangers all the time, but they were warmer to my family pretty much straight away. They really clicked with my nephew Pablo (who is 13 years old) and I’m sure they would have been friendly with Aroa (my niece’s daughter, who is almost 5) had she not been ill.
Back in the UK we haven’t really met with any other kids outside nursery hours. We’ve been places, like Finkley Down Farm and JJs, but they don’t really interact with other children there. In fact, if a child approaches me or Jon and starts talking to us, most likely Elisa will go to that child and scream something like “that’s my mum/dad!!!”. Very protective, she is.
Health.
We haven’t had any issues in this area lately. Elisa had a couple of loose nappies one day and we were told by nursery carers to keep an eye, but it never got worse or developed into anything bad.
I still haven’t called the surgery to book them for the flu vax, I keep forgetting! I will do it now that I am thinking about it and see what they say. It may be too late, I don’t know.
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Flying to Spain was slightly easier this time. As it happens, both Eric and Elisa woke up in the middle of the night the morning we were flying out, so when the alarms went at 5am, they were both ready to go downstairs. We gave them a bit of breakfast whilst Jon and I got ready, got to watch a bit of TV, got them dressed (opposed to the previous times, when we took them to the airport in their PJs and then changed them there) and off we went. We were only taking hand luggage, so no need to queue at the check in desks. We didn’t take any pushchairs either, and we didn’t regret that at all. They would have been more hassle than anything. Oh, we also used the meet and greet parking at the airport. I don’t think we’ll ever go back to using normal car parks again… Meet and greet is so great!
The flight there was great for 95% of the time. The kids behaved very well. The only problem came when we were about to land, Elisa suddenly decided that she wanted to sit on my lap and wouldn’t sit in her seat at all. She threw the mother of all tantrums and even the stewardess was freaking out a bit, telling me that we wouldn’t be able to land if she wasn’t strapped in, as it was dangerous (ok, then… you do it, I would have liked to say to her…).
The flight back was fantastic, again the twins behaved very well, no tantrums or anything. Eric fell asleep on me for a while, and then Elisa fell asleep in the car on the way back home. Unfortunately we hit a bit of rush hour traffic, as we left Gatwick at about 4:30pm, so we went through the M23, M25 and M3 at the worst time, but it wasn’t that bad in the end.
We will be going back to Spain in the summer, late August or early September (whenever the tickets are cheapest!). Until then, adiós!
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