Journey of a Kumquat: Week 59 - A mini break to Cebu

Finally Matt takes a business trip that I am interested in ~~crashing~~ accompanying. Perhaps Cebu was not on my short list of places, but a beach with fresh in-season mangoes was too difficult to resist Alas, Charlotte and I embarked on our first journey to Cebu, Philippines.

Little did I realize that this trip is a whopping 3 and a half hours from Singapore - the limit really for how long Charlotte can tolerate being held by her folks. The ride over was an exercise in over tired fussiness (sorry fellow passengers for the first 2 hours!)- and a strong lesson that babies (at least our baby) are afraid of the dark, even though they very easily sleep in their own familiar bedroom dark.

We arrived after eleven, and Charlotte really wasn't having all of this 'change'. She cried when Matt was out of her sight and she wailed when we put her in the hotel issued crib (five feet from our bed). So we all slept in our bed - a rarity in the Drake house but a necessity when Charlotte rules the travel roost. Which she did. And we were tired the next day.

Matt headed to work as Charlotte and I perused the breakfast buffet - where Charlotte enjoyed a carbo loaded meal filled with potato pancakes and standard pancakes. She was doted on by the wait staff, and she enjoyed the unsolicited attention tremendously. I call it her flirting.

The rest of our trip was a blur of kids play room / naps / mango shakes and commanding the attention of the F&B staff of the Crimson hotel, who spoiled Charlotte with free ice cream (luckily this does not seem to exacerbate her milk allergy).

The one downer of the trip was some silly beach rave that was happening probably 50 feet from our hotel room at a neighboring hotel. We were up silly long the last night (e.g. at 2AM there was no reprieve in sight), I complained to the manager (who was pretty oblivious that this party was happening prior to that evening - pretty incredible as even I saw a flyer for it and I was there all of 2 days at that point) and they moved us to a pool villa at 3 in the morning. And we settled in by 4, woke up late, ate breakfast and enjoyed a long morning nap, followed by a dip in our private pool and a rushed trip back to the airport. There is a tag on our stroller that says in large letters "LATE" - because we were.

A trick we learned on the plane from a very quiet baby was to buy a big roll or donut to keep a little kid occupied and quiet. It worked! We are getting bread rolls for our long haul trip back to America next week.

Ok, on with the countdown.

Charlotte talks! She dances! She eats!