Travels with tiddler.
Oscar is my tiddler. He is 20 months into this world and is a mad ball of continuous motion and energy.
With this in mind I still decided it would be a fantastic idea to book us tickets to see my mum, in Devon, by train...
For those of you not aware, the journey to Exmouth, from where we live, takes approximately 3hours.
Naturally I was completely shitting it when the night before travelling was suddenly upon us and I looked frantically between the huge rucksack, general rucksack and pushchair that I would be lugging around the next morning. I am a notoriously awful packet, I freak out about it for days packing little bits here and there then have a massive packing related panic and end up with way too many knickers (You just never know) and not enough socks. Throw into the mix the random may weather and packing for a tiddler who needs SOME item of clothing changed every two minutes and my lightweight carefree packing quickly turned into the same enormous rucksack I take away with me to week long music festivals...
Fast forward to the morning of our journey and we somewhat miraculously got out of the house and into the pushchair, respectively, witj virtually no fuss. (Whaaat?!) Inside I am now embarking on my first mini freak out though because we get to the station nearly an hour early and I'm too scared to board an earlier train to Victoria in case we become the cause of an embarrassing public scene and get fine or something. (Social anxiety at it's finest.) Therefore I spend the best part of 45 minutes making sure that shoes are kept on, snacks in place and giraffes not thrown onto tracks all the while maintaining a painfully repetitive dialogue about the blue train and orange man (network rail engineers.)
In a weird daze of expecting something awful to go wrong we actually make it to Paddington and as we exit the lift (the only one we found on our whole journey,) I almost feel like doing a celebratory cheer and congratulating us on having kept all our belongs and the fact that the tiddler is still in situ in the buggy!! (Unheard of but possibly something to do with my vigorous strap tightening!)
I do not cheer for joy however as we still are only in Paddington and have about 2.5 hours of our journey left to make.
The staff at Paddington were amazing though and let us through the barriers before everyone else, which meant we scored the disabled carriage! The disabled carriage is the place to be with buggy, obviously as long as you don't prevent actual people with disabilities from using the space. We scored a table seat with space in front for the buggy.
Just a heads up to anyone travelling great western with a buggy, the steps are impossibly high! I literally felt like I was going to tip Oscar out (oops) and made it my duty to help anyone else with a pushchair up them for the rest of the journey.
I was now feeling a tiny bit smug that we had managed to start our journey and actually get moving with no tears from either of us. However it didn't last long as Oscar started to wriggle uh oh! I mean at this point I don't blame him for being cross but I'm not mentally prepared to let him free so I shamlessy ply him with lunch and snacks 🙈
He is about to go to sleep and I am looking go to reading my book when a lady (who felt it necessary to tell everyone her son was autistic in a disturbingly apologetic way even though he was just quite happily minding his own business.) Anyway the lady decided it would be the best time to have the world's loudest phone call thus creating an unfriendly sleeping atmosphere and I was forced to release the kraken.
To give Oscar his credit he wasn't that bad actually. 40 minutes of jumping on the seat looking for eyeores, one very awkward and stressful nappy change (minus the wee for myself as he kept unlocking the door) and repeatedly saying "hello,hi" to the grumpy man behind us and he was suddenly tired!
Having fished him and his hoes out from under the table, I embarrasedly bundled him in the pushchair with a rice cake bribe which crazily worked this time and then spent another twenty minutes looking like a weirdo, wiggling the pushchair until he finally fell asleep.
I settled down with my book for literally 15 minutes and suddenly we were in Exeter!
I have no idea how we made it but we did and I allowed myself to feel triumphant and pretty proud of myself. If I'm honest I felt pretty much like how the runners at the front of the marathon look! If you don't have kids you will probably be like "how sad, this woman is cheering herself for getting the train. If however you do have a toddler, with the same energy levels as mine, then you will no doubt be joining me in a celebratory woop.
The staff at Exeter were also really helpful, telling me which platform to go to for my shuttle train and helping us off our high up great western. Unfortunately there was a huge delay on the lines and our shuttle train was gong nowhere, a fact that I learnt after removing the now restless tiddler from his pushchair....oh god.
Removing him was basically like lighting a firework and he quickly made friends with some girls in front which was a blessing. Until they got of the train because if the delay...natural Oscar decided he simply must follow them!
My stress levels rose slightly as we began a furious wrestling/distraction type game...to No avail.
In the end we got off and walked the relatively short distance to Exeter Central which I was very glad of because he ran the entire way and I have no idea how long we would have been wrestling on that train.
Finally as i spotted my mum I breathed a sigh of relief. We had made it! We didn't lose anything and nobody cried...much!
I am insanely pleased that I was having a good Day mentally and that I did book those tickets because we had an amazing time and I would have kicked myself if we didn't go because of my anxiety about the train journey.
If you are thinking of making a similar journey, bring lots of snacks and the smallest pushchair you can but just do it, members of the public surprise you in their toddler entertaining abilities and the ones that give you the reaction you expected well...fuck them children are children and who cares what they think.
