There is much I would like to share, following my last entry. But time so limited. In fact, when I started this entry two days ago, I was called home because an angry clingy Babe was hurling himself around the ceramic tiled floor of the hallway in the family flat and in danger of knocking himself out.
Since then he has calmed down somewhat, thank God. He will probably fully relax and start to enjoy himself properly the day before we leave. I keep thinking that I'm starting to enjoy myself, and then something else happens to remind me that I'm not. Since yesterday, New Babe has had a blocked nose and temperature, a rash on his arms and legs that I'm told is probably heat rash, and a dodgy stomach. I'm told he looks small for three months old, that his poo 'just isn't right' and that I should be giving him chamomile tea every evening. I will try and write a full list of all the other things I'm apparently doing wrong before I leave. Suffice to say that of course I'm worried about him.
In the meantime, I am loving the hour or so we snatch on the beach every morning, and am making like a dolphin as I had dreamed I might. But the weather is hot and windy, some days worse than others, and it's very hard to gauge how far we can push being out, especially with the children being under the weather, and I fear that tomorrow I may not make it out at all. How selfish that must sound!
Anyway, back to Babe. He has really been impossibly badly behaved and clingy, and I feel as though I don't know the little boy I'm observing. For several days he complained of stomach ache, ear ache and a sore throat, poor chick, and I discovered he had mouth ulcers. He did not really eat for three days, or poo, and is utterly and persistently over tired. For the first few days, when we made it to the beach for an hour or two each morning, he didn't want to so much as put his feet in the sea, and just rolled his little bag of cars around despondently on a sun lounger.
So desperate was I for some sleep on Friday that I made it to the hotel across the road for the night. I think everyone within a ten-mile radius heaved a communal sigh of relief as I carried my bag over, as the way I am feeling is hard to disguise, and I was ready to scream. But by 2am I was standing outside in the dark, struggling to ignore the bi-hourly screaming cries for 'Mummy! Mummy!' coming from the family balcony across the road. I think everyone in the vicinity would have paid to have me back again - Grandad, who is ill, was close to throwing Babe off the balcony I think - but three nights later Babe has accepted our new nightly routine and at least I am only waking to feed New Babe now.
We must take Babe in hand when we get home. (How many times have I thought something like this?) He has been ill, and is coping very well with irritating relatives, but nevertheless I think we probably fawn on him too much, and let him get one over on us too easily.
Having said that, I am considered strict and harsh by the relatives here, where I observe the same treatment of kids that I have noticed in both Greece and Spain: pretty lax discipline, better integration into family life, treating children like little Lords and Ladies if I'm honest. But it seems to work, as they grow up into decent human beings! Hum. I'd like to reflect further on this right now, but no time! More tomorrow, perchance.
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