We went for a family holiday to Australia along with Jon’s Dad for 10 days. The plan was to spend most of our time in Sydney and a couple of days driving out to the Blue Mountains area.
The flight there was tiring. We had hoped that by taking a night flight the boys would sleep on the way there. Asher was still pretty alright, though he slept much later than usual and woke once. But Ellery woke often, refused to be put down in the bassinet, and Jon and I had to take turns carrying him the entire flight. In contrast we took the evening flight home, and it was much better. We settled their dinner on board and basically ran through the night routine on the plane. So by the time the lights go out it’s about time for them to sleep too. Ellery was also much easier to handle and allowed us to put him in the bassinet for quite a large part of the flight such that I actually got to watch the rest of Transformers: Dark of the Moon (I watched the first half on the way up), Friends with Benefits, a few random episodes of kids cartoons, and still managed to get a little sleep.
Sydney was fun! We checked out several kid-friendly sights like the Sydney Aquarium and Australian Museum, did the harbour cruise, checked out a couple of street markets, walked the Rocks and the Royal Botanic Gardens, played at the relatively new Darling Quarter playground twice, and took a trip to Manly beach. We only had half-a-day each day because of the jetlag. By the time the kids were up it was about 11am Australian time, but we didn’t really want to push them to adjust. We were prepared for a slow, relaxing pace, and let the kids adjust in their own time.
Our roadtrip was hit by bad weather which prevented us from catching the views of the various Blue Mountain features. The first day was bright and sunny when we were at the Featherdale Wildlife Park. We thought the next few days would be equally sunny since the previous 4 days in Sydney were blessed with beautiful weather too. But we found the next two days in the mountains utterly dreary. It rained non-stop, the temperature dropped to a low of 7 degrees celcius (it had been 27-28 degrees in Sydney!), and there was even sleet at one point! Piled clothes onto the kids to keep them warm, though I was less worried about Ellery since he’s normally a sweaty monster in Singapore.
Instead of waiting out the rain (which would have been futile anyway), we went to explore the Jenolan Caves – apparently the best in the Southern Hemisphere. Perfect. Temperature moderated place that’s unaffected by the rain :) On the last day we also went to the ZigZag Railway for a ride on real steam engines a la Thomas! It was freezing that day, and we could even see the mist on our breathe. But we huddled in the carriage and munched on snacks to keep warm.
Overall it was a good trip. Very relaxing and enjoyable.
There was one horrific experience we went through though. Ellery had a little cold that he’d caught from Asher before the trip and the phlegm was difficult to blow out. On the first night at our Blue Mountain cabin (where we were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by darkness), I was feeding Ellery when I suddenly noticed he was looking at the wall behind us. Then I asked what he was looking at and realised he was not responding. I picked him up and found he was absolutely limp!!! Rushed out to find Jon and we saw he was turning blue. I tried very hard not to panic but I was very scared. Then he started to have fits! We prayed and prayed, and pat and pat, hoping the phlegm would come out – we assessed that it was probably that which was blocking his breathing. After I don’t know how long, the Ellery suddenly coughed up the phlegm. His eyes started to move but could not focus for a good many minutes more, and he still did not respond. He’d be looking at me but not registering anything! Prayed and prayed some more. Thank God that he eventually started to mumble something, and regained his colour, and started to be responsive again. What a fright!!! What a horrific experience!!! It was only after the kids were settled into bed later that I felt the stress of it all and cried to release the tension.
We concluded that he’d had a blocked nose, but at the same time was very hungry and wanted to nurse and couldn’t stop drinking. As a result all his airways got blocked. It was especially shocking because just a few minutes before he was perfectly fine!
We were just so thankful he was ok.
So yes, it was an eventful holiday. One good thing that came from the trip was that when we got back to Singapore the kids were kind of on Australian time so they slept much earlier, giving me more time in the evening :)
Ok, think I’ll share more on the individual aspects in a few posts over the next few days. This was just an overview.
