We had a weekend in Sydney; Mark went to a business meeting with the VP while Zoe and I went shopping. A pleasant time was had by all, except for the period between 9pm and 6.30am Sat/Sun, during which time
1) Arlo urinated on the bed in the time it took me to turn and get a nappy, post-bath. He was sitting on the pillow at the time. Luckily we were staying in serviced apartments, so we had a dryer. We rinsed the sheets and pillow slip in the sink and dried it, distracting the baby in the meantime.
2) Arlo proceeded to scream hysterically for almost an hour, for no discernable reason. Not milk, nor cuggles, nor books, nor food would calm him. Eventually he cried himself to sleep, at about midnight
3) Arlo woke at 3am and proceeded to scream hysterically again. He was so exhausted, but we fashioned up a midnight snack (croissant!), spread crumbs throughout the bed, and then managed to get his sobbing body to sleep by placing me between Arlo and Mark. Perhaps some form of separation anxiety?
4) 6.15am, the building’s smoke alarm went off. We stumbled out of bed, stumbled into clothes, stumbled downstairs (we had a loft penthouse, yay for random room upgrades), fumbled through the guest guide to see if we were supposed to take the stairs to the lobby instead of the lift, stumbled into the hall into a crowd of other stumblers, dressed variously in nive clothes and fluffy nightgowns, then stumbled back into the room when a staff member arrived in the lift to say it was a false alarm caused by the steam from someone’s cup of tea.
5) Managed to get Arlo back to sleep again, to awake a half hour before checkout. We finagled an extra half an hour, then surreptitiously claimed our own form of late checkout by leaving our car in the car park all day while we went shopping.
Arlo’s first train ride today! He sees trains often when we visit the city; once, while waiting on the footbridge so we could see Mark’s train arrive at the station, the train drivers waived hello and goodbye to Arlo, which was fun. But he’d never been inside one till this morning. On the way up the long stairs at Newtown Station, a passing Greek gentleman struck up a conversation with Arlo, to which Arlo’s contribution was "Tain! Tain! Stairs. Bye! Bye!"
He later delighted a small crowd by running in his skull-and-crossbones stockinged feet through the grass in a park in Crows Nest, during a most pleasant lunch with Arlo’s Aunty Suzie, whom we have not seen in some months, since she moved to Neutral Bay for work. Her apartment is small, but wonderful – full of light, and oh-so-tempting.
