This has been a half written post on my iPad for months. Life keeps getting in the way of updating the blog and this post in particular feels like hard work. Finally I’ve finished it, so more than a little late but here you go…

Scifi hubby hasn’t been to a comic con since New York Comic Con in 2012! There simply wasn’t a con worth going to at the start of 2013 and then once we knew I was pregnant we needed to save up so cons were banned. To make it up to him I promised we would go to London Film and Comic Con (LFCC) in July, take Scifi baby in cosplay and I would look after baby leaving him free to roam around the con like a feral comic book geek. He spent ages planning what he’d do for, arranging to meet friends, working out which celebrities and comic book folk he wanted to see, planning what to take to get signed etc etc.

Quite early on the con announced Stan Lee as one of the guests. For those who don’t know Stan is one of the creators of Spiderman, the Avengers, Hulk, Iron Man and half of the Marvel world. For a comic geek he is one of THE people to meet. He’s also 93 and lives in America. We’ve met him before but when LFCC announced this was his last European convention the fans went crazy. Scifi hubby went into a Stan Lee spiral trying to work out how many books he wanted signing, how to carry them all, how to make sure he got in the queue early enough to make sure he got the autographs he wanted and which costumes Scifi baby should be wearing to meet him. Eventually I gave in and simply bought him a silver pass which got him early access and pretty much guaranteed him seeing Stan Lee.

I’m not going to go into all the saga of the con itself suffice to say the organization was terrible, they changed the entry rules two days before the con, added an extra signing and essentially made having the silver pass pointless. However he did get everything signed and a photo with Stan and Scifi baby. Scifi baby decided that the middle of comic con weekend, whilst staying in a hotel, was the best time to get his first tooth. So in the queue for Stan’s autograph not only was I trying to juggle a hyperactive Scifi hubby who was faffing about with coloured sharpies and taking books out of plastic covers but I was also trying to push the buggy, feed a bottle to a hot, tired, grumpy and teething Scifi baby who was dressed as Ironman. Who said holidays were relaxing?

My favourite moment of the weekend came on the Saturday afternoon though. Scifi hubby had a slot booked to have his photo taken with Stan Lee. Of course this is comic con so it still involved a queue. A long one. One with no barriers or any shape of organisation. And Scifi hubby wanted to have Scifi baby in the photo too. I wasn’t allowed to join the queue with them so I was stuck the other side of a large crowd from them with the buggy. It was fine – until Stan ran late. Nearly an hour late.

Predictably hot, tired, grumpy and teething Scifi baby, who was by then dressed as Spider-Man, wanted feeding. I could hear him even if I couldn’t see him and there was no way I could get to them with the buggy. Luckily a friend of ours came to the rescue.

Doug is a really nice guy but looks like a cross between Lobo and a character from the Star Wars Cantina bar. He was actually helping out at the show so was wearing a staff T-shirt but was on a break so came to say hi. I took the opportunity to leave the buggy with him, grab a bottle and cloth and shove my way through the crowd to deliver it to Scifi hubby before retreating back. I emerged from the crush of (stinky) comic book geeks to find Doug surrounded. Not by the usual geeks asking annoying questions about how to get to meet Stan Lee but by women. Lots of them. Some of them in cosplay. He was stood in the middle, leaning on the buggy chatting away. It seems there is something to the idea that women are attracted to men with babies – or even just the idea of babies.

Scifi hubby got his photo and only we know that he has a baby bottle and cloth shoved in his back pocket.

Stan don’t jump!