Road Trip 2010

Over the Christmas break Scott and I loaded up the car, cinched our baby into her car seat, and headed out for what I now call "Road Trip 2010."

We were on our way to spend Christmas with my parents who live about 5 hours away. Of course, that 5 hour trip time does not take into account bathroom/diaper breaks, meal breaks, snack breaks, freak out breaks, or the now infamous " 'Hey, look at all that fluffy snow' while mommy cries into her pillow" break. In other words, this trip doesn't exactly take 5 hours now that we've got a baby on board.

This trip was tough but I know it could have been much, much worse. My poor sister BJ had to deal with my niece Jordyn screaming until she literally puked every time she got in the car when she was a baby - No, I'm not kidding. LITERALLY. That kid actually yakked every time they went farther than the corner store after screeeeeeaming her lungs (and her mom's eardrums) out. I have to admit, even though it wasn't a walk in the park, I'm a damn lucky woman 'cause even though my child is stubborn and vocal, you put her in a car and she's pretty chill.

Anyway...please note that I said Brynn is "PRETTY" chill. Not chillin' and definitely not mad chill, shorty. She was pretty chill for an active 1 year old hogtied to a plastic chair covered by a thin layer of padding in the backseat of our car for what we'll euphemistically call a "5" hour drive. Let's just say I'm encouraging my parents to seriously consider moving back to Vancouver - or at least the Lower Mainland - because that drive was...interesting. And by "interesting" I mean something I don't want to repeat in the foreseeable future.

It certainly wasn't all butterflies, smiles and Disneyesque musical numbers, but...we survived. Merry Friggin' Christmas Everyone!

Thailand Calling...

We're going to Thailand!

FYI: when I say "we" - I mean Scott and I, NOT Brynn, Scott and I. Now don't judge me but I have to admit that I can't help but to say "we're going to Thailand" in a singsong and I swear I hear birds chirping and angels plucking their harps as I do.

Oh. Niiiice! There you go...all judgey judgey.

Sadly, this is the portion of the blog dedicated to my defense of myself for doing something I think is normal and healthy. Sigh. Here goes...

I love my child.
I love that kid so much I spend a laughable (or rather pathetic) amount of time obsessing over whether she likes me or not.
I love that kid so much I do the most ridiculous things just to make her smile...in public...in front of strangers and people who know me, no less!
I love that kid so much I've actually (gasp!) gone to the grocery store without makeup to buy something she needed when it wasn't a 3 alarm emergency. I KNOW. Without makeup? Not even lip gloss or eye liner? "Good God," you must be thinking, "this woman sure looooooooves her baby." And believe me, anyone reading this who knows me, knows that this is something I would never do under normal circumstances, so yes, I love my child.

I do, however, think you can love your child and still go away on vacations without them. I've seen what happens to a person when her whole life is her kids and it ain't pretty. Women need to have more in their lives than diapers, scraped chins, and feeding schedules. So, my life in less than 2 weeks will revolve around beaches and bevvies. And curries. Lots of curries. (Shlurp) .

Of course, this unbridled hedonism will all be scheduled around my daily Skype conversations with my child, but that's beside the point. (disclaimer: This is NOT a picture of my child looking studiously at a computer screen. Mine would be pounding the shit out of the keyboard while laughing maniacally. No Google images photo corresponding to that, strangely enough)

zzzzzzzzzzzzzz - huh?

I'm beginning to wonder if the stories I've heard about children sleeping through the night are a societal boondoggle - a nice, tidy little flotable ring of a fable everyone quietly agrees must be thrown out there to help drowning parents stay afloat until their kids do finally sleep like babies supposedly do...and apparently don't.

When Brynn slept in the bed with us for the first couple of months, she often did sleep through the night but since then????

Not so bloody much.

Given the chance, she sleeps in but instead of our old "roll out of bed, fumble around looking for a bathrobe, stumble down the stairs and feed her a bottle once a night" routine, we're now getting up to do it twice! Ummm...how is that a step towards the mythical night of uninterrupted sleep, dammit!

The hard truth: it isn't.

I don't know if she's getting up more often because she's growing.
I don't know if she's getting up more often because she's teething.
I don't know if she's getting up more often because the wind is changing direction outside her bedroom window or because the temperature/dew point spread is not to her liking.

I don't know and I don't care. I'm too tired to care. I'm too tired to do much of anything except say, "Sleeeeep, baby sleeeeep."