Ps. Going up escalators with the pushchair is much harder than going down...
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With this in mind I still decided it would be a fantastic idea to book us tickets to see my mum, in Devon, by train...
For those of you not aware, the journey to Exmouth, from where we live, takes approximately 3hours.
Naturally I was completely shitting it when the night before travelling was suddenly upon us and I looked frantically between the huge rucksack, general rucksack and pushchair that I would be lugging around the next morning. I am a notoriously awful packet, I freak out about it for days packing little bits here and there then have a massive packing related panic and end up with way too many knickers (You just never know) and not enough socks. Throw into the mix the random may weather and packing for a tiddler who needs SOME item of clothing changed every two minutes and my lightweight carefree packing quickly turned into the same enormous rucksack I take away with me to week long music festivals...
Fast forward to the morning of our journey and we somewhat miraculously got out of the house and into the pushchair, respectively, witj virtually no fuss. (Whaaat?!) Inside I am now embarking on my first mini freak out though because we get to the station nearly an hour early and I'm too scared to board an earlier train to Victoria in case we become the cause of an embarrassing public scene and get fine or something. (Social anxiety at it's finest.) Therefore I spend the best part of 45 minutes making sure that shoes are kept on, snacks in place and giraffes not thrown onto tracks all the while maintaining a painfully repetitive dialogue about the blue train and orange man (network rail engineers.)
In a weird daze of expecting something awful to go wrong we actually make it to Paddington and as we exit the lift (the only one we found on our whole journey,) I almost feel like doing a celebratory cheer and congratulating us on having kept all our belongs and the fact that the tiddler is still in situ in the buggy!! (Unheard of but possibly something to do with my vigorous strap tightening!)
I do not cheer for joy however as we still are only in Paddington and have about 2.5 hours of our journey left to make.
The staff at Paddington were amazing though and let us through the barriers before everyone else, which meant we scored the disabled carriage! The disabled carriage is the place to be with buggy, obviously as long as you don't prevent actual people with disabilities from using the space. We scored a table seat with space in front for the buggy.
Just a heads up to anyone travelling great western with a buggy, the steps are impossibly high! I literally felt like I was going to tip Oscar out (oops) and made it my duty to help anyone else with a pushchair up them for the rest of the journey.
I was now feeling a tiny bit smug that we had managed to start our journey and actually get moving with no tears from either of us. However it didn't last long as Oscar started to wriggle uh oh! I mean at this point I don't blame him for being cross but I'm not mentally prepared to let him free so I shamlessy ply him with lunch and snacks 🙈
He is about to go to sleep and I am looking go to reading my book when a lady (who felt it necessary to tell everyone her son was autistic in a disturbingly apologetic way even though he was just quite happily minding his own business.) Anyway the lady decided it would be the best time to have the world's loudest phone call thus creating an unfriendly sleeping atmosphere and I was forced to release the kraken.
To give Oscar his credit he wasn't that bad actually. 40 minutes of jumping on the seat looking for eyeores, one very awkward and stressful nappy change (minus the wee for myself as he kept unlocking the door) and repeatedly saying "hello,hi" to the grumpy man behind us and he was suddenly tired!
Having fished him and his hoes out from under the table, I embarrasedly bundled him in the pushchair with a rice cake bribe which crazily worked this time and then spent another twenty minutes looking like a weirdo, wiggling the pushchair until he finally fell asleep.
I settled down with my book for literally 15 minutes and suddenly we were in Exeter!
I have no idea how we made it but we did and I allowed myself to feel triumphant and pretty proud of myself. If I'm honest I felt pretty much like how the runners at the front of the marathon look! If you don't have kids you will probably be like "how sad, this woman is cheering herself for getting the train. If however you do have a toddler, with the same energy levels as mine, then you will no doubt be joining me in a celebratory woop.
The staff at Exeter were also really helpful, telling me which platform to go to for my shuttle train and helping us off our high up great western. Unfortunately there was a huge delay on the lines and our shuttle train was gong nowhere, a fact that I learnt after removing the now restless tiddler from his pushchair....oh god.
Removing him was basically like lighting a firework and he quickly made friends with some girls in front which was a blessing. Until they got of the train because if the delay...natural Oscar decided he simply must follow them!
My stress levels rose slightly as we began a furious wrestling/distraction type game...to No avail.
In the end we got off and walked the relatively short distance to Exeter Central which I was very glad of because he ran the entire way and I have no idea how long we would have been wrestling on that train.
Finally as i spotted my mum I breathed a sigh of relief. We had made it! We didn't lose anything and nobody cried...much!
I am insanely pleased that I was having a good Day mentally and that I did book those tickets because we had an amazing time and I would have kicked myself if we didn't go because of my anxiety about the train journey.
If you are thinking of making a similar journey, bring lots of snacks and the smallest pushchair you can but just do it, members of the public surprise you in their toddler entertaining abilities and the ones that give you the reaction you expected well...fuck them children are children and who cares what they think.
Ps. Going up escalators with the pushchair is much harder than going down...
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