Finally made it back home. Made it out of Minneapolis/St. Paul in spite
of the crappy weather (although a couple hours later than expected) and rolled
into the airport in Madison about midnight.
The Delta flight crew tried to inspire confidence starting with the gate
agent making the boarding a free for all to get us on the plane quickly before
the pilots could change their mind about taking off. Then we got an explanation about de-icing
procedures and had to be de-iced twice.
Not a very relaxing 38-minute flight!
But they got us on the ground safely (although the hardest landing I
have ever experienced)!
I managed to say goodbye to Allie, Mat, and
Poppy without too much awkward sobbing.
(Truth be told, I secretly cried at the thought of saying goodbye to
Poppy about 5 seconds after she was born)!
I am definitely going back to my sneaking out in the middle of the night
way of doing these goodbyes. It has
served me well in the past! The wind on the
walk to the train station was my excuse for the teary eyes after I left their
flat (it, along with the rain, was also my excuse to not attempt to have good
hair the entire time I was in London).
Couldn’t find any sad movies to watch on the flight, so my fellow
passengers probably thought I was crazy when I was crying during ‘Bridesmaids’
and a couple ‘Parks and Rec’ episodes.
Poppy and I hung out a lot over the three
weeks I was there. We pulled a couple of
all-nighters together watching some late-night television…some of it good (‘To
Kill a Mockingbird’) and some of it that might give us both nightmares (the
show where they find people with weird body problems – I don’t remember what it
is called, but people have some really gross things going on with their
bodies)! Although we did decide we could
endure a couple more episodes of that as long as we didn’t have to watch any
more Olympic curling! I taught Poppy
‘the wave’ (see photo below). It was a
little awkward doing it during curling, but she will at least be prepared for
the day when Grandpa Randy takes her to a Packer game!
We also talked in the wee hours about how
the training of her parents is going. So
far, we give them a grade of A-. The
minus comes from that time they wheeled her around Soho with the vomit on her
chin going unnoticed for what seemed to Poppy like hours (probably only 30
seconds in reality). So embarrassing for
our little Princess! Also, they have
been a little so-so on the whole dressing thing. Some of her outfits have a little too much
pattern mixing going on (striped socks, flowered shirt, etc). We don’t know what they were thinking with
that bird hat and the ‘Pope’ hat! And it
was Fashion Week in London for heaven’s sake!
Anyway, Poppy has decided to let them continue to be her parents. She thinks they are showing signs of
impending awesomeness : )
Had to learn a little bit of new
terminology being an American Grandma of a half Brit…a nappy is a diaper, not
baby talk for Grandma is tired and going to take a little ‘nappy’; a buggy is a
stroller, not something the Amish cruise around London in; a dummie is a
pacifier. So when Allie said ‘is the dummie
in the diaper (nappy) bag, I stopped myself from telling her that Mat was doing
the best he can with being a new daddy, and of course he is not in the bag!
Haha!
After boasting about being mistaken for a
native Londoner in the last blog post, I was reminded that I still had a ways
to go. Someone asked me for directions
again and I was not able to help them (I did have a pretty good guess, though,
as to where the street was they were looking for), and a London bus on a rainy
day reminded me that I do not know the protocol of standing way back from the
curb when waiting to cross the road. My
hairspray, makeup, and all-weather jacket were no match for the full-frontal
assault of water that came flying up from the puddle on street as the bus
passed. Hopefully, the ubiquitous
cameras on the London streets captured that moment and you can all look forward
to seeing it on YouTube at some point in the future.
Anyway, all good things must come to an
end. While it was hard leaving little
Poppy, I am not sure Randy could have muddled on without me much longer. I didn’t hear any reports of him wandering
around the neighborhood in his pajamas in the middle of the day or anything,
but why chance it!
Thanks for those few sunny days, London,
and for making it so easy for me to get around on my solo journeys around the
city. I will miss you a little bit, but
will miss the Horvath threesome about a thousand times more!
Allie here - I think I'm going to let Grandma Caryl do all the blogging because she's way funnier than I am! Once again, I'm just here to add photos of my tiny human.
Here's the above mentioned 'wave' photo.
And the above mentioned 'Pope hat' (seriously the cutest Pope ever).
Finally, we got our photos back from the photographer today. I already knew Poppy was adorable but the photographer (magicrainbowphotography.com) did a great job capturing her adorableness! Here are some of my favourites:
These photos are all adorable and amazing but you would not believe the amount of wee and poo that comes out of an 8 day-old baby with no diaper on during a 5 hour photo session! Poo on Mat, on the wall, on the floor, on our bed and wee in my lap. But look at her ridiculously long legs! She doesn't fit into most of her tiny baby pants anymore - her little feet are smushed because she has her Dad's legs!
There are more super cute photos but I can't post all 75 of them. Maybe next blog post.. which may not be for a while because I'll be busy keeping little Pops happy and fed (and trying to get more than a minuscule amount of sleep).
The end!
