When is a holiday not a holiday?

By Alison
26 April, 2007
Comments Off on When is a holiday not a holiday?

When you take 2 children on a 24 hour flight to Sydney – alone.

Oh my, I must be a sucker for punishment. I am taking the girls to Sydney, leaving Paul here in London to work. We’ll be over there for a month. The month over there will be fun, even though it’s going to be winter. Winter in Sydney isn’t exactly that taxing. At least you can still go out and about and don’t have to crack the ice off the swings in the park.

The flying over on the hand, is a completely different kettle of fish! The people in front and behind us are probably going to hate us – even if they don’t play up. A 3 year old and a 5 year old, with very short attention spans can be noisy.

Hopefully I’ve got the entertainment covered, I’ve been recording myself reading their books (with ‘dings’ to indicate page turns!) and I am converting them to mp3s. I’ll have my nano and paul’s nano loaded with the same stories and songs. I’ve never actually timed the battery life on my nano, but it’s got to beat the battery life on my original ipod (it’s exactly 0 minutes).

To plug into the nano, two headsets with a splitter so that they can listen at the same time. The headsets fit them, which is more than I can say for the plane headsets. Last time we flew I had to wedge a sock under them, on top of Molly’s head in order to get them to stay. And that wasn’t really successful anyway.

Plus we get video on demand, and they are playing happy feet. That’s the only movie that they are showing that is suitable for Jamie to watch… Kids love repetition, I just hope she is happy to watch it 10 times. Molly can also watch a Night at the Museum, which she’s seen before.

And there are the games on the seat back tvs – there will be at least one that Molly can play. And the cartoon tv channel.

So, that’s about 4 hours entertainment we’ve covered, right!?

Also packed in the bag will be a similar conglomeration to last time – putty, plasticine, board games, polly pocket, chalk board, doodle pads, pencils, paper, rub downs, cards, dinosaurs in slime (ew) and a kinder egg or two.

Wish me luck.