Tag Archives: 13 months

I’m actually surprised this hasn’t happened sooner

This last weekend, we’re all sitting in the girls’ room getting dressed in the morning, and the girls are doing their usual early-morning goofy thing making faces and noises at each other and laughing at the results. It’s pretty awesome, and at one point the Hatchling looks over at me, mid-laugh, and says, “That Sylvia is pretty damn funny!”

“WHAT did you just say?” I ask, unsuccessfully suppressing my giggles.

“That Sylvia is pretty damn funny, Mama!” responded the Hatchling, totally unaware that she might be saying anything at all inappropriate.

We decided just to ignore it. You know: Parenting for Cowards. And really – she IS pretty damn funny.

Baaaaaaaaack

You know how sometimes you go on vacation and even though travel can be stressful it’s kind of nice to get away from things and then you get back and the house isn’t clean and the cat has puked on the sofa and you know you have a ton of emails to get to and there are probably bills in the post and you’re exhausted from the plane ride and you kind of wish you could break a limb so you could have an excuse for not dealing with it all or maybe just go back on vacation?

Yeah. That’s kind of where I’ve been since we got back.

The trip was mostly excellent. The Hatchling charmed the pants off of all her southern relatives (it’s hot there! they don’t need pants!), my accent came back in record time, we ate fabulous barbecue, seafood (mmm … fried catfish), southern breakfasts (grits!) and I brought home two bags of gen-you-wine boiled peanuts. (Most Yankees think this is the weirdest snack ever invented, but those of us blessed with Georgian heritage know that it is teh awesome, especially when consumed hot out of the boiler and chased with an ice cold coke.) We took a day to visit St. Simon’s island and showed the Hatchling the Atlantic ocean for the first time. (She thought it was pretty cool.) It was really good to see my grandmother, aunt and assorted cousins, and the weather was gorgeous.

The plane trips to and fro, however, were another story. We’ve flown with the Hatchling before: once when she was 3 months old and once at 5 months old. Both of those trips, while not exactly relaxing, were pretty successful. The Hatchling slept or nursed through most of the ride and she was still small enough to fit in a sling. This time, not so much. As a strapping 13 month old, the Hatchling is no longer at all interested in staying within the confines of her parents’ laps for the duration of a 2 hour plane ride. Also, did I mention the “strapping” part? It’s one thing to share your seat with a little bitty baby, but it is something else entirely to share it with a squirmy, always active, 97th-percentile-for-height-and-weight TODDLER. There was simply not enough room for the both of us. God help us, I think the next flight we take (in July) we’re going to have to shell out for a third seat.

And then there was the puking. Seems that the Hatchling is prone to a little airsickness. Or, well – it was a “little” on the way out, and more like “ohmigod I think she just barfed up more than her own body weight” on the way back. As the primary holder of the baby, I was the recipient of most of the ralphing, but poor Mr. Squab was stuck trying to clean us up while apologizing profusely to the woman who was unfortunate enough to be seated next to us. Not the way you really want to end a vacation. Especially when you add on the barfing in the car on the way home and the almost once-a-day barfing at home for the next four days.* Mostly on me.

So, to sum up: being back in the southeast – fabulous. Getting there and back – brain-searingly awful. Recovery from the trip – still in progress. Photos will be posted soon. Hope you all had a delightful Memorial Day weekend.

*Obviously, the way home was more than just airsickness.

A Whole New World

So I mentioned that I have a “nanny” this week, meaning that for the first time I’m spending entire days away from the Hatchling. But did I also mention that we’re having our roof re-shingled this week? Cos we are. It was loooooong overdue – we knew when we bought the place a year ago that it would need re-roofing PDQ – but the coincidence of the roofing happening at the same time as the mamala being away had made me somewhat fearful about the Hatchling’s naps this week. I mean, not only would she be put down and got up by a completely different (if beloved) person, but also: the POUNDING. And the walking on the roof. And the pneumatic nail gun. And did I mention the POUNDING? The fact that when I asked the contractor what the loudest part would be he looked at me like I was speaking Esperanto and said “it’s all loud, ma’am; maybe you should have the baby sleep downstairs” did nothing to restore my confidence.

I had nothing to worry about, of course. The Hatchling, who in the past has been known to wake up if I sneeze two floors down and three rooms over from her*, has slept like … well, like a baby! through all of the roofing madness. Thumps and bangs that make me jump – and I’m awake, mind you – she has snoozed through with great aplomb. Not only that, but the other night we misplaced the phone handset and hit the pager button twice and called it from our mobile phones three times before realizing that it had been left in the nursery. The pager beeping is LOUD, peeps, and we have the ringer set fairly high. But the baby, she no hear nothing. It’s pretty awesome, I tell you what. Sniff. Our little light sleeper is growing up!

*Admittedly, my sneezes are legendarily loud. But still.