Apologies for the blog (and email!) silence over the past few months - we decided to prioritise real face-to-face time with friends and family in the UK over e-communication! But, we are now back in LA (I can't quite bring myself to call it 'home' - that tells you where I am emotionally!) and so it is time for us to fill you in on what we've been up to!

Firstly, THANK YOU to all those of you who prayed for our journey home - it was surprisingly easy! Our original plan was to leave Cornwall early on Thursday morning, drive up to Oxshott to return Ed's grandfather's car (which we borrowed for the duration of our stay - VERY generous! THANK YOU!!!) and then take a taxi straight to Heathrow to catch our flight... that would have been an epically AWFUL day... thankfully, we realised this ahead of time and drove up to Winchester on Wednesday night while Belter slept and then headed to Oxshott after a lovely family morning together.

Once on the flight, Daniel entertained everyone by walking laps of the plane for a few hours. When I say 'everyone', I think MOST people were entertained, but there were a few people who clearly did NOT like babies, or appreciate chubby little (perhaps not entirely clean) fingers using their legs as a balancing aid! Oh well, they just had to live with it! The funniest thing was that Daniel was very taken with tattooed arms - there were a few highly decorated limbs on display - and, even though these limbs were attached to young men who I would not want to meet in a dark alley, Daniel beamed at them and they melted as he exclaimed with delight while tracing the patterns on their skin! Hilarious!

After feeding him, our meals arrived (SERIOUSLY good food in business class!) and we strapped him into his child seat. He protested for about half an hour before falling asleep... and folks, at the risk of sounding like a gloating parent, he STAYED asleep right up until about an hour before we landed! BRILLIANT! All the passengers around us kept congratulating us on having THE most wonderful baby in the universe (which, of course, he is!)

We arrived (gulp)... home (there, i've said it) at about 8pm, fed, bathed and gave him his milk. He fell asleep. We thought, we've got away with it, he thinks it's night time! All was peaceful in the Gilchrist house until about 2am, when Daniel decided it was time to start our day. Although we tried to persuade him otherwise, it soon became clear that our son had had enough sleep. So, the day began!

We thought we'd go and do our food shop, but could NOT find a 24 hour supermarket anywhere (I admit, more than one grumbling comment about how it would be easy to find a 24 hour Tesco's in the UK passed my lips!). In the end we found milk and bananas in a 7-11 (ironically, at 3 in the morning!) before heading to IHOP for breakfast (oh yes, THEY stay open 24 hours!). This was a bad idea (although fun) and Ed and I both fought back the urge to vomit afterwards. Quality cuisine it is not. Welcome back to the USA digestive system!

Yesterday was spent in a haze of unpacking, loads of washing, sorting through post and rapidly child-proofing our apartment for a now WALKING toddler!

Daniel woke at 1.30am thismorning but his wonderful Daddy managed to persuade him back to sleep and our day began at the more reasonable hour of 5am. Hopefully it won't take our son TOO long to get over his jet-lag!