Days 131 - 136

Well it's been a few days since I have posted on here. As a last minute thing the 4 of us got away for a few days, staying on a fruit farm outside High Halstow - while it wasn't exactly "going away" as in a long way, but it was great. It was just what we needed, a break from our own four walls...

To make things even better, with the government guidance on shielding changing, we managed to secure the accommodation next to us for my brother, wife and their little one to stay too, so we could share some time with them, but at the same time remain nicely socially distanced.

I can't recall if I have detailed this previously, but my brother and his wife look after their grand-daughter, who was taken into care at an early age, while we look after her brother, who was also taken into care, at birth. It has been quite a challenging 3 years since we took little one on, trying to keep on top of his needs, but it has been nice that we have been able to spend some good time with his sister at various times. We were scheduled to go away with them in May for a week, but with the travel lockdown situation and shielding it had to be cancelled.

We were delighted when we were able to get them along for a few days too. As it turned out it really couldn't have gone better, we had a great time with them, we did a couple of lovely walks around the farm and one long distance walk - to be fair, it was probably a longer walk then we intended, and their little one flagged quite badly and had to be carried a fair part of the way - not that my brother minded, much!

The only downside of the week was our little one discovered he could climb out of his travel cot. We had bought him a new larger one recently, and with cancellations of holidays, this was the first time it had been used. The first two nights were fine, as he went to bed tired, but night 3 I had the surprise of coming back from the bathroom, ready for bed, only to find that someone had pinched my spot in the bed, looking very pleased with himself. We left him to fall asleep and I put him back into his travel cot, only for him to wake up and climb back into bed with us.

The next night we figured we would put him back into his grow bag, as we thought that would stop him, but no, he shot out of his cot like a bat out of hell and straight onto our bed, where again he spent most of the night before I moved him!

I think this could be a challenge going forward, and may have an impact on our holidays - I can see me getting kicked into the spare room next time we go away...!

We decided that it would be a sensible move to cut our break short by a couple of days. My wife had radiotheraphy scheduled for today and tomorrow and was starting to suffer from lack of sleep. I played the dutiful hubby, getting little one up, but the accommodation we had wasn't big enough to get away from eachother and his loud noises and squeals could be heard for miles around, so sleep was interupted even when he wasn't in the bedroom.

The radiotherapy appeared to go well. Like so many things, it appears, the thought of the procedure was worse than the reality. Hopefully, with only one more session to go she may not suffer too many side effects. I hope not, as she has gone through enough over the past year and deserves a break of some kind...